Over the counter pain killers keep making me HIGH

Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and especially Vicodin all push me into this strange euphoric state, and sometimes it will last for days or even weeks when it's clearly out of my system by then.

Even ambien would put me through the roof for a few hours, but it would metabolize too quick and I'd always crash and end up falling asleep feeling depressed.

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I sort of forgot about this last night and took 1000mg of Tylenol for back pain and now I feel like a rocket.
Caffeine and sugar don't have this effect on me at all. What is going on?

I can see Vicodin but the others?

Are you happy about this? If your not .. umm easy solution , Don't take any of them.

Are they irritating your stomach? That makes my head feel funny.

I'm not manic, just in an uncharacteristically good mood. Enough to clean and move furniture around. I've been in a rut for several weeks and wham now I just feel right.

They're like instant antidepressants for me. It's so strange.


No

To elaborate more, the first time I truly made a connection between painkillers and these highs was when I took 800mg of Ibuprofen and ended up sleeping just a few hours a night for the next two weeks.

I've gotten "high" from ibuprofen and even robotussin a few times (don't ask), but I had to take a LOT. With ibuprofen it took about 12 regular strength tablets to feel that way.

Perhaps it's just to do with your metabolism? Maybe take one regular strength tylonol or ibuprofen and cut the tablet in half. But it really sounds like you see a doctor about it. It's not a common reaction if you're just taking the suggested dose, so there may be more going on that you'd need to get checked out.

Your poor kidneys! They're taking a beating with all these over-the-counter things at
such high dosages.

Please see your doctor and get an appropriate, prescribed medication to help you.

I'm going to add that robitussin did this to me. It was after a 2 month depression and it felt amazing at the time. But if you're using it for this purpose I suggest using extreme caution. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but the longer it went on the more I needed, which was when I stopped and started seeing my pdoc. Some might say that taking prescriptions is damn near the same thing, but at least those are monitored... and legal.

I've brought it up many many times and they always shrug it off and ignore me or just say they don't know.

I had a really bad therapist once and she acted like I was making this up.

A psychiatrist I saw during a hospitalization said that I have "mood disinhibition" meaning my mind can't regulate how high or low it sinks when it starts to go off in one direction. Since I couldn't drink yet, she said I would probably be very easily affected by any amount of alcohol and should avoid it entirely.

I've had dozens of blood tests, urine tests, and even a specific test for a pheochromocytoma (adrenal tumor) and nothing. Thyroid is fine.

I'm not sure who this is directed at, but...

Tylenol PM was prescribed to me at one point. And these are considered safe doses. I also don't take them very often anymore, and my kidney function has been tested by necessity due to some pretty nasty mood stabilizers I was on a while back, thought they didn't help so I'm off them now as well.

I do not always get like this when I take them, but sometimes they just push me over the edge and I stay like this for quite a bit longer than the actual pills remain in my body. It seems more likely to happen if I haven't used pain killers in a while, though. The amount I need for this to happen hasn't changed.

My metabolism is kind of weird (I can rapidly drop or gain weight), though my circadian rhythm is even more screwed up. These drugs all produce a floating sensation throughout my body, which feels REALLY good, then my mood changes in response but can't seem to regulate the elation or calm down.

Yes, I understand what you're saying. It isn't the sporadic use of these things that causes damage to the kidneys. It's the long-term use that puts stress
on the tiny arteries in the kidneys.

It's good that you're having testing done on occasion because it will eventually
show up over years of use. Lithium (a medication used in bipolar treatment)
can cause closure of the tiny arteries in the kidneys and there's nothing
that kidney specialists can do about it.

It's for that reason that, when people are young, they may have the feeling
that they're invincible in terms of what they can take. And it is true that
the system will adjust to some of it, but not all of it for long periods of time.

That's what I wanted to let you know about, and the fact that you're having
blood work done at intervals is an insurance against possible damage to yourself at this point in your life.

Vicodin can do this certainly, the others, I don't know, maybe if you're in a ton of pain and then the pain is alleviated by the meds it makes you feel great? And then if that inpt psychiatrist is correct, when you start to feel good (from a little vicodin, or relief from pain) you're not able to regulate the good feeling, so it takes off, increases, becomes prolonged?

Tylenol wasn't relieving back pain and so I tried Ibuprofen for the first time at 800mg. The next day my pain was almost completely gone, but I took another 800mg just in case. I was giddy and restless the whole night and just this one incident set me off balance for several weeks, and eventually lead to months of roller coaster and cyclothymic ups and downs. I don't believe it's a sudden lack of pain that does this, rather I really like the physical sensation that these pills give. Makes me feel less inhibited for some reason.

I seriously doubt I would be diagnosed bipolar right now if it wasn't for taking those pills. I ended up with a bipolar 1 diagnosis during the second hospitalization---the new doctor thought I was having a mixed episode, but I was just dysphoric and stressed.

In terms of emotional regulation I really think I'm closer to the "quiet borderline" but with some bipolar nos or other mood disorder not as severe as BP1.

800mg is a pretty high dosage if you've never taken it before. Was it a prescribed dosage because of the back pain?

The surfacing of symptoms might have been a coincidence. It's not entirely uncommon for symptoms to come out of nowhere.

No, the back pain was just from a mild strain so I wasn't even thinking about seeing a doctor. 800mg is the maximum so I figured it was safe. This happened early last year. Months later I remember thinking around the time I might have been hypomanic without knowing it much earlier than I originally thought, before the Ibuprofen set me off. I had no reason to suspect anything since I wasn't even thinking about bipolar disorder at that time.

What's strange about my last suspected episode was that it lasted months rather than days or weeks, and I didn't experience euphoria, insomnia, or manic energy, rather I was obsessive and grandiose, bordering on delusional and psychotic (I had to enlighten the world and bring us into the stars). All the other episodes seem to be short lived, but tend to be euphoric and jittery, and sleep duration is usually cut in half. But not that time. It's like I have a major episode every few years and chronic mini mood swings (usually reactive and not random) that I can hide most of the time.

All I know about those OTC drugs is the following: if you take them for headaches, they may cause rebound headaches, making headaches worse. It did happen to me.