Posted by med_empowered on July 28, 2005, at 16:05:45
hey everyone. I'm a 21 year old guy with severe, recurrent bouts of depression--sometimes also hypomania, possibly mixed-episodes--along with insomnia, anxiety, and, rarely, psychotic symptoms with more extreme mood episodes. As you can probably tell from my previous posts, I'm kind of displeased with the kind of treatment that is offered in psychiatry. Still, I need to do something. I'm more or less out of a pretty bad depressive episode (lots of insomnia, mild psychotic symptoms), but for the past couple months I've been so incredibly tired and fatigued. Sometimes I literally sleep the day away. I dont know what to do. Antidepressant used to help with my depression when I was younger, but they dont really seem to do very much now. Stimulants are OK, but I hate feeling wired and hyperfocused; plus, I'm sensitive to the cardiovascular effects of stimulants and other meds, so they can wreak havoc. Neuroleptics have been unsatisfactory; the best was low-dose abilify with an antidepressant and a few other meds...for a week or two, I felt GREAT...not manic or wired, just happy and productive. However, the dose increased, the side effects increased, and I started getting more of the ill-effects associated with neuroleptics (lack of motivation, apathy, fatigue, cognitive impairment, tremor, "neuroleptic induced dysphoria"). I just dont know what to do anymore...I feel as if my life is slipping by me and I'm wasting my youth, but I'm just so TIRED--im also unhappy, but the fatigue and apathy is far more problematic than my sense of despair. What do I do? I've kind of reached the point where I occasional consider suicide as a real alternative...I weigh the pros and cons, think about different methods, that kind of thing. I'm not mentioning this for attention, and please don't think I'm suicidal or anything, I just need to emphasize that I'm EXHAUSTED--I'm fatigued, and I'm tired of constantly dealing with bouts of ups and downs (more downs than ups) that disrupt my life and keep me from being happy. Please...if you have any suggestions, post them. Thanks.
poster:med_empowered
thread:534853
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050728/msgs/534853.html