So apparently I am bi-polar

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Short story: I got diagnosed as bi-polar a few days ago.

Long story: Several years ago, I was suffering from what I thought was a marked depression and went on Symbalta. My mood only slightly improved, but I was also left with no libido and gained a lot of weight. Also, on any occasion that I happened to miss a daily dose, I suffered intense withdrawal headaches. And on top of that was the rather high cost of the drug even with my co-pay. My mood didn’t improve enough to justify all the drawbacks, so I discontinued it.

I was seeing a therapist for about a year (before I got laid off & lost my benefits) who had said I had signs of ADD. Just before my insurance ran out, he sent me to a psychiatrist to be evaluated. I didn’t particularly like this psychiatrist - during our one session, he spent most of his time fiddling with his BlackBerry, didn’t seem to actually be listening to me describe my symptoms, kept interrupting me to ask question that IMO were “leading” (meaning that the questions seemed framed so that I would have to give him the answer he wanted to hear.) After only about ten minutes, he labelled me bi-polar, but not a “true” bi-polar, more like something called “bi-polar spectrum.” His explanation was vague, meandering and he kept stopping to look at his phone. I thought to myself “YOU’RE the one whose ADD and bi-polar you quack!” Needless to say, I didn’t go back.

After that, there were snafus with my health insurance and I couldn’t see a therapist any more anyway. That was a litle over a year ago. I’ve been mainly unemployed - with scattered odd jobs here & there, a friend who has a landscaping business gave me work over the summer. That friend of mine is actually diagnosed with ADD and takes meds for it. He said he thought he saw me demonstrating similar symptoms and advised me to get evaluated.

In general, my symptoms include

  1. a short attention span - I’m very easily distracted & forgetful.
  2. impatience - if I have trouble figuring something out, I get frustrated and get into a rage easily.
  3. Free-floating anxiety - which I’ve attributed to being out of work for a year now, but I have to say my anxiety tends to well up for no reason whatsoever.
  4. Inability to organize or get things done - I’m pretty good in ‘controlled environments’ (where I have specific jobs to do, involving no one else, where I can work on my own, at my own pace), but getting big projects done - like for example job searching - just seems to be too difficult.
  5. Absent-mindedness - Whenever I’m faced with something that seems stressful, my mind seems to “shut down” - like a computer crashing.
  6. General irritability and snapping for no reason.

Anyway, I went to the Callen-Lorde clinic (a low-cost health clinic in Manhattan) to talk to a psychiatrist. She seemed a lot more on the ball and focussed, listened to what I was saying and gave me a few tests - written & verbal - to evaluate my condition. Her diagnosis was that I showed traits of being bi-polar and ADD, although she explained that there tends to be an overlap in symptoms, and most bi-polar sufferers show a lot of ADD tendencies.

She also (clearly) explained to me that “bi-polar spectrum” basically means that there is a varying degrees of 'bipolar-ness" from mild to extreme. Admittedly, I always had a pre-conceived of “bi-polars” based on TV portrayals; that they went from a near catatonic state of depression to acting like Linda Blair in “the Exorcist.”

So, one flakely psychiatrist I could dismiss. Two independant psychiatrists telling me I’m bi-polar, I guess I have to give it some thought. In the meantime, the new psych gave me a Rx for “Lamcital” - which apparently is really an anti-epileptic seizure drug, but works for bi-polar as well. She started me out on a low dosage (I have to keep an eye out for a rash, which is a bad sign of a reaction) and was told to “up” the dosage in two weeks. I’ve been taking it since Tuesday. I don’t feel any saner so far, but I was told it would take a few weeks before the effects kick in.

Anyway, that’s my story so far. I just wondered if anybody else had advice, comments or might be in the same boat? Just curious.

2

I guess my questions would be “How do you feel about the diagnosis” and “Has the diagnosis illuminated any non-productive behaviors that you hadn’t recognized before?”

