I was just diagnosed as Bipolar NOS...now what?

[unknownxpleasures]

I was just diagnosed with Bipolar. The psychiatrist I saw this past week gave me a script for Seroquel 25 mg for two nights and then wanted me to increase to 50 mg a night every night. Truth is, I ALREADY HATE THIS MEDICATION. I have already gained two pounds in the last two days. I have restless legs, have a tendency to become hostile and agressive out of nowhere and I just don't even feel like myself!

I only took 25 mg for two nights and didn't want to take it last night. I feel like a zombie on this shit, and she wanted me to UP the dosage! I can't wake up from my sleep and my mouth is always dry

My question is, what do I do? I felt like I had more control over myself before I was on this shit. I've been having very clear suicidal ideations in my head since after the first night of taking this shit.

I should probably add that I was going through xanax withdrawal and I was trying to just get through it without anything. I even stopped smoking marijuana because I just wanted a nice clean break from all substances. Now, all I want to do is just put my life to an end

 

[paranoid android]

Withdrawal from xanax would no doubt cloud the diagnoses in my opinion atleast because it can cause really bad mood swings along with many other symptoms. Have you only seen one psychiatrist? If you have only gotten 1 opinion then id suggest getting a second and mention that you are withdrawing from xanax. Benzo withdrawal can most definetely cause suicidal thoughts.

I am diagnosed bipolar NOS as well. I was diagnosed about 4 years ago i guess and had my diagnoses changed once for no fucking reason other then to get rid of me by my first shrink. So suddenly i didnt have bipolar disorder and didnt need epival and seroquel . I went to another psychiatrist a few months after this and i was rediagnosed as having bipolar NOS. My symptoms don't fit into any neat catagory as i have rapid cycling, full blown mania, hypomania, mixed states, major depression and some psychotic symptoms.

Currently i am on seroquel as my anti-psychotic but i have zyprexa zydis as backup in case i really freak out. I am on lamictal as a mood stabilizer and it works great and i am also on wellbutrin as a anti-depressant which works good usually as well.

So even if you are bipolar there is no need to freak out as you can find the right combo of meds to help you live a happy life. It only took me about 3 years to finally get anywhere near stabilized and to this day i certainly have my moments where i get majorly depressed for weeks or go manic for a long time.

You gained 2 pounds in 2 days while on seroquel? How is that even fucking possible? Are you sure you gained 2lbs and the scale is not off? As for seroquel it can suck and it's not for everyone. Honestly i would say try a mood stabilizer before you try a anti-psychotic as they usually have less side effects. I don't know why doctors are so quick to write out scripts for anti-psychotics these days. They seem to hand out seroquel like fucking candy!

Anyways i would say get a second opinion if you can at all and if you are feeling suicidal go seek some help ASAP.

 

[das_feuer]

If you do not keep taking your medications you will die as a result of suicide or something epically stupid that you will do while manic. This is a fact of bipolar disorder. So long as you work to treat the disorder, though, you should improve. I am diagnosed bipolar I, and I can tell you that, after having tried many different medications over the last decade, it is always best to stay on your medications; if you don't something terrible will always eventually happen. Also, side effects from medications usually go away after a few months, so they won't necessarily be there forever.

In some cases, you may need to just end up dealing with certain side effects, but you should work closely with your psychiatrist and therapist to find the right medications and dosage for you. The goal is to keep you as healthy as possible with the fewest side effects.

Just stick with your treatment. It's going to be tough at times. Be glad you do not have schizophrenia. Be glad that you are pretty much always going to be fully in control of your life and what you can do with it as long as you remain in treatment. You just have a chronic illness of the brain, just like you can have a chronic illness of any other organ in your body. You aren't alone, there are probably plenty of support groups near you where you can meet other people who have been through many of the same things that you have lived through or that you may go through.

Oh, also, stay the hell away from drugs if you want to stay healthy, stay out of mental hospitals, and keep control of your life. You do what you want, but if you can walk away from that stuff now you'll be better off considering you know you now have a serious mental illness.

I am on Seroquel and it works quite well for me. I think I gained some weight in the beginning, but I lost anything that I had gained. I exercise regularly and eat sensibly and I've been pretty much the same weight since I started the medication.

 

[Bojangles69]

That is not a "fact" that is a prediction. There is a difference between statistics, predictions, and "facts". A fact means something is, a prediction means something MIGHT be.

I wasn't even aware they give seroquel to bipolar people but I guess it is somewhat of a "stabilizer" aka mind eraser. Its very possible that you were incorrectly diagnosed like panic said... or implied actually. Benzo wd and opiate wd alike can mimic bipolar systems. And the days you have that are "ok" or "bearable" a dr is likely to read as a minor manic state.

