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[Diogee]

Has anyone had any good experiance with it?  I just got tossed on it a week ago for bipolar, idk, i guess im hoping to hear somethin hopefull about it.  Just lookin for some hope, i dont even know if im bipolar, dont know much about it, but why else would they throw it at me, idk, i honestly think i have a hell of alot more downs than ups, i do have some good moments, but too often i find myself punching a hole in the wall or bleeding out till i get tired of bleeding, or my recent discovery of paperclips and a lighter, even if i dont go forth and do it, i still have vivid pictures of me doing it, gettin really sick of the bloody shit runnin thru my head, dunno what that means, they never explain the shit so a dumbass like me can understand, id like to understand some of this shit better,  maybe itd help me deal with it better, its either that or i walk into the hospital drippin blood cuz i cant figure it out on my own, idk, i just registered here today, seems like theres some knowlageable ppl here, i mean i do have a therapist, but to be honest, i have alot more balls to talk about shit online for some reason

[evilavatar]

I work in a clinic and we see Lamictal (generic name Lamotrigine) work for folks all the time.  It helps to increase the time between when a person cycles up into a manic phase or down into a depressed phase, hopefully giving you more time to notice the changes and deal with what may be coming on. In some case it works all by itself but usually it will be combined with an antidepressant (Prozac or another mood stabilizer are common) but it depends on how your bi-polar manifests.  It was actually first created to help people with convulsive disorders and has been around for a great many years.  Side effects are minimal in most people, though you always need to read the warnings and let your doctor know if you have any issues.  Many doctors use it as a first line to see if it will help because it has a pretty cheap generic formulation, it has been around a long time, and it tends to work well for most people with minimal side effects.  It's a far better drug than lithium, which is really the only other FDA approved medication that can be said to be similar.  Don't get me wrong Lithium is great when it works, it's just not an easy drug to deal with and it has a lot of long term side effects.  It can also be hard to keep at a therapeutic level in a person.

[liza]

I have not used the drug you have been prescribed, but I have taken an assortment of others for depression and insomnia.  It takes about a month for you to really notice the effects of the meds.  If you do not feel different, tell the doc.  They may have already tried other meds for you, but they will keep trying.  They do want to help you.  Once you find a med that makes you feel better you need to keep taking it, probably for the rest of your life.  Sometimes the drugs will become less effective over the years and they will try other drugs.  Just keep working with them. Do not make the mistake of thinking you are better and can stop taking the meds.  It is the meds that are making you better.  By "better" I want you to know that you will feel different.  You might see this as a personality change, and some of it is.  The drugs work on the chemical imbalance in your brain that is making you feel low or high.  My experience is that the meds put me in "neutral".  You might not like "neutral", but it is safer. My meds helped me express myself better and I learned more about myself through my understanding of others. Self love is very important.  You need to care about you.  Am I to understand that you are cutting and considering branding?  Is it too hard for you to talk to the docs and therapists?  I believe you can feel free to talk on this website.  I am new to the site also, but it seems to have a lot of great and understanding members and good monitoring system.  

[Diogee]

Yea, im just afraid of it leveling me out but in the wrong spot and just holding me in a low.  Idk what the hell it is, ive only been on it for a week, but my sleeping habbits have gotten worse, which certainly aint helpin much, a whopping 3 hours of sleep last night where i kept waking up sweating my balls of, when its about 45 degrees in my house, u can see your breath, yet i wake up soaked.  And today i felt a depression ive never really felt before, just sooo fucking tense, feel like i cant breath, just feel like my chest is gonna break open, like no pain, just on edge.  And it happened when i was doing something i enjoy, it was like someone flipped a switch as usual, i legit feel dead, i just want to be able to shut off.  Maybe it does gotta be combined with somethin else, ill have to talk to the shrink dude about it.  Cuz even before meds, i was more low than up, never really felt manic or nothin, but ive also heard manic can feel like normal for some. Idk, there was more i wanted to say but i just cometley lost my train f thought, idk, i see the light at the end of the tunnel, but theres a woodchipper on the way and i guess i should just give this time, i didnt get like this in a day, im certainly not gonna get better in a day, but im a self destructive idiot and keep feelin like imma jump into that woodchipper.  Idk, imma go hide under my rock for a while :/

[Diogee]

Am I to understand that you are cutting and considering branding?  Is it too hard for you to talk to the docs and therapists?  I believe you can feel free to talk on this website.  I am new to the site also, but it seems to have a lot of great and understanding members and good monitoring system.  