In other words, when you ask yourself, “So what?” Do you have any sense of hope or direction that you didn’t before?

(ETA: Also bipolar, so’s my son)

3

Find your county health dept (if in the USA) and look up their website. Counties usually have referals to slding fee scale mental health clincs.

These are pretty good. Often you get young therapists starting out that actually care about what they’re doing.

You’ve been diagnosed with something but if you feel it’s incorrect you need to seek out another opinion.

Until you feel comfortable with your doctor and/or therapist any treatment you get will only help you minimally.

As for the drugs, pyschiatric drugs are problematic, 'cause it takes awhile to get the not only the correct drug but the correct does. And this causes people concern.

Often you will go through 4 or 6 weeks with no effect and have to try another drug.

Bi-polar is treatable. Millions have had this and do quite well. So you will you, but it won’t happen over night.

And don’t worry about being “diagnosed” or “classed” as having a mental illness. Who cares? 50 years from now, you and me and half the people reading this will be dead and no one will even remember you, much less care you have a mental illness.

The important thing is getting back to feeling normal, or feeling normal for the first time.

The one thing that will help you most is hearing others who’ve had this. Once you read how they got through it, you will realize you can to. IF you put in the time and effort. So seek out support in your area (try meetup.com) or other local area groups. If there isn’t one in your area, use meetup.com to start one.

Finally remember a problem stated is half solved. Of course the HARD half comes now, but just think a year from now you can come back with a “Ask the lady who was diagnosed with Bi-Polar and Now Is OK” thread :slight_smile:

Good luck

4

Glad you’ve gotten a diagnosis, New and Improved Superman - that’s the first step towards finding treatment.

Please hear me on this: Even if you don’t believe your medication is working, don’t just stop taking it. Talk to your doctor, and do what he or she tells you. Ditto if you start having side effects, or start feeling worse - talk to your doctor. You’ve got an illness, just like hypothyroidism or diabetes; with treatment, you’ll be okay. But your illness can kill you, so take treatment seriously.

5

I took me 15 years of mental health services hell to get diagnosed as bipolar (sucks mightily if you don’t fit into any of their nice little boxes). It is amazing the difference receiving appropriate treatment can make. Thank God for lithium.

However - I found appropriate medication was not the be all and end all. I had to put in a lot of hard work changing my thinking patterns and habits. Personally I believe getting some long term cognitive behavioural therapy to be of equal importance as the meds (but as with anything YMMV).

6

Coincidentally, I just saw my doctor again this afternoon and this was his diagnosis for me, as well. The symptoms you describe sound very similar to mine, especially the anxiety.

Cymbalta was the first med I tried. Those withdrawals felt like sticking my brain in an electrical outlet. And yes, it was expensive stuff.

This is encouraging, as I was prescribed this today. It is also much more affordable than most other meds I’ve tried.

7

I don’t see how those symptoms map to bipolar. Bipolar is actually a very simple diagnosis. Either you’ve have a manic episode, or have had both a hypomanic and depressive episode. There’s also a type where you have a depressive episode, but about the only way to tell it from normal depression is that antidepresants make it worse.

Also, I’ll point out that, depending on how long you’ve been off Cymbalta, any bad feelings could still be post acute withdrawal from it. You need at least a year before you can get a new diagnosis. Bipolar spectrum disorders are often a catch all term for mood lability–something that is often found in pretty much all psychological disorders.

I’m not saying you aren’t bipolar, but don’t think that just having two different doctors diagnose you with it is enough. At least, you should have other symptoms that they are looking at–specifically symptoms that have changed.

8

I was on Lamictal for a few months, which was prescribed for my treatment-resistant depression. It is a mood stabilizer. It actually didn’t help me any. I didn’t really feel any effects, positive or negative from it BUT that is probably because my depression is likely a symptom of a autoimmune liver disease I was recently diagnosed with. I think I definitely have depression, but it is exacerbated by the liver problem, so the Lamictal (and my other antidepressants) didn’t touch it.

