It sounds like everyone has had such different experiences. My fear is that when I was diagnosed, I had never been hospitalized before. I just went to a therapist looking for marriage counseling with my husband (who is now my ex). Once I was placed on meds, I ended up hospitalized 10 times in 5 years. I feel that the meds made me so much worse. I developed severe paranoia and couldn't leave my house some days. I developed physical limitations as well and severe weight gain (which in two years I have been able to lose half of) It wasn't until I had a year's worth of ECT that I feel I turned the corner. I have been on some combination of the following:
Mood Stabilizers:
1. Topamax - made me feel weird and tingly on the lowest dose. I couldn't think or move correctly. I was floating. On higher doses, I felt frantic as if I would leap off a building just to get it to stop.
2. Trileptal - Had little effect on my mood and my depression deepened. Gained a bit of weight.
3. Lamictal - Lymph nodes all over my body swelled up within a week. I was quickly taken off Lamictal.
4. Lithium - I thought it was working for a while, though I always tasted metal, and felt sluggish. I think I remember it giving me the shakes and I had trouble feeding myself or writing. I was toxic once and they lowered my dose. I gained more weight. After a few months, I couldn't leave my bed. I physically couldn't stay awake. They thought I was toxic again, but when they took blood work they realized that my thyroid had crashed, and I was placed on thyroid medications. After a few months of that not working, I asked to be taken off Lithium.
5. Depakote - I was on this the longest and I gained so much more weight. My blood pressure went up and I had to take a beta blocker. My hands shook, I sometimes had trouble picking things up with my fingers and I just felt sick all the time.
6. Lamictal - Thinking that maybe I had been just fighting a virus the last time I took Lamictal, we tried it again. Within a week, my lymph nodes began to swell up again. I was taken off lamictal and a big red ALLERGY sticker was slapped across the front of my file folder. Then when I went to the hospital, I got to wear the red allergy bracelet.
Antidepressants -
1. Prozac. I was on different doses of this the entire five years.
2. Wellbutrin - No effect.
3. Abilify - Severe nausea and vomiting.
4. Trazodone - kept me wide awake for hours even though I was supposed to take it for sleep.
Antipsychotics -
1. Seroquel - Sleep, sleep, sleep... but only when I should't have been sleeping. At night, wide awake.
2. Geodon - Don't really remember, but I was only on it a short time.
3. Risperdal - Same as Geodon. I think I was paranoid on both of these and started hearing things like a TV in a room far away when there was no tv on anywhere.
4. Saphris - Made me insane. I completely lost it and had to go to the hospital after crying my eyes out on the phone begging my p-doc to take me off the med or I was going to do something really awful.
5. Invega - Made me feel very nervous and paranoid. I was only on it for a week.
Benzos-
1. Ativan - Made me crazy, nervous, total opposite effect than whet it should have.
2. Clozapine - Same thing. We gave up on benzos.

ECT - Miracle. Saved my life. Erased most of my memory for important life events, even those that happened before ECT.

But now, my life is unraveling and I need help. I am able to control my occasional suicidal thoughts so far, but they are so painful. I have been able to function enough to get my kids off to school, but I am failing in my business and don't feel that I would be able to hold down a job even though I am in danger of not being able to pay my bills and will eventually lose my home. I need to be able to function so that I can get a job! Each day is a little harder, socially. I am going on a first date with someone this weekend and I really like him based on our online interactions. I am afraid that my symptoms returning will ruin the possibility of it working and I am afraid that when I finally tell him that I have bipolar that he will run in the opposite direction.