Original SDMB thread - Dear Sister, please take your lithium
They have to take it for their own reasons, of their own (unpressured) volition, in light of their own independent conclusion that they'd rather be on lithium than off it.
(I have friends in the movement who are bipolar but choose to remain unmedicated. Some of them aren't much fun to be around, but that's also true of some of the medicated ones The important thing is that they accept the consequences of their actions, and don't try to have it both ways, e.g., "You can't have me arrested for that, I did it because I'm SICK")
Ultimately it is their brains and their biochemistry and they have the unalienable human (and in most places in the US, legal) right to make this rather basic choice. My friends tell me that lithium "flattens" what they feel to the point that no horrible consequence of a possible manic episode outweighs the lure of actually feeling something with some degree of intensity once again.
You certainly have the right to say "I don't want to have anything to do with you, you tried to have me locked up as an assailant", though, and you may find that you have to. Sorry your Thanksgiving is being marred by this.
See my next post on this same thread