Immanence

New cocktail

After a period of mostly funny (except when racing thoughts outpaced myself, rendering me semi-catatonic) hypomania, I sunk into a mixed episode with marked strong dysthimic moments — to the point I couldn’t get out of bed from depression this wednesday.

I think this stems from my shrink wanting to wean me off of Seroquel (I had been so stable on Seroquel and lamotrigine for so long), starting rippling waves even after I resumed my normal doses of Seroquel. Still, his project is to wean me off the anticonvulsants this time, substituting them for more Seroquel and more Ritalin (I take the long-acting version for actual ADD, not as a pick-me-up pill) to compensate for the extra sedative effects.

The extra Ritalin has also an emergency antidepressant function here. Higher doses of Seroquel are supposed to kick in with an antidepressant effect, but my functioning was way too impaired by the severe dysthimic micro-episodes I was getting at random points of time. All in all, while I’m worried about the possible “flattening” effects of getting too far with Seroquel (we’re dosing it up 50mg at a time), the extra Ritalin did give me an extra kick while not giving me the full hypomania (racing thoughts, etc.) effect. At least not yet.

Current cocktail:

• 150mg Seroquel (dosing up 50mg at each check)
• 200mg Lamictal (have been tapering off from 300 for 10 or 12 days now)
• 20mg Ritalin LA + 10mg ordinary Ritalin (until my LA bottle is finished; then I’ll switch to 30mg Ritalin LA)
• 2mg clonazepam (my max dose was actually 4mg and I kicked off half of it because Ritalin made me calmer; I have some flexibility as for how much clonazepam to take)

Breadcrumb trails:

10mg, Anticonvulsant, Anticonvulsants, Antidepressant, Antidepressant Effect, Clonazepam, Cocktail, depression, drugs, Heck, Hypomania, Lamictal, Lamotrigine, mixed states, Mom, Norm, racing thoughts, Ritalin, Ritalin LA, Sedative, Seroque, Seroquel, Stems, ultradian cycling

Related posts:

• Three Buzzing Conditions The "three buzzing conditions" are epilepsy, bipolar disorder and migraine.The mainstream medical explanation for both epilepsy and migraine involve convulsions (seizures) triggered by abnormal electrical activity...
• Recently been taking antipsychotics All the drugs I've taken for most of my psychiatric life -- except for that brief contact with bupropion --...
• By the way, BTW I'm okay now. From that crazy desperate rant. I'm happy, plans for my birthday are going ok, etc. I...

© 2008 μ = m // dayvan cowboy // music is math ↵.