Today marks a week into my Lamotrigine titration following my BD2 dx. I'm writing this post because I don't really have anyone* to talk to about my experience, both with the medications and my being dx'd in general. As far as I am aware, the amount I am taking (25mg for another week before 50mg for two weeks) is too low to have any therapeutic effect on me, and even if it wasn't, it hasn't been in my system long enough to do what it is meant to do yet. Some of the below info might be caused by other things, but I have never felt some of it before, and wanted to include everything for completeness sake.

Side effects: Headache On days 2 and 3, I had a persistent headache that nothing touched.
On day 3 it went completely away by 7pm.
On days 4 and 5, I had no pain.
Starting on day 6, I have a different kind of headache. It's dull and I can ignore it inside, but outside in the 90+ degree heat, it throbs. It's sort of in the back of my head where my neck and skull meet.
Brain fog
Starting on day 2, focus diminished significantly. It began as simple loss of words. The feeling that you can't remember the right word, but it's on the tip of your tongue.
By day 4, I was functionally useless around home, but driving unaffected (thank spaghetti-god). For example, I received an alert from my TrueNAS box that the battery backup communication was lost (shakes fist at silly APC junk), which never resolves until I disconnect/reconnect the USB cable. I went into the basement, and by the time I was at the bottom of the stairs, I forgot why. I stood there a minute. My wife came down and chuckled at me. "Are you lost?" I was. I told her I forgot why I was down there. She chuckled again and told me, "Your server UPS thing was being dumb, remember?" I did. I turned and opened the door to the "server room" and shut it behind me. As soon as the door was shut, I forgot why I was there again. I messaged her on Signal. "I'm dumb and forgot again. Why am I here?" She lol'd and reminded me. Then she called me a minute later, only to find that I was seated in front of the TrueNAS box, consoled in and trying to remember what I was going to upgrade. "OMG! Are you for real? You already forgot again?" Yes. Yes I did. I stayed on the phone, unplugged the cable and plugged it back in. Problem solved.

Mood: I don't attribute this to Lamotrigine, but my dx. I am happy. I have been re-evaluating my life up to this point through the lens of bipolar disorder. Before my diagnosis, it was strange to think even a few months back and think, "Maybe that was my bipolar." Now that I accept my diagnosis, there are things from my early teen years that stand out to me now. Heavy drug use, getting expelled from high school to trigger my mother's "If you get expelled, you can't live here." rule. Sleeping with my friend's GF in his bed. Poor life choices in general. I now realize that half of my relationships began during a period of hypomania. Every job I have ever held, I would suddenly start calling out around spring time (when my seasonal hypo arrives). So, while many of these things make me ashamed, I am happy knowing that it all fits my diagnosis.

The other thing that I noticed just last night is that I have relaxed a lot. I stopped trying to filter everything I say, do, want, wear, etc. I have accepted my dx, and this is who I am. I am not done trying to be a better person. I need to always strive to be my best. But I am no longer ashamed of being hypo or depressed, or needing to sleep for 18 hours. I feel slightly liberated by this. I am not suddenly unfiltered and yelling, "Deal with it! I have bipolar, fuckers!!!" I just feel like it's okay now, when I stand in a room shifting my weight from foot to foot with a blank mind. It's okay if my mind is racing and I can't explain myself. It's okay if I said you can have my orange juice, but I forgot and asked you later why you drank it. I will still apologize, but I no longer feel like I am a bad person. My unfinished projects? I sure wish they were finished, but I'll come back to them. I always do. But I have a lot more humor about my past experiences with the new, added context of my BD.

Friends and Family: The response from my family and a few friends has left me somewhat jaded. I don't think I will be volunteering to share my dx anymore. If I'm not explaining that BD isn't schizophrenia, then I'm explaining that being hypo doesn't mean I am suddenly delusional or psychotic. And even for my mother and older sister (the latter of which I believe has BD1), I ...don't know what I expected, but I was disappointed. That could be all me. In fact, it likely is. But "Wow. That's big. I am glad you are getting treatment." didn't really feel how I hoped it would feel to tell them. Well, maybe from my N mom, but not my sister. She is usually so empathetic. Usually, when I share things with her, I get responses like, "That must feel ____. How are you holding up? I think if I were in your shoes, I would..." so this was out of character to me. My best friend told me he loved me and that we'd get together when he's back in town. No worries there, but I still feel disinclined to share it with anyone.