As far as seroquel however seroquels a very interesting drug. It always sucks in the begining imo but after 3-4 weeks TRUST ME you will not be feeling like you do now. Your body adjusts and you actually DO start feeling relaxed on it. That extreme lethargy/tiredness wears away along with the oversleeping.
I use to hate seroquel like nothing else when I started it, but by the time I got out of the clinic my body had already largely adjusted to it, and those terrible side effects went away. It will definitely leave you groggy, but at the dose you're on you're not even going to feel it in a couple weeks trust me. I was on 500mg and my body adjusted in a matter of 3-4 weeks. You're just going through the new user phase.
I suggest you take it for at least 1 month before deciding that its not helping your life.

 

[unknownxpleasures]

That's the thing though. Although I have racing thoughts and other things like that, I never have an "inflated sense of self image" in fact I always have felt very poorly about myself.

I feel like a lot of the "bipolar" symptoms I am experiencing are because of my xanax withdrawal, but that is not who I am or have been for the last few years! Even at the very low dose of 25 mg I have already had problems with motor skills and coordination, as well as restless legs. I was watching SLEEP last night and I was standing and my legs kept moving like jelly. Yesterday I was at a music festival with all my friends and I felt worse than I would have if I wouldn't have taken it the night before, I know it for a fact. I am usually very tactful and although not excellent at conversation, I can at least carry one. Yesterday I couldn't.

 

[PaulyPointz]

Not otherwise specified

I think we can specify that at least a big part of your diagnosis is Xanax withdrawal. Do you blow money when manic, engage in compulsive sexuality, or any other of the hallmarks of bipolar? You know, I talk out of my ass a lot, but I think in the future there will be a different perception of mental illness as more a spectrum of person tendencies than a hard definable disorder. People talk about things like bipolar and ADD like they are hard diagnosis like diabetes or AIDs, when all they are in truth is set of symptoms that by a psych's subjective evaluation of you supposedly match up with a list in a book, in the psych's perception of you over a maximum thirty minute evaluation. It is not like a bloodsugar reading or an aids test, hard data in other words. There is a lot of room for subjectivity in the diagnosis. Does anyone notice how much press attention bipolar has gotten in the last few years? Does anyone also notice how many commercials there are on TV for patented bipolar meds? What happened to ADD? Used to all you heard about was ADD but now bipolar is the big thing. Wag the dog, anyone?
The NOS aspect of your diagnosis tells me that many of your symptoms didn't match up with the DSM criteria but your agitation and racing thoughts pointed to bipolar, but not enough to differentiate between Biploar one or two, so they stuck your diagnosis under the catch all of NOS, not otherwise specified. Dig it?
In fairness and caution however, please don't take what I'm saying as a reason to stop treatment or throw away your pills. You may want to get a second opinion, however, and remember, psych's are failed MD's, they are not Gods. I'm feeling a little manic myself, come to think of it.

 

[paranoid android]

Racing thoughts can be caused by xanax withdrawal for sure. I never get the inflated sense of self image either but i do engade in many of the stereotypical hypomanic and manic behaviours such as lot's of drug use, increased sex drive which leads to increased sex if possible, other risky stuff like driving my bike on the road at speeds that most people wouldnt drive a car at, etc.

psych's are failed MD's, they are not Gods.

You are half right fuck knows they are most certainly not gods but they are MD's in canada. If they arent MD's they can't write a prescription for anything here. Or im pretty sure thats how it goes.

If you do not keep taking your medications you will die as a result of suicide or something epically stupid that you will do while manic. This is a fact of bipolar disorder.

This is by no means a fact! You won't automatically die if you have bipolar disorder and you don't take your meds. You have a much higher chance of dying young if you have untreated bipolar disorder but it's not a fact you will die if you don't take your meds.

I wasn't even aware they give seroquel to bipolar people but I guess it is somewhat of a "stabilizer" aka mind eraser

It is commonly used for bipolar disorder nowadays and i have to say that atypical anti-psychotics can help alot for certain types of bipolar disorder. They have the advantage of kicking in much faster then most mood stabilizers and anti-manic agents and when you need to calm the fuck down now they can certainly help that. Zyprexa zydis has saved my ass more then a few times when ive been suffering from mania or mixed state mania. Everyone reacts differently to these drugs though and i am lucky because i can tolerate anti-psychotics pretty well. In regards to mood stabilizers im talking about lithium and lamotrigine (lamictal) as they are the only 2 true mood stabilizers since they help both mania and depression though lithium helps mania more and lamotrigine helps depression more in alot of people atleast. As for anti-manic drugs the valproates (depakote, epival, epilem, etc just different names same drug basically) and carbamazepine fall under this catogory. A few of the newer anti-convulsants such as topiramate are also being used in this fashion.

