I\’m on my way off Trileptal and am going on Abilify — in other words, I give up. The Trileptal isn\’t controlling my mood swings at 600mg and my body can\’t tolerate the higher dosages. I keep slipping into mania then firing into depression. I don\’t want to fuck up and spend all our money or run off on an impromptu journey or something.
It\’s hard for me to \”admit\” — come to terms with — the fact that I can\’t just control this on my own. I have a mental illness and despite sometimes feeling like I should be able to manage it on my own — like managing diabetes with diet and exercise — I can\’t. I want to, but I haven\’t been able to. I don\’t know if it\’s just too hard or I\’m too sick or I don\’t have enough self-control or what, but it doesn\’t work for me. I need medication and I hate that, hate relying on pills.
Abilify is a big old anti-psychotic. Not as heavy duty as Lithium but up there. I\’m not pleased. I feel like it\’s a step backward, because for the past few years I\’ve been able to get by with just mood stabilizers and anti-depressants but no anti-psychotics. It feels sort of like I\’m regressing. I know that\’s how bipolar works — some years are better than others and it doesn\’t mean there won\’t be a time when I\’ll be able to drop the anti-psychotics again — but that unto itself is frustrating. Not being able to ultimately rely on my own mental stability, particularly in the future, is belittling.
I\’m hoping the Abilify works. I\’ve only been on it three days so nothing yet, of course. I\’ve been overall rather depressed with varying rapid cycling moments of mania for the past year and a half, which is pretty rotten.
Someone told me that he didn\’t think I was happy to be married because I\’ve been depressed since getting married. He said that wasn\’t normal; that if I was happy to be married, I wouldn\’t have become so depressed afterward. But it was a hell of a lot more than that; it was my grandfather deteriorating and dying, my two aunts dying, the situation around my other aunt, the depressing quest for a house, issues with my job, and just having bipolar in general which brings it all down. I don\’t know; I think he was out of line saying what he did. He\’s never been supportive of my decisions, particularly of my relationships. He said my wedding was like a circus…and I liked my wedding, except for the fact that we couldn\’t get the sound system to work. Bah. Friends…what are those?
