Today hasn’t been a good day. I slept until 5 pm, mostly because I took a Zopiclone (7.5 mg) last night to help me sleep (I mistakenly called it Clozapine in an earlier post, which I’ve since corrected). As it turns out, I’ve taken it before, under the name Imovane, which I realized when I [...]

Mood charting was one of the first things I had to do when I was hospitalized. It’s the easiest way (I’ve found) to keep track of my ups and downs. I was in the habit of doing a mood chart daily for the first couple of years after my diagnosis – mostly because I was [...]

Yesterday I had an interesting email conversation with a friend. I had been discussing the blog post on side effects, and how my doctors didn’t tell me about so many of them, and she said, It’s true, they don’t really tell you about the side effects of medications… especially if you mix it with alcohol! [...]

When people hear about someone being manic-depressive, the first thought seems to be towards the mania end of the spectrum. The depression is easier to understand – we’ve all been there in some form, right? You can make a reasonable guess as to how manic-depressives behave when they’re depressed. People have a more difficult time [...]

Wow, talk about rapid cycling. Yesterday I was feeling pretty good. I had been sleeping well all week and had even been early for work every day. Work was going well, and I hadn’t been reamed out for sleeping in that day, which was top of my list of worries. Then, for no apparent reason, [...]

Ah, side effects. As I was preparing to write this post, I decided to research as many medications as I could remember being on. (I know it sounds weird to say I don’t remember some, but I really don’t.) Since many of them have the same side effects and warnings, I’m just going to go [...]

There are many people out there who truly believe that depression and bipolar (and schizophrenia, etc.) are not real illnesses but rather are caused by a “weakness” in the person, or by external situations or events or people or lifestyles. I never thought about it before I was diagnosed. It was always called a “mental [...]

So I went on a date last week. It’s been two years since I had a real first date, with my ex. This guy, we’ll call him Joe, for the sake of anonymity, is really great. He’s a couple of years younger than me, going back to school for his MBA. He doesn’t live in [...]

For the second time in two weeks my illness has affected my work. The last time I let this happen was in fourth year of university when I slept through a final exam. Luckily I had a friend who helped me get out of that one – not only that, he helped me get all [...]

It’s been a while since I was officially diagnosed. Even longer since I first started showing symptoms. But I’m really only just coming to terms with the fact that this is a disorder that I’ll have for the rest of my life. Even if I do manage to stabilize, odds are I will never come [...]