Do any of you genuinely feel happy, motivated, creative, and inspired on bipolar meds? Or are you mostly just stable and getting by?

I’m male fresh adult . I tried Seroquel and stopped in less than a week because I felt exhausted, sluggish, and constantly hungry. Lamictal didn’t work for me either.

I’m wondering if I just haven’t found the right medication or combination yet. Can you actually thrive on these drugs, or is there always a trade-off? Do you still feel like yourself? What about your energy, creativity, sex drive, and passion for life?

I’m not expecting constant euphoria or mania. I just don’t want to feel emotionally neutered in exchange for stability. Have any of you found medication that lets you feel genuinely happy and alive, rather than just keeping your head above water? I want honest answers.

I've lived with bipolar disorder for 8 years. Lithium has kept me steady, but I've never had many people to talk to who understand this in an Indian context, with the family misunderstanding, the stigma around psychiatric medication, and the pressure to "just be strong."

If you're in India and have bipolar disorder, I'd love to hear from you:

1.How did you get diagnosed, and how long ago?

2.What's been the hardest part?

3.What has genuinely helped?

Share as much or as little as you like, in the comments or by DM. This isn't about medical advice, just community and feeling a little less alone.

Besides the obvious antisocial or narcissistic spectrum. Any other type that really is hard for you to get a long with and why do you think that is?

How long does it take for the body to adjust with the bipolar medications? Or is it expected to always live with the side effects of medications which is pretty dificult to say the least?

I recently compiled a list of Redditors responses to this question and summarized it into a Medium post. I thought some of you might find it interesting.

https://medium.com/life-with-bipolar/what-people-with-bipolar-disorder-wish-you-understood-4f792b960b6c

Context:

I have Bipolar 1.

My depression started last 2016/2018.

My mania started last 2024.

My first hallucinations started when I was 5-7yo.

Current situation:

My lows are getting lower and lower.

My suicidal side is stronger and stronger.

My hallucinations are extremely aggressive.

I had my first hospitalization recently on top of the ER visit due to extreme symptoms.

I have developed auditory hallucinations

I have been rapid cycling since 2024

My maintenance meds are not working enough

I hate meds but believe they are necessary and now I've realised that I might need a new maintenance med on top of the other one cause it was no longer working the way it did. Even my psychiatrist seems stumped with what to do to help me.

Based on how stuff is progressing, with my disorder getting worse and my body adapting to meds/needing new maintenance meds even if I was only on them for 2 years (a mood stabilizer) or even as less as 6months (an antipsychotic which stopped working), I'm kind of scared for the future.

And please don't call me anxious. I am not.

It's just natural to worry when you see a downward pattern that even your best efforts could not stop.

Does anyone also have this same worry?

Im crying right now cause life is so cruel and I am sooooooooo exhausted. I am only 26.

Just want to hear other opinion about this because sometimes i feel like it’s helpful but sometimes i feel like it’s making my depression worse hahaha

If I haven’t achieved compete nihilism, I’m close. I never intended to not care about anything… I just stopped. I wish I was still the person I used to be who loved my family and friends and life.

I don’t care to get out of bed anymore. I haven’t left my bed in 2 months.

I have no one to talk to. I do not shower. I barely eat.

The only thing I feel is emptiness, regret, and hatred.

Is my situation hopeless? I don’t try to change anything because there’s no situation where I would be happy. I cannot make friends. I’ll never find love. I have no interests.

Would a medication help? I don’t even think I want to get better. I just know ending things would be better than scrolling for 16 hours a day, but I lack the motivation to even do that.

When times are good, I can manage to stay afloat. But when things go to shit, especially things that I have no control whether it the state of society and the economy, I feel like we're the first to fall through the cracks.

Since my manic episode two years ago, I’ve managed to stay at the same job doing IT support. For context, I usually only last about 18 months to two years at a job before I either get burnt out or have an episode that causes me to quit or get fired.

I work full time, Monday through Friday, with a round-trip commute of over 1.5 hours. It’s a real slog, and I spend most of my weekends just trying to recover from the workweek.

The past few weeks have been especially rough. I’ve had some pretty shitty things happen, including my car breaking down on the freeway in the middle of rush hour. Ever since everything happened, work has felt so much harder to manage. My insomnia has gotten so bad that I’ve had to call out twice in the past two weeks.
I’m at the point where I just want to give up on working altogether, or at least cut back to part time. Unfortunately, my company has fewer than 15 employees, so FMLA and short-term disability aren’t options for me. I’ve also exhausted all my PTO until next year.

