Long story ahead folks. Back at the beginning of June I made the switch off of my long time antidepressant, Paxil, because it was very obviously no longer doing squat for my depression. My gp put me on Viibryd for depression (very expensive 30 supply cost $133 WITH coupon) and buspirone for anxiety Thought it was working. I suddenly had waaaay more energy that I used to, i was painting again, felt good like I could do anything. Over 4 months though I started developing higher and higher levels of anxiety, my memory started going to shit, my energy levels were getting high enough at points where I started feeling red flags going off, my migraines also increased in frequency, and i started having trouble sleeping. Beginning of September I had a very bad mental breakdown. I won't get into the nitty-gritty on it, but I began having panic attacks from hell and was afraid to sleep alone. GP gave me stuff for the panic attacks. A week later I was back in her office with extreme insomnia, pounding heartbeat, panic attacks upon waking up, and violently upset stomach. Ekg showed nothing, but bloodtests showed my thyroid levels were too high and we concluded my problems were related to hyperthyroidism cause by incorrect synthroid doseage. A month later my blood tests are back to normal and I was STILL expiriencing everything but the stomach problems. And was starting to have wild moodswings. Going from feeling like I could slam-dunk a grizzy bear to wishing i didn't exist. Gp and I decided to change from the Viibryd to Effexor xr in hopes that would help (and because it was sooooo much cheaper). Yeah no. At this point the only way I can describe how I feel is manic. Also I have just this week learned that bipolar runs in both sides of my family. Gotta follow-up with my gp on friday and am gonna bring all this up. Until then I get to feel like garbage/a being made of pure caffeine. Any input would be appreciated because at this point I am basically scared as shit.
My psychiatrist was really kinda worried about putting me on another antidepressant for kinda the same reason - I have manic episodes too, not sure why but I do. Since the antidepressant was gonna raise my mood, she was worried it might destabilize it and leave me manic. Not to mention Paxil withdrawal can go fuck itself, I was sick for like a month when I got off that shit. I was a mess at first, but after a little while it started evening out. The shit I hate with Psychtropics is they take foreeevvvveeerrr to kick in but you can get the negative side effects right away. What we eventually wound up doing was an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety medication, which it sounds like your GP is open to doing with you? I found that helps a lot - stabilizes my mood, too, which is nice. You might want to bring up the family history of Bipolar with your GP so that she knows it might not be the medication causing the mania - the meds might just be exacerbating an underlying problem. My migraines also increased when I was off Paxil - Paxil apparently helps treat them. After a while they leveled out though. Have you had that experience? It's good that you're following up with your GP - that's important!
I did end up bringing up all this stuff with my gp and she's pretty sure I'm bipolar. I also helps that my mom got on of my really bad depressive moodswings on video and was able to show my doc what we're dealing with. She's put me on lamictal in hopes of stabilizing my mood swings until I'm able to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, because I've been really really bad these past few days. Like reeeeeally bad. I have been on an anxiety med to go with the antidepressant, but it's not doing much. My mother doesn't think it's bipolar because it's not presenting in the way it has/had in my relatives. They all did the "regular" high for a few weeks and then low for a few weeks. Meanwhile I'm over here having drastic mood swings all day and even feeling manic and depressed at the same time. She's also more familiar with friends of our family who's mania come with a heaping helping of psychosis. It's been "fun"
I have the rapidly swinging moods too. Mine is in response to PTSD, usually, but it took me a stupid long time to figure that out. I hope the lamictal is helping!!
Update: for the first time in months I was able to sleep until 7am! Sure, a few hours after waking up I was just about bouncing off the walls with overwhelming amounts of energy, but I didn't get woken out of a dead sleep feeling like that. Which is nice. Side note: charting a cross stitch pattern is hard as fuck when your brain is going 90% faster than your body in physically capable of going. Like holy shit. I'm supposed to increase my dose of Lamictal tonight, let's see if this helps knock the edge off that! Fingers crossed, guys!