Best of luck to you!

9

Just chiming in to say hang in there. My husband is bipolar, and he leads a great life. It was hard at first, before we got the diagnosis, and then through the process of finding the right combination of medications. But once we got it figured out life improved immensely.

Believe it or not, but this diagnosis (assumed correct) is a *good *thing. Now that you know what’s wrong, you can go about fixing it. And there’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of…like someone said above, it’s no different from someone who has diabetes or hypothyroidism (have you had your thyroid levels checked, btw?). It’s an illness, you need to manage it, and that’s it.

10

That’s what happened with me. Oh, I’d get hyper a lot, but it never lasted long enough for people to think, “Oh, something’s wrong with her.” My depressive moods were much more long and gloomy, especially when I was younger. I was on maybe 6-7 different antidepressants within a span of 7-8 years. I either had over-the-top side effects or felt very detached from everything, as though I was sleepwalking.

One of the antidepressants I was put on was Wellbutrin.

Talk about a freak show – I literally shot through the roof. Agitation like agitation never before. I seriously could have started a physical fight at work. I didn’t, thank god.

Psych at the time: “You’re bipolar. Your reaction to the Wellbutrin points to it.”

Psychs 2 and 3 confirmed it.

This happened almost 10 years ago.

Mine is very “soft”, as they call it in psych parlance – never been hospitalized, never have been so manic that I lose total control (the extent of mine is staying up all night). It’s been more subtle since my thyroidectomy. I was taking a minimum dosage of Lamictal, but chose to discontinue it because I honestly didn’t think it was helping much.

Bipolar runs in my family. One of my uncles was hospitalized for it off and on, while other uncles plus my mother all had varying degrees of mood disorders. Of course, back then, nobody ever talked about it, but now, knowing this, their behavior while I was growing up makes much more sense.

:nodding: The incident with the Wellbutrin sealed mine, but yeah, I agree with this also. As someone upthread said, ADD and bipolar tend to mimic each other in many areas. I probably wouldn’t had ever known about mine if it hadn’t been for the Wellbutrin. ADD has never been mentioned to me.

11

Note: Listen to your doctor’s advice over mine. I’ve got controversial views, but I think they might be useful food for thought. If you do not find them useful, just disregard them.

I would keep in mind that “bipolar” is a descriptive diagnosis, not a causative one. So of course having a reaction to Welbutrin is going to lead to the same diagnosis across practitioners- one of the definitions of “bipolar” is “has this reaction to Welbutrin.” These diagnosis do not say much about the causes of the problems, which are still not well understood. Nor does it even provide too much insight into the solutions- given the amount of messing with drugs and doses it takes to find something that works. So while it’s an easy line, it’s not “exactly the same” as being diagnoses as diabetic and needing insulin. A diabetic knows what is missing biologically and how to treat it. A bipolar person only knows that they act crazy in a specific way sometimes- something you presumably already had some clue about.

You will need to continue to think critically about your diagnosis and treatment. Unfortunately our understanding of mental illness is not to the point where you can just get your diagnosis, lie back, and let the doctors do their work. By this, I don’t imply in any way that you should go off medication in an unsupervised manner, but that it might be smart to look into CBT and other treatment options, and keep an eye on what drugs you are taking, what the side effects might be, and how you are responding to them.

12

I have not been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or ADD, but I have privately considered that have a “little of column A” and a “little of column B”. There actually IS a bipolar spectrum–or perhaps a mood spectrum, is a better way of describing it. For instance, one can have the cognitive and emotional symptoms of major depression, but simultaneously have the hyperactivity and agitation of mania. It’s called being in a “mixed” state and it is actually more concerning than being just depressed because you can have the suicidal ideation of depression with all the energy and impulsivity of carrying it through.

