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for Lotus...neurobiology resources

I deleted this one, the one below is better.

The underlying neurobiology of bipolar disorder

I like this one better. It also speaks of the direction of research and treatment as anticipated for the future.

yeah, I like this one. It also addresses the brain's abnormalities, the effects of the illness on the brain and preventative treatments.

this link has an article and then other links that look interesting.

http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/con...act/60/12/1201

Yay... I'll be doing some major reading now!!! Thanks again!

Lotus,

I first went to a psychologist in 1989. She said I had low grade depression from the way I was raised. She sent my (then) husband to an internist for antidepressants but did not even mention such a course with me.
We worked on family of origon issues. She told me I would probably always have a bit of a struggle with depression. It certainly wasn't a serious one at this time.
I didn't tell her that after our sessions that I would grieve in bed for a week....but I was angry and sad about my childhood..not the kind of depressions I later got.
I was 30 years old at the time.
In retrospect I can see that I had some depression in the winters and a tiny bit of hypomania in the springs but I don't know if my currant diagnosis is re-coloring my perspective because it really didn't seem odd at the time..it seemed to me that many people were like that.

In 1992 I went to see a psychiatrist because I had separated from my husband and was heading toward a divorce. In 1993 he said I was becoming destructive in my handling of things (I was so controlling!) and suggested I book a stay in the hospital for 5 days. It was a very nice private hospital. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety.

A year later it was discovered that he was a fraud! and he was the director of psych services at the hospital! He didn't have the qualifications to even prescribe. I didn't live around there and didn't hear what it was about really.

I had indulged in sexual promiscuity that is associated with hypomanias but as a "free love child" from the 70's and with my husband strongly encouraging it...it seemed to have many explanations and did not seem abnormal. And I thought I was entering that hormonal sexual peak. I knew several people that had similar inclinations. So, I am still not sure that it crossed into the line of abnormal there either.

I was put on an antidepressant and a benzo.
I became very depressed and non functional for awhile as the divorce went down very ugly. I am not sure that is abnormal.

I functioned on that medication regime for 10 years. I worked, I had relationships.
I had some depression but I had alot of circumstances, situations and struggles that would seem to explain that. My son committed suicide at 20 years old in 1999. I had tried everything to help and prevent it and I hold his father responsible. The father was also related to the county judge and thro' some corrupt nepotism connections, he took custody of my daughter when she was 13. I was extraordinarily crushed and depressed for quite some time after those events. I couldn't cope with it.

One of the men I had a relationship with was bipolar. That was my first look at the illness. and he was very, very ill. It had hit him at about 30 years old. He could not work formally, could not function socially,.....but had the most brilliant mind of any one I had ever met and was very ethical. One day he didn't take his meds because he wanted to hang with me and a friend of mine and have normal feelings and a normal day. I didn't know he had done this. The next day I found that he had gone to see a Priest and the Priest took him to the hospital.
He was psychotic and had complicated religious delusions. He showed me how his feet fit together as Christ on the Cross and "stigmata" on his hands. They also concerned things he believed he must do and that would happen on his 33d birthday.
Even on the medications and after he was released, he still believed the delusions of his destiny. One day he went to the grocery and wrote a hot check for over $400 for those tins of ravioli which he would take with him to go to Colorado where he believed his destiny would be fulfilled. He was just going to take off that day or the next. Months later, he had enrolled in a college in Colorado and did go.

Around the same time I had a brilliant college professor who related to the class far more personally than is common. He told the story of how his daughter had committed suicide because she was pregnant. He had religious delusions. He told of how he and his wife had divorced but God welded their wedding rings together (or something very similar to that) and they had re-married. One of them ...I think she had had a tubal..could not have children but he believed that God was going to give them a child that would be like a second coming. He convinced his wife. He invited all of us to Bible Study at his house.
One evening I went out of curiousity. There wasn't anything else there and there was no organized Bible study. I remember saying to him one time that there were many contradictions in the Bible and he told me that I was mistaken and challenged me to locate any and bring them to him to resolve for me.
I was in college. I didn't have time to fool with anything like that nor was I interested.

Then, a few years later I moved and was going to al-anon. The leader there and I became friends. His wife and he were separated and she believed she was going to give birth to a Christ child or second coming. She almost had him believing it. I told him those things were very common with bipolar disorder (which he had told me she had)

part one.

