Do You Maintain or Reduce Your Meds?

I'm not even sure why I do this, but I am continually trying to reduce my pain medication.

I stabilize for a period of time, and then I try to taper.  I drop a few pills and then I begin to feel tiny ripples of pain - I call them guppy ripples.  At that point either I pay attention to them and go back up to the last medication level at which I was stable; or I pretend they are indigestion, try to ignore them for a week or so.  Too often the guppies then turn into barracudas, and I have to increase the med dosage beyond where it was when I began to taper.  Sometimes, though, I can successfully taper, and this then justifies my next attempts to cut down on meds.

Richard has learned that his voice needs to be a quiet one during these medication experiments.  He reminds me of my doctor's perpetual advice to of just stay stable at the level of meds I'm on.  At some point I ignore his counsel and do my thing.  If (or when) I suffer the consequences, he just holds me and reminds me that I had stabiity and can have it again.

If you're the ill partner, how do you manage your medication?  And if you're the well partner what role, if any, do you play around medication matters?