Tag: medication

My Personal Battle Wounds

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In high school, I was really good looking and I could have almost any girl I wanted. However, I trusted God with everything back then. Then, my first psychotic episode happened along with a Bipolar I/schizoaffective disorder diagnosis. I started taking meds. I assure you, the trauma, the stress, and the meds all together caused me to gain a lot of weight. As a result, I’m fat now.

I don’t call them battle scars, but wounds that can heal. It’s been top 5 in my worst struggles in life I’ve ever had, that is, being fat. I remember how good it felt to feel good about my body and have all the energy and health and ability to do the things I want to do. Now that I’ve managed the trauma, the stress, and the meds, I sense a reckoning at hand soon!!! 🙂

-theothersid3

photo credit: Hafnarfjall in heavy rain via photopin (license)

Psychiatrist Visit 2-29-2016

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I saw my doctor today and I’m quite excited about the visit! We decided it’s best for me to cut my antidepressant Wellbutrin 150mg from my medications to take, which leaves me with only two that I now take for bipolar. Only a few years ago, I was taking five different medications for bipolar every day!

I’m now only on Lithobid 1500mg (Lithium carbonate extended release) and Abilify 20mg per day. It feels good to reduce the medications I need as I progress in my recovery and treatment process. It isn’t that I didn’t need all the medications before, but that I no longer need them at this point. I’m not afraid to add medications as long as I need them in the future, but I admit it’s wonderful that I don’t need as many atm.

I imagine if I start becoming depressed in the future, I’ll add the Wellbutrin back on temporarily.

I used to take a steady dose of Zyprexa as well, which I find to be a debilitating but effective medication for mania. If I start becoming manic, I add a small dose of Zyprexa temporarily.

The lithium acts as a mood stabilizer and is the foundation of my medicinal treatment.

The abilify prevents depression as well as mania and psychotic symptoms associated with both. Overall, I find it to be another miracle drug with no perceivable side effects at this point.

Well, that’s a snap shot of my medications as of now. Anyone else dealing with medication changes these days?

photo credit: Handful of Drugs via photopin (license)

1 Week Followup – Zyprexa Change

So I’m going on my first week of reducing my dose of Zyprexa from 2.5mg to 1.25mg. I haven’t noticed much of a difference other than I have more energy and I’m able to concentrate better. Also, meditation is coming easier. Maybe I can go off it in a few months 🙂 I guess I’ve evaded all the pitfalls of the last dose reduction I had.

Phones and Psychosis Part 2: My First Break

In part 1, I described my experiences with phones during my second hospitalization for psychotic mania. My second break was more of a trippy, metaphysical journey I had, and very different from my first hospitalization. During my first hospitalization, I was in hell.

My first break happened while I was on a family Christmas vacation out of state. I completely decompensated on or around Christmas day, and the only place I could go was a seedy crisis stabilization unit. There, the patients were far gone to begin with, and I was in tune with what was going on around me spiritually. It was truly horrifying. Unfortunately, I don’t have my records as a reference point to what was happening in reality, so I just have the memories of what I experienced first hand.

I noticed that when patients would start talking on the phone, they would fade away and start changing into a different person. I didn’t know what was going on at the time, so I just stayed away from the phone. However, curiosity got the best of me, and I tried listening to the earpiece. All I heard were pops, crackles, and a feeling of me being sucked in. I put the earpiece down immediately.

Then it was time for me to see the doctor. When I heard that, all I felt was dread. I sensed he was a truly evil man. When I got in to the room to see him, he basically asked me why I was there. After my manic strings of answers, he replied. I cannot remember his face other than that I saw two voids for eyes and he looked like nothing I had ever seen before. “I can FIX you,” he said. He handed me a phone and told me to talk on it. I refused. He tried pressuring me hard, and I opened the door and ran out.

Later, I had a brief memory of me in a dark room wearing some sort of helmet that someone was dialing in signals that I could feel into my brain. I felt myself going out of my body to some place else, and entering a realm that I experienced later during my second break, verbatim. I saw many things, and I felt like someone was trying to steal me. I fought back hard, and snapped to in the dark room, threw the helmet off, and ran back into my unit.

I believed they were “curing” these people by attaching healthy souls to them, and part of it had to do with the phones they were strongly encouraging people to use.

That psychiatrist prescribed me Geodon. I refused it, because I could never trust a doctor who tells me “I can fix you,” in such a calm, matter-of-fact demeanor; someone whose face I couldn’t see.

Fortunately, they had another psychiatrist on a different day and she seemed trustworthy. I took the Abilify she prescribed, brand new at the time.

