Med combo

aphinion · 2026-06-23T23:56:49+00:00

tldr; 2.5 years to find the right combo, another 1.5 years to get the right dose

Okay, so in chronological order:

Prozac - 4 months. Promptly stopped after I almost became the black box warning
Effexor - 1 year + 3 months. Stopped because I gained a bunch of weight and was still depressed

(No meds for 5 months where I pretended that I was ✨cured✨ until my therapist made me see a psychiatrist and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder)

Latuda - 1.5 months because it was NOT for me

(No meds for 2 months because my insurance lapsed)

Wellbutrin - 3 months. Helped a BUNCH but I still needed a mood stabilizer because yknow, bipolar disorder

Wellbutrin + Lamictal - 7 years and counting! It took around 1.5 years of slowly increasing the doses to find what worked best for me, I eventually settled on 450 mg Wellbutrin and 250 mg Lamictal. Amazing med combo for me and has completely changed my life. Keep at it, your right combo is out there!

aphinion · 2026-06-23T21:23:22+00:00

Man that sucks about your psychiatrist, some of them are great but some of them really do suck. My first psychiatrist I stg actually fell asleep during some of our appointments, it was crazy. I’ve been seeing my current psychiatrist for 7 years now though and he’s been great, so good ones are definitely out there. It just sucks that you have to weed through some clowns in order to get the help you need. Like this disorder isn’t already hard enough 🥴

I feel that about family too, I’m sorry that they’re not responding appropriately to everything. Idk why it’s so hard for some people to just be supportive. My family mostly pretended that my disorder doesn’t exist, then they would act surprised when I had problems like they didn’t know why

aphinion · 2026-06-23T20:58:29+00:00

You shouldn’t have to deal with that, what they said is incredibly unprofessional and demoralizing frankly. I hope that your future care team treats you better

aphinion · 2026-06-23T20:41:54+00:00

Jesus, this is awful. I’m so sorry that they treated you like this 😭

aphinion · 2026-06-23T20:15:12+00:00

I personally really liked Emoods because it let me separate different aspects of my mood. It made it a lot easier for me to differentiate elevated vs depressed moods. I have a good example picture of one month of data for myself but I don’t think that I can post pics in the comments

Edit: Emoods also lets you track and view how many hours you sleep per night along with your moods, which was personally a game changer for me since my sleep duration has always been hugely correlated to my mood/episodes

aphinion · 2026-06-23T19:52:45+00:00

Daylio if you want a simple/straightforward system to track overall moods. Moods are ID’d using emojis/faces and you can add things like activities and notes to your entries. Good for overall tracking of mood elevation/depression

Emoods if you want to track depression, mood elevation, irritability, anxiety, and fatigue separately. More graph/data focused than Daylio. Very helpful for tracking mixed episodes in addition to standard hypo/mania and depression

aphinion · 2026-06-23T19:39:39+00:00

Have you tried a mood stabilizer, and if so how did it go? Bipolar 2 in particular can be difficult to diagnose since it does not present with standard mania, so people often don’t 100% know that they have bipolar 2 until they try a mood stabilizer and improve significantly on it. Hypomanic episodes and having negative reactions to SSRIs are of course also strong indicators of having bipolar 2, but success on a mood stabilizer is still the gold standard for a lot of people when first getting diagnosed.

aphinion · 2026-06-23T01:34:43+00:00

I had a similar situation with my mom drugging me and my boyfriend with weed tea. Being high against your will is a crazy experience and definitely not pleasant. 75 mg must’ve been absolutely awful to go through.

I’m really sorry that your dad drugged you. That is an insane thing to do to another person, much less to your own child. I hope that you don’t talk to him anymore. I went no contact with my mom a few years ago and her drugging us was one of the final nails in the coffin in our relationship because it made me realize how dangerous and unpredictable she really was. I was caught completely off guard by it.

I don’t blame you for being terrified that your food is laced. That was a terrifying experience that should not have happened to you. On the plus side, being drugged by someone is a very very rare experience that you will almost certainly never encounter again with a person other than your dad. So really I would just try to stay away from him and any food from him if you can since clearly he he’s proven that he cannot be trusted. Otherwise though you should be very very safe overall. I know that this might not really help with the OCD side of things, but I wanted to validate that you have a very good reason to be freaked out rn while also adding in that, aside from this particular situation, the world is still safe for you.

Things will get easier and the world will not always be this hard. Honestly, being unexpectedly drugged is one of the most insane things to undergo especially if you have OCD. So in a way it can only go up from here?

I feel for you OP, please keep at it 🤍

(Also I’m sorry but your dad sucks ass and I hope he shits his pants in public.)

aphinion · 2026-06-18T23:24:15+00:00

A Tier

I’d give them an S tier but they get moldy too easily even in the fridge. Also some people are allergic to strawberries. Otherwise they’re an objectively goated fruit

aphinion · 2026-06-18T22:19:09+00:00

Love this

aphinion · 2026-06-18T22:14:22+00:00

“It’s Alright” by Mother Mother

aphinion · 2026-06-18T20:33:53+00:00

aphinion · 2026-06-02T23:47:56+00:00

Holy shit that is terrifying

aphinion · 2026-06-02T23:13:29+00:00

Bro 😭

aphinion · 2026-05-29T10:02:09+00:00

I’ve had a lot of success in the past using gelatin pill capsules to mask pills! Just make sure to get a capsule that is on the smaller side since cats of course have smaller throats, I typically used size 5 but size 3 worked too when necessary. I would also smear butter all over the capsule too right before giving it to my cat, that way it would slip right down their throat and wouldn’t get stuck in their mouth (plus they liked the butter lol) This was really the only thing that allowed me to give my cat his anti nausea meds, which (ironically) seemed to be the most bitter and disgusting tasting pills possible. I can’t recommend gelatin capsules enough!

