The right medications?

You sound a lot like me.  I was diagnosed last year with BP when I was 19 following a suicide attempt but I've always been proned to severe mood swings all my life.  I take Lamictal and Abilify to stablize my moods but I still had racing thoughts, erratic behavior and suicidal thoughts.  My dr. added prozac to the mix to counter the depression and it has really helped me a lot.  I just left my job and I'm preparing the go back to college in a few weeks .... hoping I'll do better this year than last year when I went to pieces.  Talk therapy has also helped me a lot and having a few friends that know about my disorder and watch out for me.  Everyone with this disorder is different ... what works for me may not work for you.  You really have to stay positive and get out and enjoy life and be prepared to go with the flow all the time.  Daily Structure - like a job or school, is important but so is being spontaneous and having fun.  If your drugs are making you "foogy" talk to your doc. about reducing your dose.  It sucks not having insurance.  Hang in there and stay well.

I feel your pain. I dont thing there is a day that some sort of racing though or bout of depression is running through my body. It sounds like you really need to be seen and have some medication added or some tweaked a little as not sleeping is not a good thing. I went months on no sleep and now I take 6mg of resperdal at night and I sleep like a baby.

As for the insurance thing that really sucks. I went a while withlut insurance and relied on free samples of medications from my docs office. I dont know what your income level is but most places have a program where people based on there yearly income can get discounted medical care or even free care. Look into it. I wish you all the luck

Take care, Chris

Jenna...It's always hard to know if your med mix is the right one.  Just about all of us need our meds "tweaked" from time to time.  Our body's chemistry changes and adjustments are needed.  Sounds like your meds are working to some degree - small waves of depression and hypomania are common with this illness.  The key is being able to function reasonably normally and have good days.

It makes my blood boil when I think of how many folks don't get treatment due to money difficulties and inadequate insurance.  It's far to prevalent in our country and it needs to change.  Hope you figure out a way to get the services you need.

Support groups are free, they have helped me more than I can tell you.  You might look around for one in your city.  DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance) has support groups most everywhere - I highly recommend them.

Talk therapy is also very beneficial for most of us, although you may have some cost issues with this.  Therapists usually give you more time to discuss and work out issues, while phych docs mostly talk meds.

Judy

Long story short, I have suffered from "mental illness" for about as long as I can remember.I am 30 now.  I started cutting when I was 14, abusing drugs, drinking, sleeping around, writing bad poetry and dropped out of school (all by the time I was 15) . I have been at one time or another, by a dozen or more doctors been "diagnosed" with Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Severe/Chronic/Major Depression with Dysthimia/melancholic features, ADD, Panic Disorder, various phobia/anxiety disorders, OCD, Eating Disorder/Anorexia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. I think I thats it, it's hard to remember sometimes LOL :) ... Some of these I think are/were correct, but for some reason I took immediate offense at the idea that I might be bipolar. I never have boundless energy or delusions of grandeur, stay up all night painting the house or nething like that. I am frequently mentally "wound up" for no good reason, I go off on long, verbose tangents at the drop of a hat, and can be ultra sensitive/irritable when I feel like my head is screaming at me.

I have taken nearly every drug available and just today, had them changed again. (Previously depakote, paxil, luvox, zoloft, effexor (awful!!!), sinequan, elavil, desipramine, trazodone, wellbutrin, valium )  I was what I would call "stable",I suppose, for about 6 years but I  have been spiraling into crisis for about 18 months now.

I have a great job, a beautiful place to live, my amazing soul mate/best friend/fiancee, the best friends of my heart have all come into my life in the last 5 years or so, I have never felt so loved. And yet, most of the time, all I want to do is just stop breathing. Just stop and die. You know how if you're running, and you decide you don't want to run, so you just stop? That's how I wish breathing was. I am empty and dark and I can't even see my friends because I feel like such a soul sucking vampire. I make them stay away so I don't make them suffer. I am a disaster on the inside and have finally reached the point were I can't even maintain appearances.  - (Sigh! See - Long, wordy tangent!!Sorry :( )

Anyhow, today my Dr. changed my meds from

Adderall, ativan, seroquel, celexa (restoril and ambien as needed ) and  Xanax

to

Klonopin, Lamictal, Adderall, Celexa (restoril and ambien as needed)....I'm terrified of letting go of the ativan and xanax (though they weren't apparently helping much and definitely didn't work as well as they used to - stopping before ANOTHER tangent starts)

****I think my original point was just to say that you are the only person I have ever heard describe that feeling of not making plans because it will interfere with all the things you want to get done, then never do and can't usually remember. except you still feel like a worthless failure for not doing SOMETHING you should have been doing. I get almost phobic about going to bed because I feel like I should be DOING something, only I don't have any idea what. And anything I tried to do, I could never finish and never made me feel satisfied.

I have spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars in the last 2 months on new projects to try to get that feeling of accomplishing something - I have everything I could ever possibly need to make ten million beaded bracelets, a billion embroidered whats-it's, thirty seven thousand scrapbooks, 400 dresses (I even bought a new sewing machine and yards n yards of fabric) and enough books to keep me reading back to back for a hundred years. And it's all piled up all over my tiny little loft. Staring at me. Saying "Start me, make me, Finish me - Just PICK ME UP!" ... and what am I doing? Surfing the internet. Ive been sitting here for 5 hours straight doing nothing and getting more and more upset about it as time ticks by. I got 2 hours of sleep today and I'm working myself into a full fledged panic episode just typing this. Uggghhh!!

