Caffeine and Bipolar

I love coffee and have no issues with the caffeine. But the weird thing is with green tea. I cant seem to deal with the caffeine that is in green tea even if its technically less. If I drink green tea at 3pm or later my whole sleep schedule is screwed up. I do not know if there is any science to back this up but this is how it feels to me.

Coffee(Cuban style) and HYDROXYCUT HARDCORE make SUPERMAN flights possible.
I dare you to be depressed with this combo.

Caffeine doesn’t affect my bipolar state on its own. It can aggravate my anxiety and causes acid reflux, though. Both could worsen a bad state.

Mr/Ms AspiringAuthor,

Please do more reading and research before posting again. If you have a good education you should be able to accurately determine what websites are good sources of information for explaining what a med is for, and what websites are poor and unreliable sources of information.

Lamictal is a MOOD STABILIZER, it PREVENTS mania. It does not cause it, it is a main-line drug for PREVENTING it. It does everyone a disservice to post such a ridiculous statement that it causes mania and we should be worried what medications we're taking, not about caffeine.

Since you're obviously having a lot of difficulty understanding what your meds are for and what they do, please post a separate question asking for help about that. But this particular question is for sharing what caffeine does, not for sharing what your meds do.

This is flat out wrong. Lamictal is like the number one mood stabilizer prescribed for bipolar. It doesnt cause mania. Zoloft is an SSRI and some people with bipolar have issues with SSRI's (like me) in which case I take cymbalta which is an SNRI. I so not know where you are getting your information from but you really shouldnt spread disinformation. Someone could be in a fragile state, read that and decide to stop their medicine. Impulsivity is a part of Bipolar sometimes.

Lamictal was touted as the Holy Grail mood stabilizer for bipolar - meaning, preventing episodes on both ends of the spectrum, but has not lived up to the initial promise. It is primary use is preventing bipolar depression. As a monotherapy, it is primarily used in Bipolar II disorder where patients do not go into frank mania. If you query [lamictal mania] on PubMed, your results will focus on depression prevention despite putting [mania] into the query - see lamictal mania - PubMed - NCBI.

In Silicon Valley, among "designer psychiatrists", Lamictal is known as the drug of choice of CEOs because it ups their energy.

Most people on this forum know that SSRI's are dangerous for them - not "some", but "most".

I obtain my data primarily from peer-reviewed publications, but also from speaking to qualified medical professionals. Lamictal has been known to cause mania - happened to me twice, the first time, two years ago, in combination of other agents, caused a mixed state and a very major suicide attempt with several days on a ventilator. That was at 200 mg monotherapy when I was mis-dx'd with BPII. In 2016 I tried again, a very low dose of 25 mg, as part of a cocktail that included some Lithium and FDA max dose of Geodon, and it induced elevated mood and insomnia nonetheless and had to be stopped but the sequelae of that short trial were long-lived and highly negative.

needadvicenow5500 - you are acting as a moderator that you are not. If you think that my posts are out of line, reach out to the forum moderators. Lamictal has been dubbed a "bipolar antidepressant" and its main promise is that as opposed to SSRI, SNRI and Wellbutrin (which is in a class of its own) antidepressants, it won't cause mania (but sometimes it does - just not as frequently as these agents). It is not used widely in the prevention of mania and any person who pays attention to detail and who reads this forum with its posts and signatures would realize that people who need treatment and prevention of mania are taking much more "serious" drugs than Lamictal. To take both an SSRI and Lamictal and nothing to act against elevated mood and against the elevating properties of these drugs is almost unheard of - it is a very weird cocktail and while one can imagine that such cocktail would be prescribed as a last resort to somebody in a very deep depression (and still that would be a questionable prescription), the OP appears to be doing OK, so one wonders why OP is taking this very strange cocktail that nobody else on this forum takes - I have near photographic memory and synesthesia with special memorial abilities and from all my reading this forum I have never before seen such a cocktail, so I pointed out that it is a very, very weird cocktail.

Another thing that precisely because Lamictal is supposed to be effective against eliminating the depressive phase of bipolar disorder, why also take an SSRI? Usually, it is Lamictal against the low mood plus something else against the high mood - that is a much more typical cocktail.


sarahsweets - the first hit on Google for the query [which medication is prescribed most often for bipolar disorder] is this:

The most widely used drugs for the treatment of bipolar disorder include lithium carbonate and valproic acid (also known as Depakote or generically as divalproex). Lithium carbonate can be remarkably effective in reducing mania, although doctors still do not know precisely how it works.Nov 8, 2017
Bipolar Disorder Treatment - WebMD

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Having read my signature, most would realize that after all the failed medication trials I have been through, I must be, my necessity, highly educated in this field.

I've seen people just be on Lamictal for a mood stabilizer and do good.

Honestly meds affect people differently. Reactions tend to vary quite widely.

I've taken SSRI's and have no problem with most of them as long as I'm on a moodstabilizer with them.

Anyway, the post is about caffeine not telling other people what their meds do or don't do or claiming to know more than everyone else.

Caffeine definitely affects me and how so depends on my underlying level of anxiety/stress, mood and medications. So, when I was dealing with chronic stress in school I pretty much found just a little caffeine would send me into panic attacks and racing thoughts. Then, prior to the bipolar diagnosis I was on an SSRI with made things 1000 times worse, and if I added any caffeine I got so irritable I wanted to punch walls. Kind of the same thing with Lamictal for me, actually, in terms of irritability. After stopping meds, eating better, getting more sleep and lowering caffeine intake for awhile I can now handle it again. But, if I do too many days of caffeine in a row it kind of builds up and makes me feel irritable and perhaps hypomanic. I really cannot say what is hypomania, what is anxiety, and what is just caffeine sensitivity. I kind of blends together and I am just listening to my body and mind as best I can when it comes to caffeine.

"In all bipolar controlled trials combined, adverse reactions of mania (including hypomania and mixed mood episodes) were reported in 5% of patients treated with LAMICTAL (n = 956), 3% of patients treated with lithium (n = 280), and 4% of patients treated with placebo (n = 803)."

The above is from the GSK (the manufacturer) medication guide.