Abilified

Among the more than five million adults in America who have Bipolar Disorder, these “mood swings” can be extreme or frequent. These changes in mood aren’t as simple as transitioning from “happy” to “sad.” With Bipolar Disorder, symptoms can include both a lowering of mood (depression) and an exaggerated elevation of mood (mania). These changes occur in cycles and are referred to as “episodes.” People with Bipolar Disorder experience extreme mood swings that can take three different forms: manic, depressive, and mixed episodes.-  From www.abilify.com


  My new psychiatrist put me on Abilify about a month ago. It's supposed to help manage bipolar 1 mania, and make me less paranoid and delusional.


Clinical studies have shown the effectiveness of ABILIFY in the treatment of acute manic and mixed episodes in adults or pediatric patients (10 to 17 years) with

Bipolar I Disorder.-  www.abilify.com

I've spent a few years now getting help for whatever is wrong with me. Although bipolar disorder was first brought to my attention a few years ago, I was adamant I didn't have it, because I was unable to admit that I had manic (high mood/elevated) episodes.

On average, people with Bipolar Disorder spend ten years seeking treatment before finally getting diagnosed. One survey found that as many as 70% of people with Bipolar Disorder are initially diagnosed with a different condition. Often, this is because people only tend to seek treatment during a depressive episode and neglect to discuss manic symptoms with their healthcare professional. There are no lab tests or other procedures for diagnosing Bipolar Disorder. Instead, a healthcare professional must take a very thorough history  - www.abilify.com

What I now know as part of this illness, I always used to think was my normal mood. But after a couple years of therapy, of psychiatrists and a stay in a mental hospital, I've been able to get some insight into my episodes and the cycles they follow. 


You can help others, such as family and friends, support you by talking with them about your condition and allowing them to help and support you. It is helpful for family and friends to learn as much as they can about your condition so you can discuss it more openly and they can find ways to support you. The support and encouragement of loved ones can be an important part of your treatment plan.- www.abilify.com


 The Abilify website says that talking with your friends and family is helpful. I want to believe thats true. I guess thats why I do this blog, but I really don't have many friends in AZ, I get the impression most of family and friends either get too creeped out by this subject to talk about it with me, they think its all bullshit, or they think I shouldn't be airing my dirty laundry out for all the world to see so they try to just pretend that it doesn't exist, and that just makes me feel awkward and I just want to avoid people even more than I already do. 

  So this blog is pretty much how I interact with the world and how I share my experiences with bipolar disorder.

Until very recently, I had been on an amazing, manic episode that had started back in the begining of February. I was dieting on almost entirely all egg whites, I had lost 40lbs, I was running 3-4 miles a day and my energy levels were literally superhuman. 

  Abilify's website has this picture on it. I'm assuming that this what Abilify says you're going to feel like when you start taking this medication. 

It also says you will feel like this:

  But in reality I feel like this:

But I hate looking at myself in picture so in my mind I look more like this:

  The elation and euphoria is gone. My energy levels are nonexistent. My creativity is nowhere to be found. I feel empty and awkward because I'm used to either being manic and obsessed about something or angry paranoid and depressed. 

  But its not all bad. I definitely feel less paranoid, delusional and slightly less irritated. Sometimes I wish I could just hang onto that manic  high feeling and just take medication when I'm on the lows. But I know now that it doesn't work like that. You can't have the wonderful highs without the earth-shattering lows. And the more manic and depressed episodes I allow myself to have go unchecked the harder it is on my wife, my step daughter and my job. And that ultimately hurts me. 

   I think this how normal people are. Not high, not low, just "there" neither happy or sad, not obsessed but not depressed. I'm not used to feeling like this, its not natural for me and I'm not sure I like it. But mentally I'm a lot more stable and that's ultimately whats in my best interests because I'm married and have stepchildren who rely on me and for the first time I realize how difficult I am to deal with when I'm having these episodes.

 I'll never be normal and there is no cure for what I have. But it can be managed and thats the best anyone in my position can hope for.

 I dont have a nice little ending planned that sums everything up. This was more of an extended rant. I guess I just wanted to vent today, so I'll just end it now.

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My Bipolar Rollercoaster

So I've finally made the classic Bipolar mistake...

 I went off my medications thinking I didn't need them anymore, but in reality I was just in an elevated/manic phase. 

 I've been seeing a new therapist who I really like and I'm going to see a new psychiatrist this week and have decided to get back on medication.

 The last time I sought out professional help, the decision wasn't entirely mine. The ultimatum was literally put to me to get help or get divorced and get out of the house, and I agreed. While my personal and domestic situation was definitely a factor this time, my decision to once again attempt professional help was entirely mine, and mine alone.

