I know you said you wanted to hear from people who had experience taking meds and that's not me but I've been a psych nurse for 21 years. I mean, anxiety...it depends, if you don't have any addiction potential a little bit of Ativan twice a day could help but there are lots of other things that work just as well. CBT, relaxation techniques, yoga...just to name a few. There are no meds for borderline personality disorder. That doesn't mean that doctors don't throw every conceivable med at them. And you might feel like it's working for a little while but personally, I think there's a lot of placebo effect going on. As far as bipolar, I don't know...I'd have to know your symptoms, your age, etc. Most of the mood stabilizers have pretty bad side effects (I wouldn't want to be on them) but certain ones do work for certain people. That's the problem with all of psych...there's something out there (meds, therapy, foods, exercise, really pretty much anything will work for some person, somewhere) that'll probably work. The trouble is finding it. There's no magic formula.