Falling apart (possible trigger warning maybe)

For some reason I'm the kind of person who doesn't really notice I'm depressed until it gets really bad. I've probably been on this downward path for a while now (I had a big mania in early November, and this is probably the other foot dropping). But everything kind of hit me all at once two weeks ago. Grad school applications, grad school (it's complicated), work, appointments, tax issue (also complicated), my mom breathing down my neck for being lazy unmotivated and messy, etc. just...blah. Too much to deal with. Even when I'm feeling okay I can generally only accomplish one thing a day. I just get overwhelmed.

Some suicidal thoughts, but nothing too serious.

Then today I have my first psychiatrist appointment in like 6 weeks, and it was traumatic. I got into a fight with my psychiatrist because he keeps saying I might have epilepsy, and I keep insisting that I'm not having seizures (he says my hallucinations are absence seizures, which doesn't even make sense), and he keeps insisting that my hallucinations have gotten better since he drastically lowered my clonopin dose when in reality i went from 1 hallucination to 0 in my recent history...not exactly drastic. And I don't care about my hallucinations anyway. They're so few and far between, and not scary, and don't negatively impact my life in any way. But since he's lowered the clonopin I've been having panic attacks left and right. And that's my main concern right now, not the one random hallucination I had two months ago.

And the biggie that came up in my appointment is that I'm an addict and that I apparently have an eating disorder. He was kind of vague as to whether I have bulimia or binge eating disorder but for insurance reasons he's going to say I have binge eating disorder so he can prescribe me vyvanse which apparently helps with addictive behavior. Which is great. But he wouldn't prescribe me the vyvance unless I agreed to go off of my wellbutrin, my geodon, and my ambien...which basically leaves me with nothing, except he wants me to start saphris again, which i've tried in the past and it didn't help except for with sleep.

As far as the whole addiction thing goes, I know I have issues with alcohol. I've been trying to go sober for months now and I keep slipping up. I slipped up for a week in november, and I slipped up on New Years Eve. Better than drinking morning through night every day like I was...but apparently I don't get credit for improvement, just total abstinence. I've also been addicted to cigarettes twice, i've been addicted to caffeine since i started college 7 years ago (but whatever, everyone's addicted to caffeine), I'm currently hooked on kratom (which I didn't tell him about, I haven't told anyone about that), and I've had phases of doing other illicit drugs (I've stayed away from heroin, meth and coke though) and I guess I'm addicted to bingeing. I knew I had an addictive personality, but no one had ever told me to my face that I'm an addict until today and that hit me pretty hard.

Same thing with the eating disorder, I knew I had eating issues, but no one has ever said to my face that I have an eating disorder. I think he's wrong about which one I have (I think I have EDNOS), but I guess he's right that I have an eating disorder. Basically I'm either starving myself, bingeing and not doing anything about it, or bingeing and purging, those are my three phases. About 70% of the time is starving, 28% is bingeing, and 2% is bingeing and purging. Except my psychiatrist claims that starving yourself is a form of purging (wtf?). That can't be right can it? I'll ask the proper forum in a different thread...

Anyway, I just am caught in a spiral of self loathing, no motivation to do anything, and anxiety out the wazoo. The only things keeping me going are the prospect of my friend from CA (my only friend) coming to visit me for two weeks next month, and the prospect of going to a Supernatural convention in December with her. (Anyone here love Supernatural?? If so, let's be friends). The whole reason I decided to stop drinking in the first place is that my favorite costar on Supernatural is 26 years sober (I'm 26 years old) and he's just so inspiring to me.

I don't know what the point of this thread is. I guess if anyone can relate, or has advice, or is on some of these meds, or loves supernatural, give me a holler.

If he thinks seizures why dosent he send you straight to a neurologist... Better yet my dad is seeingba psych neurologist who does it all?
And I though klonopin was anti seizure so wouldn't you have more "seizures" with dropping it drastically?
He's not making sense but maybe I'm missing something
I am giving up binge drinking.nhelps nothing harms more than we like to believe
Also if he thinks e.D. is he a specialist in that or addiction? Seems he should be doing a lot of refferals

Over the past 30 years, I've had all sorts of issues with booze and dope. I never thought it to be a problem because I was one of those "functional" partiers that would only lay it down on weekends. I never missed work or got arrested but I was lucky. I would go through phases of self-loathing but I always came back to the partying because I thought it was great. I probably drove drunk 200 times and I'm not proud of that.

I never knew I was bipolar.....I was diagnosed with a "disorder" in February 2015 and with BP II just last week. Now I know why I drank so much. It was probably directly connected to my mania - when I felt great, I was the life of the party and set the pace for everyone to follow.

But let's be honest. I was a drunk and a dope head and I quit it all about a year ago. It was the best decision I've ever made in my life. Your situation sounds much more complex than mine but consider taking that first step - it's one you can do on your own. The sobriety gave me power over myself, the world, and everything that happens around me. It also gave me clarity to enjoy the things I love.

I have a good friend who has an addictive personality - perhaps you can look into something like that. He had all sorts of issues like yours and it all connected back to the fact that he just went hell-bent-for-leather with everything he did in his life. For the record, he was my drink-and-drug buddy too. But he's clean now and works at it every day. We support each other.

Also......I know this might be tough to do but maybe you would consider rolling with your p-doc's suggestion. I was literally *forced* by my wife to get help and I was in denial in the beginning when I was told I needed to take Depakote. But I had to roll with it. Why should I take this at my age? Now I also take Lithium and have finally accepted the diagnosis. It has helped me tremendously.

Rock on, Sister Risu!

