Bipolar 2 Disorder

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Living with Bipolar Disorder: Benzodiazepine Dependence #BipolarDisorder #Bipolar1Disorder #Bipolar2Disorder #BipolarDepression

In January 2024 I was diagnosed with a benzodiazepine dependence. This was due to the constant prescription of Lorazepam (Ativan) I had been given on and off for the last several months leading up to January’24. I was to ween off by taking one tablet less each prescription. So, I was prescribed 28 tablets at first and took one each night, or day, depending on how much it affected me. The next prescription was a reduced amount of Lorazepam (24 tablets) and I didn’t take it on a certain day in the week and then it was 20 tablets and not taking it on 2 days a week but not two days together, I had to space it out, and so on and so on until I was down to a couple of days a week that I was taking it. It was then I was moved on to Diazepam for the last couple of weeks. This is because there is more control with the dosage of Diazepam at lower levels. You see, 1mg of Lorazepam is equivalent to 10mg of Diazepam. So when I was coming to the end of tapering off the 500mcg Lorazepam tablets were too small to split and there wasn’t a lower dose to prescribe so they used Diazepam to keep the reduction going. I had 5mg tablets, 2mg tablets and finally 1mg tablets. I’ve not had any issues since finishing the course of treatment, so I’m hoping that I won’t need any benzodiazepines in the future as they aren’t really suitable for my problems and as in this case of becoming dependent they were used as a stop gap.

#MightyTogether #Benzodiazepines

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A Song I’ve Written Called “Bipolar” #BipolarDisorder #Bipolar1Disorder #Bipolar2Disorder #BipolarDepression #Music

Here’s a song that I have written about Bipolar. It’s one of ten songs I have written about it and made in to an album titled simply “Bipolar”. I hope you like it and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the comments section below 🙏

#MightyTogether

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Thought of the Day 💭💬🗯️ #BipolarDisorder #Bipolar1Disorder #Bipolar2Disorder #BipolarDepression #Depression #Anxiety #MentalHealth

My thought of the day is what gives somebody the right to diagnose a person who is, according to them, suffering from an illness or ailment, or whatever else that it is, and they fundamentally don’t understand what it is that they are saying you are suffering from. This is something that they don’t fully understand. Not surprisingly then, they don’t know what you need to cure your newfound condition! 🤯

“Well, we don’t really know how this condition actually works or what is causing it Mr. Smith, but it is definitely what you’ve got”! 👨🏼‍⚕️👨🏻‍⚕️🥼😂🤦🏽‍♂️

It’s absolutely bonkers if you think about it! 🤣🤪🤯

#MightyTogether #SchizoaffectiveDisorder #Schizophrenia

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The Doctors Appointment #BipolarDisorder #BipolarDepression #Bipolar1Disorder #Bipolar2Disorder #Antidepressants

So, following on to the post I made about my upcoming Doctors appointment, I had nothing to worry about. Thankfully 😅

I had done my research and read up on everything I could from the books I had to establish a cognitive narrative that backed up my theory and my request. I went to my local Pharmacy with this yesterday and read it to the Pharmacist who concurred with me and I was asking him if I had any mistakes with regards to my medication interactions, but he said I had done very well and that he was impressed with how much detail, time and effort I had put into it. Now, I know not everyone is in a position to do what I did and I’m very lucky to be able to do this, but I think that if you have an opportunity to make your appointments more interactive experiences that involve ‘you’ being in the conversation, I would highly recommend that you give it a go.

In the appointment the Dr initially said that if I’m sleeping excessively then the antidepressant increase could cause this to get worse. I assured him I was going to be very stringent with my sleep schedule and concentrate on getting up at 8am. I think it’s easier to control your waking up time than it is your going to sleep time. I told him about my lack of appetite, loss of interest in doing things I enjoy (currently forcing myself to play guitar each day), low mood and self esteem, and lethargy in general. He was happy to increase my dose of Fluoxetine from 20mg to 40mg daily starting from now. He was also about to look up in the BNF if Olanzapine interaction would be affected by increased Fluoxetine, which I was able to answer for him as it was in my notes. There’s no implications reported. I felt a bit cheeky telling a Dr something he didn’t know about his own profession (I guess it is slightly more pharmaceutical in his defence), but I felt slightly guilty about it and embarrassed too. But hey, we’re working together at the end of the day aren’t we?

#MightyTogether

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Blogging and Writing ✍🏻 #BipolarDisorder #Bipolar1Disorder #Bipolar2Disorder

I started blogging in 2021 with the intention of creating a scrapbook if you will of all my thoughts and feelings about different things I have experienced and if my Bipolar had any influence on my perspectives and opinions. I found that writing was the best way to cope with my extremes of Bipolar as it occupied my mind and focused my attention on the writing and away from the nonsense that I had reverberating around my head. It started with only a solitary word that I wrote but I was thinking about the words and not the nonsense in my head. Slowly the one word became 2, which then became 3 and so on until I was writing full sentences. From these I tried to make a paragraph out of them and join them together as best I could as they weren’t really in a narrative that was comprehensible to understand. Since this I have written 27 songs about Bipolar and associated things that it brings. I have written 3 short books too. I’m under no illusion about these being any good or great pieces of work but I am proud of myself for doing it. I’m an example of how you can make a negative situation become a positive one. I don’t have the answers for anything about Bipolar Disorder but I do have some insight into how to deal with things that I can offer to help others. I have been a far worse person than most people, meaning that I can help others and relate with them in their journeys, as I’ve come back from the abyss and I can now tell the story of how I attempted to get out of it, and maybe even give someone a chance to do it too.

My blog is a collection of accounts of Living with Bipolar Disorder, explanations of the medication used, links to the 3 books I wrote, funny bipolar memes, quotes from a selection of people, a lot of philosophy of the great Alan Watts (someone I highly regard and someone I relate to completely), songs of the day, music polls, stories of my escapades and shenanigans, Fight Club influenced perspectives on different topics, I have actually written a narrative using quotes from the film Fight Club that forms a different narrative all on its own that I’m pretty proud of, it’s pinned on my home page so it’s the first thing that you see.

If you want to check it out then there’s a link below 👇🏼

livingthebipolardiary.wordpress.com

#Writing #copingskills #MentalHealth #MentalIllness #MightyTogether

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My Bipolar Perspectives of a Unipolar World

We’re all individually unique, yet we’re all fundamentally identical
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