I've been away from PC for quite awhile, but today thought I'd check back in to see what was going on. This thread really caught my attention. [After typing this out, realized what follows is pretty lengthy...sorry for that.]

I was looking for a non-med option to manage my symptoms about a year ago. I came across some of LucyG's posts, read them, and decided to give amino acids a try. My experience with them, in tandem with two rounds of neurofeedback, has been amazing. I'm actually starting to test out cutting my usage to every other day instead of daily, to see if I can manage without the supplements every day.

For background, my experience with BP2 has been primarily depressed - in a mostly depressed state for about 15 years now. I would say I had maybe 4-5 hypomanic episodes in there (maybe more - my memory is pretty spotty). Most of that time I was unmedicated; I tried a couple of antidepressants during that time, but it felt like they were worse than the depression and I really didn't want to go through the struggle of adding more meds to manage the issues of the first ones. So I tried to just soldier through it - it was awful. But you know how depression is - I was unable to motivate myself to find a way to make it better. During this period, I did exercise at least a couple of times a week, and I generally ate pretty well because that's a concern for me raising kids. I would eat a fair bit of sugar on top of the healthy stuff, but was getting pretty well rounded nutrition. Despite all that, most days were a struggle just to get through whatever had to be done (out of bed, kids to school, 'appearance' at work though I work from home).

After finding LucyG's posts on amino acids, I decided they were worth a shot. Within a week, I was feeling less depressed. Within 2 weeks, I felt like baseline - I was able to feel a range of emotions, including joy, but I wouldn't tailspin the second something negative happened. Somewhere between the supplements and the neurofeedback, I managed to develop a resilience - a buffer to insulate me from the reactivity I had gotten so used to. I could tell in the moment when something happened that would have tanked me for days or weeks in the past; now I could just take it in stride. I still get sad, frustrated, defeated, unmotivated, etc., but it lasts for minutes or hours at most, not days/weeks/months. My husband has noticed a significant improvement, too - he still mentions it a lot, 10 months or so after the changes started. He didn't trust it at first (neither did I), and spent a lot of time still walking on eggshells around me.

In the end, I think the amino acids have made a huge difference for me in terms of how my brain produces and manages the neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin) that neurotypical brains deal with naturally. I have energy and motivation now to do the things that people without depression always tell depressed people to do - exercise, eat healthy, find something you enjoy doing, socialize, get outside, etc. I really couldn't do most of that while depressed, and the bits I did didn't seem to help - they seemed like overwhelming burdens to take care of.

The only thing I have a hard time with is that I figured out what to take based on LucyG's posts; there isn't much out there that I could find to help guide me about what to take and how much. I'm glad it's working for me, but I would love if there was more info about this available and/or a professional in my area who could help me monitor this. I've been thinking about checking out a naturopath in my area; we'll see. My regular doctor knows I'm taking the amino acids and didn't have any problem with it, as long as my BP symptoms are managed and I don't experience any other symptoms physically. Incidentally, this isn't something I talk about at length, because I have found that people who rely on RX meds seem to take it personally when someone else either doesn't want to medicate or has success with more natural avenues. I saw several posts that I thought were unnecessarily harsh towards LucyG because she found a natural avenue and thought that RX meds could contribute to symptoms as readily as they could help them, and it made me reticent to talk about my experience.

So in the end, I guess take my post with a grain of salt. I found something more natural, non-RX, that really opened my life back up to me. I don't know where I would be today if I hadn't. Obviously, my experience is not universal, and I'm certainly no professional to recommend anything to anyone about their own medications or management of their mental illness. But I do believe there is more out there for people who are looking for alternatives.