I am Me. Okiewan

[okiewan]

I just found this site today and have been looking through it. It seems interesting and I hope useful to me in the long run. So many of these support sites are either warm and fuzzy or so filled with psycho babble that I can't get anything out of them.

Anyways, I am 42 and was diagnosed bi polar and ADHD when I was 35. I went the ADHD 'cause made total sense to me. The bi polar part freaked me out and I didn't much like the idea of being a disease of the week movie candidate. As I look back... When I got that diagnoses I had just decided to renovate the downstairs of my house, not just paint mind you, I was painting, tearing out a wall, replacing case molding, and building a window seat with accessible storage. When the doc told me he thought I was bi polar I crashed and cried for 2 days and essentially didn't finish any of the work that I started. I lived in a house that looked like a crack dealer house for about a year till my wife finally hired someone to finish the work I had started.

So here I am trying to learn more. I am on 100m of Lamictal 2x a day. I still have swings but they are so broad that it is hard for me to see them at the time and they haven't been as severe (so says my wife.) That is until recently. I will try to find the right place to post this question but I will also ask here. Does anyone know the side effects of booze and Lamictal? The only thing that I find officially is that it can intensify the experience of the booze, but what I have experienced is that every time my intake of alcohol I tend to get very angry or very depressed after a week or two. Basically what happens is after I drink more than normal for a week or two (like on vacation or something) I either get really angry, or I get way low. We have recently had some friends over a lot and they are kind of heavy drinkers. So for lack of a better term, I have drunk more in the last several months because of peer pressure. Then after a pretty minor disagreement between my wife and I, I broke down into a total wreck, I cried - no sobbed uncontrollably for hours, I became paranoid, had panic attacks. I was a mess. I stopped drinking and it seems to have evened out but I am still challenged with deeper mood swings than I am used to. So is it the alcohol, or the fact that I am doing something fun for a period of time creating sort of an artificial manic period that is causing these bigger dipps?

[The Emperor]

I just wanted to say welcome to the boards! I'm noe diagnosed Bipolar, so I don't know anything about the effects of Lamictal and alcohol, but it seems like if it's doing what you say it's doing, drinking probably isn't the best idea, seems like you know that anyway.

Well, welcome to CB! It's an awesome place, I hope you like it here.

[olga]

I also don't know about the effects of alcohol and Lamictal, but I know that alcohol in excess is usually not a great idea with any of the crazy-meds. I hope that someone who takes Lamictal and is familiar with it will comment on your question.

Welcome to our little place, and please read the rules if you haven't done so already. I'm glad you're here!

olga