thread on which to be factitiously Mentally Normal (NOS)

[Mitchy1nge]

nobody was wondering but not only am I still alive, the horribleness of my back pain has completely stopped is all a bit tender and traumatised but hooray for me

and partial hooray for the weirdness that is tramadol I suppose

I have no answer but if you figure it all out please tell me.

maybe the modest magical properties of lithium will help us :)

I discovered I'm on 400mg and I was sure I was on 200. Oh well.

No hungry people came, just people who wanted to chat which is fine but someone ate 13 custard creams and I don't know what to do about that other than comment on the internet about it.

that is still a very tiny amount, although the idea is to take as little as is therapeutic of course, but it will probably go up unless you are already feeling some benefits of it?

I only take heroic doses when I'm Being Mental in either direction, will be good if can stay normal at this amount because had forgotten the hydration challenges of long distance running and lithium. Is ok for now but runs of 15 miles and upward can be hard.

13 custard creams! daring new use of biscuits as endurance sport! that is quite impressive, who was it?

A food bank volunteer. His plan seems to be to eat all the food provided for Very Hungry People without being aware he is not being Normal.

On this dose I am being pretty mentally normal - all meals stay within me and I have not attached my arms with sharp implements for nine days, so it is doing something. Still Very Sad sometimes but haven't talked too much for a little while.

I'm currently being successfully Mentally Normal on phenelzine, though the sleepiness and headaches are getting me down a bit. Achieved a decent night's sleep thanks to my Christmas present hot chocolate and managed to avoid zopiclone (which I have decided never to take again, along with any other hypnotic/anxiolytic, after discovering an observational study from a couple of years ago in which people who took as few as 18 doses a year of benzos/z-drugs/select other hypnotics were at 3.5 times greater risk of death in the next couple of years than similar people who didn't take those drugs and significantly higher cancer rates too).

I appear to have caught a cold, though. Misery misery sad sad.

Enpoid's Big List of Drugs She Will Not Take is getting longer - second-generation antipsychotics, first generation antipsychotics (except phenothiazines for nausea), SSRIs/SNRIs and similar, valproate, carbemazepine, lithium, TCAs, benzos when up, and now benzos and non-benzos at any other time.

My psychiatrist is going to be pleased.

Luckily, I can still have this if we ignore the caffeine and theobromine (bad with MAOI) and the saturated fats (must pay attention to cholesterol and triglyceride levels) and sugars (sodding diabetes) in the milk.

CarbAmazepine.

mad cancerous friend fucking loves her carbamazepine though am never quite sure what it actually does for her or anyone with bipolar, but I didn't know her before she was on it and think she only tried lithium before that

how can anyone not like benzos though?

I have a never say never approach to most drugs, even some of the prescription ones

how can anyone not like benzos though?

When they kept pushing benzos on me a few weeks ago when I was slightly up, they had odd effects on me. I took diazepam as suggested by an OOH doc and it had essentially no effect, I took several times that dose of diazepam as suggested by a CPN I saw at one point (the whole "keep taking more tablets until you feel they're working" thing) and did manage to go to bed rather than stay up dancing all night, but lay there with my mind buzzing horribly listening to Hung Up for hours, and then when I took clonazepam, I ended up dancing/running down the middle of an A-road with my eyes closed, singing, absolutely sure and certain that no car could hit me They do bad things to me when I'm up - other times when I took clonazepam they massively harshed the high and instead of being able to work off a nice clean high in a happy way, the energy couldn't go anywhere and built into a dirty, black, irritable panic - I got angry at a friend and shouted at her down the phone, calling her a misogynist

They are very effective for anxiety, though; so effective that I avoid if at all possible because it's too easy to get hooked. I've known several people addicted to heroin and benzos who have a far easier time getting off the heroin.

If I'm low they just make me sad/sleepy.

yeah, at least heroin withdrawal isn't fatal unlike benzos which actually can be

(I think they kept pushing the benzos at that point because the crisis team don't know me so they assumed I was hypomanic and that benzos would help.)

I think it's probably sensible to have a "never say never" approach, but my Big List is of things I really would rather avoid if at all possible.

Heroin is actually pretty benign stuff if you can get a clean supply - there are lots of things that are much worse. Long-term, cocaine and crack seem much more damaging, at least for people I've met personally.

it's just the treatment for elation isn't it, benzos and antipsychotics

I don't know what else there is? apart from anticonvulsant-as-antimanic type things or lithium

this reminds me to check in on #1 who will prob have to stay on antipsychotics for a few months at least :(

I'm glad the lithium seems to be helping you Caulky

Why treat elation if the treatment turns it into bonkers disinhibited risktaking or black angry agitation? Benzos don't work for me.

Hope #1 is okay. Antipsychotic side-effects can be really unpleasant

why treat? well, chronic mania is A Really Bad Thing even if it is rare and that can and does happen so that's one reason I guess

in #1's case in just a few weeks she has bought: a car, a house, taken out a lease on an expensive flat, taken on an additional 45 hours a week of work (on top of a full time, not sure what she counts as full time, but over 40 hours, and a part time - one full day - job, and her OU study which is 120 credits this year which is also fairly 'full time') spent thousands of pounds on crap, utterly mad crap, very out of character, and she has been wandering in and out of shops not paying for things, stealing random crap but not acknowledging it as theft or showing any awareness of the seriousness of it at all. If she is convicted of an offence of dishonesty she is fucked now and for all time.

as far as psychiatry goes mania is as close to a clinical emergency as it gets, and it is terrifying

but is maybe a different animal to a milder state that has a beginning and an end, like a cold

the side effects can be grim but not really comparable with what lies ahead if left untreated by this sort of stage, if that makes sense

that doesn't mean I'd support very long term treatment necessarily, we will have to wait and see, but ideally she should start taking even something like seroquel and stay on it for a bit (she won't at the moment )

Yes, obviously mania needs treatment and is a proper severe emergency. It's just that you asked how someone could not like benzos, and I just meant that for me personally, when I didn't have mania but just some mild elation, the benzos didn't help but made things worse, and I preferred the elation. So I was saying why treat that slightly elevated mood IF the treatment makes it worse, not that actual mania shouldn't be treated IYSWIM. I didn't mean at all to minimise how ill #1 is - my comment wasn't really related to that but I can see how it all got a bit mixed up with what I was saying before.

I hope she improves soon on the antipsychotics.

Sorry if I've annoyed you Mitchy; I know I'm being irritating.

Have you decided on lunch yet? I had some houmous and carrot, and some yoghurt.

oh right

I don't know, how or why would a mild elevation in mood, within a normal range, come to the attention of a psychiatrist? something somewhere must be worrying enough for people to drag you to the dr in the first place, there must be some disturbance in behaviour or functioning?

you're not annoying me, am in that 'transmit only' mode where I don't really take in incoming information but rather just broadcast random thoughts

there is a basic spinach and feta omelette under the grill :)