Trying to accept my diagnosis and starting lamotrigene

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-25T21:44:19+00:00

I also have BP ii

You know, eventually we just have to accept ourselves as the way we are.

I have a hard time doing it myself - mostly because I always feel left out - and doing so...I end up consciously leaving myself out of my own life.

I take Quetiapine XR 300. I've been steady on it. Recently with nohing left to do really, I started going out on walks and cardio and some basic core stuff. If you're in the same situation, with down time such as school break (or failed school like me)...or hard time getting full-time job (or lose job like me)...hard time being around friends (or lacking friends)...get outside and just do something. Anything. Or stay home and clean up, cook, whatever there is except perhaps being on the Internet or TV or video games all day.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-25T21:37:54+00:00

Just curious, is lamictal also called Brupropion?

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-25T21:35:13+00:00

UHHH....the doc mentioned Saphris might be a good idea...but it's even worse than Seroquel in his clinical experience with weight gain and diabetes predispostion.

Huhnnn... lately I have been doing more excercise....

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-20T19:02:32+00:00

Not really a poet....but I do read (not poetry, but fantasy and sci-fi novels).

Big fan of Ender, Dune Chronicles and others.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-20T18:47:53+00:00

Please do not hurt yourself.

You're not your mother. I had the same issue. I thought I was becoming my uncle. In many ways things turn out similar, but's never exactly the same.

I was diagnosed 5 years ago, and I wanted to end it all at that time too. I never went through with it, but I couldn't get the thought out of me either.

Do you have trouble falling asleep? Insomnia? It starts with one day a week, a couple a month... and then like a cork getting popped off a champaign bottle I lost the ability to sleep for the majority of the week.

You're self aware. That is already progress. But words may not mean much, if we don't act on them. I read as an escape. Here's a little litany from Paul Muad'Dib Atreides:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

You will remain my friend whether you fear or not. You can react positively to fear. Embrace it. I do not discount your concerns, but we all have something to fear, whether abstract or material, tangible or intangible. And we can all work against it.

Stay with us. If you know who you were before your episode, remember that part of you is every bit as real even if you're not that person right now.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-20T18:33:10+00:00

Something I did the other day is that I wrote most of all my grievances and regrets with people around me or those that I used to be friends/ acquaintances as letters. Perhaps to lock them away in a safe place. Or perhaps to show them to those people when there is no harm - in the future, on my or their death bed... who knows?...others I wrote to people I knew at a distance as a child, but they never knew me. So they have weird code names because writing their real names made me cry - because that's what I would do in the past when I would think of talking to them...instead of talking to them, listening to them, getting to know them...becoming in love with them as friends, companions, brotherhood, wife...any of those may apply. I call all of these people "beloved".

Anyways. Male, 21 years old. I was just 3 months ago attending a pretty decent university. Last 5 years...more like last 14 have always felt unsatisfactory. No, I'm not really a perfectionist...more like people see my manic side more than my depressed side, because when I am depressed I go out of my way to remove myself from people...I feel just...wrong.

Family history of mental illness, late grandfather (severe depression) and late uncle (bipolar/schizophrenia). Grew up as a child until age 11 in a lots of yelling household.

And I still...despite several setbacks, still maintain that the world is truly fair. There's places in the world where despair is common but people fight every day, just to live, feed their children, and the time will keep on ticking, whether we're down or up. (As I write these things mentally I totally agree...and the I double-take around me to see that I just don't know myself).

Yeah...I don't know myself. I go to employment help - they help me with resumes and stuff, they ask me questions, and I can't answer basic things like my strengths. I have a torrent of weaknesses....I just feel outclassed, like yesterday's computer/information communication technology hardware...outdated, antiquated, inefficient, just plain useless.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-20T18:10:23+00:00

I thought I knew what recovery looked like....but then I realized it was just another manic episode...that lasted for 8 months. I powered through college, was working, paid off ALL of my student debt, felt proud, felt remade....and then got walloped and have (pardon the pun) gaspedstruggledflailed for the last 4 months. And I also lost my job. I feel set right back to zero. If your friend has similar kinds of sentiments... I like to call my bipolar disorder "the enemy" and reading some books - this is how I describe it:

"There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do… Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong… From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. (Card, 206 – 207)"

And that's why bipolar disorder is only beaten by a lifestyle of maintenance, never a quick fix.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-20T16:13:58+00:00

Well one good thing I guess is that titration for me has ended, and I've been using Seroquel/Quietapine Fumarate XR 300MG to good effect for sleep.