Does bipolar or mood disorders run in your family? It’s interesting; my older sis was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (I don’t know which type, but can you definitely tell when she’s manic). Her daughter has ADD. So when I’m feeling particularly restless and agitated, I know that I’m not alone having this experience in my family.

One non-medical thing that I’ve done to cope with the “racing” thoughts (which loop nonsensically) is to engage in physical activity. Whether it be gardening or yard work, arts and crafts, walking to the grocery store instead of driving, or jumping on a trampoline (Ok, that last one is a lie. But I totally want to get one for my office!). It has really really helped get my thoughts together.

Don’t be afraid of meds, but don’t stick with something for too long if it’s not working. Sometimes the side-effects can be worse than the disease.

13

I’m not disregarding what you’ve posted, but I will say you’re not giving much credit to psychiatric research and what scientists do know about bipolar disorder. If a patients acts more manic with Wellbutrin, one can much pretty much surmise why. Wellbutrin works by increasing dopamine in the brain. Excessive dopamine has been linked to many disorders, especially those of the basal ganglia, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, OCD, and ADD. So a bad effect with Wellbutrin is a major clue that a patient may have an excess of dopamine to begin with, and that adding the drug, especially in high doses, is making the problem worse.

I kinda think Wellbutrin has made my movement disorder a tad worse. However, it has improved my mood (that is, when it doesn’t make me break out in hives!) So there’s a trade-off involved with these medications. Sometimes you have to make tough choices.

Psychiatric medicine is often a guessing game, but it’s not voodoo. People do have an idea of which neurotransmitters are involved with certain disorders and the modes of action of certain drugs that can help. It’s just that everyone is so different, both in terms of wiring and biochemical baselines. It takes a degree of experimentation, in terms of doses and drug combos, for doctor’s to find a good match. I don’t think this means psychiatrists are clueless (though they definitely can be). It just means this stuff is hard to fix in one fell swoop. That’s why I recommend going to a psychotherapist while also going to a psychiatrist, because it can be psychologically hard dealing with the ups and downs of all the drugs they throw at you. And you need someone to “ride the wave” with you, as well as be an objective observer just in case you can’t tell if you’re getting worse or better.

14

But it’s not simply an excess or lack of specific neurotransmitters. While manipulating neurotransmitters seems to help symptoms, the relationship is not explicitly causative and has not been clearly defined. While we know (to some degree) what effect the drugs can have, we have very little concept of why they do what they do.

15

There is nothing simple in medicine. Do you think there’s a one-drug-fits-all solution for most somatic conditions? Jut in case you think there is, the answer is no. But does this automatically mean that the medical community “has very little concept” of what drugs do? Not necessarily. It just means that the entire body is a bag of chemicals, and the interactions between those chemicals and the ones we put in them are hard to predict. But we do know something. Believe it or not, science has come a long way.

And I’ll be the first to say I’ve been and still am riding the drug merry-go-round. I’m still dealing with the frustration of not having a solid diagnosis (other than a generalized basal ganglion disorder), nor the right drug regiment to help me with all my problems. But the improvements I have seen indicate to me that the whole idea of doctors not knowing what they’re doing is kind of bullshit. Some of them do. In an ideal world, they could take a patient’s DNA profile, bloodwork, brain imaging, medical history, and symptom description and be able to work out a complete diagnostics test and a treatment program. But that’s not how it works. A typical drug-treatment psychiatrist session last how long? Thirty minutes, at the most? My last shrink visit lasted a sum total of 10 minutes. Talk about a rip off. And then you have to come back maybe a month later and hope they remember you and your problems. And then hope that you can withstand the side-effects of the drugs they keep prescribing until you can find the right match. And this is all with GOOD insurance. It’s very hard, under this care system, to figure out what’s going on with someone or how to treat them with high accuracy. But with enough time and patience (and oh boy, that is easier said than done), help will come.

