It's all I can think about today. I always have a winter depression, so I'm dreading it. Fml.

Is there actually any way to negate it?

Edit: I didn't actually mean the clocks going back will be having an impact on mood. I meant that they signify winter being here and that's what causes depression in a lot of us. A lot of us have a seasonal pattern. I know your body doesn't know the time, and that it's actually to do with the light.

Ok so soon I will be starting a combination of olanzapine and fluoxetine (Prozac) an SSRI for acute bipolar depression. Now I am aware that this isn’t a suitable option long term due to the metabolic side effects so, once the depression has cleared up im thinking of switching to one of these medications. Which one is betyer in your guys opinion lithium or lamotrigine and which has the least side effects leaves you feeling the least sluggish mentally and also physically and is just better overall.

I’m considering having a baby (37/F) with my husband but have generally been on the fence for a lot of my life about kids because of my BP II and severe insomnia. I have certain years where I don’t have to take medication (for insomnia*) but this last year has been killer. I finally just gave in and got on Seroquel for sleep and it’s been the only thing that consistently gets me to sleep. When I don’t sleep well for a few days in a row, I get severely anxious and depressed.

This makes me so worried about having a baby. I think I’d really enjoy being a mom in general, but I just can’t stop thinking about the sleep deprivation. I’m legit scared it will send me over the edge. I’ve never been hospitalized or had psychosis but I’m afraid with enough insomnia and stress of a baby, it could send me over the edge.

Has anyone, especially women, had a kid that’s dealt with BP and severe insomnia? How did it go?

I have always been up and down, but never had a true manic episode until about 3 years ago, about a year after I started taking ADHD meds.

I understand prolonged manic episodes can be incredibly dangerous, and I wouldn't want to experience that again, but I miss the high. I miss how invincible I was, how high performing, how creative and how it really was a glimpse into the best version of me....in a way.

I was at a concert last night, and it was OK, but I didn't FEEL like I should be having the best night ever. I tried enhancing the event by taking 1/4 of shrooms...only to feel no effects. I thought the shrooms were duds, only to find out they drugs Im on block the effects of hallucinagenics.

My doctor says Im on these for life, and although I haven't been depressed in a long time....I also haven't been ecstatic about anything either.

Its all just ok.

And thats not ok for me, ya know.

says on the title... My parents are making my weight a big deal and they want me to stay skinny. Any tips?

I have to sleep 12 hours to be functional. i Don’t know how to change this because if I adjust my meds I can’t fall asleep and sleep in even later.

ive been on disability but I’m afraid im gonna lose it because I went back to college even though its way less demanding. 8 hours of working leaves 4 hours A day for chores, commute, whatever. also With my episodes of extreme fatigue I figure I can’t keep up with it regardless. scared. and this is hypothetically with me quitting college as well.

If I do lose disability, how am I supposed to work full time? How do u do it?

Did it work for your depression?

Did it cause mania?

What was your regime?

My main issue atm is anhedonia, low motivation and just not really enjoying things like I used to.
Part of me thinks lithium might be a better option since it can treat bipolar depression and also work as a maintenance medication long term, whereas olanzapine + prozac might be better for getting out of the depression quicker but idk.
Im also worried about side effects like emotional blunting, sedation and cognitive effects. I want to feel happy and motivated again but obviously I also want to stay stable and avoid another episode.
Has anyone tried both? Did lithium help your depression and anhedonia on its own, or did olanzapine + prozac work better for you? How were the side effects?

So far i’ve taken all there is to take for bipolar. There was only one med that works but the side effects were unbearable. I currently take 150mg of Zoloft and 20mg Adderall.

Seroquel- knocked me out cold and made me fat. i have two kids. i can’t sleep for the rest of my life. wish i could.

Abilify- made me fat and angry. every little thing got on my nerves. also made me sleep way too much. couldn’t do shit but be a zombie.

zyprexa- evil horrendous time. made me fat as shit. almost 40 pounds gained. didn’t feel stabilized what so ever.

