I ’m No Psychopharmacologist

The summer of 2018 went fine. Tommy, my 13-year-old son, was enrolled in several summer camps, which he enjoyed; we had no discernible immediate family issues, and I was in a complete bipolar remission. It felt good to feel good. But then, the school year rolled around, and I got stressed out. I was teaching two writing courses at a local college, and I noticed a big difference between the calm I’d felt over the summer and the tension that going back to work brought on. There were classes to plan and papers to grade. There were names and faces to learn and personalities to try to understand. Pretty soon, I found myself a little hypomanic. I couldn’t sleep, and I felt myself living on the edge of reality, which was a feeling I hated; the ideas of reference were returning. Ideas of reference are when a person believes that small, random incidents have important personal meaning. To compensate for this abnormal rise in my mood, I took myself off the 20mg of Cymbalta which I’d been taking for about a year and a half. My ex-psychiatrist, who had recently retired and who I’d trusted with my very life, had given me “permission” to do this whenever I felt myself get too high. All I had to do was call his office and tell him that I was going off the med, and his nurse would record the change in my file. I discussed my prior medication change process with my new psychiatrist, and he was completely on board with it. OK, so all was fine and dandy. I quickly came down off my h...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Antidepressant Bipolar Medications Personal Psychotherapy Bipolar Disorder Depressive Episode Hypomania Manic Episode medication change Psychopharmacology Source Type: blogs