I am a 45 year old female who has bipolar disorder. i currently take 20 mgs of Abilify and have started lamotrigine about 5 weeks ago. I currently take 150 mgs. I have noticed lately that i feel like i am being pinched all over my body. Could this be a side effect of lamotrigine or am i having tactile hallucination? I don't see my psychiatrist for about 3 weeks and wonder if i should call him.
View 1 RepliesMy whole body shakes from lithium. Dr decreased my dose today down to 600 mg a day. Does anyone know of any essential oils that would help with this until my lithium levels decrease.
View 3 RepliesI have had bipolar disorder for quite a while now. It usually gets really bad in the winter. Last year I tried to kill myself. Since then I have started smoking weed every day. I've found it helps tremendously. I haven't cut myself for a year now. However This winter I noticed that I am so tired and groggy all the time that I can barely even function. I end up sleeping through my classes, I can barely work, and when I get home all I can do is get to my room light up and play video games. I feel like I need to sleep all the time. Does this sound like it's due to the weed or is it just my bipolar acting up for the winter time. I'm an 18 year old boy who is overall healthy in the most part.
View 3 RepliesFirst apologise for spelling and grammar I'm dyslexic.
I first decided to come off lithium because of wanting a child . I was now with a man I'm crazy In Love with and about to be married this summer .
Also found out though blood test the lithium was causing low kidney function to my one kidney.
Coming off was a breeze until a week after my last dose. My chest is so tight with anxiety I feel like I murdered someone and I'm running for life .
Massive sense of guilt & fear and panic. I'm not dealing well with anything.
The only thing that makes me happy and at ease is Richards unconditional love . And planning my wedding . Started a new job and may get fired due to my anxiety and hecticness . I'm all over the place racing thought . Clumsy can't remember anything . I was a fashion designer for many years now I've gone into teaching . And it's my first real course I'll be teaching .
Waiting to see my therapist again in a few weeks but this has had such a domino effect on me . I'm also not sleeping ! Two three hours if I'm lucky .
Lately I've been taking lithium (this will be week 3) I finally feel I am sort of seeing a difference. I can actually think now, understand things a little better, and overall I'm feeling good. But I need to know is lithium supposed to make your moods go up and down while you are still getting used to the meds? For examp. last week (which was wk 2) I was completely manic in front of my stupid coworkers. I had no idea until I was sitting on the bus to go home. Also I've been switching moods. Like from depression to mania....
View 3 RepliesI have been diagnosed with bipolar for 8 years now and have been on Lamictal and Risperidone at different mg's. Just this week I have gone through one of my manic stages and my wife has said that is enough for her. She is asking that I leave the home we built together and the children we raised. I have no idea how to handle this. I am on the backend of my cycle however I know the level of regret I will have once I'm completely. Am i the only one that this disease has affected everyone around them? I feel alone and truly have no one to confide in.
View 2 RepliesI just wanted to know if Bipolar is genetic. My was recently told that my grandad is bipolar and wondered if I was to as I believe I have some sort of mental problem. I don't really know much about bipolar and be good to learn about it also, not just from reading books and websites but from people who actually experience it themselves or with other people.
View 4 RepliesIs a low level (0.5) useful although it's not quite in the therapeutic range? Thoughts?
View 1 RepliesAt first I was on 200 mg of Lamictal and (not sure the dose) of Seroquel. Seroquel made me gain weight. Worked like a charm though! Would also make me feel like I had a major hangover the next day. I said, no more, to that med. Had a really bad Mania episode during the weekend (few weekends ago) seen my doctor two days ago. He put me on 600mg of Lithium and 200mg of Lamictal. I don't have any side effects except I am so tired all day long. I take 100mg of Lamictal and 300 Lithium BUT here is the kicker. For some odd reason, mainly because I think my body hates me, if I take 200mg of Lamictal at night, to lighten up the load of my mornings, I can't sleep.... It makes no sense to me. SO I have to drink lots of water with Lithium, I can barely take a 5 hour energy because the Lithium makes my tummy hurt. I was told the side effects are short lasting. Also, I was told I will need blood work. Do you have to have blood work every so often or just that one time?? I still have Xanax for those moments when I have a really bad bout of anxiety.