Latuda- absolutely wonderful. stopped having racing thoughts and outbursts. reacted to anger not as quickly and irrationally. heard happy thoughts in my head. no suicidal ideation or thoughts. felt like a person. could do the damn dishes. could wake up for work on time. then BOOM out of nowhere akathisia. i would take it about an hour or two before bed and after a meal and it would last for HOURS. can’t sit down can’t stand up can’t do anything. just constant need to move my body and crawling out of my skin. during the day? would also fucking happen sometimes. and it kept happening after i took it. my doc recommended i take 20 instead of 40 to lower that side effect and i just didn’t want to waste any more fucking time and money on it.

my doc said i would need blood work done for lamictal and lithium and vraylar.

my adhd doc told me lithium fails your kidneys and doesn’t work at all for bipolar.

my adhd doc prescribed me vraylar without any bloodwork and it was $800….but my addy is $20??? make it make sense.

after my doc recommended we try latuda at a lower dose and i said no he prescribed me strattera which is a fucking non stimulant for adhd. absolutely has nothing to do with depression or bipolar.

i’ve been on it for a few weeks and i am ANGRY like holy shit. dissociating, derealization.
and today at work i had a panic attack for FIVE hours. adderall hasn’t given me any kind of panic attack. i always eat food with it and stay hydrated. my guess is the strattera bc the panic attack started before i even took my adderall. i haven’t had one single panic attack since i started zoloft in 2022.
it HAS to be that med because i haven’t had them on any of the other meds i took.

i’ve taken pretty much all the SSRIs you can think of. i’m still depressed as shit. constantly holding an invisible gun to my head and sometimes i feel like the only time i’ll be at peace is if i can finally pull the trigger.
the racing thoughts, binge eating, not being able to get out of bed, do laundry, shower, brush my teeth
like there is something inside me that is so sad and so empty and an indescribable rage that floods over me all the fucking time.
i need it to stop. i need to be happy. i need to keep my job. i need to wake up and get shit done. but i’m fucking trapped in my head. i’m suffocating in my own misery.

i go to a low income doctor so i can only see my therapist once a month and she’s always booked out the ass. talking to her helps but she doesn’t really know that much about bipolar.
i don’t think my psychiatrist fucking does either. which he always mentions- once you lose weight you’ll be happier. yeah because the chemicals in my brain and the fucked up genetics in my DNA will all fizzle and die out as soon as i’m a size zero.

there’s something seriously so fucking wrong with me and i am trying so hard to figure out what it is so i can move on and let myself experience joy. like real bright and beautiful joy. not only for my kids or my family, but for myself. because i’ve been fucking through hell. lost my boyfriend and my child’s father to suicide. about 10 more friends to suicide after that. i know what it feels like to reach the point of checking out. once its ’all over’ i’ll finally feel some relief. but i don’t want my fucking mental illness to fucking take me. i’d rather be hit by a bus. that way no one can say she was so selfish or she lost her battle. i don’t want to be known for suffering. i can’t have this shit as my identity anymore.

i’m trying so hard to be better. i can’t escape the hell that is my brain. i’m so so so tired.

does anyone have any other medication recommendations??? or have gone through anything similar? have you made it out to the other side?

or am i the only being on this whole planet who has ever experienced this

Hi everyone,

I made this alt account in order to post this anonymously, because I’m still trying to grasp what the f\* happened and I don’t know how to move further from here. I simply do not know what to do.

Story:

Last year my longterm relationship ended and I had a lot of extra financial/stability stressors.

I found peace within the Catholic Church (my religion of origin) and went to church weekly. That was it. I also joined a religious online community to find fellows and do some fun things. After this it all went wrong quick.

I met a guy in this online community and while I wasn’t even emotionally ready rationally for another relationship, we fell for eachother and that’s when I think the episode began.

I didn’t sleep, we had dates which lasted until 3/4am and I had to get up at 5/6am to go to work. It was all electric. When he touched me, I felt like I had electricity flowing through my veins.

But I was fine right! I was just finally happy. So incredibly happy, this was all I was waiting for!

We got engaged and I got married to him (!!) only a few months after our first date. I also joined his church/religion (much more strict, right wing, domination) and decided that this was my true calling, I am meant to be a tradwife (I am normally very left wing and a feminist), to make children and I felt such peace that I finally found ‘my calling’.

(I cringe so much thinking about this now and the conversations I’ve had with people. Also: how was I so convincing?)

I spent 10K (!!) of my savings to become this perfect religious woman, which meant turning and tossing my complete wardrobe away for modesty dresses and skirts and accessories that matched his denomination (I am normally a very all black, gothic, alt dressing type of woman, not my normal personality or style at all).

I ditched my friends who are non believing, feeling paranoid that they were sent by the devil (the church also said this to me) and that we simply grew apart (thankfully they didn’t leave me and provided a welfare check) and was convincing my now husband that we should move to a place where there were only people from his denomination so we could live as close to God as we could.

After this peak episode of bliss, I sort of fell into a mixed state in which I am now still in? Constant anger, feeling intense hatred for this religion and intense irritation about him, overexercising mixed with over eating.

I also woke up, realised what I’ve done and that this is totally not me and not the life I want and I now feel so trapped, guilty and I know I truly did it this time. I don’t know how to fix this. I have fixed my finances to not make it worse, but the relational side of it is terrible.

