Posted by Nickengland on September 12, 2005, at 16:06:14
In reply to Whats your story nick ?, posted by linkadge on September 11, 2005, at 13:43:32
Hi Linkadge,
>You mind giving me a brief overview of what happened.
No not at all :-)
>You were 17/18 when getting all the SSRI's?
Yep, it basically all began so to speak just after my 17th birthday, I fell into a very severe and disturbed, for want of a better word dark depression. I had never been on medication before or to see a psychiatirst so this was my first experience of mental illness. Before this time though I had been feeling very confident in my life at 16 years old and everything seemed to be going so well, which looking back I can now see was the hypomania before the crash.
The depression was absolutley terrible to say the least, I had to drop out of college and was at home for 8 months. During this time I was very close to going in hospital and really should have been in as I was that low it was dangerous ~ i did come close at one point to being admitted, but fortunately never was.
So I began at that stage with prozac, but I remember when I was first ill I never actually took it the first few months as it didnt make me feel well at all, but then I started to take it for afew months, but came out of the depression naturally as I recall.
I then was well for 6 months, only to relapse again with the previous symtptoms of before, albeit slightly milder as I knew what to expect this time round. Had the prozac again and took it this time for 8 months-ish ~ got well and came off it. All the time I was on it though I never felt it was helping me, the side effects were awful and in effect it made me worse, produced some kind of strange mixed state, but I came out of it as I reduced the medication.
So this pattern when round like this for over 5 years. I'd be well for 6 months, then down for 6-8 months.
I was always told by the doctors I had recurrent clinical depression and SSRI anti-depressants were the way to go.
After the 4th time though I tried staying well with st johns wort as I could not take the SSRI's longterm as the doctors suggested to prevent relapse as I felt they were generally no good and making me feel ill overall. So whilst being "well" in the cycle, I used st johns wort as maintanance treatment (with my psychiatrist aware) hoping that might prevent relapes. Of course always under the impression at that point I was dealing with recurrent unipolar clinical depression.
During that time my hypomania got more out of hand (even though I wasn't even using the st johns wort much at all as I was feeling so good) and I got involved in some behaviour that goes hand in hand with hypomania, pretty risky behaviour to say the least, money, debts etc..
I then eventually crashed and at that point, knew it had to be more than just depression.
All this time mental illness had never been knew to me in some respects, as my mother is a manic depressive also, she had more or less the same symptoms as me when she was 17 ~ was diagnosed manic depressive at the age of 18, but back then had ECT treatment and of course different drugs. Shes been on lithium for nearly 20 years and has remained in good health. The thing is I am under the same psychiatrist which treats her, we had both asked the doctor on several occasions in the past whether or not I was bipolar too, the answer was no (with a doctors grin like he knew everything) and at one time he said time will tell..Will this time (more or less this time last year I crashed from the hypomania) I put forward to the doctors that this was not depression and explained the other side of what had happened with regards to when I am 'well' This was actually about October / November at a second appointment, where during the past 2 months he put me on Effexor, then Effoxor XL, then Mirtazepine. He then gave the diagnosis which I had suspected and suggested of bipolar disorder and suggested/prescribed Sodium Valproate. Unfortunately the sodium Valproate did not work..
So with all the previous experience of the psychiatrist I then began suggesting to the doctor what I could try with him luckily prescribing it.
I tried Lamotrigine next (induced anxious mixed state)
So then I tried lithium as it has helped my mother so much we thought it would work, but failed.. (she is more classic bipolar 1 though where i am more bipolar 2.)
Then carbamazepine, again not so good but helped somewhat.
Then oxcarbazepine ~ which worked extreamly well, but I got terrible kidney pains as a side effect had to quit.
Now I have ended up with Gabapentin which works good for anxiety and sleep and Topiramate as my main mood stabiliser which is about as good as I can get compared to the success of Oxcarbazepine.
And of course the supplements too which help greatly...
I've just recently turned 23.
Kind regards
Nick
Ps I tried to keep it brief, but unfortunately..lol
poster:Nickengland
thread:552809
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050909/msgs/554276.html