And yes, i do cut, looks like i put my arm to a belt sander with 60 grit paper and i have burnt, got fuck up burnt into my wrist and failure cut next to it.  And it is kinda hard to talk to the shrinks, as much as i know itd probly be a good thing, i dont wanna get thrown into the hospital and leave my dog who already got hit by a car 3 months ago, im not gonna let that happen with my psycho father watching him

[liza]

What kind of dog do you have?  I have two Airedale crosses and a Boston terrier.  They are good friends.  I also have a horse, 4 cats, and a goat.  I like to have a whole group of buddies who love me.  Is your dad really pyscho?  Is that where some of your dispair comes from?  My dad died when I was 10 yrs old.  It sucked, but I sometimes wonder if it would have sucked worse if he had lived.  He was great, but he was a teaser and liked to pick on people as humor.  All that is o.k. when you are grown and can understand and be allowed to tease back, but kind of hard on a kid.  Anyway, you sound really sad and I hope you can find a way to feel better.  I used writing and music to help me through.  I would just write everything down.  All of my weird thoughts, etc.  Sometimes I would create verse, or sometimes things that looked like a meaningless running sentence, but it made sense to me. I did not have anybody to tell these things to, nor did I really want to tell anybody anything.  Nothing really horrible had happened to me, I just suffered from depression and nobody knew what to do.  I did have a good family, though.  It makes a huge difference.  I am sorry if your family unit is not supportive or is causing worse problems for you.  Or, did you cause problems first and then things just escalated?  That would happen to me sometimes. I am truly my own worst enemy and critic.  Find the things about yourself that are great and hold on to them.  Keep that dog healthy and share with him/her.  Dogs always understand.

[Diogee]

What kind of dog do you have?  I have two Airedale crosses and a Boston terrier.  They are good friends.  I also have a horse, 4 cats, and a goat.  I like to have a whole group of buddies who love me.  Is your dad really pyscho?  Is that where some of your dispair comes from?  My dad died when I was 10 yrs old.  It sucked, but I sometimes wonder if it would have sucked worse if he had lived.  He was great, but he was a teaser and liked to pick on people as humor.  All that is o.k. when you are grown and can understand and be allowed to tease back, but kind of hard on a kid.  Anyway, you sound really sad and I hope you can find a way to feel better.  I used writing and music to help me through.  I would just write everything down.  All of my weird thoughts, etc.  Sometimes I would create verse, or sometimes things that looked like a meaningless running sentence, but it made sense to me. I did not have anybody to tell these things to, nor did I really want to tell anybody anything.  Nothing really horrible had happened to me, I just suffered from depression and nobody knew what to do.  I did have a good family, though.  It makes a huge difference.  I am sorry if your family unit is not supportive or is causing worse problems for you.  Or, did you cause problems first and then things just escalated?  That would happen to me sometimes. I am truly my own worst enemy and critic.  Find the things about yourself that are great and hold on to them.  Keep that dog healthy and share with him/her.  Dogs always understand.

if ya click the link on ma profile you can find some pics of him there, hes pit and Bernese mountain dog.  i love the little bugger, hes all i got, hes the only thing that kept me from walkin off into the woods when hit a vein 3 months ago, buttttt yea, im crazy and thats my left arm, and his left leg got broken, so of course i kinda consider it karma being a bitch and call it my fault as he kinda got hit when i was sharpening my knife

and yea, he really is a psycho, beat the living fuck out of me every other day, and unfortunatly i still have to live with him, the physical abuse is one thing, but the mental shit, not good, if you beat a dog and say bad dog bad dog, its gonna be a fucked up dog, parents pretty much program their children, and seeing my mom could only see me every other weekend cuz DCF is a bunch of scumbags i never really got much good dog if ya know what i mean.  idk, i know i can get better, but if every time i start feeling good about myself he smashes me back down into my little hole, like i wanna check myself into the hospital, cuz sometimes i scare myself, but i refuse to leave my dog with him, and i dont trust anyone else with him either
but yea, hes schizo, my mom has a chemical imbalance and has attemted suicide, my sister has attemted suicide, me, what the hell havent i done, drugs, cutting, and went nuts self medicating and ate a full script of lithium (i thought itd make me trip, nopppe, just lottts of puking my brains out) but yea, you have to crazies make babies, whatya expect to come out, and then treat the crazy kid like shit, yea, 21 years later, i sure turned out greaaaaaat

and even my therapist told me to start writing a journal, and i did, but then i end up reading it, and actually see my mood swings and fuckkkked up thoughts on paper, and it makes me realize that im really fucking crazy, and then i sit there overanalyzing everything and and talk shit about myself, kinda like i am right here, another thing my therapist told me to do, write down ever time i smash myself down.

