Bipolar, Medication, Cutting, and Drugs

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Bipolar, Medication, Cutting, and Drugs

I was diagnosed as bipolar earlier than a lot of people. Many doctors don't like giving the diagnosis to people under the age of 18. When they do, they often describe it as displaying bipolar tendencies or behaviors. But with me the doctor told me straight out and placed me on several medications (I did seek out several opinions before committing to take meds).

I don't take the medication anymore; it made me feel weird. My heart always raced, and I was thirsty all the time. It was hard to sleep some days, and a lot of the medication had side effects like liver and kidney damage which scared me. So I stopped taking it, which swung me into crazy cycles back and forth from mania to depression. I barely ever had a "normal" period of time where I was just Fay.

I started cutting myself, which only worked on a temporary basis. I'd get really depressed, cut, and for an hour or two I would calm down a little. .. go numb for a while. But the cuts were getting to be too many, and my boyfriend who loves me to death gets really upset. He's not a baby or anything, but I managed to make him cry a few times because he just didn't know what to do with me.

I've been in and out of psych wards since I was 12, constantly. Group homes, specialized schools, you name it; I was there. Then about a year ago I discovered something. I know it might sound bad or crazy, but drugs help me a lot. When I smoke weed during the day, it levels me out for a while. Now I smoke it everyday, and it's great. I can function. I still cycle a little bit, but my swings are not nearly as bad. I don't go 'crazy' anymore. I just get depressed sometimes but not even to the extent that I used to. And without the manic episodes, I don't get into trouble as much. I also don't tend to get that silly stupid high that most people do. I get a calm relaxed, watch a movie, talk to my friends, go for a walk kind of high.

I even tested it out - I figured maybe it wasn't the drugs. Maybe I was just growing out of some sort of childhood bipolar stage. So I quit smoking for a month and spiraled into a depression for two weeks and then a manic cycle. My boyfriend, who is very tolerant of my condition for the most part, couldn't handle it at all and broke up with me. I went back to weed, and I'm level again. It's bizarre, but it works for me. My boyfriend and I are back together - he understands my drug use and actually encourages me. He says whatever keeps me sane as long as it works I should continue it as long as I am safe about it.

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	Fay	03-Jan-08

Nah, Ive done the meds thing, so many cocktails. Basically every med Ive heard of has been attempted, things to control the depression, things to control the mania, things to control the anxiety that come from those medications, anti psyc ics thrown in the mix. The meds make me feel so sick I can't ction a lot of the times, and every med I take needs a counter med to take away the side effects. I gotta worry about feeling sick, tired but unable to sleep, then you have to worry about the big side effects like I said with organ damage, and on top of that almost all the mixable anti anxiety medications are highly addictive and you build tolerance to them like xanex and klonopin. So Ill stick with the marijuana, it might be hurting my lungs but at least I know thats all its doing and unlike most of the other medications I actually feel it work.

	Karin	28-Dec-07

Although I don't have bipolar disorder, I do have an extremely bad depression problem where all of the normal meds for depression didn't work, so I was but on a medicine normally used for treating bipolar (Lithium). It worked okay for the first few months and then it really leveled out my mood to where it should be. You do have to drink more water with it because it's a salt and maybe other bipolar meds are salts too. And about them affecting your organs, your psychiatrist should have you go in for blood tests to check the levels. I think that if you're monitoring your bipolar meds it's pretty safe.

	1st Sarge E. D.	28-Dec-07

Fay, I don't have Bipolar but I can tell you about how you can take action for this problem. If you let this go for the least amount of time, your life can go downhill more than you expect just like with you starting drugs and cutting right after you stopped taking your medication. I know you don't want to experience the effects of the drugs you have started because they are a lot worse than the Bipolar medication. I know that the side effects are horrible and I was once on medications like that made me gain weight severely, urinary incontinence, etc. etc. In order to keep your sanity, you may have to take the medication to ction like a normal human.

	Ella	25-Dec-07

This is terrible. There are new medications now for bipolar that maybe will work for you. Go and see another doctor and find out what is available that you haven't tried. Good luck.