My Support Forums - View Single Post - Post-mania regrets?

ultramar · Jul 14, 2013, 02:58 PM

I'm completely with you on this one.

I love the 'hangover' analogy, that's it.

I don't tend to fall into a *clinical* depression afterwards but I do tend to get down. To me, it's the 'hangover', it's as a result of the episode *itself* not a separate sort of depression.

I feel down because of my regrets. Because of the memory loss (that you describe). Because I start to question (this is a relatively new phenomenon for me) who I really am (am I 'me' while manic or am I taken over by something else and lose my'self'?).

I've realized that my episodes don't end with the end of the episode. It doesn't fully end until the hangover is over, and this drags it out in a really ugly way. Feeling down about how I feel, if that makes sense. I have felt down during the course of 2 episodes now, usually towards the end. Some might call this a mixed episode (feeling down while hypo/manic) but to me it's a reaction to feeling out of control, crawling out my skin, my behavior. Maybe it would be a mixed episode if I felt this throughout, I don't know.

I'm in the thick of a 'hangover' right now and I hate it. I'm coming out of what I would call a hypomanic episode in my personal context (I didn't get fully delusional, not 100% out of control, speech usually wasn't *that* bad, etc.) I think because I upped the Seroquel the earliest in the process I ever have, but it nonetheless lasted for some 3 weeks, I probably should have increased it more, for various reasons didn't).

The hangover also includes lowering my Seroquel little by little back to my baseline dose. This can take weeks depending on how much it was increased. It means oversleeping, and being sleepy and stupid during the day. It means fearing all the while that I won't tolerate going all the way back down to my baseline dose (something I always worry about) and end up with a higher baseline dose. This is part of the hangover in the sense that it drags it out, it makes it hard to put the episode behind me, because I'm reminded every day because the medication issue and how it affects me.

I'm rambling, but I get it. The hangover prolongs things so much and I hate it. I tend to feel that I should have controlled this, that I'm a failure, I tend to feel really feel badly about myself.

When I get down on myself, my therapist tells me that I need to accept that 'my brain just operates this way sometimes' -sometimes I don't think he gets it. Sometimes I feel bad that he may feel helpless in helping me when I'm like that because it's a medication issue (to resolve it) above all (he advises me to up my med when I get like that), and that 'psychological' interventions just can't help this.