Saying that i would still highely suggest that the OP get a second opinion because xanax withdrawal can account for alot if not all of those symptoms. I really don't like it when shrinks slap a diagnoses on people so quick either and they often do that especially with depression here. I remember when paxil and effexor first hit the market and id walk into a doctors office and practically have a sample pack of effexor XR tossed at my head . But these where GP's not psychiatrists and ive honestly never had a shrink push a med on me before. Well okay thats sorta not true as my first real psychiatrist who was a twat thought that gabapentin was a cure all for bipolar disorder and anxiety. I was already on it for neuropathic pain and it certainly did not help my moods! But this was her own ignorance and she gets a bad rep anyway.

I would suggest to keep taking the seroquel for now and get a second opinion. The dose of seroquel your on is not a anti-psychotic dose really and your mostly getting hit with the anti-histaminic effects now which can suck bad. But the side effects tend to go away quickly and although the weight gain can be bad from seroquel i don't think it's anywhere near as bad as weight gain from zyprexa or clozapine.

 

[unknownxpleasures]

I`ll definitely take your advice with a grain of salt, will definitely try to check with another doctor. I really don`t want to endure the shitty side effects =(

 

[unknownxpleasures]

Thank you Paranoid Android! I`ll definitely look into it more, might even take my dose tonight to see how I feel tomorrow! Thank you everyone for posting I appreciate it.

 

[leiphos]

seroquel is an anti-psychotic and is used for bipolar fairly atypically. you should ask her about mood-stabilizers like lithium and lamictal - more traditional bipolar medications - and ask her forcefully. you are the patient, you have a right to refuse or debate any medicine prescribed to you. do your research and present cogent arguments and you may get somewhere.

 

[FiatFlux]

why they are putting you on ONLY an anti-psychotic for your supposed bipolar NOS puzzles me.

imo seroquel is only going to make you feel shittier. if you have not had a major manic episode (as in type I bipolar), effectively removing heaps of seratonin from your brain will only push you into irritability, depression and despair (i have a bit of experience with hating seroquel and faulty bipolar diagnoses)

agree with leiphos, talk to your doctor and if you do feel you have bipolar, they NEED to put you on a mood stabilizer either instead of or in addition to an anti-psychotic. fwiw I was diagnosed with BP type II then BP NOS. it seems like a really trendy thing to be labeled BP in the psychiatric community, like ADHD in the 1990s. research the disorder, and try to look at your life as a big picture.. if you truly have BP, throughout your life probably and definitely by your late teens you will have pronounced up periods lasting at least a week (up to 3 months) and then pronounced, deep horrible depression (up to 12 months).. though you only need technically one manic episode to obtain the bipolar diagnoses, i STRONGLY encourage you to think about your sleeping and eating and spending and drug use patterns over the past and well if u are bipolar you will DEFINITELY begin noticing some correlations :S

 

[molly897]

it's hard to give things a chance when they do that to you. i really don't blame you, i'd do the same thing. whether that's the moral thing to do or not is up in the air but like you said, you don't feel comfortable. i ahd the exact reaction on SSRIs, was more suicidal than ever

 

[paranoid android]

why they are putting you on ONLY an anti-psychotic for your supposed bipolar NOS puzzles me.

imo seroquel is only going to make you feel shittier. if you have not had a major manic episode (as in type I bipolar), effectively removing heaps of seratonin from your brain will only push you into irritability, depression and despair (i have a bit of experience with hating seroquel and faulty bipolar diagnoses)

agree with leiphos, talk to your doctor and if you do feel you have bipolar, they NEED to put you on a mood stabilizer either instead of or in addition to an anti-psychotic. fwiw I was diagnosed with BP type II then BP NOS. it seems like a really trendy thing to be labeled BP in the psychiatric community, like ADHD in the 1990s. research the disorder, and try to look at your life as a big picture.. if you truly have BP, throughout your life probably and definitely by your late teens you will have pronounced up periods lasting at least a week (up to 3 months) and then pronounced, deep horrible depression (up to 12 months).. though you only need technically one manic episode to obtain the bipolar diagnoses, i STRONGLY encourage you to think about your sleeping and eating and spending and drug use patterns over the past and well if u are bipolar you will DEFINITELY begin noticing some correlations :S

I agree that putting someone on only a atypical anti-psychotic for bipolar isint a great idea. Some people can get away with it but i think a mood stabilizer or anti-manic drug with a atypical anti-psychotic is the best approach. Or perhaps just using the atypical anti-psychotic until the mood stabilizer starts to work as certainly not everyone with bipolar disorder needs a anti-psychotic. Many people do fine on medications such as lithium, lamotrigine or divalproex (depakote, epival) without taking a anti-psychotic.