 After 2 psychiatrists, 3 therapists and one hospital stay, I've learned a lot about my moods and how they cycle, I've finally been able to categorize my moods and I'm hoping this will enable my psychiatrist and therapist to better treat me this time around by making my therapy sessions more productive and by giving me the right medications in the right doseages.
 

My Bipolar 1 mood swings follow a very specific cycle with four stages, which I've titled as follows.

1. DEPRESSED/LOW

  2. MANIC/ELEVATED

  3. MANIC/IRRITATED

              4.  RAPID (cycling of all three)

This represents a typical cycle for me. Each cycle lasts about several months, I typically go thru about 2 each year.

The first three stages take about several months to go thru. Then I go thru this "rapid" stage where I go thru the whole cycle in a week or even a day. Over and over again for several weeks until finally, utterly exhausted physically and mentally I enter a depression and start all over again. 

I've gone thru this ever since I was a teenager. I cannot control when they start or stop or how severe the different states manifest and how fast they change. Although drugs (illegal, legal, prescribed or not) mask, minimize, or lessen the severity and duration of the cycles, it never goes away and I suspect it never will. 

Here are some of the highlights of my various mood stages.   

Depressed/Low    

* Lasts several days to several weeks
* Suicidal thoughts and actions
* no sleep, no energy, no appetite
* Total avoidance of social situation, family and friends
* Panic attacts, anxiety, dread, paranoia, racing thoughts
* Completely unable to function, I'm constantly loosing jobs in this stage.

MANIC/ELEVATED 

* Lasts several weeks to several months
* "God Mode" I feel bulletproof, invincible
* Overly Spiritual
*Hypersexual
* The ADD-Like Symptoms: Completely overfocus on subjects or completely unfocused with racing thoughts, ideas and speech (motormouth)
* Seemingly limitless energy on hardly any sleep.

* My "creative periods"
* usually when I meet people and enter relationships
* Delusional/Irrational/Manic Behavior & Thoughts
 
     - Quitting my job to blog full time or write a book proposal believing I will become a famous writer.
 
     - Opening a credit card in my wife's name so I can take 
       phlebotomy classess I'll never finish. 
 
     - Missing important meetings at work and risking getting fired to go on mental health days, reading at the library or meditating in my car
 
      - selling all my musical equipment to buy tickets to a Roger   Waters concert that I can't afford anyways, then walking around downtown phoenix for 7 hours looking for the band so I can ask them for free tickets.
 
       - Those are just some of the ones that I'm comfortable 
         discussing here.

MANIC/IRRITATED

* Can last several weeks to several months
* Extreme Irritability
* Agumentative, unreasonable, ill-tempered
*decreasing, energy, focus and thinking
*The OCD-Like Symptoms: An almost phobic fear of loosing control causes me to seek comfort in predictability, order, routine, and I lose my shit when the routines are broken or when I feel I am not in control of my environment.    
* Paranoia

 - my bosses phone rings, it obviously must be someone calling to complain about me. I don't even want to be within earshot of the call, I gotta get outta here, I make up an excuse, hours later I'm online turning in resumes over a phone call and now afraid to go back to work

  - I send a message to my wife, she doesn't answer, is she mad at me? she must be mad at me? very mad. Maybe she's gonna throw me out? I get outta work and go pack. Maybe she's so mad she's gonna have me arrested on some bs charge, or worse maybe have me killed. I should leave work now. Go to my folks. No wait, that's the first place she'll look. Hour's later I left work on some bs excuse and am at a Kinkos and have spent all my money on computer time so I can anonymously google how to change my identity and fake my death. All because my wife wouldn't return a text message. Prob because she was in a meeting.

                     
                                  RAPID PHASE

 

* Signals the end of a stage
* can last up to several weeks
* I go all the previous stages in the course of a week, or even a day, then go thru it all over again, and again.  

*  Usually about the time I have a huge blow up at home.
* Utterly exhausted since by this time I've usually taken a huge amount of verbal abuse over my behavior. I'm left embarrassed, humiliated, guilt-ridden, powerless and hopeless.  I lapse into depression and the cycle starts again.

_______________________________________________________

I wanted to share this to educate people, who may be bi polar or may be living with someone who is bipolar.

 Sure everyone goes thru hi's and lo's, but in my case, they are absurdly high and earth shatteringly low. They are predictable and those around me who know me well can see them coming, but even still I cannot control them.   

 Being off medications, I at least feel happy in a manic elevated state but its extremely hard for those around me to keep up with me mentally and physically.  Through sheer willpower I can delay/postpone a mood but ultimately I will give in and I am unable to control the duration or severity of a particular mood swing. It's like playing Russian roulette. Eventually you will gamble and loose.  
 
 I'm optimistic about the new psychiatrist I'm going to see and I'm hopeful we can find a medication/medications that will help me and still allow me to live an active life where I can keep my job and be somewhat physically active and not some drugged up zombie, sitting at home watching tv, eating cereal, and sleeping 15 hours a day, and getting yelled at by my wife because she's out working all day and I'm not doing shit. 
 