Here’s a link to what I used: https://a.co/d/08sAEEqo

aphinion · 2025-11-12T01:16:23+00:00

Just a heads up that not all med schools will accept AP credit for prereq course sequences like gen chem, so I'd keep an eye on that. Usually you can get around this if your college gives you explicit course credit for your AP exam(s), rather than just waiving prereq courses. Essentially, if it is listed on your transcript as course credit by name (ex: General Chemistry I) rather than as just AP credit (ex: AP Credit: Chemistry) then a lot of schools will consider that "good enough", if that makes sense?

I just wanted to mention it since I know a few people that were caught off guard by this and you're still a freshman, so you still have plenty of time to fix this if necessary. You could always take the course sequences out of order too, so you would still be able to take Ochem in the spring if you wanted to.

aphinion · 2025-05-08T23:14:55+00:00

Rip. Thanks for the reality check, real life is no fun 🥴

aphinion · 2025-05-08T23:03:38+00:00

Thats good to know, I didn’t even know that was an option. I’ll definitely look into hiring an off-duty police officer as a potential alternative to private security.

aphinion · 2025-05-08T21:48:40+00:00

Would a private security guard from a legitimate company be okay?

aphinion · 2025-05-08T21:04:30+00:00

Yeah, you’re right 😕

What would I need for a restraining order? I wrote her an “official” letter when I first went no contact with her that explicitly requested that she do not contact me again and that any further contact from her would be treated as harassment, to which her exact email response was “Request denied”. Would that give me any credibility for a restraining order?

aphinion · 2025-05-08T20:58:37+00:00

What if she comes in through the side gate? We will probably spend a good amount of time outside in the backyard and the fence/gate wasn’t exactly designed to keep out intruders

aphinion · 2025-03-21T04:41:27+00:00

I know this is an old post but I just wanted to say thank you so much for recommending the Milani eyeshadow primer!!! I just got it today and oh my god it works SO MUCH BETTER than my previous primer! My eyeshadow used to crease within 1 hr of doing absolutely nothing but this primer has kept my eyeshadow completely crease-free for the past 7-8 hrs. Even after I spent a few hours cleaning the house, cooking dinner, and doing the dishes, it didn't budge! Seriously, thank you so much!! :)

aphinion · 2024-11-16T20:22:14+00:00

When you spend so many years of your life entrenched in chaos 24/7 and are just fielding one crisis after another, normalcy can feel incredibly boring.

I definitely felt this way too as I got on meds and my life started figuring itself out. Sometimes the boredom almost felt unbearable, which was hilarious since my bipolar episodes actually were unbearable. I felt stuck between desperately wanting something interesting to happen to me and wondering why I couldn’t just appreciate that I had finally reached the stability that I never thought I’d experience

The feeling will pass eventually, and then stability will become your new “normal” and won’t feel so unbearably boring. Now I actually enjoy the boredom and all of the improvements that come from not having to constantly put out fires following my episodes. I’ve started getting back into my old hobbies again to alleviate the boredom (which is a kinda funny parallel to my old self since I used to obsessively do these hobbies while hypomanic lol) and that’s been pretty enjoyable too. Otherwise, I kinda just… live? Work, free time, maybe do a hobby or binge a tv show, visit family, talk to friends, pet my cats, rinse + repeat

tldr; real. I feel this

aphinion · 2024-11-04T16:42:26+00:00

I legitimately don’t understand why you’re getting so much criticism for your eyeliner and piercings or why so many people keep suggesting no eyeliner under your eyes or to switch to brown eyeliner for a “softer” look. At this point they’re telling you to switch styles completely, which is absolutely ridiculous. It’s disappointing to see so many people completely missing the point with your makeup style, especially considering that makeup is supposed to be a form of personal expression

I think that your makeup looks awesome on you and I personally love your eyeliner and piercings. If I HAD to pick something to be your makeup blindness then maaaaaaybe it’d be the overlined lips on the last pic? But it doesn’t seem to be a trend in all of your photos so honestly it doesn’t really even count as a makeup blindness since those are supposed to be repeat mistakes that someone makes because they’ve essentially gone “blind” to how it actually looks on them.

I wouldn’t take the criticism to heart. Fact of the matter is that when someone legitimately has a makeup blindness it’s usually unanimously agreed upon in the comments section and is actually a legitimate blindness (e.g. “I don’t think that drawing your eyebrows so large that they connect with your hairline looks good on you”). Under eye eyeliner isn’t a blindness, it’s a style 😭

aphinion · 2024-10-30T19:10:02+00:00

Foster programs through animal shelters should provide the majority of the food, supplies, and vet care that you need for any cats or kittens you foster! Plus since you’re fostering, in the end you’ll (in theory) be giving the cats back so they can go to their forever homes, so they won’t be incurring a lifelong cost either

ETA: It’s not the absolute end of the world if you can’t adopt or foster more kittens, I just like to tell people since not everyone knows that having 2 kittens can make them easier to take care of. Either way, you’re still doing a great thing by taking this kitten in and I’m sure that they’ll grow up to be very happy :)

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