My bending road

[Aaron]

Hi all:

I like the style and tone of this site a lot. No bullshit; that's nice.

I have suffered from depression and anxiety for many years (I'm 34). I was never manic in the "I'm jesus" sense, but I did have delusions of grandeur and have always been a perfectionist. Had to skip a year of college and always had trouble holding on to jobs-- lucky to have one now.

In September 2008 I started on Klonopin after a series of nasty panic attacks. Went up to 2mg daily. A year later I was smart enough to miss a few doctors' visits and my script was cut off. I was also drinking heavily. Being absolutely ignorant about meds of any sort, nevermind benzos, I figured whatever, didn't need the script, so I went cold turkey. 3 days later I had the worst panic attack ever-- or rather a succession of the worst panic attacks. Ooops. The next few months (fall '09) I lost 30 lbs and had the worst psych. symptoms imaginable, including agoraphobia and waves of terror. I moved back in with my parents. I was healing but in April I decided to reinstate on a benzo anyway-- 75 mg librium.

For some reason benzos make me want to drink and make me act like an asshole. I started drinking again and drank all summer. Then in September after a hard night of drinking anxiety struck hard and I knew I wanted to get off benzos forever. Tapered from 20mg to 14mg valium, which is where I'm at today. No alcohol in 2 months. My pdoc says I have bipolar and gave me Saphris 5mg. This helped the withdrawal, but I talked myself off it two weeks ago after reading Robert Whitaker's new book. Terror slowly crept up and returned full blown. I blamed the Saphris. Had to take time away from work and stay with my poor parents. I've been in hell the last week.

I lied to my pdoc about going off Saphris, thinking I'd just taper the valium on my own. I'm stubborn and have not been very smart about meds. Anyway, I finally admitted to her I stopped it last week and she encouraged me to get back on. I've resisted, because the rule in the "benzo withdrawal community" is add nothing while tapering, ie. the Ashton protocol. But fuck it, I'm taking the Saphris because it was helping me. And I'm not lying to my doctor anymore. I think I might be bipolar after all, after believing it didn't exist for a long time. Thanks for reading.

[Velvet Elvis]

Hey, glad you found us.

If you're bipolar you really do need to be on something for it for life or it will just keep getting worse. Read this:

http://bipolar.about.com/cs/brainchemistry/a/0009_kindling1.htm

[olga]

Aaron, welcome to Crazyboards. I know you'll learn a lot if you talk to our bipolar members---some of them have been on various combinations of meds for many years.

Let us know if you have a question about anything.

olga 

[AnneMarie]

It must be hard to go from believing bipolar did not exist to accepting that you have it. You have much to learn. We have some of the info and links to more. Welcome to CB.

[The Emperor]

Hi, Aaron! Welcome to CB! I'm glad you haven't drank in a couple of months, good job. You'll find plenty of people to relate to here, it's a good place.

[Guest]

Hey. I've seen myself and others go through a sort of grief when being diagnosed, after a lot of distraction, bargaining and often substance abuse. I think it's normal to struggle with the diagnosis and the medication, especially if you've had bad experiences with benzo's.

I hope we can offer our experiences and help.