I lived in the "bi-polar" thought world all my life until 2000, not knowing it, but not experiencing true "psychosis."

From 2000 to 2006, I had two borderline psychotic experiences. I was also experimenting with psychiatry and medications; sometimes I took them; different kinds; different dosages and sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I had "Icarus" type discussions with my psychiatrist and preferred to try spiritual remedies; also I struggled simultaneously with alcohol and drug use. In my case though, I had a good experience with the two psychiatrists I had, the second one for most of the period. I had the money to pay which maybe accounts for that, plus some luck, plus I'm an articulate professional, not so easy to push around, or at least I was at the time.

In the first experience, I went about eight days, awake most of the time, far into the thought world, fascinated, illumined (or so it seems, and too some extent it was, though "garbled"), laughing, writing screenplays in my head, so profound, and reading the Bhagavad Gita with more complete comprehension, it was child's play, than ever since, until it built to a stage that in thinking about the movie, The Matrix, I got all kinds of frantic because I couldn't remember if I had or hadn't taken the pill. I started to get stuck, repeating the problem over and over. I realized I was in trouble, called people I trusted, and then got an emergency appointment with the pychiatrist; the Zyprexia worked perfectly for me, and helped me; if I had to keep going in the state with no effective meds, I don't know what would have happened. I wouldn't want to try it.

The second experience I wrote about in my blog topic "Delusion." It was longer in duration; definately borderline "psychotic" but it never produced the "crisis" moment I had in the first one; but it didn't run its course, I stayed in it; at a certain point I realized the state was harmful to me; I was exhausted and very little of me was left in contact with "reality," but I didn't "go completely over." At that point, I went to the meds again; and they helped.

My suspicion is, for me, I couldn't survive and wouldn't want to try, a full trip to the "other world." I might never come out. 

I know from my own experience that your own sense of your problem or situation can help the meds to work. For instance, in my case, I realized that the world I was living in was harmful. I saw it. I also realized that certain spiritual activities of mine were unhelpful and somewhat deluded.

After 2006, I finally came into the state of consciousness that I think matches, close enough, more or less, what is considered "normal." Only then could I see where I really was before; I decided, to the extent I had power over it, to not go back there, and to refrain from activities that start to send me there. This realization and intent itself helped me, in addition to the drugs, which I take at bare minimum doses, to stay out of there. (I find even very good and "nondomineering" psychiatrists tend to want to overmedicate you out of, from their point of view, a desire to err on the side of caution. This is where lying comes in handy!) But I had to learn for myself through experience and experimentation.

So far, I haven't changed my mind, although I do wrestle with how to get the most "juice" out of life, which the meds do suppress somewhat, as I can. 

It took me a long time, but I kinda got there, at least it seems so for now.