Hello,

I have been struggling for about a decade, I am 25 now and cannot imagine this to go on.

I always feel exhausted, most of the times I get enough sleep but I don`t feel rested even if I am on a holiday. I am always feeling as if I am behind a glass and cannot concentrate well or care enough for most of the things, as if I`m just passing by on a train.

It`s hard to fall asleep as I get anxious thoughts and my heartbeat races. Sometimes during the day I get stuck on events that happen and just think them over and over again for hours.

I have been going to a lot to doctors an doing a lot of tests but so far there is no big concern yet, I do have prolactin level raised and will be checking it again soon, although the doctor says that it`s not raised much.

Besides that, about three months ago I was started on 37.5 mg of Venlafaxine during the day and Quetiapine with Lamotrigine 25 mg each before bed. Finally, I started to fall asleep fast and it became a bit easier to handle day-to-day stress, as I care way less for it. I stopped getting huge mood swings and it became a little bit easier to concentrate.

A month ago, the dose of Venlafaxine was raised to 75 mg per day and Quetiapine and Lamotrigine to 50mg. I started to have a really hard time of waking up and I keep waking up during the night as well, although overall I do fall asleep easier and the quality of sleep is better than without the pills. I`m still as tired during the day and it`s still hard to concentrate, although I started to be interested in more things around me and get stuck on repetitive anxious thoughts less. I am supposed to start working again soon and I don`t know how to be able to do my work well when I feel like this all the time. The other positive from taking these pills is that I don`t want to drink alcohol at all but there is also a huge negative one - it became almost impossible to reach an orgasm and hard to get aroused, even though I love my partner and I want to be intimate but my body just stopped feeing much.

It`s hard to get a good mental health professional in the country where I am, so I decided to leave a message here as I feel quite hopeless by now to feel any better and become less depressed. I eat healthy, stopped smoking, started going to ballet classes and it does help a little bit but still only a bit...

What could you recommend? Is there any other better medication that I could ask my doctor if I should try? Or other dosage? As far as I know, the doctor is treating bipolar disorder, but as I said it`s hard to find a good affordable professional here, maybe I struggle with something else? Borderline personality disorder or obsessions-compulsions or else?

As for my personality, I do work hard ( I am a painter and a musician) and try to go up to perfection, although obsession with schedules does interfere with it at times. I do enjoy the way I look or at least make it look like that for others, leaving my insecurities for myself deep inside to deal with. I read a lot, am interested in cinematic masterpieces and a huge range of music genres, although, I have this deep fear that just ruins me, especially when I am with people that smarter than me - that I have nothing interesting to say. I`ve been in an abusive and manipulative relationship in the past and that person was very intelligent and created a huge complex for me where I feel like I`m not good enough, like I`m not smart enough. He used to yell at me or threaten to leave, or get very restless as soon as I would get quiet. It came to a point where in the current relationship I get extremely anxious even when it`s just a minute since we didn`t say a word and have to remind myself that my partner did say that he enjoys being quiet with me, remind myself that it`s okay not to speak all the time. I do know A LOT but it scares me when a lot of times I literally have no thought in my head, and I cannot understand why that is whith so much that I`ve learned during my lifetime. I think because my depression have been lasting for so long maybe it became a coping mechanism to block any thoughts away as I`ve been living without medication for a long time. It`s almost as if thoughts in my head are kind of emotions, or colors, or images, not actual thoughts. My current partner says that I do have some traits of dyslexia which is not very well studied here as well so I am not sure.

Overall, I really want to get better but don`t really know what else to do from here and if I should be maybe raising the medication I take, or canceling it, or maybe even taking some other medication? I decided to lower Venlafaxine back to 37.5 mg and raise Quetiapine to 100mg but not sure if that`s the right way to go.

I hope that you could give some advice on what I described above and on how I could make my life a bit easier with all this.

Thank you.