I did find out over the years that I must have an antidepressant. Everytime I would think that I had all things in order and was doing well..I would drop them and everytime I would get very badly depressed. It was a deep clinical depression this time.
I finally reconciled myself to staying on them for life. I also took the anti-anxiety benzos with them.

All seemed well.

I have been known to be impulsive and adventurous..but it sure didn't seem like a sickness. I thought it was my personality and that I had inherited it from my dad's side of the family.

Around 2005 my then new prescribing psychiatrist asked me a couple of times if I might be bipolar. Well, I equated that with those psychotic breaks and religious delusions and could answer definitely not.

In Oct of 2008 is when I knew that I broke somehow. I had been under tremendous stress with my (then) husband's health and a horrid situation that went on all day at the VA hospital and I was trying my best to get things fixed and he wasn't cooperating all that well. I couldn't get my runaway anxiety under control. I took one xanax after another. Still by that night I was having intrusive suicidal thoughts. That had never happened before. I had moaned when I was depressed about having to live like that and etc. This was a whole different ballgame. It scared me. I couldn't take enough xanax to calm down and I couldn't stop those thoughts. They weren't like I was thinking of suicide and brooding on it, it was an insistent thought that kept poking into my head as if from an outside source. I didn't "hear" voices.
I drove myself home very worried because I couldn't get a handle on it. That was a Saturday morning at 2am that I left to go home. I couldn't sleep either.

Insomnia had always been a problem...but usually my meds (I had now added trazadone) took care of that.

By Sunday afternoon, my head was worrying me to death with it. I was trying to figure out how to bleed to death but so as not to be detectable as a suicide. My head just kept worrying it like a problem to be solved and it did not feel like me thinking it. It was an intrusive obsession. I finally decided to go for help because I couldn't make it stop.
I went to the ER. I was hospitalized for a week. I left there on 7 different meds. By this time (and other things had grown a bit difficult over the last year as my meds weren't doing it for me anymore), I was still diagnosed with major depressive disorder and severe anxiety.

My primary pdoc began to suggest bipolar more and more but I alway said no...because I knew I didn't have those grandiose and/or pyschotic manias. I wished I would feel manic! ha! at least from what I had read it felt supremely good!

I now see that incidence as agitation...agitated depression. I did not know that there was any kind of mania other than the one I knew.
By the end of 2008 my pdoc was getting annoyed with me. I am sure she saw that it was bipolar. When I would feel good, I just thought I was finally over the depression and feeling really fine..which I ought to deserve. She would recommend a mood stabilizer and I would tell her no, not now...I feel too good. It was hypomania. I didn't know about that either.

My husband and I separated in December of 2008. I de-toxed myself off the benzos over a period of time.
I went to the clinic in Oklahoma and did the intake interview. I was diagnosed as bipolar.
I was sure they were wrong.
I spent months trying to prove my point and they play medications trial guinea pig with me.
It didn't help that the Drs kept changing all the time and they each had their own philosophy.

I convinced one dr that I wasn't bipolar and he told me that he didn't see it either. So, I went about dumping meds. I wanted to go back down to the basic antidepressant that seemed to help me best. (Effexor & I have since learned that it can trigger mania)

I also wanted a baseline to figure things out from. I cannot believe that I somehow endured those months. I couldn't sleep. I would lay down with David, he would fall asleep right off the bat and then I would get back up. I got more and more frantic.
Those suicide thoughts were totally enveloping me again. I actually got to the point where I would pace, pull at my hair and mumble to myself trying to talk sense to myself that these thoughts were crazy and please stop. During the day I would sit huddled in a corner in the chair just kind of holding onto myself and hanging in there..enduring. The suicidal thoughts only peltered me at night when I could not sleep.

During the day it had kind of an unreal quality about it. It seemed that my nights were surreal.

One day I got another dr at the clinic and he became alarmed even tho' I didn't tell him everything. But he knew from the not sleeping and the intrusive suicidal thoughts that I was headed for trouble and he told me he feared that I would hurt myself when I wasn't in my right mind and not fully knowing what I was doing. He loaded me up with depakote very aggressively.

