medication advice

schnitzel

i have been suffering from chronic insomnia for quite a while now. my psychiatrist thinks i have some sort of bipolar disorder, but i'm not so sure because i NEVER sleep. which means, i don't think i really go into the depressive stages anymore, though i maybe used to several years ago. to me it seems like i am just hyper manic basically. a couple medications i have tried that treat bipolar disorder (seroquil and zyprexa) did put me to sleep but had unbearable side effects. the seroquil gave me panic/manic attacks, and the zyprexa made me feel extremely depressed. on top of that, i could just feel that those medications were the most nocuous substances to be putting into my body. benzos do put me to sleep, but at this point when i take them and exercise, i get massive headaches that do not go away for like 6 to 8 hours. on top of that, those meds are pretty bad for you too, when you take them for a long stretch of time.

i'm wondering if anybody on here has experience with mania/bipolar, etc., and trazadone. i know this is used as a sleep aid for some people, but i also know that it is a psycho-active antidepressant. i have taken antidepressants before that have made crawl out of my skin. but i've read that trazadone is an antidepressant which often does not have this effect on bipolar people. i would just call me doctor (and might) and ask him if i could try taking it, but i have a feeling that he is going to say no, so i thought i'd try to get some other viewpoints.

also, has anybody ever suffered from insomnia and gotten any good results from acupuncture? I have heard that this can work for some people.

*edit: i have currently been taking lamictal for a month, and have just reached the dosage my doc wanted to get me too. i'm not sure if it would take another couple of weeks/month to actually feel the effect. but i think i read somewhere that it is similar to lithium, in that it is supposed to keep you from the highs and the lows (mood stabilizer). But when i took lithium, it actually KEPT me awake, more than usual. i would usually go several days without sleep but while taking lithium i, not exaggerating, went about 9 nights in a row without a single drop of sleep. If anybody has any opinions on how these drugs are related, that may help. but that might be something i should just ask my doc.

thanks for any advice.

ceres

You NEED to be talking to a psychiatrist who knows you. Even if anyone on this forum fits all the criteria you just listed, the effects of any mood-altering medication out there are highly individual.

schnitzel

i mean, that's probably true but ah, i don't know any psychiatrists. how can one become acquainted with a person without spending some time talking to them...

Feral

schnitzel wrote: »

i mean, that's probably true but ah, i don't know any psychiatrists. how can one become acquainted with a person without spending some time talking to them...

You said you have a psychiatrist. Are you saying he doesn't know you well? Perhaps you should see him more often. (Like once or twice a month.)

...

Anyway, to answer your simplest question, lithium and Lamictal are not particularly chemically related, and it's not really clearly known why either of these drugs work they way they do. There are ideas, but they're not firm.

Your other questions are complicated. You say you have insomnia; but you didn't describe why you think you are "hyper manic." (I suspect you meant to say hypo-manic.) It takes more than insomnia to indicate that somebody is going through a hypomanic stage. You say that you think that Zyprexa, Seroquel, and benzodiazepines are "nocuous" and "bad for you," when they're just medicines.

See, I'm all for people doing research on their own and trying to understand their own condition. But not only did you give yourself a suspicious self-diagnosis, but you also misused a medical term. I think you're overthinking things and you need to cooperate with your doctor more.