That's not my idea of mental health and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid in a medication this time around.



HERE IS A LINK TO AN ARTICLE ON ABOUT.COM THAT DISCUSSES HOW TO SPOT A MANIC EPISODE IN YOUR LOVED ONE.




 

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Why it is a good idea for a Paranoid/Delusional Bipolar with ADD & OCD to Not Take Medication.

`Once well underground,' he said, `you know exactly where you are. Nothing can happen to you, and nothing can get at you. You're entirely your own master, and you don't have to consult anybody or mind what they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you let 'em, and don't bother about 'em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.' - from "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame

I am a diagnosed, Paranoid/Delusional, Bipolar with ADD & OCD.

I'm also a guitar player, but that's not what I'm writing about today. 

 I've been completely off all medications since the end of July. Now I'm gonna tell you why. But I gotta explain some things first.

 When I was "hospitalized" last May, I was taking Seroquel, Prozac & Adderall daily. My first psychiatrist was a grumpy old Polish woman. She did this one thing I used to hate. Either because she tried to help me with my tendency to ramble on and on or because she was just plain annoyed by me, she used to put a timer on her desk and whenever she asked me a question I had 30 seconds to answer it. I rarely ever got an answer in under the buzzer. 

What a bitch.

  I figured if after a year under her care, the best I could manage was to end up not being able to work in a year and ultimately in a mental institution then I should probably find another psychiatrist. So I did.

  I found very nice doctor who told me that the reason I was getting all sorts of cardiograms in the hospital was because Seroquel and Prozac taken together can cause a rare condition where you heart can just suddenly stop. Nobody told me this, including the doctor that prescribed the shit to me. 

What a bitch.

  The solution, get me off Prozac, and Adderall, put me on something called Lamictal and double my dosage of Seroquel. 

  Let's talk about Seroquel for a little bit. 

Seroquel is an anti-psychotic, mood stabilizer commonly used to treat schizophrenics and bipolars. In small doses like 50-75 milligrams, I hear people sometimes take it for insomnia, and I believe it because this shit will knock you the fuck out

I was taking 400mg/day and now I was being upped to 800/day. 

I did notice an immediate effect on my mood. Despite the fact that at the time me and my wife were separated, the, fear, overwhelming sense of panic, dread and suspicion, the bad voices, all that shit went away. It was the equivalent of watching TV in color vs in black & white.

 Or just maybe it was the massive amount of medication I was taking, but maybe it was because I didn't have a job, was living with my parents and spent 12-15 hours a day sleeping, and the rest of my waking hours watching TV or in the local library. I wasn't living in real life. I was living in my own protected little world where nothing could get to me. Guarded by medication and the seclusion of Queen Creek, AZ, I was virtually invulnerable. Who wouldn't be happy? or at least relatively unstressed, and content.

  But then I found a job. A job I really enjoy doing, and one I still have today. When you sleep 15 hours a day its kind of hard to wake up at 5am so you can commute across town to go to work. Then expect to be alert and awake and productive while you're at work. 

  And as both my psychiatrists and the doctor in the mental hospital has said, being a Paranoid/Delusional, Bipolar with ADD & OCD is extremely hard to medicate. To get the right medications in the right mix is just very hard to do. 

  The sheer amount of medications needed to handle all the shit that's wrong with me is just enormous. It's possible of course, but it doesn't seem like it can be done without it resulting in me basically spending my life like some sort of ZOMBIE.

 NO! NOT ROB ZOMBIE, DAMMIT!

  I want to work and try to have a productive life that doesn't just involve sitting at home collecting disability and sleeping all day long.  I also don't want to keep trying different medications and risking possibly dangerous side effects- like my heart possibly stopping. At least not before the next round of star wars movies come out.

  So I live with the the highs and lows, and depression and dread, and suspicion, and the bad voices that try to convince me of all sorts of crazy shit.  I go to work, I eat healthy and try to keep myself in shape. I rarely drink and don't do any other drugs. I try to keep my marriage intact and basically I just try really hard thru sheer willpower to keep my shit together and make sure that I'm always around people and in situations that are conducive to my mental health.

  Its not perfect and not even entirely successful, but after almost 10 months off all medications, I'm still alive, I'm not in a mental institution, I'm still married and I have a job and I think that's a pretty good start.

  I have gotten back into counseling too. Hopefully that will help me keep an even keel and stay off medication. But I'm not naive and I realize that medication may eventually be the only way to keep me healthy. But for now I'm doing ok. 

 But all the bad stuff never really goes away. It's always there, like some annoying kid yelling in your ear, fucking with you, doing everything they can to try to make you lose your cool.

  But so far I haven't entirely lost it yet...

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