lithium/depakote/tegretol/seroquel/abilify/olanzapine/lamictal

[adel_ezz]

please mark one you found effective and worked as monotherapy in your view and with little adverse effects (all have them but i mean relatively speaking) especially the one with the least antidepressant needed.  just mark and no need to explain. as you know i mixed AC's with AP's

this will help me choose one
thanks

[freebird227]

Seroquel and Kolopin have been my saving grace of combinations. Took several years to get this stable, with many, tooo many depressive eposides B-4 my current  cocktail. I take most of my seroquil@night 200mgs.@ bedtime.and I take 1 50 mg. during the day. Kolopin is 0.5mg x3 daily, I usually take 2.I am also a recovering addict of 25 years and have only been medicated for the last 7 years ( I THINK ).............I am very diligent with my meds, I don't miss and I don't mis use. Good Luck~

[bpchrisb]

Lamictal has been a great medication for me but I have to compliment it with Neurontin.

Many shrinks believe that Neurontin is simply an anti-anxiety medication but it can work well as a mood stabilizer. It got a bad reputation because of the way it was marketed by the drug companies; they pushed it for BP without doing any research.

The research on it hasn't been very conclusive as it, but it works well for me. Pdocs tend to stray away from medication that haven't cut the mustard with the studies. However, when you look int a lot of these studies, even the best medications out there don't beat the placebo by much.

[adel_ezz]

thank you for your feedback

If i am to do some thoughts on the meds alone. My heart tells me the best combo is
either

lithium + abilify

or

lamictal + seroquel

[LostGrrl]

I don't think you can stay stable for long with only one drug in your system(IMHO), it's the nature of the beast to swing either way.

Maybe I'm Devil's Advocate, but you'd take a poll to see what med you'll take? I talked to my pdoc last week about side effects that are possible. I personally don't worry myself too much, OR I could get paranoid that any of the symptoms could happen. I never looked at drugs like Ibuprophen aka Motrin, the list of side effects which are pretty high if not higher then most drugs out there. A majority of people taking it get heartburn.  I should also add that if one person gets a specific side effect they have to report it, even if 999 other participants did not have that symptom, by law they must.
Just food for thought, I hope you find the right cocktail of meds :)

[starbunny]

Wow, I thought that people could be treated with one medication. I was on tegretol alone for about 4 years and had to increase the dose repeatedly until I was on the maximum. Even then I eventually had a manic episode and Seroquel was added which stabilised things somewhat. I have been advvised to add an AD to the mix but have a fear of it making matters worse. Adding medications make me nervous because I worry that I will not ever be able to go off them once I start and fear ending up on loads of different meds.

[moonpanda]

I tried Lithium monotherapy for a little over a year. It did stabilize me, relatively speaking. I only experienced slight fluctuations for the most part. Mood stabilizers are pretty much expected to at least increase the time of stability between episodes, and so in that regards, it was helpful. However, when I was met with a slew of major life stressors within a short span of time, I did experience several very bad mixed episodes, and the Lithium wasn't enough on its own.

I'm currently on Lamictal, but I was only on it as a monotherapy for a short time. It wasn't really yet a therapeutic dose, so I can't really give a proper rating to its efficacy alone.

I wish I had a good, definite answer for you. But out of the two stabilizers I've tried, Lithium has been alright. Not perfect, but alright. But remember, these things are different for everyone. Good luck!

[dragonflynda]

My pdoc has told me that with bipolar, one medication can't treat the disorder if it is truly bipolar.  From everyone I know with bipolar, this seems to be the case.  

I have been on various medications, including Abilify and Lamictal.  Abilify made me gain a lot of weight so I came off of that.