I'm also on carbamazapine which is also anti-seizure. So I have no idea where he's getting the whole seizure idea from. It makes absolutely no sense. And I've had brain scans. Nothing was abnormal. He's not a specialist in eating disorders OR addiction. He's just a general psychiatric nurse practitioner. There are groups at my clinic for addiction, I don't know about eating disorders, but my clinic is all about the groups. I don't know why he's not making referrals. But I have horrible insurance, so maybe that's part of why. I don't want more appointments anyway, but that's just my apathetic depressed self talking.

I'm totally fine with the bipolar diagnosis. I've had the diagnosis for several years now, and I'm fine with taking medication for it. I just really want to be on medications that a) work for me and b) don't cause weight gain.

And yeah, I am the kind of person who takes EVERYTHING in life to the extreme. It's all or nothing. I can't seem to find the middle ground, so I guess I have to stay away from things that are bad when you take them to the extreme...but I kind of need to eat, so I can't just avoid food, as much as I'd like to. It's all easier said than done, that's all I know so far.

Can you get in to see a p-doc? You might have a co-morbid PD......that's what they thought about me in the beginning. My original diagnosis was borderline personality disorder but he got rid of that and re-diagnosed me as BP II.

A p-doc might also get rid of the seizure diagnosis. Your general practitioner should be able to refer you to see a p-doc. IMO, an NP has no business making that sort of call.

(((((((((RisuNeko)))))))))
That's a lot to take in all at once, and on top of how you were already feeling(!)
I was just wondering the other day how you were doing. Sorry to hear it's not so good. Sending lots of good thoughts your way that things settle down soon for you, so things are at a more manageable level.
(Hear you on overwhelm!)

Thanks Innerzone, I appreciate it Nice to know someone out there has been thinking of me. That's comforting.

Row Jimmy: What makes you think I have a personality disorder? I'm very curious about that because I feel pretty strongly that I do not have one. Is it just because we both have bipolar and have/had substance issues and your pdoc thought you had borderline for a while? That's kind of weird logic. I know I share one or two traits of borderline when I'm depressed, but they disappear when I'm stable or manic. No problems with relationships, no mood lability throughout the day etc.

My clinic (the only place I can go in my town) doesn't have psychiatrists, they only have psychiatric nurse practitioners. I've worked with PNPs and real psychiatrists and haven't found one to be better than the other. I understand they have different training, but I've had psychiatrists who were more clueless than my already clueless PNP (for instance my last psychiatrist insisted that I go on Clozaril even though I was stable or he would not be willing to see me anymore). I don't think switching providers is going to somehow change the problems I already have. Label it whatever you want, I have "issues" with alcohol and eating. I want to just deal with them. And with my insurance, and in my area, this is my only shot at professional help with that. Believe me, my current setup is 5x better than my last setup, and the one before that. It's not perfect, in fact it's not great at all, but it's as good as it's going to get right now. I've had more stability than I've had in the past 7 years working with my current team. That has to mean something. Also, I don't have a seizure diagnosis. My psychiatrist just likes to throw around the term "absence seizure" in every other sentence for some strange reason. Also, I don't have a GP. And if I did, they would refer me right back to my PNP because they're all in the same building.

I'm starting to see what my therapist is talking about when he tells me I put up a roadblock to any advice anyone ever gives me. I'm stubborn I guess. Or maybe I only like the advice I give myself...but I still don't follow it.

Also, as far as the quality of my current treatment team goes, it is night and day between my setup and my good friend in California's setup. She has gotten horrific "care" and I just feel blessed that I'm getting better care than that (and that I don't live in Bakersfield). She has Bipolar I and eating issues like me and the only thing she's on is Prozac. Her doctor took her OFF lithium when he started the prozac for some stupid reason. His appointments with her are every 2.5 months and last less than 15 minutes, and she still isn't on a therapeutic dose of Prozac. Meanwhile she's in a mixed episode and has made two suicide attempts in the past two weeks. I had to call the police in her town to do a welfare check on her one of those times (and the stupid police couldn't even find her house). Seriously. I hate Bakersfield. But that's a different rant...

Anyway, I'm grateful for what I've got. That was my point.

I have been thinking about you.

I am sorry. This is a lot to take in. I don't know what to say other than I think the addiction is something you need to tackle. It affects everything. Physical and mental.

I know it seems insurmountable. What does your psychiatrist recommend?

Is rehab something you have thought about?

Aaahhh someone is a Mark Shepherd fan...me too! Love love love Supernatural.

You could start going to aa. Or na. When you quit something you need to replace it with something else.

Not sure..........in the beginning, I think my p-doc sort of combined my symptoms (anger, intensity, unpredictability, black/white take on things) with my substance abuse history and went with it for a while until he saw more of the BP side with the mania (a lot of this), depression, (mild but often with alcohol) and general lack of stable baseline.

At this point adding something to my schedule like AA sounds impossible because I'm having a hard enough time with work/gradschool/appointments. It also seems kind of weird to go because I never thought my drinking was that bad except on rare occasion (like new years). I never really drank to get drunk. I drank because it calmed me down a bit and I liked the taste of beer. I do know I need to replace that with something else though, especially because I've been having a lot of panic attacks lately and my psychiatrist reduced my clonopin dose by more than a half. I have nothing to calm me down anymore.

I also don't want my parents to know about any of this. I haven't told them about the addiction thing or the eating disorder thing yet mainly because they would start watching me like a hawk if I did. (I live at home right now).

I'm probably still in some kind of denial about all of this. But I mean, I just found out yesterday. It hasn't exactly sunk in yet. It's all just been bombarding at my skull trying to get into my brain and it hurts.

Hey, I went through absence seizures after withdrawal from clonazepam. It's no big deal really. I quit cold turkey and seizures lasted a week. You're going to be fine, dependence and addiction are not the same. addiction implies cravings. Dependence implies withdrawal when drug cessation. If your hallucinations got worse and then stopped when the dose was lowered, consider it might have been seizures.