Posted by cache-monkey on January 2, 2005, at 1:38:19
In reply to BPII, hate meds, have many questions, posted by MM on December 17, 2004, at 16:49:46
[responding to your post in reverse order]
"I am currently diagnosed as Bipolar II and my biggest problems are anxiety (with panic attacks; could probably be diagnosed with every type of anxiety disorder there is) and depression. When I'm supposedly hypomanic, it presents as a great amount of anxiety instead of an "up" time. I don't like SSRI's and I believe my problems to be more dopamine related than serotonin."
What you just wrote basically describes me perfectly. The one thing is I'm not sure about whether it's dopamine or serotonin for me, but I'm leaning toward DA. I don't like SSRIs for other reasons: weight gain and sexual side effects, and because my Celexa/Lexapro + Wellbutrin trial made me hypomanic for a while. (Wellbutrin alone took care of some of my depressive and socially-anxious symptoms, but made me more edgy and obsessional.)
If my current traditional med cocktail (low-dose BuSpar and Lamictal) doesn't pan out, I'm thinking of trying low-dose selegiline, which is very dopaminergic. The one thing I'm worried about with that is a worsening of my anxiety. Do you by any chance have any experience with selegiline? I'm also looking for more natural substances to help with my issues, which is why I'm here.
"Did you just do trial and error on your own? I am excited about nutritional therapies, but I feel helpless to implement them."
My approach has been to read up a bit on the various supplements posted here (especially the very useful info Larry Hoover provides) and then, yeah, just do trial and error. I try to change only one or two things at a time, and then track my mood. This is hard, though, since I'm also cycolthymic/BP II (see above), but after a while I tend to get a gut feeling for whether something's working or not. If I don't think it's working, I remove it from my regimen and then track my moods again. It's kind of tedious, and frustratingly slow at times, but I feel like I've made a little progress so far.
Good luck,
cache-monkey
poster:cache-monkey
thread:430957
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20050101/msgs/436669.html