Posted by BarbaraCat on March 20, 2003, at 16:13:04
In reply to Re: Add, Add, Subtract, Confuse, Read, posted by wcfrench on March 20, 2003, at 14:02:41
Ah, Young Grasshoppa,
I can only share my own experience, which has been in the making these many years. It's hard to tell what is doing what when one is adding, subtracting multiple meds at a time. This goes for all the vitamins, over the counter stuff we get. It confuses the purity of the experiment. But I have heard that Lamictal may stop working as well as at first - this is the case with me. At first I thought 'oh, I've finally found The Drug' and then it slowly petered out.If you've stopped Depakote, this could certainly be contributing to anxiety. Anxiety is my personal downfall and unchecked stress will always turn into an agitated depression. I take a benzo (valium now, it was lorazepam, then klonopin. They're all pretty much the same.) and it helps to nip a bad stress state in the bud.
Mixed states. Ah, now there is a worthy foe. What is usually referred to as mixed states is a point along the bipolar continuum where mania and depression collide. The usual vanilla symptoms we think of as 'bipolar' are the extremes of high and low. Mania is crazed insomnia extroverted revved up thinking and depression is slow murky sluggish dreary can't give a rip about life. Mixed states is a very frightening combination of the two and can have delusional very scary nightmarish hallucinations, much like a very bad acid trip that goes on and on. Can't sleep, lots of wailing, catastrophic doom and total despair. I got to the point that I couldn't eat anything because I could hear the salad greens screaming on my plate. And oh, to walk past the butcher counter in a supermarket! I collapsed a few times in the aisle sobbing uncontrollably because I was very vividly transported to the slaughterhouse. I felt God had gone insane and we were in the hands of a sick diety. No hope. Very different from extreme anxiety states because of the hallucinatory quality.
That's not to say that all the things I was so supersensitive about were not horrible in their own right, but it was like I had an antenna that was only picking up horror movies, or like all my skin was peeled to expose nerve endings. I'd also get extremely empathetic and even psychic during these times - painfully sensitive in all ways and it wore me down. It's been a cyclical thing since I was 20. It was beginning to cycle more and more frequently and at 50 it was almost a constant state. I don't know many people who have had this form of mood disorder, but Edgar Allen Poe comes to mind. Real nightmare stuff. It's usually a Bipolar I thing since it's so extreme that it doesn't usually fit in with the milder BPII symptoms. For me it had classic schizoprenic qualities, but because it was cyclical, did not fit in with a schizoid dx. But who knows? All I know and am so very grateful for is that I haven't had a single episode like this since starting lithium. I've had severe depression, especially when my Mom was killed in December, but a normal response even though severe. It was thankfully not complicated by the horrific mixed states stuff.
Yes, Power of Now has been my constant companion - books, the tapes, video. I've rediscovered it after forgetting about it for a year. It's the single most helpful philosophy/spiritual teaching that I've encountered. Bless Eckhart Tolle, who had his own Hell to contend with. Now that my chemistry is stable, these teachings are taking root. Cheers. Barbara-San
> This has seemed to be the trend with my meds... Add because it's working, subtract because it's not (or it stops) working. The combo fails and we don't know who the culprit is.
>
> I'm on 100mg/2x Lamictal now, having started it about a month ago, and I don't feel the same as when I started it... now I feel a little more depressed, and as if it doesn't work as well. I did stop Depakote a short time before that, do you think I could be suffering withdrawals? It doesn't seem likely... I think sometimes I have mixed states too.. I'll be peaceful, then really anxious/nervous, then OK again. It's very weird, but I'm trying to balance it. Is that mixed states? Thanks for your help to me the young "grasshoppa"
>
> See ya
> Charlie
>
> PS I read "the power of now" and "present moment awareness" and both are really good books to read. Even if you're not in a great position to take them in (as we are at times), they could benefit anyone's current situation. They are also very relaxing, and unlike other books when I'm anxious, I find myself actually seeing these as reprieve.
poster:BarbaraCat
thread:208531
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030319/msgs/210969.html