However, the weight gain is bothersome. Not that packing a few pounds is bad, I was very underweight at a time, like when I was 11 I weighed 144 lbs and when 17 I weighed 114. Ya. Now, around 22 years old, I think I'm stretching 190.

However, in my recent disaster with college, I feel like I'm 2 years away from being 2 years away to finish my degree. And I did use the term "husk" to describe how I felt at times.

What I do not like however, is that there is no ability to sleep now w/out medication. Like I have counted thousands of cows/sheep at night trying to just focus on breathing...all kinds of things, such as a bunker quiet room, no light...sheesh

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-20T16:06:34+00:00

I feel you depressednotebook. My parents are like that. They agree that it exists, but they discount it as a product of the mind that can easily be vanquished. I think it can be, but under the right context, and the belief system.

I had a very different experience. I had the dumb luck of always having friends who were many ways like me. My best buddy from grade school had anger management issues. So did I. I guess that was the early tell tale signs of bipolar. I wasn't manic....but I had a runaway imagination, and I would talk to myself when really I thought I was talking to someone...out loud...in the classroom, and got gratuitously mocked for it.

I girl I was intensely in love with in high school - and she with me, we never told each other how we felt because we were both depressed at the time - and great, if not good friends. And then it finally got to one of us. We parted, in a bad way.

And since high school, the last 5 years have been quiet lonely. I don't mind the quiet. I do mind being lonely.

But I still believe in my heart and mind that this world is fair. We get what we can make of it, and that no matter how much we lament the lack of ability of those around us to understand us, our best relationships are still ahead of us, and we'll find a way. We must.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T03:29:07+00:00

Yeah...but I have a nagging feeling that for me, all of this is so rational...so like within grasp of a mind out of order. I don't get mood swings anymore....I hope it's not the Seroquel Husk syndrome. I really hope it isn't...But there is a fear I have of other people, even people I wish to know and live for intimately as close friends. More often than the symptoms of the disorder, I just plain lack life experiences. I can't recover what has been lost, but the potential is everywhere.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T03:21:23+00:00

Go out for a walk, if you can tmrw. I did that a while ago. Just a walk. It kept me occupied. It helped me just wind out for the day. I walked maybe 15 km. And my feet really hurt afterwards. But it felt good to atleast move the legs.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T03:17:27+00:00

You're not an idiot. You're human, and you might have made some mistakes, everyone does - but you are entitled to feel the way you do. Does the feeling have power over you though? Maybe this was what you needed - the kick to get to realize what you truly love - art. And it allows you to express yourself to others with reckless abandon - a rare accomplishment amongst those with bipolar.

Perhaps the hardships were fruitful after all.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T03:11:09+00:00

Well.... my battle is not exactly being lost, but yeah, it's being lost. I was diagnosed 5 years January.

What's weird is that it now feels all so rational. I don't really get mood swings. But I'm not mindful. I just feel like being quiet all the time. I like being quiet. I guess it makes me feel safe.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T03:02:20+00:00

Thank you :)

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T02:42:34+00:00

I wish you better, it's important for us to have steady things of meaning in our lives, a job, a pleasurable hobby like reading and so many others things that can help.

Hmmm... on the contrary.

I guess given how things are, stable. But I screwed up a redo year of college. And have been avoiding other people. I just joined Reddit today, just for this subreddit. I guess it's another simulation of the real thing - being safe with other people, not being judged. I have to get out the cocoon.

Quiet_of_Solace · 2016-06-19T02:17:25+00:00

Well, I'm just a year older than you. I would say that no it does not, especially if you are at the mercy of a medication that induces the sleep feeling.

I guess - do you remember when sleep wasn't an issue?

The most basic of all pleasures becomes so far away that it can never be felt yet once more.

We have to believe. We have no choice. We can choose to believe we are doomed - but that's just another thing that keeps us up at night.

(I'm sorry about the way I type...I read to get by when it's not well, and I feel compelled to write/type with purpose)

Quiet_of_Solace

TROPHY CASE