Why? I didn't realize how people really don't know what BD is. It seems that the media or just common misconception leads to most people assuming it is multiple personality disorder or they think it's ultra-rapid cycling, going from full major depressive episode into full mania or hypomania in minutes, and back again. Even when they don't have those mistaken assumptions, there's still a persistent tone of, "You will be erratic and unpredictable." I feel like they don't trust me anymore. They act like my disorder began at dx last Wednesday. I've been this way for at least 29 years. The same guy who raised three kids who all have awesome attitudes and care for everybody in their lives. I've owned three homes with mortgages. I have a solid retirement saved up. No debt. No brushes with the law since 2006 (speeding ticket).

I'll have to do some work to correct these assumptions, and I will get to that. It's just that for the next few months, I plan to focus on me as much as I can. I don't have the resources to try to explain BD right now.

I hope this doesn't sound all doom and gloom. I am happy, but I know I tend to focus on the negative (that's a family trait on my mother's side). I am committed to staying on this treatment for the next several months in hopes of smoothing out my moods. This isn't a post rationalizing why I won't continue treatment. I'm happy to be treating my disorder.

*Full disclosure, my wife has BD1 (diagnosed around 2001 -- I forget which year), and she loves talking about my experience, but she also tends to discount things and give "advice" where I just want to discuss and get my thoughts out there. For that reason, I feel like she isn't the ideal person for me to talk openly with. Some of the things I need to learn, I will have to learn on my own; I can't just follow advice for every part of this experience.

I've been keeping a journal in multiple ways since 10/2024. Tracking moods and meds with graded scales, but also writing daily.

Until last night, I had NEVER gone back and read any of them. I went back to the beginning and saw a distinct pattern. I wonder now whether I would have suspected that I have BD2 before if I had read the journal sooner. My pattern is seasonal, at least primarily. October, things get dark for me, which lasts until about February, when I am SUUUPER happy and productive. I also have episodes other times, but I can count on at least two each year in spring and fall.

Entries like, "I forgot to journal yesterday because I didn't go to sleep last night. I just spent $650 on a new CPU and motherboard. I think I'm going to buy a brand new GPU for $750 too. I don't need it, but I'm already on a spending spree, so why not?"

Or, "I just went outside and everything is so beautiful, I can't even begin to describe it. I asked (my wife) to join me, but she refused. It's too cold for her. She says I'm being like her when she's hypo. I don't know why she insists on projecting her illness on me." Yeah, that one was kind of a doozy.

Or, "I had a really bad night last night. Suicidal. (Wife) wants me to go to our pDoc.. Well, she thinks I would benefit from a mood stabilizer ...the kind that only people with bipolar take. Take from that what you will. Could I have bipolar? Am I sure that I don't have it?"

And lastly, "[Wife] says I am talking too much and too fast. But I just want to show her how much fun I am having playing the PIANO!!!! I can't believe how far I've come in the past few weeks. I never dreamed that I could be this good at it. My hands know what to do even when my eyes are telling me the hands are wrong. I feel like there's nothing I couldn't play."

It's been really fun (and a little embarrassing) going back through the journal entries. I had no idea I would. It's actually funny that I never even considered going back and reading it. Ha! That's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Well, leave it to me to miss that.

Update: Doctor confirmed diagnosis. Said he had in his notes from previous visits that he suspected seasonal bipolarity. My history, childhood and recent events -- not to mention I'm still hypo -- prompted him to say that he is confident in his diagnosis. So. Yup. BD2.

This community is pretty quiet, but I wanted to drop a short check-in post anyway.

On Wednesday, I will see my pDoc to be evaluated for bipolar II. I just came off what I (and my wife with bipolar I) think was a hypo episode that peaked for about 9 days (after checking my computer history and sleep/mood journal). According to my wife, I get hypo every spring, but this one was the first one where sleep was completely optional for me. Some days I would sleep for 2.5hrs. Some days I wouldn't sleep at all. During that time, I was doing three things: playing my digital piano, playing games on my PC, and editing a mediawiki fandom site, creating 275+ updates with more than 1k characters in five days, over 170 of them on May 5.

I thought I was just being really creative and multi-tasking. I know that I really did level-up with the piano. I have third-party confirmation of that, but, yeah, I think that maybe I wasn't as awesome as I thought I was. Like, I know I got better at piano from playing basically all day for almost two weeks, but I also know I am only self-taught, and I didn't become a wizard or something.

After reading the bipolar sections of the DSM-V, I am fairly confident the diagnosis would be Bipolar II rapid cycling with mixed features and seasonal pattern.

So, I don't know if our suspicions will be confirmed or not, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to belonging to this community, and feeling like a label actually helps me when it comes to this.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone will see this post, as this community seems sort of fizzled out, but oh well. I just feel better sharing this. It helps me come to terms with it, I think.