Sighhhhhh..

Im sorry there is probably a better place for this post. But reading your post and your description of that thing I could never put into words gave me a moment's clarity and a bit of, "ok, so maybe I AM bi-polar. Now what?".

It seems my Dr is slanting my meds towards treating bi-polar also without actually SAYING it to me again hahhaah - Kinda sly now that I realize it.

So anyhow....Thank you for posting. It has gotten me thinking. Not having insurance sucks, Usually when you leave a job where you have benefits you can continue them by paying the premiums yourself for up to 18 months under The "COBRA" law  - continuation of benefits something something... I dont know where you live..but I think its a federal (nation wide) law...it may not be too late to look into ?

I hope all goes well for you ...maybe you can up your meds only on alternate days or something to get a little more in your system on a regular basis, but not so much that it makes you goofy? Good luck though..have you ever been to www.crazymeds.us ? Its a GREAT site with tons of info..That might help too.... Ok Im going now ;)

XOXO

I am 41 and attempted suicide ( and came a slither away from reaching non-existance) the first time when I was about 18.  It was very stressful growing up with other's inapproprite behaviors and lots of control, never good enough, etc.  Progressed from there to receive what I like to call the diagnosis du jour... depression, then personality disorder, then bipolar became popular and then I started accumlating add-ons (and still am adding)  I have tried every medicine out there at least once and started combinations.  At first I wanted to be normal - like everyone else, but what I disovered is that everyone elses perception of what is normal varies.  Who is really to say what is and what isn't normal - it is very subjective.  Who's to say that everyone I pick to have a relationship with is a loser.  Maybe we are all losers to some degree.  Maybe there are no perfectly happy marriages; I don't know of a single one.  So, again what should the expectation be... to be someone else's defination of normal or a our realistic concept of normalcy.  (Can you tell that I have been doing a lot of soul seaching and reality assessment the past 6 months.  No therapist willing to take me on - way beyong their capabilities, and without a psych for same reasons.  Number 4 finally did not turn me away - I took that as a positive thing, although he has no references on the internet (most do) and he looks (age-wise) like I am one of first patients.  Who knows, maybe he will be more daring, maybe he is more current, maybe he's the one that can bring me as close to being my definition (which has been revamped several times over the years) of being normal as I can.  And That is my new goal.  As you probably noticed veteran bipolar people tend to ramble and jump about - that IS normal for us... LOL Anyway, maybe you should consider go enough as good enough and celebrate.  Many of us may never reach that "good enough" level.  Most of the time I want to and when I give up (which I regularly do out of frustration and experiences and lack of support and the various concotions that have not helped especially after a stressful bump.  Then it starts again.

Now good news, I actually had a couple of psychs and psychs that traeted me for free when I had no insurance or was scrimping by to feel my son and I and provide shelter - basics.  Several psychs would hord sample meds for me, so that I did not have to buy them withe the understanding when, not if, we switched to the next hopeful combination, I would return unused unopened samples for someone else in my situation.  He was the best and when I was getting desperate because I was loosing my memory, he experimented by giving me a new drug FDA approved for Alzheimer's, Aricept, problem is no one else will renew the script and the significant difference has worn away; loosing memory day by day and minute.  Now they are taking away my Ativan, which I have been taking for about 15 years.  It used to help me sleep, but now it merely calms me at high doses.  I don't know what I am going to do; how I can hold what little I have left together.  He does not plan to replace it with anything else.  He cut my Ativan in half from 6mg a day to 3 in one fell swoop.  I am scared and am not handling it well. Blab blab blab.  Back on track, if you are close to your perception of normal go with it and keep it monitored because it will need to be tweaked along the way as your body gets used to the current drug cocktail.  I hope tht somehow as you sift tnrough my rambles something may help???  Try to stay positive and journal to dump your feelings or jog or there may be something else.  Journaling helps if you periodically read them (maybe years in between, always starting with the first one) to look for patterns and to see if based on your judgement, things seem to be getting better or worse.  Keep them hidden so that you feel more comfortable about writing anything that creaps into your head in what ever order it pops there.  I used to write abaout other people at first probably because I had a hard time with me, but I have gotten better now.  Complete mind dumps.  In reading them, I found out that the relationships that I thought were perfect, actually went through the same issues that every other one went through, just like with my THIRD husband - currently separely, no place to go except to live in one of my parent's attic or basement.  Once prominate in my field overachieving in school, now sunken to this shameful existance.  No self-pity, just reality...

Find peace...  Johns Hopkins and Univ of Penn have bipolar disorders clinics - that was the best I ever was, even though it was very distant (mot just my thoughts, but I read the doctor's notes after my SSDI hearing.)  Than I lost the insurance and then the new one was not accepted, just like not having it and could notr afford $90/visit 2-3 times a month + $80 co-pays everytime the meds changed for each med - no samples from them!  So I was forced to try to find someone else, it has been a long search, I hope I found someone with a fresh open mind,  I would try anything.  Rambling again.

I really do wish you the best and hope that you have success in keeping all of this at bay.. and with that, I sign off... finally!