I actually found that both seroquel and zyprexa had some anti-depressant properties of their own. Seroquel especially seems to help with the depression side of bipolar for some odd reason and seems to make the wellbutrin im on treat the depression side of things better. I would have to say i don't completely agree with your definetion of bipolar disorder as there are many different types of bipolar disorder and peoples symptoms can actually change over time. This happened to me actually as i have become more manic over the years . I don't think i first fit the type of mania that comes with bipolar 1 but i do get that full blown mania now that can last for weeks . Thankfully unless it's really bad i can nip it in the bud or as when i was really bad the spring take risperdal and zyprexa together! Now that is abit insane.

I do think the diagnoses is thrown around too much these days which is a sad thing as there are people who actually have bipolar disorder and this in some fucked up way diminishes just how bad the illness is. I would not wish it on anyone and that is the truth. Those long periods of depression that can last months, mania and last but not least the psychological torture that is a mixed state is nothing short of hell on earth. Also people get labelled as bipolar when they should be getting treated for something else.

I think this is alot more prevelant in the US then here in Canada as we don't have any atypical anti-psychotics that are still on patent except zeldox (ziprasidone) aka geodon and psychiatrists arent going to make any money pushing meds that are off patent. Im actually pissed that zyprexa zydis is no longer on patent because my shrink no longer gets free samples of it and i sure as hell can't afford the stuff.

 

[FiatFlux]

^ yea i know, there are all different types of bipolar... in my stoned brain i was trying to say something like "you would KNOW if you had a manic episode" and i know you can fly all around the bipolar spectrum from BPII --> BPI -- BPII (or only ever have 1 manic and not hypomanic episode) but just because the over-diagnosis of this illness i put up those time-frames. of course everyone is different. but the point is, what makes bipolar bipolar and not another mood disorder is the mania... OP having racing thoughts while withdrawing from benzos doesnt impress me as being anything that unusual. shit i have had the exact same thing after 7 years of heavy klonopin and ativan use, it lasted about 4 months...

& fwiw its coming from someone who has been in and out of mental hospital with fucking shrinks diagnosing me with everything from bipolar type 2 to panic disorder to adhd to drug-induced psychosis (at least i got the biggest cup of meds... ) my current diagnoses? fuck them, i am clean off meth, im not working in the sex industry nemore, and for about a year i have been off ALL my psych meds and in fact ive never felt better. I dont know what that says, I minored in psych at uni and used to have a lot of faith in it... now i think unless you cant get by without psych meds, you are better off without them in the long term (short term can be helpful).

 

[Colmes]

I was just diagnosed with Bipolar. The psychiatrist I saw this past week gave me a script for Seroquel 25 mg for two nights and then wanted me to increase to 50 mg a night every night. Truth is, I ALREADY HATE THIS MEDICATION. I have already gained two pounds in the last two days. I have restless legs, have a tendency to become hostile and agressive out of nowhere and I just don't even feel like myself!

I only took 25 mg for two nights and didn't want to take it last night. I feel like a zombie on this shit, and she wanted me to UP the dosage! I can't wake up from my sleep and my mouth is always dry

My question is, what do I do? I felt like I had more control over myself before I was on this shit. I've been having very clear suicidal ideations in my head since after the first night of taking this shit.

I should probably add that I was going through xanax withdrawal and I was trying to just get through it without anything. I even stopped smoking marijuana because I just wanted a nice clean break from all substances. Now, all I want to do is just put my life to an end

focusing just on the seraquel; there are other alternatives to that drug like geodon etc, for people who experience particularly bad side effects. Getting off xanax is...i dont even need to explain.

Whatever you do dont stop taking the meds. Find one you can deal with and keep taking it. You always hear those stories of people who stop taking medication due to feeling better or side effects, and end up having the mental illness really hit their life hard. goodluck

 

[UnSquare]

The Incredible Shrinking Profession

I think we can specify that at least a big part of your diagnosis is Xanax withdrawal.

Did your doctor know you were going through xanax withdrawal when he diagnosed you? And did you have these symptoms (racing thoughts etc) before you took xanax? If not, I'd try to get a second opinion from a different psychiatrist if I were you.

Hey unknownxpleasures,

IMO it is seriously poorly educated / uninformed doctors who
make ANY form of mental health diagnosis (and even
physical health diagnosis is extremely difficult) during benzo withdrawal.

If you answer the questions above people might
be able to help more.

But from personal experience benzo withdrawal can feel like a
lot of different things for a significant amount of time,
definitely including bipolar.

Have a look here for some of the shit people have go on-

www.benzo.org.uk

www.benzowithdrawal.com

PEACE
UnSquare