I’m coming up on two years at this job, and I’m genuinely proud of myself for making it this far, especially considering my history. But I’m also so fucking tired of trying to hold down a full-time job while juggling multiple mental health diagnoses. It feels like just getting through a normal workweek takes everything I have, and there’s barely anything left of me afterward.

I’m completely tapped out. I don’t necessarily hate my job, but I fucking hate how hard it is to keep working when I’m already struggling so much just to function. I wish I could be done.

I started a new job as a teacher a little less than two months ago. I really like teaching, so that is not a problem, but the stress is. I am only working part time, but still I'm not managing well with the stress. I work a few hours each morning + commute, and then I work another extra hours from home in the afternoon doing private online classes. I usually start my day at 8am end at 18pm, with some slots of free time in between that I don't use because I am mostly preparing classes or wasting time.

I've been having some mental health symptoms lately, mostly feeling of emptiness and boredom and exhaustion and anxiety unless I'm at work. And reoccurrence of self harm behaviors. I don't feel depressed or manic, I just feel bored and empty and like my life is very limited by time and mostly, finances, bc I make very little money.

There are still things I want to do and would enjoy, but time and money don't allow me to do any of them. So I'm mostly bored, empty and understimulated. It's like the things I want to do are not available to me, and that's frustrating.

I'm taking lamictal, latuda and trazodone. No psychosis since starting latuda, so that's neat. I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar subtype. I barely ever go manic/hipomanic, but I'm depressed many times a year.

I'm at a new job and this is my third day. I keep fucking up and I feel completely incompetent at what I'm doing and the owner of the company is really against praise or being nice and it's causing me to lose sleep and cry for hours after I get home unless I take a klonopin or olanzapine and I can't do that every night but I am unable to fall asleep or sleep through the night because I'm so anxious and overwhelmed by everything. More importantly, I keep thinking about killing myself or self harming incessantly every time something goes wrong. I'm so out of my league in this job and I don't want to be fired and I want people to like me but I feel like a fucking idiot. I am working as an activities director in memory care along with another AD that's significantly more qualified than me. I just need someone to help. What do I do?

I don’t want to keep getting a job then getting fired then getting a job then getting fired. I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life but I’m scared.

Been trying to be really consistent with my sleep routine lately given how crucial it is for us bipolar peeps. I’ve been trying to get 8-9 hours a night but wondering if I’m almost sleeping too much and 7 hours would leave me feeling slightly ,ore refreshed than groggy. What’s your sleep schedule/volume look like?

​

I went to my psychiatrist today. I have been feeling a very different type of depression for three weeks. I am not suicidal, but it comes with an intense hopelessness and hypervigilance and some psychosomatic issues.

I firmly believe that this mood episode is from ongoing issues I had with a colleague of his. He works out of a hospital, and I encountered her in the ER. She wrote lies about me that were pretty significant, and when I complained to the regulating board, she claimed I was self harming and doing drugs around my kid. They believed her and wouldn't allow me to enter evidence contrary to that accusation.

Anyways, I've been traumatized by the situation. A doctor who was supposed to help me, betrayed me for seemingly no reason. I am now trying to figure out how to live with this false accusation. It has been honestly devastating.

My psychiatrist thinks that this has nothing to do with his colleague and is a typical Bipolar depression. He upped some medication and honestly I hope it helps.

I don't know how things are going to play out if I just don't get better because this is rooted in trauma, not Bipolar.

**For those of you who have both trauma as an adult and Bipolar, how does your psychiatrist approach your treatment?**

Especially depression. I don’t just mean making you feel guilty for what you’re experiencing, but wanting to push you over the edge.

Is it ok for me to post in this community? if I am “undiagnosed”. I use quotation marks because I have done so myself. I am very certain I am bipolar 2, among other things. My circumstances are unusual and as a result I’ve never sought help. I think that it might be time to do so. but I am very scared to.

I have bipolar 2. My current antipsychotic wears off in the evenings, leading to psychosis and mania. This is the best tablet antipsychotic I can take.

There are multiple injectible forms of this medication that last for close to a month, so I wouldn't have these long periods of mania and psychosis. However, they don't seem to be covered by my insurance, meaning I'd have to pay out of pocket.

I looked on GoodRX, and it only covers a lower dose (I need the maximum dose), and only every four weeks, for over $2,000.

Does anyone know any other way I can afford this medication and not be sick?

