Bipolar Check-in #82

It's different meds but I felt a lot better after adding a small dose of Seroquel to my clozaril dose, which is high by blood levels. I doubt I'll ever come off either unless something drastic happens. The only thing I fear is having the Seroquel dose gradually upped and I don't want that. I would go to about 100 mg but no further (I'm on 75 as of today).

I actually feel very levelnow with taking 2.5 mg zyprexa and 6mg risperdal. im gonna ask. shell probably say no. ugh.

Another iffy night. I was still awake at 2am then fell asleep until 7:30am so almost 6 hours. It will do but I need a longer sleep to really function well. Sigh, I’m trying to get by on one mg of ambian. I’m prescribed 11/2 but it’s a pain to cut them in half. So every week at least once a week I take 2mg and sleep great that night. The ambian is all too easy for my body to get used to. So I don’t want to take the 11/2 on a regular basis.

Well happy hump day everyone hope it goes well.

I'm still level so my update is pretty boring. I found yesterday that I had forgotten to take my lamotrigine Monday, so maybe that's why I was a bit wound up yesterday morning.

I'm having strong desires to half my quetiapine for the night and take 150 mg instead of 3 mg to see if I can get by on that and be less tired when I wake. I haven't done it yet, but the temptation seems to be getting stronger.

I see my pdoc again tomorrow and hopefully this time he'll let me go a month between appts. b/c it's a pain to have to keep going every 2 weeks.

Blueberry, boring is good! 👍

That's awesome @Blue_Bird! I bet it feels nice

Fall is here. Well, it feels like it's here anyways

I hope that that will not happen to you!

@Nammu I woke up at 04:00Am and feel complete down.


Hope we both will have a good sleep this night.

@Blueberrybook I agree with Nammu! Have a good day!

I feel very tired. I have had the studies that take a lot of time and I have almost had no time to do house-work and so on.

It has built up. I become sick if I look at all this clutter. High tension in my body.

Do you remember that I took some benzos the other day? Well, I fell again and took more this day. It is scary! I am so frightened to not be able to cut it down before I get my normal prescription from my GP. The aim is to not use more than what is allowed by my GP.

I tried to help myself by filling the pillbox with the legal dozes and for 1 1/2 week + what I need to take to reduce what is too much.

I understand that I have to take this seriously and make some strategies to use to stop to use extra Benzos when feeling far from OK.

Frightened! Very frightened!

@Rosi700

Yeah. You wanna be careful with benzos! Don't take more than you're prescribed! It's awful when you run out early. Benzo withdrawal is no joke.

I know @raspberrytorte! I have experienced THAT and it cannot be described how awful that was. I thought my last hour was come!

That is why I have portioned it out for the next days. I am also scared about what this is!

I have to figure out what this is, in what situations I do it and how I can avoid doing it. Usually I have developed a talent for making plans, and that is generally of good help, but THIS is something else!

Hope I will be able to get the needed control and develop relevant tools for how to stop it in the future.

@Rosi700
Benzo withdrawal is definitely the pits. My pdoc finally took me off clonazepam after I had been taking it over a decade b/c he feared it was making me too forgetful (and I think he was right). I had been on clonazepam 4 mg for quite awhile. It took me over a year of tapering to get off the clonazepam.

You might ask your pdoc if you can try some non-benzos for panic/anxiety so you can stick with your prescribed benzo dose. They definitely do not work as well as benzos but they help some. I found taking low dose Seroquel (25 mg) as a prn helped me quite a bit. It can cause drowisness for some but it didn't for me (possibly b/c I'd been taking 300 mg Seroquel at night for quite awhile). There is buspirone too which I never had an issue with drowsiness though the jury is out on how much it's helped me . Also propranolol which I believe is a beta blocker that cannot be taken if you have heart or blood presssure issues but can be used as a prn; it's use for anxiety is off label I think. Also hydroxyzine which is an anti-histamine; can cause some drowsiness though but my pdoc has prescribed it both to take regularly and as a prn.

I certainly slept good. I slept straight through the night then I took a nap this morning around 9:30am and didn’t wake up till about 20 minutes ago around 12:10pm. I try not to take long naps like that during the day but sometimes I need to.

I’m gonna be facilitating more of the groups and activities in my apartment building this month.

Idk what I’m doing today. Definitely practicing violin. I think that’s about it. Other than that I’m gonna read a lot. I might clean some too. I don’t have the energy for the treadmill today

I had an ok trip. My medical issue is still a problem so I'll have to go to the doctors tommorow and probably get a mini procedure. I went out to dinner last night for the first since Febuarary. It was nice. I was with my aunt and uncle and my mom and brother. I normally back out of plans but my anxiety has been ok lately and I felt like I was able to do it. We had a table in a corner and it wasn't crowded.

Today my mom and I went shopping. I finally found Land O Lakes maple butter and pumpkin pie butter. I'm a bit cranky because I'm nervous about tommorow. I've had this happen before and it was not fun. But I'm handling it well for the most part. My paranoia was fine today.

I slept really strangely, very unsettled. It was 8.5 hours though which is a huge improvement from a few months ago.

Just got back from the gym - lots of sweating and effort. I had to sit in my car in the parking lot at the gym for a half hour afterwards to settle down so I could drive home.

I'm still feeling low, but I managed to take a shower. I hadn't showered in a number of days.

I'm trying to brush my teeth but I find it difficult to do. When I really push myself, I can do it and am satisfied that I did brush, but getting that push is really difficult.

I'm working on the mindfulness for my anxiety. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's good to make a little progress after having bad anxiety for such a long time.

My pdoc says it's likely that therapy will make the biggest difference for my anxiety and that the meds will eventually no longer be necessary. The depression is another story though, but who knows, maybe it'll improve as I get better at reducing my anxiety.

I'm on 2 antidepressants at the moment and my pdoc says that is remarkable because they're not pushing me into hypomania. Shows how heavy the depression really is.

just did a therapy session with a cleint here a the unit and also a grouP!

Saw Pdoc this morning. She took me off risperdal and put me on a low dose of Vraylar. Let’s hope it knocks out the hypomania and doesn’t give me the liver side effects. I am very tired after my flu shot yesterday . Going to take a nap.

Oh, drama! When to my daughter’s so we could continue Starger Things, but their credit card was hacked and $5000 taken out for gas, and another $5000 waiting for approval when they canceled the card. Their Netflix was on auto payment so that was canceled. So we went shopping. Got up to the counter and my pocket was empty! My wallet! I thought maybe it came out in the bathroom? I went to the bathroom way in the back. Followed my trail out of the bathroom,.. no wallet. She canceled the sale. And I went to my car I was trying to get my phone out of my other pocket when I pulled out my wallet! What? I never put my wallet in my left pocket. Crisis averted. But oh man I was sooo worried for a bit.

Then I get home and find out my credit card has been upgraded by the bank. I gonna lose my pretty personalize card but I’ll get more rewards and it’s good in other countries! So good news I guess.

Tonight is poker night, I should make a killing.