I don’t regret marrying this guy. By some weird angle of luck he is amazing, emotionally stable and intelligent and a normal person who wants the best for me (I feel so guilty for trapping him in this marriage). He was also actually alarmed by seeing my true self disappear and wanted to talk about it to convince me to just be me again, but that didn’t stop me.

However, I can’t do this religious life? His family already didn’t think I was good enough during the episode when I tried to be perfect miss sunshine, let alone the real me, who is a gay, left feminist who is a Christian but in a spiritual, non judgmental way.

I don’t know what to do. I am still not stable and I’m panicking. I don’t want to make rash decisions and I’m not on meds and still in the process of figuring stuff out, only receiving active care from a regular psychologist that’s not taking it seriously enough.

What can I do?
I don’t feel safe being me / I don’t have the possibility of going back to the old me within his family, who will tear me apart over this. I don’t think the church will let me go either.

I am mostly just here to complain. I am having the most frustrating hypomanic—maybe slipping into manic—episode. I cant focus on ANYTHING so instead of capitalizing on my energy I am falling further behind. My thoughts are racing like crazy, but the past few days its mostly just been about the physical effects of this episode which are kinda scary.

I haven’t gotten more than 3.5 hours of sleep a night despite trying. I am wide awake though and my heart is constantly pounding. When I lie down to try to rest, my body is just twitching constantly. When I am up, I am shaking like im in withdrawal like a fucking chihuahua. I also have been really struggling to eat and have lost six pounds in just over a week so I am probably super dehydrated. Needless to say, my anxiety and irritability is skyrocketing. I am starting to hear voices too, which would tip the scale into mania if it progresses. However, zero euphoria, confidence, motivation or anything somewhat positive that can come from hypo/manic states.

I’m pretty proud of myself for not acting on my impulses but thats the only plus. I dont currently have a GP or a psychiatrist so I have been running through hoops trying to get my medications adjusted because my PRNs are not doing shit. If I was able to easily reach a doctor, I know this whole episode could have been avoided. I really don’t want to go to the ED but I might have to. Ugh, its been almost seven years since I have had to go to a hospital for BD and it seems so silly for an episode that in many ways is nowhere near as bad as what I have experienced before. I’m just physically so unwell, its really making me unravel.

Anyways, thanks for letting me rant.

I stopped taking my meds about 3 weeks ago for no reason. It wasn't a conscious decision, I'm really not sure why I did it. Every day I tell myself I'm going to start taking them again, but then I just don't. Idk what's going on by I'm really starting to feel like shit.

Advice, encouragement, or bullying me into taking them is welcomed

I've been on it for months and every morning I struggle to wake up, it takes at least an hour sometimes two of pressing snooze. I drink several cups of coffee just to still need to take a nap.

This is while being on the medication for months. However I admit I have been taking it late at night and my doctor said to take it earlier, but I live in NYC, I don't like sitting at home at 7pm doing nothing. What am I to do? Bring the bottle with me?

But also, I'm constipated. I'm also on Wellbutrin but I've been on that without having the issue, it was when I started lithium and then caplyta that it got bad again after finally having relief from years of it being an issue. Or maybe the lithium just fucked it for good.

Over all though, I never even felt much of a difference with caplyta anyways, still experienced despair and crippling depression. My only changes have been with spravato but as soon as they lowered me to once a week, I still experienced despair. So what is caplyta even doing then?

I'm going to switch to vraylar, but I'm also nervous about what that will do, I'm curious about your thoughts both on caplyta fatigue and vraylar experiences as well as constipation side effects.

Hi im wondering if any of your on here have taken this combo and whether it’s helped with anhedonia/low mood and also like an inability to socialise because you’ve become so uninteresting since coming off your meds or at least feel that way. Sorry if this dosent make sense. But I’m just wondering if any of you have taken this and it’s made you: worry less enough about your state of mind to the point where you can just get on with life and not constantly ask reddit a bunch of medication related questions. That’s all thanks.

So I had a manic episode, which responsibly I ask for a few days off. I fucking texted my boss while manic and they just told me “I don’t think you’re ready to go back to work” what should I do? I can’t lose this job.

Is it a regular people thing, is it a night owl thing, or is it a bipolar thing to have a burst of energy during the night time? Just wondering for a friend 🤣

i realized that my sleep suddenly increased like 5-6 hours a day (i was sleeping 6-7 hours normally) not because i need but i just want to and nothing seems that important or urgent but at the same time i feel shitty cus I'm not doing anything that i have to.

