Hi.

I agree with online user's post.

I also am wondering if it's not bipolar coming thru for you.

I don't agree that bipolar is bad body chemistry (if that is what was meant on another post). It's simply two sides of a coin. That coin's name is "mood". Or we could call it a seesaw!

I'd like to share a piece of my story in hopes that you might find something in it that is helpful for you...

Over 15 years ago, after years of therapy wasn't helping my depressed/suicidal-ideation self well enough, I saw a psychiatrist who started me on an anti-depressant. I still recall the experience, after a few weeks on the anti-dep, it was as though the dark stormy clouds I'd been walking under for as long as I could remember, suddenly cleared and I saw the beautiful sunny blue sky... Life was good. After some time, I had a manic episode. At the time, 15 years ago, drs couldn't tell me if the mania had always been a part of me or if the meds caused it.

Now I believe that while the anti-depressant actually did lift my depression, it lifted so much of it that the other extreme, mania, had room to exist. (Not as alien-ish as that sounded... ) This conclusion that I've reached is partly based on my experience, as well as a believing that the natural order of things includes concepts like duality and yin yang and two ends of a continuum and "you can't have one extreme without the other..."

All that is to say, I don't think meds made me feel/do/think in ways that aren't already a part of me... I don't believe meds caused my bipolar dx... I think meds (chemicals) in the brain can affect how I think and thereby how I feel. But how it manifests itself is different for each person. Even NOT taking meds, if I had been able to adjust the brain waves in a more natural way, I believe my inherent brain chemicals would have still been affected and something similar to extreme joy would have been shown through... I think the psych meds give as quicker and more intense results, which could also mean more intense consequences...

I can't say for sure how the psych meds influence the intensity of my state of mind/mood. Anything I've ever had results with that was more "natural" and less toxic has always had a much more subtle effect...more gentle. So maybe the psych meds make my "high" self a more intense. For example, anti-anxiety psych meds are incredibly powerful on me and unfortunately for me, they're also very addictive. So I avoid them. I found homeopathic remedies that take the edge off enough so that I can function. And I can take it safely and as often as needed. A n y w a y, writing about that is making me dizzy... which came first? the mania or the depression? the mania or the psych meds?

What I do know is that when I had my one manic episode and during the more moderate/manageable hypo-manic episodes that have since followed, *I experience a self that is confident, optimistic, brave, strong... etc... I do believe that that person IS a part of me. When I get depressed now it helps me remember that the other side of me is available and that keeps me hopeful thru the darker times... *(Everyone's manic side is different, some get angry, some get suicidal, others get really touchy...)

So. my meds did take some tweeking. And it was hit/miss for many years. Eventually after the first manic episode, I started on only lithium. I got afraid to take anti-dep because I was afraid they'd make me manic. And mania is scarier (= less familiar) for me than the (almost comfortably-familiar) depression. After years on only lithium and feeling like I never got down but really never got happy, I spoke up to my psychiatrist. She was a good psychiatrist because she listened and suggested we do something not yet common then. We added an anti-depressant to the lithium. And that did the trick. Made sense. The two meds, two mood extremes. I felt safe trying that because I trusted the lithium to hold the mania back... and it has...

I mean, I still can get suicidally down and I have my dark weeks. So now I am working more carefully on realizing that I have these two extremes in me that operate as kind of default mode. The meds help with the extreme extremes. So I'm looking more closely at which daily habits I need to incorporate that can help me tweek all this even more. I'm "fine-tuning"...

I currently am aware of a pattern where I'll feel good for a few weeks and then crash and get low for a few weeks... over and over, again and again. I've gotten tired of not being able to ever make plans far ahead of time because I never know how I'm going to feel in one or two weeks... Anyway, things like exercise, and homeopathic anxiety remedies, limiting alcohol intake (esp wine), eating salmon and other brain-friendly foods, and managing my sleep, and even watching additives in food/drink like all the crap in non-natural diet sodas, phenylketonurics, and many others... and thanks to you and this post, I'm thinking now that I may even need to tweek the lithium a bit...

So... look into a possibility that you may have the two sides of this mood coin...or the seesaw...

Also, maybe it'll help to think/talking/writing about the following ideas. (Consider going over it with your psychiatrist and/or someone else you feel comfortable with):

• When did you start current meds/med cocktail?
• Did you taper off slowly from other meds when switching to new meds?
• Do you take meds on time each day?
• Has the dosage amount changed AND was it adjusted slowly with dr?
• Did you increase dosage? If yes, did you start at the lower dose, and slowly, with dr supervision, increase dose?
• Are you getting your 'script for these new meds from a pyschiatrist or general doctor?
• What is your high like that you experience? Have you told your dr?