Posted by CK1 on April 2, 2005, at 12:22:23
In reply to Re: Bipolar II - SSRI/Lamictal - anxious, posted by Lushkins on April 2, 2005, at 11:03:40
Thanks for the insights everyone! Bipolar II is an extremely general term: My pdoc thinks I'm Bipolar II because when I got on Paxil last year (it worked then!!), I became almost too happy and every day was a new experience. I spent the summer interning in New York and was parting 5 nights/week, sleeping around 5 hours a night, and, overall, feeling "on top of the world." He thinks SSRI "poop out" can oftentimes signify underlying bipolar II, especially when you try other SSRI's and they cause overwhelming anxiety. That's why I "could" be Bipolar II. There are also many family members with bipolar which is very important to point out.
Anyway, Paxil was my "wonder drug" for so long, but I'm thinking it's not working anymore due to the fact that my "illness" has progressed and, NOW, as opposed to before, maybe all the SSRI's will make me worse, if I don't have a high enough dose of a mood stabilizer in place (for weeks) BEFORE I add an SSRI. 37.5mg of Lamictal ain't gonna stabilize me since the normal stabilizing dose is 100-400mg, so I'm thinking: drop Paxil (for now!) and reach the theraputic dose of Lamictal (if I can!) before re-introducing Paxil or Nortriptyline. If Lamictal starts causing too much anxiety, maybe a switch to Depakote is in question. Gosh....there sure are a lot of lot of "what if's" for mental illnesses. The more drugs that come to the market, the more complicated everything gets...so it seems!
This site is amazing since it brings so many people together who are going through the same experiences. I guess I consider it my form of "therapy"
poster:CK1
thread:478374
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050330/msgs/478914.html