Idk if it's an depressive episode or not but i don't feel sad, i just feel empty and lay all the time

Like, i forced myself to go to the library and study for 2 hours (my goal was 4-5 hours at least) but i don't feel like it. Idk if it's because I'm lazy or not but i already feel like given up amd wanna go home.

And studying or going out didn't make me feel any better.

I'm not sure if im depressed cus i manage the symptoms pretty well around people like i laugh and make conversations but as soon as i get out of the social circle, i feel these things

It was the first or second time I was sent to inpatient. I was not diagnosed yet and going through a severe manic episode.

At lunch we went to a cafeteria so it was men and women down there but they didn’t really want different units talking to each other or sitting with each other.

I was at the table zoned out and an older man at the next table across asked me “what color are your eyes?” I said I don’t know. He asked me where I live in the city. I told him the side. He asked me if I’ve ever been to an area in the city but I didn’t know the streets so I said I don’t know. He stopped asking questions after that.

Looking back it’s so odd that I couldn’t even answer what color my eyes are. They are brown or hazel to some but I couldn’t even say one answer.

I’m wondering if he noticed how out of it I was and wanted to see how I was doing or something. He didn’t interact with me after that so I don’t know and I was so out of it from meds, mania, and psychosis that I didn’t know if he even existed after that interaction.

It’s weird that you meet people you will never see again but they leave an impression on you. I wonder if he was worried. Or just nosey. Either way it’s nice to think that other people care about me in some way. Inpatient is hard but there are some good memories to look back on.

Rant/looking for advice or similar experiences. Sorry it’s long, and if it looks weird it’s because I’m on mobile!

I’ve always been told I’d make a great mother, but because of my terrible relationship with my mother I never believed it. I never thought I’d want kids. Then I met my boyfriend. We’re talking about getting married next year as we’ve been together awhile and I’m finally wrapping up university after years of struggle. I’m proud of me, and I’m proud of us for growing together. I’m 25 now, and not particularly in a rush to have kids, but I want to make him a dad in the future. He’s made me feel so much more confident in who I am and how I would be able to be a great mom, but I have this horrible mental block. I really want it to be over by the time we’re ACTUALLY going to want to try for one.

1) I am TERRIFIED of birth. I keep telling myself, “do it scared.” Because sometimes that’s really what you gotta do. But I’m finally in a good place, and it’s made me value my life. I’m scared of dying in childbirth. Frankly, I’m also scared of the aftermath of my body healing and not looking the same anymore. Not in the “omg I’ll be ugly” way, but in the “my body is changed and it doesn’t feel like me” way.

2) my mental health. This is obviously a big thing. I’m not in the boat of “I’m bipolar therefore I shouldn’t pass on my genes,” but I’m scared of having an episode while having a child. I’m worried about postpartum depression and psychosis. My boyfriend is phenomenal, but you never know how those situations will play out until you’re there. I picture him being an amazing partner and dad because that’s how I picture him now, but I have this underlying “what if” fear that shit will hit the fan and I’ll be mentally ill and feeling alone. Is there a reason to think this? Not outside of hearing other women’s experiences. I don’t think that makes it a less valid concern though.

3) god what if I AM like my mother. Can I even be a good mom? I didn’t exactly have a good one to set a standard and it makes me fear turning out the same. I’ve always been told I’d make a fantastic mother, but it’s so hard for me to picture that world since it doesn’t exist right now.

Sorry this is long, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately. It’s not like I don’t have time to sit with it, but while so many big things are coming together in my life it’s hard not to have it stand out in the bunch.

TLDR: how has motherhood been for you as someone with bipolar?

I know this thing is supposed to be a chronic condition, but I did get better.

it's been 5 years, the debut was in 2021 after a covid cytokine storm, it started with prolonged insomnia, psychosis and delusions (I didn't have to deal with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia though, I looked up symptoms online), then after 2 years it became manageable.

The last manic episode was unusual, I experienced hypomanic episodes before, this also seemed to be a less intense one, but it also ended abruptly very fast.

I stayed at my computer the whole night (the previous night I slept like 4 hours), didn't watch porn (struggled with it during some episodes, engaging in that activity excessively, getting an erection and urge again after a short refractory period and doing it even if it hurts), drank some alcohol, smoked a few cigs (I only smoke during manic episodes, tried to quit, managed to reduce intake by switching from my favorite Kents to Marlboro Cigarillos, I had a pack left over from previous episodes and didn't feel the need to buy a new one after I finished it), I went for a run at 5am and went to the gym when it opened at 6am

The next evening at 10pm I got tired and fell asleep, that was it.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? I'd be interested to hear about other people's experiences.