Can you explain how anti-seizure medicine benefits bipolar?
• Not really; there are a number of theories, but the best I have heard is that the anticonvulsants interfere with an intracellular energy-producing series of chemical reactions called the phosphoinositol pathway. Most antimania drugs have been shown to slow the rate of the chemical reactions by interfering with one or another of the intermediate molecules within this pathway.

Is it addictive?

•No, absolutely not.

Is it forever? Can one be cured of bipolar?

•Yes, then no. I have not heard anyone with bipolar disorder being really and truly "cured". Medication must be taken for life in better than 95% of cases. The testimonials from that people claim to be cured are misleading. Bipolar disorder is characterized by periods of mania or depression interrupted by periods of relative normalcy of indeterminate lengths of time. The problem with is is that it seems that every "episode" that a person has, the next episode occurs sooner, lasts longer, and is more severe. This theory is known as "kindling"; one episode kindles the next. Although even perfect compliance with medication does not ensure that one won't experience an episode, it is thought that medication decreases the number of episodes in a lifetime, thus slowing kindling because the person has fewer episodes in their lifetime, hopefully slowing kindling.

•I hope that this is of some help. - Cam


<font color=blue>"The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing." - Gertrude Stein, 1937</font color=blue>