Thanks, still_crazy. I do talk therapy, art, writing and it all helps. I am not the kind of person with seasonal affective disorder tendencies, plus I live in Northern Cal and having grown up in Russia, I do not seize to feel thankful (that is, when I am already a little elevated) for the blessed climate. Unless I do not know something about light boxes and they help with circadian rhythms and not just SAD. I will do searches, both on this site and on google. I have sent in my request to put me to (wo)man soup kitchen at the school where my now adult son learned to read, several hours a month. I do not think I can handle more now, since I have a lot of writing projects on which I am late and when I do not write enough, the combo of creativity and lack of progress causes issues on the high end of the spectrum (no, not pleasant highs). I eat very well, except that on Asenapine I ate sweet stuff (it is normally out of character) and on Zyprexa I ate everything in site. Depakote causes me to become culinary adventurous, cook festive dishes inventing unusual combinations of ingredients, and take heightened pleasure in tastes and colors of foods. Anyway, Depakote is clearly not indicated now, so I went off on a tangent. I eat lots of fiber, veggies, and protein. Cook 90% of my meals. Eat buckwheat and millet regularly. Do not eat much processed stuff. Eat lots of leafy greens, cook soups, make my own bone broth, invent heavenly fruit salads. Make smoothies with plain kefir, vanilla yogurt, frozen fruit or berries, cooked dried fruit and ground hemp seeds. Make my own dried fruit infusion. I really do not know what I can do better with food except that I plan to buy flax seed oil and add it to smoothies.

Maybe trileptal is the first thing to try for me.

Yes on anti-seizure drugs causing psychiatric symptoms - I tried Zonegran for migraine prevention and weight loss and it caused such mania that I ended up fired.