Eugene_a

Well, here's my story. A bit long, but bare with me... I've been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder about 2 years ago. I had a very severe manic episode around the start of college, I guess it was triggered by the new stress, lack of sleep, lotsa drinking, smoking weed, girls, etc... And I mean it was bad, I didn't sleep for about 3 days straight and felt no exhaustion whatsoever. My mood was incredibly elivated. Had crazy delusional thoughts (that made perfect logical sense to me at the time). Started seeing things on my monitor and some auditory hallucinations as well. At one point I actually jumped through a first-floor double-ply glass window, luckily I didn't get hurt too bad, buncha cuts, few stiches, etc. So I was hospitalized after that incident, spent about 2 weeks in a psych ward, they put me on some haldol at first, then placed me on zyprexa, I seemed to be stabalized, so they set me free. I couldn't stand the side-effects of the med, so I stopped taking it... was fine for about another week... then got manic again, didn't do anything as crazy again, though. So I was hopsitalized for 2 weeks again. This time they put me on depacote (2000mg I think). I got stable again in the hospital, so they sent me home again, and I stuck with the med... then after 2 weeks I went manic again despite the medicine.

The third episode was the worst. Didn't do anything as crazy as preluding to the first episode, but it was bad. So they hospitalized me again... but I was way out of wack. Was in an incredible hyper rage and blacking out. Several times they had to subdue me with about 6 men. Couldn't remember half of what happened while I was in that state. I was locked in the "quiet room" for about a week. They gave me a huge coctail of pills, haldol, thorazine, other stuff... they tried lithium, didn't work. Then when I got a little better and they let me out of the quiet room, and try ECT(Electro Convulsive Therapy) treatments for about 2 weeks... seemed to have worked, but then the manic symptoms returned anyway after about a week and a half. So... then they placed me on the most hardcore medicine out there, closaril. That seemed to have done the trick, but the sideffects were awful. I took it before I went to bed, and it just knocked me the hell out. If no one would wake me up in the morning I'd sleep for 16 hours. And If I'd wake up only after say, 8 hours of sleep, I'd be a walking zombie. But... what other choice did I have? So I took a year off school while getting used to it, went to a little support group for a while because the whole experience left me completely demoralized, yadda yadda... but I was still an empty shell of my previous self. Then I started school again while on the med, finished my first year well enough... (almost failed one of my 8:00 am classes because of the damn med). So then after doing some research my mom stumbled onto something on the internet called EM Power, made by the company ******** (www.********.com). It's an alternative supplement to the traditional medication, but it's very new, untested, rather expensive (around $150/month), and isn't covered by any insurance. So we found a psychaitrist in the area who has some experience with switching people to it from traditional meds. He was a little concerned putting me on it because my symptoms were so severe, but in the end it came down to being my choice, and I wanted my life back, so I decided to go for it. So eventually I started taking the stuff and reducing the dose of my closaril. I have now been totally off the closaril for about 1.5 months, and things seem to be going well thus far... At first when getting off the closaril I started getting some withdrawl, shakes, sweating, feeling either hot or cold, excessive sweating, insomnia, etc. Most symptoms went away, but some of the insomnia remained. Usually I had no trouble going to sleep, but would wake up repeatedly in the middle of the night and would have trouble going to sleep again. But... over the last 2 days something changed to my concern. The previous two days I couldn't fall asleep almost at all, was up till 3 am... at which point on both days I took 5mg's of ambien to help me sleep... I'm hoping this isn't the start of another manic episode. And I have been feeling slightly more aggressive the last few days, but very slightly, and only towards the end of the day, in the mornings and most of the day I feel just fine, so maybe the aggressiveness/aginess is just a side-effect of the insomnia. And I don't really feel full of energy like before my first manic episode, still feel pretty tired from the lack of sleep, but when I try to go to sleep I just can't... I called my psychiatrist this morning about it and left him a message. Just decided to post this here because I'm a bit nervous, so if anyone has any feedback, or tried EM Power, any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks.

[This message has been edited by Eugene_a (edited 09-06-2003).]

[This message has been edited by Eugene_a (edited 09-06-2003).]

[This message has been edited by Eugene_a (edited 09-06-2003).]