Hey guys, I started taking escitalopram(SSRI),lexapro and almost immediately I noticed I'm a different person with massive amount of energy, happy, restless, I started doing things I would never do couple days ago and stopped things I did. After couple days this turned into a fury I was obsessed over my therapist and called her a murderer and all those things. I felt like I really wanna hurt her. I was really furious or still am. Now the therapist suggested I might be bipolar. I went to my psychiatrist and after maybe 20 minutes talk she just doesn't know and changed my dose from 10 mg to 5mg. Im really worried especially that I feel many times like I'm starting to lose control of my thoughts and action and it only gets worse. Does anyone have anything to say any experiences that could help me?

This is probably gonna sound dumb but what med were you on/ currently on which allowed you to retain or regain full range of emotions and were able to uncontrollably laugh at things that were humorous if that makes sense. The only time I’ve noticed this/felt this was, the day after taking the last dose of olanzapine 2.5mg I remember I was sat in room with my cousin and my brother and my cousin was having a convo with his friend and I remember the room was silent and my brother looking at me and starting giggling and I couldn’t help but laugh uncontrollably. It was so funny I haven’t been able to do that since and my mood has dropped considerably no psychosis symptoms just depression and suicidal ideation when it gets bad. Is this a sign to get back onto 2.5mg of olanzapine. Any meds you guys are on that had a similar effect at bringing you joy and I don’t mean joy from not being manic anymore or from coming down from a mixed episode. And not joy from “being stable for the first time in my life” I mean joy in terms of being able to genuinely find things funny, laugh uncontrollably, feel spontaneous happiness and experience those moments where you’re just genuinely happy to be there, enjoying the moment without forcing it or overthinking it.

I have been treating my illness for long and still not be able to have normal life. I tried medication mostly antipsicotics but i never been able to adapt them because they higly sedaditve and it make me and my body feel like crap, which in the end makes me depressive because i feel dead and with low self-esteem. I know some people say is that or being destroyed by the illness but honeslty for me, living like sedated for all my life it's just as bad and it would kill me anyway because of depression. I dont have emotional support from anyone so i need my energy to be able to keep strong and keep going.
So my question is: It is REALLY possible to have a really normal life with bipolar treatment? If someone did really acomplish this i would like to know. Because i really need some rays of hope that i can really have a normal life. (Im very depressed while writting this at 2 am clock)

I hate that I have to try make these meds work for me when they don’t…I’m not sure what I have to say to make sure I’m heard. I have ADHD not bipolar!

I need some perspective because I feel like I am losing my mind and destroying my relationship.
From the start, I’ve had an intense, irrational jealousy issue. My partner has family in Tanzania, and for some reason, I’ve always resented his closeness to them especially his mom. It got to a point where I tried to turn him against his family or blocked his extended family members. I was mentally unregulated and struggling to take my medications consistently.

Worse than that, I got physical with him twice. The scariest part is that this happened over six months ago, and I genuinely cannot remember what the arguments were about or how it happened. I black out or forget our fights entirely. What does stick in my head are the things he says to me out of hurt, like:
"I’m turning into my mom"

"We can never have a single nice day, you always ruin it"

"You can never be happy, you always complain"

I feel like an awful person. Because of my anger, we took a brief break. During those four days apart, he cheated on me—or tried to. He brought three girls to our home. He claims he didn’t sleep with any of them because he broke down, went to cry in the bathtub, and couldn’t go through with it. I found a condom wrapper on the floor with the condom stretched out, right next to our own sex enhancers.

To be transparent: I am not blameless. I have messaged other guys while we’ve been together and hurt him repeatedly, too. I don't even have a clear reason why I did it was I bored, unhappy, or feeling neglected? I just know I was mad all the time and didn’t realize how toxic I was being.

After a 4-day stint in a rehab program (where I freaked out at staff because they wouldn't let me see him, and he came and picked me up), we agreed to "restart" our relationship.

Since the restart, I even called his mom and apologized for taking her son away, trying to make peace (I called her in rehab). Yet the resentment keeps creeping back. Whenever he talks to his family on the phone, I have to leave the room. When they text me a simple "hi" or "hello," I freeze up, ignore them, and actively avoid them. In my head, it’s a constant loop of I hate them and I don't want them around.My mood even changes when he talks to them I get all upset and shut down but I don’t say anything.

I don't understand why I can't just let go of this anger and move on. I can't afford therapy, so I am asking: has anyone gone through something like extreme retroactive/family jealousy, memory gaps during rage, or a toxic cycle like this? How did you stop the spiral?