Hi Everyone

[Majmehtaj]

Hi everyone,

I have been reading crazyboards for a while. I had another username, but rarely posted. I just changed it because I realize it was too close to my real name. I just started a blog, which feels really good. I have gotten a lot out of having online journals in the past.

Me and my disorder in a nutshell: I was diagnosed with bipolar when I was 16. I was put on lithium, which did not go well. Then depakote, which was also an unpleasant experience (I was flat all the time). When I went off to college, my psychiatrist and I decided to stop the medications. I then lasted 8 years without meds. I had somewhat of a breakdown in 2006 while in lawschool. (didn't sleep for 2 weeks, baked carrot cake for 18 hours - there was a lot more to it, but I will save that for another post). A really great psychiatrist initially put me on Zyprexa to nip the extreme mania in the bud. We then tried lamictal and zoloft. I thought this combination was great because I had no side effects. In the coming months, I still had issues concentrating and was still cycling. Zyprexa was too strong for maintenance therapy, so we tried abilify. Unfortunately, abilify caused me to experience akithesia. We then tried Geodon, but I was nauseaus all the time and couldn't shake the lethargy. I walked away from these experiences with an extreme dislike of all atypical antipsycotics. I finally found a doctor who suggested bumping my lamictal up to 200mg and paired it with zoloft and ambien. Long story short... I was on lamictal and zoloft for the past few years. I became increasingly dependent on ambien, xanax and alcohol. In fact, up until recently, alcohol was the only thing I could use to help combat the mania. But of course the excess drinking caused me to cycle rapidly. I was scared to death of taking Seroquel (I might be flat, I might be a different person, I might be sleepy all the time, I CAN'T DRINK). It wasn't until after I read some of the posts here about seroquel that I decided to give it a try.

I can honestly say that this may be the first time I have every really taken my disorder seriously. I am willing to make whatever life changes necessary in order to be stable. So here I am.

P.S. Since on the Seroquel, I haven't craved a single drink!

[LunaRufina]

Hi!

Glad you decided to start participating and poke around. I'll check out your blog.

Sound like you've been all around the crazy med-go-round and like you might be finding something that is starting to work.

Good for you!

I don't know if you noticed the chat at the top, but feel free to drop in some time.

Luna

[celestia]

I can honestly say that this may be the first time I have every really taken my disorder seriously. I am willing to make whatever life changes necessary in order to be stable. So here I am.

For me, it was an aha moment around the time I was going through something really difficult about 10 years ago. I was clean and sober but my depression was working hard to kill me. It was then I had the epiphany that it really was my responsibility to seek the best balance in my lifestyle, including regular visits to pdoc/tdoc and a strict adherence to my med regimen. I was cavalier in the early years, 20s, 30s, I didn't take the illness so seriously. But it has my attention now, and has for awhile.

Anyhoo, enough about me!

Welcome!

[scatty]

That's awesome about the drinking. Welcome to CB!

[olga]

Welcome to CrazyBoards and please PM any of the moderators if we can help you. Congrats on taking your MI seriously---it sounds like you are working hard to keep that crazy under control!

olga