Posted by Mr Cushing on November 25, 2002, at 16:35:57
In reply to Re: Is there ever a normal after BP - fluffy, posted by fluffy on November 24, 2002, at 11:21:52
Hey Fluffy, sorry about not taking more interesting in this conversation before but I completely lost the thread and well, I've been trying to get myself off of Effexor to see exactly I'm doing with just a mood stabilizer alone and that for about a week or so turned my head into jello.
Anyways, it's funny how when people are diagnosed with a certain condition, how much their personalities are also in common. Most of your messages I can totally relate to.
Now let's see... the friends issue, I've taken it like this. Since I've basically been a prisoner of this disease (meaning that it has taken up ALL of my time just about) since May, when I graduated from College for my 2nd time, I don't really have a whole lot that's interesting to say. I haven't been partying.. Hell.. I've been barely going out. Just dealing with this, taking my meds, doing as much research on this as I possibly can so that I'm "armed" for the future, etc. So now when I talk to my friends, I tell them basically exactly what's going on. If they say something stupid, like "Well, that's all in your head, you're strong enough to be able to deal with that without taking medications" then I simply don't have any room in my life for them anymore. I'm a very independent person and I've been strong enough to last through a life that has had TONS of extreme ups and downs (similar to my moods lol...) and I'm still alright. Most people that know my life story thus far couldn't imagine having to live through everything that I have and still be alright.
So with that being said, it doesn't matter how strong you are. This is one thing that you can't beat by yourself. I found that the harder I fought it, the worse it got, till it got to the point where it basically controlled me instead of how it's supposed to be, me controlling my condition.
When my Mom died, when I was 16, I fell into a DEEP depression for like 4 years without wanting any help with it. I always thought that I would be able to snap out of it myself. But after 4 years of basically torturing myself, I'm like, alright... I've got to do something here or I'm going to wind up destroying myself. So I went on Celexa for about 16 months. That pulled me right out of my depression. Weird since most doctors really advise against putting patients who are Bi-Polar on AD’s without having a mood stabilizer already working in your system. Funny part about it is that it worked. It worked so well that 16 months later I came off of Celexa completely because I had felt so well.
This led to another cycle for me. I went back to school full time and found that I had never at any time in my life been as productive as I could be at this point. God, my Term Papers were finished before even the first half of the Term was over. I was acing every one of my courses. I had just about quit sleeping, figured it was a waste of time seeing as that I didn’t need more than 3-4 hours a night in order to function properly. Actually, this is one of my main problems seeing as though I had NEVER been able to sleep properly ever since I was a baby. I was talking so fast that most people couldn’t understand a word I was saying and my thoughts were going even quicker than that. God, most of the time I couldn’t get a thought out of my head quick enough to say it so I would just stop mid sentence and jump to a completely different topic. But see, to me, they were all related. Things kept going quicker and quicker in my mind, I kept forcing myself to become more and more productive each day, I kept sleeping less and less, and well, I just kept on getting more and more F****d up in the head. The Term ended with me threatening a teacher that I was going to beat the Hell out of them with a baseball bat and I wound up getting banned from my Graduation Ceremony.
At this point I’m like, whoah… K, I need to relax, I’m going to take a looooong vacation away from all this stress. I figured that I was just mentally burned out to the extreme. Well, my mania subsided and I became what I now recognize as depression, but this was in fact just an EXTREME tiredness that never seemed to go away. I still couldn’t sleep so my body wasn’t getting the rest that it needed, and each day I was becoming more and more like a couch potato. Friends were calling me up because they were worried about me and every day I kept telling them, you know, I actually feel worse now than I did yesterday. At this point I decided to go out and see a PDoc that I’ve known since I was a little kid. Within 2 months of working together trying to figure out what was wrong, I stumbled across an article on manic depression and I’m like… this fits me to a T.
Well, for Bi-Polars, Krysti is right, your mood stabilizer is the key to getting better. I can’t believe that your Doctor would prescribe a higher dose of Zoloft while still keeping you on a (in my opinion) very weak mood stabilizer. Nerotonin has like the shortest half-life out of all the mood stabilizers. If I was in that position, I would have lowered my Zoloft dosage and increased my Nerotonin quite a bit. Or Hell, I’d just switch to a more effective mood stabilizer. Once you stop the cycling, the anxiety/depression seems to almost disappear with it. If it doesn’t go away completely, that’s when you try a very small dose of an AD to see if that does the trick.
I’m currently on 375mg of Depakote (which is my maintenance dose) and I think I’ve finally got enough of the Effexor out of my system to be able to quit it all together. I’m going to let myself go for a number of months on Depakote to make sure that I’m stabilized before I even think about going on any other SSRI’s. The only other medication that I’m taking with this is Clonazepam/Klonopin, at bedtime, because even with my moods pretty normal during the day, I still have a VERY hard time sleeping at night. I’m actually supposed to go to a sleep clinic to find out what the root of this problem is.
Keeping a journal every day is also extremely helpful. I started that up about a month ago and still post in it every day. Whenever you’re putting any drug into your system (even tobacco) post it in your journal and then about an hour after you take it, if you can, post again to show what your mood is like now. Any thoughts that you’re getting considering your mental condition, post it in there. If you don’t feel good, if you’re p’d off about something, if you’re depressed, if you’re hyper for no apparent reason, post it. That will help you gain some incredible insight into how to best keep yourself stable.
Keep educating yourself about your condition, read up as much as you can about manic depression, so that you can thoroughly understand for yourself exactly what you’re going through. It’s the best way to prepare for the future. If you’re going to be dealing with this for the rest of your life, it’s probably time now to give yourself that powerful foundation to treating yourself. For example, my PDoc is actually starting to be amazed at how well I understand what’s going on now. She doesn’t have to simplify anything for me anymore because even if she speaks in “medical language”, I understand completely what she’s talking about. That’s one of the gifts about being Bi-Polar I think, your mind is constantly hungry for new information, so you just keep feeding it. Eventually you’ll be one of the smartest people that just about anybody’s ever met. I missed out on the creativity that usually comes with being Bi-Polar, but man, my mind is like it’s own database lol… Right now, I would highly recommend you reading “The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide” By: David J. Miklowitz This book is in VERY plain English, has numerous case studies, and covers just about everything that you want to know but can’t remember or don’t have the time to ask your PDoc about.
And yeah, you’re right, Krysti is the bomb. A few weeks ago when I really didn’t understand a thing, she helped give me some insight and some strength that enabled me to figure out exactly what was going on with myself. For that, I’ll always be in debt to Krysti. So if you’re reading this Krysti, just know that you REALLY helped me out.
Oh, and Fluffy, if you’ve got any questions, you can always either post them on this board or you can email me at: Michael_Cushing@hotmail.com and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
Mike
poster:Mr Cushing
thread:127130
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021122/msgs/129260.html