Author: tearj3rker
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 8:35 pm
At times I’ve wondered what role Sub can play in my negative thinking. It’s really impossible to tell what is just an effect of the bipolar, and what is caused by the Sub.
While I can’t compare as much now because I’ve been on Sub so long, in the past I’ve thought that Sub made me a bit irritable and negative, and I had a belief that I was more prone to depression while on Sub. Naltrexone did a very similar thing – had this slight cold dysphoric edge that made me quite cranky. One of my ex-partners got VERY nasty while she was on Sub. We called it getting "bupe-cranky". Maybe it’s an antagonist-thing? Or something that happens when our endorphins no longer have any effect (as they do while we’re on opioid therapy of any kind).
How much of it is just me being bipolar, and me being bipolar on Sub, is really impossible to know … so I’m not going to say with any certainty that Sub contributes to my blues.
But I do know for a fact that it doesn’t act as any kind of anti-depressant.
Re your bipolar and meds. At the moment there is a large school-of-thought in American psychiatry that believe people with bipolar should not be prescribed anti-depressants ..at all.. I’ve largely found SSRI/SNRI’s to provide some relief for a bit, but I’d always end up self-destructing in some way while I was on them. It took years for my doctor to acknowledge that pattern (years that I won’t get back … anyway).
There are two mood-stabilisers that help with depressive symptoms as well – lithium and lamotrigine. I’ve found that on these medications, while I do still get depressed, the depression gets a bit blunted, or blurred out. They’re hardly depression busters like anti-depressants, but they do take the edge off.
I also take 5-htp which also blunts the depression a bit. I still go through dark periods, but they’re easier to manage.
