Hey there,

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in March, 2015 and have been much happier since I started treatment. I initially was on Abilify which worked really well for stabilizing my mood. Since I started medicating I haven't attempted any kind of self harm and have not dealt with any major cycling until recently.

My doctor and I wanted to change my medication as I had gained a lot of weight and was dealing with a lot of fatigue. So we decided to switch to Latuda as at the very least it could help with the weight some and it has a lower risk of cuasing the development of diabetes. The initial dose was too low however by a long shot and after about three weeks of being on it I fell in to an 8 day hypomania just down right crazy time. I almost didn't sleep, eat or even drink water the entire time. I ruined an amazing friendship, heavily abused drugs, and almost lost my job because of it.

I went through severe depression afterwards for about two weeks, the first couple days being particularly bad. After I upped my dosage the mania has only come back in full force for a much smaller three day period. Now I have fallen into a regular cycle of a couple days of contentedness, to a day or two of borderline mania, to between a week to 10 days of depression.

In addition to simply not being stable there has been an extraordinarily large amount of bad things happening to me for the past two months. It's become almost impossible to resolve these issues as I spend most of my time depressed and when I do have energy I am incapable of focusing on anything.

I am wondering if I need to just switch back to abilify. Maybe it's just time for an additional medication. Maybe I need to up my dose. I really don't know. I have been altering the severity of the problems when I see my doctor as I like to be sure myself of the general direction things are going to go before I let her start making decisions. I have had three really bad experiences with doctors that has resulted in a great loss of trust and the need to make every decision with them.

I honestly don't know anyone in my personal life who has bipolar disorder. There are some I wonder about but I certainly don't know anyone who has treated it. I am aware that it is degenerative. Is this what's happening? Has anyone experienced anything similar?