I was also put on seroquel (an anti-pychotic to put me to sleep) That worked for a month. When I saw yet a different dr the next month, she said she didn't think it wise to give an anti-psychotic to a person who wasn't psychotic. I begged her for just one more month because it let me sleep and I hadn't slept right in six months. She said, yes, I am here to help you and we can look at it again next month but she also added a benzo to help with sleep.

Boy,, I wish I would have listened to her. Two weeks later and I wasn't sleeping any more. One night I just got super stressed (had some outside stressors too), drank some wine, yelled at David and when he went to bed..I took a seroquel to go to sleep. It didn't work. I took another. Repeat. repeat. I don't know how many I took. I just needed to go to sleep. I wasn't suicidal. I realized I had taken far too many and called 911.
I woke up in ICU with the feeling that I had f'ed up everything that was important to me.
oh, and a ventilator tube. damn.

well, that news got out and everybody thought I had tried to kill myself.
I spend 6 days involuntary in a crisis unit.

That convinced me that something was going on and I accepted the bipolar diagnosis and have been doing my best to learn about it ever since.

It is said that statistically it often takes 8-12 years to reach a proper diagnosis.

I very much contributed to my misdiagnosis. I was smart, well read and could conduct myself (in short bursts) like a very together person.
I had too much shame and too many misconceptions to speak openly of all that happened in my head and in my life.

I have read that people with bipolar do tend to explain their difficulties as associated with life events and stressors. It certainly seemed more than justifiable to me!
and I had some pretty big things so others could believe it too.

I have gotten fully hypomanic three times since then. It feels so very good! My mind clicks and that is so refreshing after the dulled thinking of depression. I have all sorts of interests, things going on, things I want to do. I start things that I can't follow through on. It feels like me at my best!
When I get that pressured speech tho' I know I am full on.

I have a set of writings that I wrote compulsively during some of my recent tormented sleepless nights.

I will share the first page...it is pretty telling.

‎Sunday, ‎November ‎14, ‎2010
(in the wee hours of Saturday night-Sunday morning)

I feel like I am about at my wit's end - just frantically frustrated.

My last worst depression truly scared me. I knew that I had another depression in me but I didn't know if I would have another recovery. I have never chanced it. I have never went without antidepressants since. I have had depressions but never without medical care.

This. This lack of restful sleep, this agitation, this being beside myself and hanging on, barely, in the midst of desperate frustration has almost taken me down. I OD'ed in June just trying to escape it and get some rest. I have used up all my reserves in that battle this year. I am a strong woman. Looking back; I can scarcely believe what I endured. And for such a length of time! I haven't re-built that strength to be able to struggle like that now.

Especially now as the anniversary of Eric's death sits around the corner.

My inability to make myself heard and get the help I need is also utterly maddening. I know what works. I know what I need. I thought that was the hard part and, by God, I have paid my dues. Jesus! Addiction is not my worry. It's absurd. I have to negotiate this crisis in the here and now. This combination of the sleeplessness, bad dreams, and haunting suicidal thoughts will, I am afraid, overcome me.

I just can't deal with this stress now. Not this month of this year. I need a reprieve. Why is it so hard to get?

Please help me with the things I need and cannot do for myself!
I need:
 150 mg Effexor x 1
 50 mg lamictal x 2
 300 mg neurontin x 4
 45 mg mirtazapine x 1
 A benzo to be determined (not halcion)
 NO antipsychotics
Please help me. This is not the time to be trying new or different medications. Please?

I ran out of meds the 3d week of October and this is what happened to me.

Statistics also show that 40% of people with bipolar also have anxiety illnesses. I am sure I do. I am hoping to get that ironed out soon.

I have a dr's appmt here Tues morning.

I haven't been stable in 2 years....things finally seemed to be treated correctly just before I left with those meds I listed.

It took me from June until the end of Sept/ first of Oct to recover from that mania.
Recoveries can take awhile. 4 months is pretty good. It can often take a year.
Usually their are outside repercussions from a mania still seen at 18 months later.

I am sorry I can't cite where I learned those.

I am crazily frustrated now...because I automatically will take time to recover from getting really ill again.

I had a good counselor in Oklahoma whom I came to love. She said I masked it remarkably well. She said that I am her most soft spoken client..never emotionallly riled or hysterical and seem logical.

It is crazy. I haven't lost my mind. But I can't really control it either, not for long.

Wow!!!! Thank you sooo much for sharing your story! You're amazing! It's wonderful that you are so open about what you've been through.
The whole med thing sounds nightmarish. Please make sure you continue to take good care of yourself.