TL;DR- I'm swinging up and down because I don't feel like I belong to the family I once knew, and my parents are sending me weird facebook reels.

I'm so exhausted. It's hard to not be depressed or find myself thrown into a hypomanic state when I'm getting absolutely wild messages from my parents.

I love my family, and I will never disown them, but it can be rough when I know I can't talk about my identity, my friends, my work, or what I'm doing with my life now that I moved halfway across the US. Sometimes I'm financially struggling, but I'm also kinda dumb in that I keep gigging and creating events and shows that give me spikes in pay. I'm a musician and I think I'm taking off, but it's always hard to see that in the moment. I just remind myself that it will all make sense one day. I'm very different from my family- I really don't belong anywhere. Frankly it's a miracle I can pay rent doing what I do.

For a while in 2020, things were really rough. My mom and sister are very much TERFS, and my dad has been sliding more and more into the manosphere. What's strange is how my dad, who has always been the conservative wing of the family, was also the only one who told me he loved me when I came out at 16. My mom, who would always talk about her hippy days and how she doesn't like the GOP, was the one who wouldn't talk to me for 3 weeks after I came out, and when she finally did, she asked if I still was bi and I had to say no so I could have a mom. My sister was the one I thought I could talk to about it- but she was the one who told my parents. So I guess I didn't come out, I was forced out by the person I trusted the most. That said there were other times I could see them trying to be more accepting of my differences, but it just never felt authentic.

Recently my dad sent me an obviously Ai generated video showing a rabbi talking to the camera giving financial advice saying "jewish dads are better at raising their kids because they don't let them hang with poor friends" or "jewish dads tell their kids not to follow their passions" etc. He has become more and more "your wealth is your worth" and "greed is good".

As a bipolar kid who is living the full time artists struggle, it's hard not to sit with a feeling that my parents think I'm worthless. When my bipolar diagnosis happened, they treated me like a freak, and it was hard not to just cut them off. But I just can't do that- they are still the people who raised me. My dad is still the dad who can make me laugh harder than anyone. Before all of this, my dad was my best friend, I was moms little guy, and my sister was my partner in crime... but then it got weird.

It really showed in 2020 when the BLM protests happened. I went to 2 protests and didn't tell my family because that's when they were saying how BLM is a terrorist organization. When I moved home that year, I remember feeling I had a duty to talk to them about their views, but all it did was make them see me as "the woke left" and not their son. I know it's false, they love me and see me as their son, but I just felt so alien.

I ask myself all the time "Who are these people? Have they changed, or were they always this way and I'm seeing it more and more? Do they still think of me as family?"

I've been told that I need to practice self acceptance, but when the people who I consider closest to me won't accept who I am, I just don't know how I can do the same. Everytime I call crying because of something I did or my shame they always seem to speak with hesitation, trying to be kind but I can hear the judgement in the silence.

I've been creating more and more projects, sleeping less and less, and a lot of it has to do with the anxiety of being seen as a loser. I know I'm not a loser, but my body still feels like it is. I've been taking meds, but also medicating myself more.

I feel lost and alone.

currently i take abilify 2mg and it’s helping!! yay me!! 🎉

How is everyone doing?

How is everyone doing?

How are you doing?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35683029

Short Version - it's a list of things to do instead of ~~doing dumb shit~~ making life altering-ly bad decisions.

I typed this up real quick in reply to a question I saw elsewhere on Lemmy.

Why?

1. Your mental health just generally sucks lately
2. You're waiting on an appointment with a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, or other treatment program that is days, weeks, or even months away and you need to make it there in one piece.
3. If you get dragged to the ER for ~~doing dumb shit~~ making bad / harmful decisions, you want something to show the ER psychiatrist so they're less likely to admit you to the psych ward (I work in one. I try, and if you need it you need it, but they pretty much all suck).
4. You wanna start a trend among your friend / social group of thinking about these things ahead of time instead of right before or during the ~~dumb shit~~ life altering-ly bad decisions.

Also a cool upside: you can make this all on your own and never have to show anyone. You can print it off and write on it and stuff it under your pillow, you can take a picture of it and burn it, you could just write the entire thing out in a password-protected note. This is for you, and while it can help to share the plan with your loved ones, you don't actually have to show it to anyone!

Here's the SAMHSA template but if you don't like it there's plenty of different variations around on the internet or you can just make your own.

