My minimal med regime
Currently I take 50 mg of Zoloft and 500 mg of Epival (that’s Depakote to those of you not in Canada) per day. Actually, I have very little money and no drug plan and take generics rather than brand name drugs, but it’s easier to say “Zoloft” and “Epival” than “sertraline hydrochloride” and “divalproex sodium.” This is the least amount of medication I’ve been on in eight years, barring the times when I’d decide I’d be much better without the drugs and would stop taking them all.
I used to take 200 mg of Zoloft a day, not 50 mg. I was on antipsychotics for about six years. For about a year and a half, I took an antidepressant, a mood stabilizer, an antipsychotic, and an antianxiety med every day, some of them multiple times a day. I haven’t been on a lot of different medications (only eight) because usually when something didn’t work, my doctors would just increase my dosage rather than try something new.
The side effects from all these drugs were bad, particularly from Dope-a-max Topamax and the antipsychotics. I was lucky enough to be one of the few people who didn’t gain any weight from antipsychotics, but the pills made me completely exhausted every day for years. That is no way to live your life. So a few times I stopped taking my pills, things would go all right for a brief period, and then the really bad episodes would come. It’s not as if the medication ever really stopped my mood swings completely, but at least it made me less likely to be severely suicidal or psychotically manic.
For a long time, I thought, as a lot of people think, that my only choices were being out of control or being a zombie. But these low dosages of medication are actually helping me without making me tired and confused all the time. Five hundred milligrams of Epival isn’t even supposed to be effective for bipolar disorder, but it’s helping. I’m a bit hypomanic right now; I get that way in the spring. So far, though, it’s hypomanic in a good way, and I’m keeping a close eye on the way I’m feeling and acting. If I start feeling hypomanic in a bad way, I’ll call my family doctor and/or my therapist. I don’t have a psychiatrist right now, but that’s a post for another day, or probably several posts for several other days.
I’m not saying that drugs are all I need to stay healthy. Oh, HELL no. There are a lot of things I need to do. Plus, I’ve been taking these pills at these dosages for less than four months, so I don’t know if they’re going to keep helping me for a long time or just suddenly stop working. But for now, it’s good.