Day 10. I've been feeling wonderful for the last two days, aside from lingering physical symptoms (insomnia, some restlessness) and having to deal with the pain that was the reason I was on Tramadol in the first place. I thought it was that I was just, finally, clearheaded again, and hadn't realized before how much the painkillers were impacting my cognition. I was feeling emotionally labile, but wasn't surprised by that, considering the brain and chemical issues associated with opiate use and abuse, and cessation.
Turns out, no, I'm either manic or hypomanic. My partner recognized it immediately, as he has experience with bipolar family members (he's kind of like a dowsing rod for All Things Mental Health, actually, or maybe like one of those drug sniffing dogs - he can usually tell if someone has mental health issues within a few minutes of meeting them, and even give an accurate assessment of the broad strokes of the issues, sometimes even a specific "diagnosis" in that he recognizes the condition itself from his childhood, which is a strange adaptation, but makes sense given his upbringing). So that's kind of unpleasant - it's not post-opiate depression, which is nice, but it's also not something I've ever dealt with before. My psych state has been pretty moderate and balanced for my whole life. My partner warned me that the depression is probably coming, though, and the research I've done on mania/hypomania after opiate use supports that. Apparently a seesawing thing is not unusual as part of the endogenous system re-establishing itself. The good news is, it's temporary. Also, now that he has pointed out to me what's happening, has identified it, I've found that I can moderate it. I just have to make a conscious effort to remain calm, collected, and all that jazz. It's still unpleasant. I understand, intellectually, that mania is often expressed as (among other things) an overly ebullient mood, and I definitely feel like I'm on that end of things, rather than on the paranoid/irritable side. But it's not fun having my emotions be so high and having so much energy, as weird as that may sound.
Before anyone asks, yes, I do have an appointment with BHS/Mental Health already scheduled for next week, which is the soonest they had an opening. If I'm still "up" at that point, and haven't started the downward swing, I might talk to them about looking into a short-term treatment regimen with Valproate, which has apparently been effective for some patients in reducing or regulating hypomania post opiate withdrawal, or some similar medication.
Between the hypomanic insomnia and the return/increase in my painsomnia, I'm not getting much sleep, which sucks (especially since sleep deprivation increases mania). Tonight I managed 5 hours, which is way better than I've done the past few nights. I woke up about 2 hours after going to bed because my hands were aching so badly. I had to go run hot water over them and do finger and palm stretching exercises to get the pain to reduce enough to be able to fall back asleep.