and as for the problems, ive been fucked up forever, i was supposed to me on antipsychotics since i was 15 but never took em, then got into drugs and probly made everything worse, and the fact i never followed thru when i was 15 didnt help. i went thru many more years of shit.  but my depression comes out of the blue, like someone flipped a switch, but instead of just being depressed, i sit there and anylyze it trying to find out why i feel like that, and when i cant find the reason, i go nuts and my mind starts wandering and thinking about how much shit ive fucked up in my life, and i pretty much feel like, whats the point of trying, im only gonna fuck everything up again.

think of it as a saftey net made of barbed wire keeping me from falling off the deep end, every time i try to leave it and drag myself outta my hole, i end up getting shoved back in, i dont see the glass as half empty, its shattered all over the floor, so everything can have the tendancy to bring me down...  but yea, everytime i get shoved back into my hole, the saftey net breaks a little bit, and theres only soo many times i can deal with this before it breaks and i go off the deep end and dissapear off the face of the earth. so id kinda rather do nothing and sit in my dark hole all day..  i mean, im trying really hard to get better, hoping meds will help me out a bit, but its a long drawn out process, and its driving me even more nuts

and yea, i know, i dont have a magnet on the back of my car that says who rescued who for nothin :p

[liza]

I know what you mean about the journals.  I can't go back and look at them.  My mom saved all of my letters and things from when I was in the Army and she wanted to give them to me to look back on those days.  I was using a lot of opiates back then because everything in Korea had opium bases; like wine, cough syrup, cold medicine.  We would get a bottle of some stuff that you should only take 2 tablets and we would split the whole bottle of 100 tabs in one go.  When the drug hit you got really sick to your stomach at first and then your skin would burn and prickle, and then you would get the high.  I don't know how I survived. Stong will, I guess.  I was tripping on acid at my high school graduation, smoked weed, did amphetamines, didn't like barbituates much.  I tried counseling, but felt they all were the same and didn't really help, just made me think more.  I had the constant thinking and analyzed everything.  Every conversation, every action, every non-action.  It was really hard for a few years in my 20's, then I found a doctor who suggested the meds. They help, but I still have a lot of buzzing thoughts and analysis.  I worked as a budget analyst for many years, so that helped my brain get its analysis cravings out of the way.  I suffered several concussions in my time and now my brain has a lot of trouble with memory and numbers.  Had to leave a good job, went down hill, and now am on retirement disability.  My body got pretty wrecked in a car accident, so I was forced to be less active, which also affected my depression. I can function, but cannot handle stress and working situations. 
Anyway, I was not abused by my parents.  I cannot know what you feel, but I can understand the confusion and betrayal you must have felt, still feel, toward your dad.  Is there no way you can find ad different living situation? Your dog sounds awesome.  There is nothing better than a big dog for lifting a mood.  Please keep on the meds, try to get off the other stuff.  I finally realizsed, as I got older, that the drugs and the booze only made things worse.  The high was good while it lasted, but the down time afterward really sucked.  The meds are not as effective when using other things.  I still smoke a little weed because it really helps my physical pain and mellows my thoughts.  Mainly it helps me not care that I am not what I used to be. I was coming along pretty well when a car accident, not my fault, brought me down lower and ruined my physical health.  It is all connected, mind, body, spirit.
I also broke away from the Christian dogma and went pagan like my ancestors.  When I was able to free my spirit, I began to heal.  I had to look inside a lot, and it was really hard, but I learned a lot about myself and I learned to like what I found.   You are not Fucked Up, your brain just has some trouble.  I was always told I was a Bitch.  I am, but I learned to control it, and use it when necessary.  I also took a look around at what was considered "normal", and decided that I did not want to be normal.  I embraced my difference and continue to do so regardless of public opinion.
Now I am rambling.  I do not understand the cutting or any other self mutilation. I am told that it releases endorphins or something, but I do not know much els.  I do know a lot of people do it, though. Does it feel like a release of some sort? Sorry to questin you so much, but I would like to help if I can.  Oh, I also have a Bantam Roster that weighs about 6 oz. My  Boston terier loves him and they play for hours ot in the yard.  Soooo, funny.  Humor really saved me. Try to get some good laulghs in everyday.  Cartoons help.