Cost of medication

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I have changed the way I take my medication because of the cost of my prescriptions. I have either stopped taking the meds on a regular basis - hoping to extend the life of the remaining pills or taken a smaller dosage. This is of course without recommendation from the doctor or even asking him if it okay.

I just cannot bear changing the scripts to a different med because of cost. I would have to change the way I take all my meds in the morning and go through the entire process of seeing what side effects I can endur and what will happen if I continue to take such medications. I don't want to go through that. I am sorry. Am I doing an injustice to my body? I see not, but perhaps I am. I mean, there is that possibility. Self-medication is touted at being a bad thing, as I am not a doctor. However I have studied pharmecueticals for a while now. Some would say, I am not a pharmacist either.

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I am in a predicament that many people, especially the elderly, or even, as in my case, I make too much money for automatic medicaid (as I have a spenddown of $801/month) or prescription assistance, but not enough money to be able to afford these drugs and drug choices on my own. I feel surrounded by difficulties ahead, as I cannot meet my coverage gap for this year. I don't see my spending or coming up with the money, close to $2700 more before my prescription plan kicks back in helping to pay for almost all of the co-pays I will have to now pay out of pocket.

I have some Lamictal leftover from a trial period when I was trying to stop using my Abilify. But I started to get the shakes - uncontrolable muscle movements in my entire lower body, especially my legs. But I think that when I was taking it, I stopped the Abilify cold turkey. I think that is what caused my shakes, not the Lamictal. My doctor said that he thought one of the rare side effects was what I was experiencing. However, I tend to think he was just saying that as a method of "knowing exacty what caused it". Cuz I mentioned to him, it was either the case of stopping Abilify right away without taking a smaller dosage over a period of time, when I would be introducing the Lamictal ramped up into my bloodstream. My fault, cuz I didn't want to spend the $580 for 30 Abilify pills. That is really just crazy, it really is.

Anyway, I have about 4 pills left of the Abilify. I am gonna stretch them over a period of about 2 weeks. At that time, I should have some money saved to expend about half the cost to get another prescription for the Abilify meds, cut in a prescription noted by the doctor, whom I am seeing on July 13th, about 17 days away from now. Hopefully he won't get mad at me in changing my mind again, to try to go on Lamotrigine (the generic form of Lamictal). If that does work, I would be saving myself quite a sum of money in the long run, as that med is only dramatically cheaper than Abilify.