Young & Restless twisted when we thought it would turn this week… we really didn’t see this coming! The jaw-dropping reveal came when Mariah told Nick that she had found Sharon’s meds and she was taking them. Wait, wut?! This totally unexpected bit of information left us all wondering what the heck, then, is really going on here?

Mariah and Nick hatched a plan to get to the bottom of Sharon’s rather unhinged behavior by going behind her back to figure out whether or not she was on her bipolar meds as she claimed to be. Mariah subsequently reported that she found the prescription at her mom’s place and launched her investigation. The number of pills left in the bottle indicated that she had been taking them since the day they were prescribed, so Mariah concluded that Sharon was on her meds.

Backtracking, Sharon had told Nick that her doctor had put her on new meds because her old ones had become less effective. She’d also made it clear to Nick that she didn’t like how the meds made her feel. During a “conversation” with Cameron, we also learned that Sharon had lied to her family and had not, in fact, called the doctor to discuss the prescription as promised. Therefore, they (and we) suspected she was off her meds, and Mariah’s reveal was a bit of a shocker.

So, what’s really going on here? Well, there are multiple possible scenarios that could be coming into play.

Bipolar Sharon is nothing if not sly. She could be taking a pill out of the bottle each day and flushing it down the toilet or throwing it in the trash to make it look as though she’s taking them. She’s been shifty with her family since this began, so it’s not impossible.

On the other hand, Mariah’s theory could prove true. She wondered if the new meds were simply taking a while to kick in. After all, it can take weeks for a prescription like this to take effect. But if this were the case, wouldn’t we see her gradually improving rather than spinning further and further out of control? Also, as Nick pointed out, things had reached the point where they didn’t have “weeks” to sit back and see if the new RX was going to work.
It’s possible that Sharon was prescribed the wrong meds. It often takes some trial and error to land on the correct prescription to treat bipolar disorder, but if Sharon has stopped communicating with her doctor, they’d have no way of knowing that the pills are having an undesired effect on her.

We also saw Mariah find a huge bottle of ibuprofen in Sharon’s purse. Now, nothing happens on soaps without a reason, so how might this figure in? Has Sharon been dumping out her prescription medicine and replacing it with ibuprofen? Perhaps what Mariah thought she was counting was not proper meds at all.

Conversely, the ibuprofen could be indicitive that something more is at play here. We haven’t seen Sharon having headaches, but she’s been spaced out and sleeping a lot. Tired, distracted, emotional, not to mention hallucinating Cassie, Cameron, and Nick. Might Sharon be dealing with something more than bipolar disorder? Perhaps what is driving her behavior isn’t a med mix-up at all, but a classic soap opera brain tumor. We’re all too familiar with the kind of havoc those puppies can wreak.

Finally, someone could be messing with Sharon’s medication. This is a pretty big stretch, however, as we can’t imagine anyone on canvas doing this save for Cameron, who is already dead. They’d also have to have access to her house, and, well… a motive. Let us know what you think is going on with Sharon and her meds in the comment section.