Is the antidepressant that has always helped me so much the reason I am struggling now? I have been thinking a lot about the medications I am on, and I am wondering how much my antidepressants are impacting my mood.

Prior to my diagnoses, I spent 15 years going on and off antidepressants.  It was very difficult for me and it seemed as though I was just “depressed” all the time.  Every time I would start the antidepressants, some would send me into a rage and fill me with hostility and anger, and others would put me in a beautiful euphoria.  I didn’t understand how critical it was to see a psychiatrist regularly to determine what would help me best.  Maybe I would have found stability sooner if I had found a good psychiatrist to monitor my medicine.  Hindsight is beautiful.

When I hit the most severe major depressive episode I’ve ever experienced last year, I was placed back on a better antidepressant that I was on before.  Once I reached a therapeutic dose, I was pushed into a full manic episode.

It was great at first, then it started making me and everyone around me wonder what was going on.  Two weeks later, when I went to see my doctor again, she told me what was happening and diagnosed me with Bipolar.  She decreased my dosage and started trying many different mood stabilizing medications.  It has been a process of trial and error, and I still have not found the “perfect” medicine to stabilize me, but we are close enough to where I do feel comfortable with the meds I am on.

A couple of years ago when I was on the same antidepressant I am currently on, Effexor XR, the doctor I was seeing wasn’t very good with treating me.  I believe I was put into a mild hypo-manic episode then, and when I would crash into another depression my dosage would be increased, the doctor thinking the dose was not right.

I had reached a level of 350 mg before I crashed into another major depression and my doctor decided to pull me off the medication stating it wasn’t working well enough.  Looking back, I kept going for that “high” and didn’t even know it, and was mistaking the low experienced after the manic episodes for the dosage not being correct.  The withdrawal I experienced coming down from such a high dosage was horrible.  The physical pain I felt scared me away from any medications for a long time.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, how antidepressants affect bipolar disorder, and how being placed on antidepressants over and over again has really impacted my rapidly changing moods.  I feel like I need the antidepressant to help keep me from the severe lows that I experience, but at the same time I feel like it is causing some mild hypo-manic episodes on a regular basis, which in turn throws me back into a depression again.  It seems it is creating a dangerous cycle for me and the highs and lows are getting extremely frustrating.

My doctor wants to take me off the antidepressants and just keep me on a mood stabilizer, but I am so scared of the depression I am very torn on what my next step should be.  Now, I am beginning to wonder if the antidepressant is actually causing more harm than good and maybe my “miracle” drug is actually causing the roller coaster of mood swings I’ve been experiencing lately.

I am curious if I am I the only one this happens to.

Photo by Edouardo Costa, available under a Creative Commons attribution license.

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    Last reviewed: 24 Feb 2011