So yeah, the OP should tread cautiously with any diagnosis he’s given. But he should also should feel some hope that someone out there has an idea of how to treat him medically.

16

Of course.

But don’t expect it to be “I got a diagnosis so now they can cure me,” think critically about the drugs you are taking and do your own research on side effects and long-term outcomes because a lot of drugs are prescribed essentially at random, and consider the role of non-drug therapies. This science is still in it’s infancy, and if you are not in immediate danger or experiencing symptoms that are massively affecting your life, it’s wise to consider a number of different ways of thinking about the diagnosis.

17

My shrink and I both think I fit in the bipolar II (“soft”) end of the spectrum, as depression is the major presenting symptom. My “highs” are increased agitation and irritibility - not classic manic. However, through charting my emotional states daily for months, the cycles became pretty obvious. And it only took several years of treatment for us to clue in!

I agree with the idea of thinking critically about your choices, and you have to have a doc who’s willing to listen to you and who is versed in what’s available for treatment. I’ve been on and off many meds at this point. Last month, I decided that I don’t want to have an SSRI in the mix anymore, as it always stops working or seems to make me worse after a while. Just trying to get off of a low dose of Lexapro has been frustratingly slow. (Cymbalta was worse, though.) I haven’t found the sweet spot yet, for sure, but I know I’ve felt worse, so there’s hope, right? I’m on Lamictal (took a long time to reach a therapeutic dose), Abilify and Ativan right now.

Also, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have good sleep, a reasonably structured day and enough exercise.

I found this site to be a wealth of good information on bipolar II. While the layout looks a little homegrown, the site has solid info on symptoms, different treatment options, etc. The doc who put it together is an evidence-based guy who encourages skepticism. If he has an opinion, it’s stated as such, and where there are references, they are cited.

18

I came in to recommend the same site. Homegrown is certainly a good description of it! Don’t let its hokey design turn you off the information you can find there. Jim Phelps also put his site’s information into a book called Why Am I Still Depressed? I’ve also been diagnosed with bipolar spectrum disorder and switched from Lexapro to Lamictal in December of last year.

19

I was diagnosed bp1 when I was 35. I’m 49 now. Looking back, I believe my symptoms manifested themselves when I was around 16.

To say I’ve lived an intense life is an understatement. It wasnt all bad though. I started my career in one of the most aggressive and challenging markets on the planet. I know the hypomania was a huge advantage, although it did lead to me getting into some trouble.

Long story short… I did the med cocktail merry-go-round for years, which had me way more fucked up than I ever was pre-diagnosis. I’ve been off all meds for about 3 years now. I dont see a shrink because the ones I had were of the opinion that for a total loon, I really had my shit together.

In my case, the highs are awesome. I love every minute of it. They are also pretty dangerous because I have been known to take incredible risks. When things start to get a little crazy I bomb myself with seroquel. It knocks me back to earth with a crash, but it keeps me out of court, jail, the hospital…

The lows are brutal, and all I can do is force myself to get out of bed and participate in life and face my responsibilities. My family has stood by me through this whole ordeal which kind of gives me something to fight for.
I hope this isn’t too much of a rambling mess. I’ve been a little scatterbrained for the last couple weeks.

20

I’m bipolar, too! Join the party!!

Aw, I hate this party. Too depressed to party.

Lets go get drunk, drive recklessly and have lots of promiscuous sex!

Okay, so it’s not quite like that. But you’ll figure it out. Each person’s bipolar will be different. Some people have amazing highs. Some people have extreme lows. Some people have both. Some people have one and a little of the other. Some people have just a little of each.

For me, I have pretty low lows and mild highs. My highs consist of some insomnia, a heightening of my OCD (mostly obsessive thoughts), increased sex drive (when my OCD isn’t driving me absolutely nutter butters), and increased energy (which is usually used to clean).

But each person will be different. Comorbidity can effect the bipolar. Life can effect the bipolar.

Best of luck on coping with this.