View 2 RepliesBeen in a relationship with a bipolar disorder person ( i believe) and after a while into the relationship , she has the notion of hurting me in the situation when she is very much emotionally involved with me as in romance etc. Seems like she loses herself and starts scratching me . i kind of ignored earlier but when i wake her up kinda thing she completes looks puzzle and asks me dis she hurt me kinda thing. She also did mention lets breakup coz its gonna get worst then this but i must admit i was adamant and was sure i can find a solution for this and we can be happy together. Then came a point whereby she went through the same episode and woke to ask me did she stab me and when realized no, she went on saying this has to stop kinda thing since next she will go to suicidal mode etc. She also went on i just cant be as normal anymore to you since my mind has already shutting u down. That evening when i got in touch with her , she told me that its happening and she was somewhere alone in her office not sure what she was trying to do neither any recollection how she got there. She was infact awaken by the cleaner lady thankfully she said. She said "i love u more then my life" to me and that's the problem . The next day when i got in touch with her , she acted as though she has no recollection of what we had in between and she seems to have memory loss on all the places and events that she has been and was with me. She even started calling me by my real name instead of dear or darling how she used to. She is also doing her studies now, and i'm confused to whether to help her to recall things that we had in the past or let it be as not to distract her from her studies and help her to recollect once she is done with her studies and then seek medical help so that we can be on track again.
View 8 RepliesI just started taking 300 mg of Lithium yesterday. I was nice and calm for the day. Is it too soon to have any effects on me yet? Or was maybe I was just putting my mind on it to make me calm. My husband said I was scaring him bc I was calm and not screaming.
View 3 RepliesAre there any doctors out there that know exactly what gets checked during a lithium blood test. Do they also look at your full blood count? I know the usual things like thyroid and kidneys but I am just wondering if the normal things get checked too.
View 1 RepliesI suffer from rapid cycling bipolar disorder, and I'm waiting for blood test results to come back before they'll start me on Lithium. The problem I'm having at the moment is that I'm self medicating nearly every night with alcohol, it's the only thing that seems to keep me stable, I know it's not good for me, but I was wondering if anyone else out there does this, or understands it?
View 9 Repliesi've been taking meds for bipolar disorder and ADHD since I was about 6 or 7, when I was about 13 I was taking a total of 17 pills everyday, it wasn't until about 9 months or more that I was put into a hospital for an immediate detox. my doses have always been as high as I can get. Right now I'm taking bupropion 450 mg, vyvanse 120 mg, intuniv 300mg, and at night I take zolpidem 20mg; everyday! But sometimes when I don't wake up and take my pills in the morning I get stomach pains and I feel like c**p. My mom said that I need to go see a doctor and have tests done to see if I have liver damage, but all I keep hearing is that I should smoke weed. It would help with my stress and anxiety and my eating disorder ( I sometimes put off eating when I feel bloated). Is marijuana the best option?
View 1 RepliesDiagnosed bipolar 2 as i have had 7-10 days hypomanic and 17 days of severe depression i write a daily diary looking at this since day 17 i get up and down days of fluctuating mood is this normal with bipolar?
View 36 RepliesI have suffered with anx and depression for many years, but lately bipolar has been mentioned by my therapist. Could I run through my main symptoms and you kind people can give an opinion? I have bad anxiety most of the time, I don't have a classic high, my high is more about lack of need for sleep, don't seem to need much food, loads of creative work going on and I get really out of sorts if I'm interrupted. My downs happen generally after a high time of a few weeks, then I just crash out - don't want to do anything or talk to anyone
View 37 RepliesHey everyone,
I've had a weird type of parasomnia for as long as I can remember, and I am unable to find a name for it.
It usually happens when I had an emotional day, and usually after 3 or 4 hours of sleep (in the middle of the night, so to speak). To be as clear as possible, I am going to give you last night's example: I work as a camera operator, and yesterday we had quite a difficult shoot, where I made a few mistakes. Nevertheless, I didn't feel too worried, as I know these things can happen. But then, when I wen't to sleep, I "woke up" at about 2:30 am with this feeling that I was right in the middle of a shoot. I was aware that there was nobody in my room, but I had this feeling that people could see me and hear me, like they were just behind my door. I wasn't scared - the main feeling really was embarrassment. When I woke up, I was dressed up (I felt like my coworkers could see me in my pijamas, and so I got dressed!), and some items around my bed had moved, like I had tried to make the place look more tidy.