Components:

1. Warning Signs: especially the less obvious ones you might not think about consciously, sleeping too much or too little, eating too much or too little, forgetting to shower, etc.
2. Things you can do on your own: can be self-care activities like watching a favorite movie or having an at-home "spa day," or making sure to handle a responsibility that might make things worse if you miss it like making a doctors appointment if you already have one or checking on your finances.
3. People or places to go for safety: This could be a family or friend's house, or if you don't have a safe home environment it could be something like the nearby waffle house. It can be helpful to pick somewhere where there's people to check on you, but it could also be a place of solitude like a hiking trail. Just try to consider what is actually safest for you, if you have a tendency to get into trouble when you isolate, plan to avoid that.
4. People you can call: usually a friend or family member but it could also be a mentor or life coach or a trusted spiritual leader. I would put the person most likely to answer the phone for you at 3am near the top, then the next most likely et cetera.
5. Crisis resources: these are the emergency "noting else worked" resources. A lot of places have local options, and there are a lot of specialized hotlines for minority and under-served populations such as LGBT, PoC, and veterans. If you can't find any local ones or don't like / trust the ones you find, Here's Wikipedia's List

If you found this helpful and are interested in a similar but more in-depth concept (and especially if you have a longer / more complicated mental health history), I highly recommend WRAP Planning. Again it's a plan you make for yourself and that you don't even need to share with anyone else if you don't want to:

• SAMHSA Guide
• Fill-In Workbook Again, there's multiple versions floating around the internet, and you don't even have to use all of it. Mine is four typed pages (two when printed front & back).
• When you're filling out the list of things to do to stay well it can help to look at SAMHSAs guide to free support groups There's often better, more local options, I just give this one to patients as a cheat sheet to fill in some easy stuff

Hope this helps!

I was briefly working on a super basic website / guide to mental health concepts for people who can't afford / access therapy if anybody wants to collab (my biggest issue was lowering the reading level enough, it can be hard for me to remember which concepts will be new to someone who hasn't been working in the field for years).

For myself, I've been feeling a lot of despair, but try to balance things out by going to music shows and the like. Tonight, I'm going to a local comedy show with a buddy. I think I'd be in terrible shape if I was single; living with my partner for the past 15 months has made all the difference.

Hope you're doing ok and if you aren't, I hope it turns around for you soon.

cross-posted from: https://hackertalks.com/post/7095330

TLDR: Ketone levels above 2mmol/l show significant improvements in patients with Euthymic bipolar disorder.

Of 27 recruited participants, 26 began and 20 completed the ketogenic diet. For participants completing the intervention, mean body weight fell by 4.2 kg (P < 0.001), mean body mass index fell by 1.5 kg/m2 (P < 0.001) and mean systolic blood pressure fell by 7.4 mmHg (P < 0.041). The euthymic participants had average baseline and follow-up assessments consistent with them being in the euthymic range with no statistically significant changes in Affective Lability Scale-18, Beck Depression Inventory and Young Mania Rating Scale. In participants providing reliable daily ecological momentary assessment data (n = 14), there was a positive correlation between daily ketone levels and self-rated mood (r = 0.21, P < 0.001) and energy (r = 0.19 P < 0.001), and an inverse correlation between ketone levels and both impulsivity (r = −0.30, P < 0.001) and anxiety (r = −0.19, P < 0.001). From the MRS measurements, brain glutamate plus glutamine concentration decreased by 11.6% in the anterior cingulate cortex (P = 0.025) and fell by 13.6% in the posterior cingulate cortex (P = <0.001).

These findings suggest that a ketogenic diet may be clinically useful in bipolar disorder, for both mental health and metabolic outcomes. Replication and randomised controlled trials are now warranted.

Full Paper: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2024.841

How are you doing? All topics welcome!

I've been put on Depakote instead of Olanzapine who made me put on 97lbs My psychiatrist says it is weight neutral, internet and research says otherwise. I am not looking for medication advice just anecdotes on whether Depakote made you gain weight or not. Or if it even causes the same ravenous hunger as an antipsychotic.

I’ve had a life change this weekend. I was diagnosed a few years ago right before I started a new relationship. It’s been three years we’ve been together and in the last week it just did a 180. Two years ago I got custody of my niece who is now 12. So today, I am a 50 year old single woman with bipolar and a 12 year old child in tow. I am scared as fuck. I have never done well the short time I’ve been single. Looking back, I would say it had triggered manic episodes. Self medicating to find stability? This IS the first time I’ve been single and I do have something to focus on, my kid. I’m hoping that’s enough. But scared as fuck it’s not. I was diagnosed 5 years ago so I never feel I can say for sure what a correct answer is. Empathy, suggestions, hugs,…. All are welcome right now. 😞❤️