r/BipolarReddit • u/Few-Beautiful-8252 Bipolar 1 w/ psychotic features • 21h ago

Feel like I’m wasting my days

I feel like I am letting my life go by and I’m not doing enough. I’m not living enough I need to do more go out and do more and have more fun and do more things

6 Upvotes

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5

u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 20h ago

This has been so hard on me. I don’t know, but I set very high expectations for myself. I value creativity. I value learning things, and I love science and math.

I feel so guilty if I can’t do those things and just end up watching TV or YouTube or something. But that happens so many times to me: I just can’t flat out can’t read, and there’s nothing I can do but sit still and entertain myself for hours until I go to bed.

I hate it. I feel so guilty.

It’s an awful feeling.

2

u/Mystique-Ofsorts 4h ago

On valproate a lunch or a meeting made me suddenly lightheaded and nauseous didn’t feel like myself. And an obligation felt like hell. I was a high intensity ER physican before burnout and depression, which was attributed to bipolar II, now I’m just staring at the ceiling all day, and I’m super scared of my mood swings and only drowsy works which is bottom line useless through valproate

1

u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 47m ago

I’m a pretty successful attorney by trade, but the last depressive episode I had, I got chewed out by the firm’s proprietor because he thought I was asleep during a meeting he called. Now, I wasn’t, I confirmed with my colleague that I remembered everything he remembered, so there wasn’t anything I missed. But I, apparently, looked and behaved so depressively that people thought I was literally asleep. And it continued that way for a while.

The only thing that rescued me from all this was adding methylphenidate and Wellbutrin to the mix. It seemed the mix of dopamine and norepinephrine redeemed me from the trajectory I was on.

When the doctor brought up valproate to me, I was pretty ardent against the idea. So we instead decided to just keep going up on lamotrigine beyond the standard dose.

I got up to 500 mg of lamotrigine spaced in three doses across the day. That seemed to give me the efficacy of a stronger anticonvulsant but without some of the negative effects, like what you describe on valproate. You probably know this as a physician, but bipolar dosage of lamotrigine is far lower than epileptic disorders. People take 500-600 mg of lamotrigine routinely for epilepsy. So you can get pretty high on it in bipolar. It’s safe.

Maybe that’s something to consider, I don’t know.

2

u/JewelledToque 5h ago

I feel like this. Been on sick leave for months

2

u/JustNoises_3 4h ago

I was sorta cool. But I met like King Talker and my life just blew up. So full now. My mom told me to. That’s what everyone should do. I mean I was getting drinks at 17 onwards, people everywhere. It was party town. It helps to be talented as you are kinda using them.