I gained 45 pounds on quetiapine (Seroquel) in the three years that I was on it. I was a size 12 going on 14 by the end of it (US size 8-10), none of my clothes fit me anymore and it was just depressing because I love my clothes, all my dresses and skirts that I have collected over the years. I had to buy some new ones eventually. But after three years I'd had enough, it wasn't working for me; it wasn't just that I felt fat, I also felt like my brain had been replaced by a concrete block, like I wasn't really a person anymore. When I was first put on quetiapine I had been emotionally unstable my whole life (I was bipolar as a child but went undiagnosed until I was 23), so feeling empty was a great relief to me. But then I walked around like that for three years, gained all that weight, and at some point realised that I just couldn't carry on like that anymore. My life was going nowhere.

So I went back to see a psychiatrist at the community mental health team (about a year and a half ago) and was prescribed Lamictal. Once I got through the nightmarish experience of coming off quetiapine and I was just taking Lamictal the weight just started to drop off. In six months I had lost everything I gained, and I am now back to being a size 8 (US size 4) and my clothes fit me again!

I am in seriously bad shape, however. Just the worst. I am not eating much food, because I don't want it, and then I reach a point where I haven't had a meal for 48 hours (it gets worse when I'm depressed like now) and I'm trembling and feeling really weak, and then I have to force myself to go make food somehow. I always have some junk in my room, and I snack on that occasionally, but that has to be there in order for me to eat something. Last week, for example, I had two meals in two days, and then nothing for the next two days, and it's just terrible.

I have had high cholesterol a few times in the past, it runs in my family so that's mostly why, but it hasn't been high enough to cause any real concern. I know I should exercise, but I hate gyms; I like going for a run in the park or something, but running (or jogging I guess) upsets my stomach. I tell people this, and they say I shouldn't be pushing myself so hard, but the thing is I don't. It doesn't matter if I run for five or fifteen minutes, as soon as I stop running the stomach cramps will hit within a couple of minutes and I will need to be close to a toilet. The thought of that doesn't exactly make me feel more motivated.

Anyway, f*** you, bipolar disorder. You are a pest and I hate you.