Although I can't say that I was awake, I have very clear memories of what I was going through. I remember thinking at some point "no way, they can't be in my room, it makes no sense", but then the sensation took over again. That being said, I have no idea of how long it lasted, and I can't remember dressing up, although I can recall moving stuff around. I must also say that there were no actual hallucinations: I couldn't see no hear anybody. The best way I can describe it is this: it's like being in a room and knowing that behind the close door there are people, even though you can't hear them. Once again, it's not a scary feeling, it's just really stressful.
So... does anyone have experienced something similar? Does it have a name?
I must say I can easily live with this parasomnia, because it's not really giving me a hard time, but most of all I am quite curious, cause I've never met someone who has something similar.
I was diagnosed 5 years ago as a paranoid schizophrenic. I have allot of auditory hallucinations, but never once a visual one.
A week ago when I was in my room I stared at the ceiling, I have a wood one. Suddenly the marks and patterns on it started to move, then dance. I just thought that I must have been tired and went to sleep.
Since then it got a little worse. Every night the ceiling would dance for me. Then inanimate objects would start to bend and move around. The weird thing is that when my keyboard against the wall moves, the shadow casted on the wall by it, moves with it. I found this a bit odd.
Tonight was the worst case. The blanked on my bed puffed up and moves around, exactly like there was a dog underneath. My closet door handle would move up and down while the closet opens and closes, with no sound.
When my laptop's light went down and I stared at my own reflection, things got weird. My reflection's hands would move while I am sitting still. "He" would blink when I do not. Then my whole face started to change. It puffed up and my hair was longer. When I turned my face one way, he turned a different way and started smiling at me. And our eyes never made contact. When I looked into "his" eyes, he would look to the sides or roll them back.
Because I have had this illness for a long time I didn't go into a panic as I kind of got the jest of what was going on.
Since this was my first visual experience, I just want to know if this is the "norm" of it. I did not see anything that was not there, just things moving and getting distorted.
And does anyone know if the visual part can come for the first time after me having this illness for so long?
I have been experiencing hallucination when waking up suddenly in the night. The hallucination is usually a huge spider in the room and I always wake up people in the house screaming "look!" or "Oh my God". And in a matter of a minute or so the image disappears. I have ignored these hallucinations for sometime, but recently I hallucinated that their was someone in the room. I panicked but I could not move my entire right side. I some how managed to wake my partner and I could still not move. When I finally hard arm and leg movement back, it was difficult to move my muscles and felt I could not control them. I gets bouts of tiredness during the day and nap a lot. Is this a sign of narcolepsy? My grandmother had it. Should I worry?
View 1 RepliesI am a 14 year old male and for the past 1-2 weeks, i have been experiencing strange feelings suddenly after falling asleep. Most of the time (In regards to religion) devilish. It started one night when I suddenly go to sleep and feel a rush go up my body, then a tap on my left knee. I disregarded it thinking i was just about to have a nightmare. About 5 minutes after that, i go to sleep again and feel another sudden rush up my body and a tap on my right bicep. This time i heard a slurred voice (I cannot recall what it said but i do believe there was laughing.) I finally got sleep and told my mom the next morning. These things had not happened again until 4-5 days later when I went to sleep and i get a sudden rush up my body but instead of a tap, I have no control over my body. After 30 seconds of not being able to move myself (Note, this was not sleep paralysis because I gained control over my body.) I regain control but then I feel another sudden rush through my body and a tap on my left leg again with another slurred voice. I want to know what is going on with me, am I being possessed? Or am I just hallucinating? I want to know your guys's thoughts and what I should do.
View 1 RepliesThis might be Anxiety, but I am wondering if nude body to body massage with the masseuse vagina rubbing on my penis outside (no penetration/intercourse) but defo fluid exchange, no condom and she put her finger in my anus, would that be a risk of HIV?
I have been to the same masseuses and I have done test and they all negative after but the last time I went for the massage is after my last negative test so I am just being very worry?