I really don't know what to say! Powerful post - Again THANK YOU!!!

that piece I wrote only 11 days ago that has all ready escaped my memory is an example of the racing thougts (and extreme feelings of both depression and agitation which are mixed episodes, which is what my manias are..)
That completely consumes me and envelops me. It whirls around over and over and over relentlessly.
I do not know how to get any relief from it other than medications.

The most important thing I must do every day is take my medications.
The second is to regulate my sleep schedule. (David has an alarm set for 7pm that tells me to take my night meds and I need to be asleep by 10 pm)
It has been shown that there is a relationship between the circadian cycle and bipolar.
Missing sleep can by itself trigger an episode.

That has been causing me untold torment for the last year! I regulated really well for awhile when those meds started working, but I don't have the meds to do that now. At least I am sleeping tho'. I keep staying up later and sleeping later.
David doesn't even know what I am doing but he just told me...uh-oh, do you know it is after midnight? Are you going to have trouble sleeping.
He knows to be concerned. He knows I need it.

I dug out some old effexor and an old scrip of depakote (I had switched to lamictal and read great things about it) I have been taking that. I am going to run out.

So, I am going to go lay down and read for a bit and hope I can sleep. It is very important and in an emergency and that is what this is, I need to grab any sleep I can, any time I can. Any rest I can get is much needed.

oh, and something that I have done for many years and did not know that it is a type of hypomania (those tend to be very short lived) is that my normal me is interested in this right now and so I would stay up all night just because I want to and am doing something I like.
I have stayed up many a night doing research or reading a novel...seeing the sun rise.

I thought of it as nothing more than compelling interest and enthusiasm, a labor of love, so to speak.

I may have trouble sleeping because I will have trouble shutting down. I will keep thinking about things that I wish I had said or explained or how I could do it better.

This is not a burden, do not think that. I am so interested because I am learning about what runs my life!
I have been smitten with psychology, then sociology, then added biology since I was a teen.

I want to learn as much as I can as rapidly as I can.

I can describe those "suicidal thoughts" that night in October more accurately:

It was this, "suicide. suicide. suicide. suicide." just the word itself insistently popping up repeating itself in strings like that. Bizarre. It wasn't a feeling, it was a word thought that wasn't coming from anything I was thinking about.

I have read that bipolar people feel normal things extremely. That has no meaning to me. This is my normal so I have no concept of how "most" people feel. I just can't wrap my head around that.

I have had people telling me for over a decade that I am different, but they were saying that as why they liked me. I have asked what that means. I still want to know what that means. It just doesn't have any meaning to me. I have nothing to compare to as for what I am different than, I don't understand. Sure, I have read about my diagnosis.
But I have wanted people to explain to me what I do, what I say, what is it that makes me different. No one has ever satisfied that for me.

I do know that when I am "hypomanic" it is great fun to be around, the life of the party.
That part I understand, but that doesn't last very long. It can come as a response to things tho' and that comes in handy.
It upsets me to know that whenever I feel good it is a pathology.
Doesn't everybody love to laugh and have a good time?
And with the far more frequent depressions, I certainly cherish high spirits.

The suicidal thinking (in a different form now) comes more and more readily. That frightens me. I love life!
So, it was so refreshing when I was on that med regimen that kind of thinking in any way, shape or form never even crossed my mind, not even in a whisper.

I don't like that it is called a mood disorder either. It is just as much a thought disorder.
It impairs my thinking. and I can see where that has progressed. I hate the memory impairment very much. I used to have a very sharp mind and memory.
Now, I act like the "stereotypical blonde"!
I am still smart, but sometimes I can't get a handle on it and reign in and focus my mind.

I must have a low stress, drama free life. I am not able to handle stress very well anymore.

Right now, without the proper meds, I don't want to leave the house. I know I am not right and really don't care to be amongst people.
I really only like social situations when I am hypomanic anyway.
I have always liked to read and write and I live in my head alot.

I started getting headaches at puberty. By my mid twenties they were migraines and then that got more frequent and worse.
Bipolar people have a higher incidence of migraines than the general population.

okay...those are things that won't roll around in my head now that I have said it! :)

back to bed. sometimes it takes me a few attempts to settle down..but at least I have been able to!