Marijuana and Bipolar

I used cannabis in the past for about a year (though I quit over 5 years ago) to help manage my bipolar mood shifts. I found that responsible use of marijuana is key if it is to be therapeutic. The therapeutic part for me was not the part about getting high, which was a good release and fun, but that it balanced out my moods for the next few days after using. This was immensely helpful because my Rx medications were not in order at that point.

Also, using the right strains was essential, as some tended to cause paranoia and psychosis-like effects, which was harmful. Pure sativa and sativa-heavy hybrid strains could cause a stimulating, euphoric “head high,” which I found caused me to have symptoms of psychosis while using and lingered afterwards. Indica and indica-heavy hybrid strains didn’t produce such side effects and provided the therapeutic balance for days afterwards.

Long story short, the strain of cannabis one uses to help manage bipolar plays a big role in whether it succeeds, and AVOID SATIVA. (It also makes me wonder if most of the research done with bipolar and marijuana used sativa strains, as many claim to say cannabis causes psychosis in bipolar.)

Another key part of responsible use was to use it sparingly. Using too much would cause many of the negative side effects to become more pronounced, such as lethargy, weight gain, and being “constantly stoned.” Using about two times a week was ideal for me.

Also, part of being responsible is telling your doctors that you are using. It is dangerous if they are not aware.

Finally, cannabis is not for everyone, and little is objectively known about it and its effects on bipolar. Getting mixed up on the wrong side of the law can be devastating as well.

I no longer use because of employment, the fact that it’s an illegal substance, and I feel I’m better off without it. I do hope some day that it becomes legal, as it can be a wonderful therapeutic tool to help manage bipolar instead of expensive, questionable medications.

Be careful! When in doubt, don’t do it, and don’t break the law!

To the Doctor on Monday!

I’ll be going to my psychiatrist on Monday. Hopefully, I can stop the Zyprexa completely now, but I suspect I’ll need to taper it in half one more time to 1.25 mg before cutting it out completely. I feel like I’ve been able to be more creative and alive since reducing the dose down to 2.5mg. It’s pretty incredible how potent these medications are, and how tiny changes can make such a big difference.

The original reason why I decided to stop Zyprexa was because of the hunger for food it causes. I gained a lot of weight as a result, and desire to drop the pounds and the med now. Supposedly, the hunger issue doesn’t stop until I get off the med completely. In the process of tapering it down, I have discovered I don’t need the medication. I wonder what else I can reduce or eliminate… 🙂

Lithium 2100mg/day

Zyprexa 2.5mg/day (tapering off)

Wellbutrin 300mg XL/day

Abilify 20mg/day

Ativan prn (sleep, manic symptoms)

Two Months after Diagnosed Bipolar, Mixed State (Highlights)

What follows are highlights of a rather long journal entry I made 10 years ago approximately 2 months after I was diagnosed bipolar and hospitalized. I was 17 at the time, and it was after a psychotic episode I had that revved up over the preceding six months or so and triggered by 4 days with no sleep at all.

Part of my treatment was in a crisis stabilization unit out of state on our family Christmas vacation, and the other portion was partial hospitalization in my home town because we couldn’t afford full hospitalization. I was on Risperdal right after my inpatient treatment, which dulled everything. I couldn’t handle it, so I begged my psychiatrist to reduce my dose. I became more unstable shortly after, my depression and mania magnified both at the same time, while allowing me to write more freely. I tried to stay positive, but I was in the middle of a storm at the same time. Here are highlights of this moment.

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-Feelings Journal Entry: exhausted, confused, guilty, angry, frustrated, sad, confident, happy, ashamed, depressed, overwhelmed.

– I woke up this morning wanting to kill myself to end the pain, and now I feel pretty good. Craziness.

-I’m writing now because my emotions are swirling in my head, and I don’t know how to express myself. I just want to throw up somewhere, and I’ll just do it here in writing.

– I wonder if I’m just being weak and lazy.

-Then I have bipolar thrown into the equation. And this word “equation” kills me – I am trying to calculate where all this is coming from – my past, present, illness, medication, or lack of will power. I’m sick of it. What’s me? My therapist showed me that I can keep the things that I like about myself, and reject and fight the disease that takes my strengths to the extreme – high or low.

-But yesterday and today, I woke up and didn’t feel like getting out of bed at all. Anything that requires effort seems to me no point in doing. It’s like I’m stuck in a rut and there’s no point in pulling myself out or making the effort even to grab someone else’s helping hand because I don’t experience the pleasure for long and I just slump back down. I don’t feel like doing anything productive, getting out of bed, doing research and homework, fixing food, playing guitar, taking a shower, going out with friends, planning events, going for a walk, maintaining relationships.

