How long did it take you to find the right medications?

I was diagnosed at 38. My first full blown psychotic episode was when I was sixteen, though I imagine there were signs before that. I should point out that I'm schizoaffective, which means that in addition to bipolar symptoms I have some elements of schizophrenia, but since I believe both diseases are on a spectrum, I hope I can be of some help.

How long of intervals of you stable for?

My mood episodes used to be mainly depressed for a long time, a month or so of mania... though I went manic for about six months shortly after my husband died. (Sounds weird, but I think I was running from the depression.) My periods of mood stability were complicated by the fact that I was having schizophrenic symptoms between mood disorder.
What is considered being stable for you?

Stable is being aware of my condition, what symptoms presage an episode, and being able to ward it off at an early stage. It is knowing that just because I think I heard the neighbours criticising me to the builder fixing their roof, it doesn't mean it happened... and even if it did, it doesn't matter. It's having a reasonably stable mood, good sleep pattern, and not hallucinating too much. It's not going off on a massive spending spree, or suddenly deciding to lock myself into the house and drink myself unconscious, since it's the only way to shut myself up. (I only do that when my son is visiting friends, and haven't done it since the meds kicked in.)

What is your medication or combo that works?
Lamotrigine, 100 m (that may be increased at some point, since my mood is rather low at the moment) and seroquel XL (which worked brilliantly as an anti psychotic, and which I'm slowly reducing from 450... so far I'm down to 350. We'll see how far down I can go. I may be able to maintain on a low dose, or even one day come off it, if I stay aware of my symptoms.)

Because I'm going down with my seroquel I've had a few sleepless nights recently... the doctor has given me a short course of temazapam, which has helped. It's just to get my sleeping back to a normal rhythm (recently it completely inverted, and I was awake all night, and sleeping in the day.)

I've been on quite a few anti depressants (they made me manic) and two mood stabilisers, the second of which helped a lot. Carbimazipine was the first, lamotrigine the one that worked. The doctor's were reluctant to put me on lithium since my mother had a very bad reaction to it. I've been on two anti psychotics that I know of (rispiridone and seroquel.) I'm afraid I'm not sure what the first anti psychotic I went onto was... and at one point they added mirtazapine to the mix. I can't remember why I came off that one, I wasn't very well at the time.

This last year it's been like the fog has been lifting. Mind you, I do have nightmares about it all going pearshaped again... but I'm hoping that I'll maintain on a dose of seroquel and lamotrigine.