BiPolar - Generic Rant

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Today, I have a cold and I feel incredibly depressed and just want to throw my life away, and I feel incredibly tired and could sleep for hours.

I've been feeling like this for about 2 days now.

Before this, (as well as having depression in the back of my mind these days), I've been in manic phases with buzzes and pointless excitement moments in the early hours of the morning hence, no sleep, and during the day of these manic phases I just feel like I'm on top of the world.

Now, I had these manic blips every now and then in December, which suggests much faster rapid mood cycles, but now in January, I had a manic phase for a week or 2 before crashing back into a worse than normal state of depression.

I've been depressed for over 20 or so months now and I don't think the Prozac's done this to me seeing how I've been on Prozac since March/April time.

I think my generic depression has developed into some kind of BiPolar State.

Any advice? Help? Suggestions?

If you don't already do this, you might keep a record of your daily mood swings. There is a good chart available online from the Black Dog Institute:

http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/docs/moodchartbp.pdf

On it, you can make notes about which meds you take, how much, what time of day, events that had an effect on your mood, or anything else you feel is relevant. (Over-the-counter cold remedy, perhaps?)

Prozac can provoke hypomanic episodes in some individuals. If this is happening to you, your doctor may wish to change you to a mood-stabilising medication instead. Keep a record, watch for patterns or triggers, and take all this info to your doctor for discussion.

P.S. Best wishes.

Regardless of diagnosis, mood stabilizers often help with mood swings. It's recently been decided I'm not Bipolar (I had been diagnosed as such in the past), yet anticonvulsants/mood stabilizers help my mood a lot (I'm on Keppra). Antidepressants make me physically ill and crazy.

I agree about trying to record your mood changes until you see a doctor.

The Prozac doesn't feel like it's provoking me.

But I wish to stay on it, because it has lowered my anxiety and stress levels.

The more typical antidepressants didn't work for me. It took a mood stabilizer. Here's the thing, we're all different and react differently. If this one helps and you feel it does, state it very clearly and if need be, strongly to your doctor. You are the only one that knows what's going on inside. And in my case I have a hard time in words getting it across clearly. They have a way of almost bulling you into a change and in at least my case going back to something that worked better, was no longer there, did not work when I go back on that med or dose. I have no idea why this is, but it is. Make sure you are comfortable with doing a med or dose change before you do it, make sure you have given it enough time, don't let them rush you. I have also found and this depends on what they might think your DX is, that sometimes what the recommended minimum effective dose is, I can go lower and still receive another level of the med. This doctor finally understands this and agrees, although he's a stick in the mud with saying there is AS involved, my councilors disagree, but I digress. (I can make eye contact, there for I am not an apsie, sheezus) With Bipolar sometimes a "drug cocktail" is needed, in other words more then one at the same time. I still have swings but they're very mild and some are just plain triggered events. The most beneficial thing that has come out of this is it has reduced stress some what and gotten the brain race under control better. The brain race is the biggest change other then being more in the middle of the over all feelings. What I now see happening, over time, very subtly is my over all feeling is starting to change. In other words, 50 some years of living with this, I'm seeing a change just due to not being in a constant state of flux or a low. My manics hardly tipped the scale of 0, but when they did, yikes, what a ride and believe it or not, they can be a bit addicting. One of the reasons some of us with BP go off meds, we miss out little friend the manic, the good manic that is, more then one kind of those too. Miss those months of endless depression? You can bet the farm I do not. Finding the right med, if that's what you need to do, can benefit your life in ways I can't begin to fully explain. Sometimes it takes a good deal of time to do it, but believe me it is so worth it, if conditions are calling for it.

There are things that can mimic Bipolar and combinations of things that can mimic it as well. Look carefully with a pros help to weed them out. The diary approach is excellent and spare no detail and I mean right down to what might set you up for something on TV, like the news. A good DX is worth it's weight in gold.
The best of luck to you.