– I hope that this is not normal, and bipolar is involved – but I don’t want to use this as a crutch, and aren’t the meds supposed to take care of it?

-But there’s still this remnant left. One moment, I’m alone in my room or taking a walk and all I can think about is suicide. I just get more depressed and I feel exhausted over anything that requires effort, and I just want it to stop and just go away forever into heaven.

-But I’m suicidal one moment and I make an effort to get up, and I engage in activities, and the feelings of joy do return, and it’s little things. Little things are magnified throughout my days and I feel them fluctuate. This not only plays into my moods but in my concentration as well. I have a harder time concentrating and I tend to do things quite slowly.

-There’s something about her that really attracts me, how loving, and caring she is to people, and she knows what to say to give comfort. God used her picture there [in the crisis unit] to prevent me from slitting my own wrists.

-I’m still low on the self-confidence issue. First, there’s my body image. My gut is starting to sag, and I’m not eating healthily. I don’t have the drive to exercise like I used to. I went nuts, and my body and other peoples’ reactions show it. Eating is now a comfort for me to deal with my problems.

-I’m shy around people, and I don’t know how to handle conversations; did my bipolar have an effect on this? Am I social or am I not? I’m so confused.

-I’m also having a lot of problems with cognition. Things seem to always go in one ear and out the other, or if it stays in my head, I have a hard time finding it, let alone think about it. That is, compared to what I was like before I was on all these meds, particularly Risperdal.

– I still remember in the crisis unit when I got my first dose of Abilify. I was supposed to write a paragraph about why I was on the unit and after the medicine started kicking in, the thoughts and connections in my head started to become numb, one by one, along with all desires. It slowly started to paralyze me, till I couldn’t tell what I was thinking and I could write nothing down.

– Maybe the decrease in Risperdal will let me feel more normal. I’m worried about being in charge of anything, in general. Before, I was used to being the driven one and took on leadership roles. Now, the drive is not there, and I cannot keep track of many things let alone my own homework assignments.

– It’s awful for me to make the first few marks on the paper in art, to improvise in jazz, to follow conversations. I wish I were more spontaneous and loose. Oh, dancing is another good example of what I mean, but this one always was. I simply can’t dance. If somebody asks me what the music feels or looks like, I stand there like a rod. It seems like my ability to do art and conversation is fading to the point of my inability to dance.

-My therapist says this is important for me in relation to my bipolar, as life can throw earthquakes at times, but I don’t understand this yet. I don’t know how the role of being released in tough situations plays with bipolar, yet, because I haven’t had any quakes thrown at me yet with me being consciously aware of my disorder.

-I’m also reliving some of the experiences in the hospitals – both in and out of state.

-I wish these spells of thinking about inviting suicide would go away. Mom wonders if they’re spiritual attacks.

-I’m so glad that I’m not writing too furiously like I was when I was manic, believing that I have the revolutionary book that will change society. Sorry, that was kind of random.

-Mom, grandma, and aunt Bell are still not on speaking terms. It is partly my job to mop up the mess I created in the family the past few months. I dunno what to say. I wish my head was a little more clear.

-As far as the disease of bipolar vs. who I am is concerned, I wish I could keep all the good things, but sometimes my disorder enables me to be the good things or prevents me from being the good things. I wish I could control it.

Psychotropics (Mind-Altering Medications) and Bipolar

There is hope that the agonies associated with the psychotropics journey all people with bipolar undergo fade away.

The journey involves finding the medications that work and patiently discarding the ones that didn’t after giving them a fair chance. It is a mind-numbing process in the most literal sense, as many bipolar meds end up taking away cognition, drive, and emotional capacity to promote normal functioning. It was incredibly frustrating when I discovered a medication was useless for me as it felt like a wasted effort at times.

Then I find a med regime that works, and adjustments to make when bad things happen.

Then those “side effects” start to dissipate, and I begin to feel normal most of the time.

After that, I reach a point where I start to reduce my meds with my doctor’s blessing, which is a joyful, profoundly baffling experience. I know I’ll always need medication, but I get pieces of me back which I forget about by reducing them and eliminating some.

The worst thing I did was to stop my meds without my doctor’s blessing: bipolar then proceeded to stab me in the back. The last time I stopped my meds for two months I ended up in the hospital for over a month with a severe break on my hands to recover from.

Have any of you stopped your meds? What happened, why did you stop them, and how long did you stop them? What are psychotropics doing for you now – good and bad?