I was about to open a new topic, but here's a post on Bipolar disorder! I was diagnosed Bipolar-1 almost 10 years back now, and have struggled with various meds, one caused liver failure, currently on a mix of Wellbutrin and Abilify, and it seems to be doing the job.
However, I would love to be able to come off it. I firmly believe my severely unhealthy state majorly contributed to the issue. When I was diagnosed, I was at my heaviest. I noticed the same with Tirz, felt like the best mood stabilizer I have experienced thus far, and adding a little Reta perked me up a bit from flatness. Doesn't feel like the fight between depression and mania. It's incredible!
My question to anyone who has done this long-term or gone through a physical transformation is, does the disorder become manageable without meds if you are in a healed state physically? The physical and mental are so closely linked, I can only wonder and hope.
While not quite the same problem as bipolar, I have had fairly severe episodes of depressive illness probably starting in early high school. Over decades it gradually transformed into a more chronic rather than episodic problem, much less severe with treatment, but with some long term persisting symptoms such as anhedonia and low motivation. I have taken nearly every antidepressant there is either alone or in various combinations or with augmenting agents, and even had ECT once, which probably saved my life. At this point I am fairly reluctant to mess with long term medications as stability has advantages as opposed to the risks of stopping and changing everything which may or more likely might not help.
Weight has always been related to mood, and they are usually at their worst together.
In 2022, I was 145kg was no longer working due to depression plus covid which had combined to kill my business , had to sell my house and was living at my ex'es house, which due to her hoarding was a trashpile. Still glad she was OK with me staying there given my lack of options at the time. In some ways it turned out to help as I had to do something to get out of there and I was not capable of buying a new place or looking after it if I did buy one. I had trouble doing basic shopping and walking more than 50 m was exhausting. Physical health was pretty terrible as well.
So I started a diet, ate 1600 kcal/day, low carb, very high protein low calorific density and over the next year got to 75kg and had slowly built up some basic fitness by walking, at least enough to get me able to move around and do things so I could buy somewhere to live and finally get out of there.
At that point I believed GLP drugs to be impossible due to their price and I was not employed. But losing nearly half my body weight improved my overall mood , thinking and functional capacities a lot, probably at least as much as any antidepressant ever had. Losing the weight did not really solve the long term issues with anhedonia and low motivation but helped with my mood and ability to function overall to a fairly large degree. Given my past experiences I have basically zero interest in risking trying to get off antidepressants, it is possible they are not helping, but it is possible I could spend a year or more in a severely depressed state, trying different medications until I found something that worked, if I tried stopping them.
I would guess stopping mood stabilising agents with bipolar would depend a bit on how severe the episodes were, if they were landing you in hospital or in financial ruin or legal trouble from manic episodes when they happened I would argue in favor of being very careful and even then doing it with professional guidance and review might be a good idea. One of the problems with mood disorders , not that I have experienced the manic part is that you do not always recognise things are going wrong straight away, and it can get bad before you realise what is going on, this is a problem with depression I have experienced, and even more of an issue with mania.
Since then I started prescribed low dose ozempic which was not too expensive in Aus, but was more or less nauseous and a bit ill for the year I stuck with it as it was just worth it so I could be less hungry. Thankfully I discovered cheap chinese GLPs through this forum and started on tirzepatide 15mg with much less side effects and better appetite suppression , then added a bit of reta as well 5mg. No obvious effect on mood, but it made sticking to my diet and maintaining the weight loss a lot less difficult, currently at 65kg.
