Medication Struggles--Are they making me more crazy?

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATION 

Medication. It is beyond vital for managing my Bipolar 1 Disorder. I'd be mad or dead without it, trust me there. And yet...

I was on Lithium for 10 years and I was doing really great on it--was only hospitalized once. I had ups and downs, nothing a little help from my friend Ativan couldn't cure. My psychiatrist retired--and let me tell you, losing your psychiatrist is like losing a very dear friend--who gives you meds, always returns your calls, and keeps you fucking saner than you'd be without them. He was great, he listened,  he'd text to check in if I had fallen off the face of the earth, he did medication changes VERY VERY slowly, and always followed up within a few days to make sure all was well. When I was hospitalized, he got me a follow-up appointment with him that week. And I was ALWAYS cleared for work.

I had an interim psychiatrist and that didn't work out for me. She was way too expensive and didn't take my insurance.

I went off my psych meds, as stated in an earlier post, and got into a program to help me out. My Lithium got upped to almost double the dosage in a day and I turned toxic. NEVER good--I'm here though so all turned out well.

Now I'm on an interesting cocktail, Depakote, Seroquel, and Lamictal. I'm taking the Depakote 2X's

per day, 500 mg each time, Seroquel 50 mgs at night with 75 mgs of Lamictal. Here's the problem, I feel like I'm going crazier on those meds. My thoughts are racing MAD FAST 90% of the day, and my rapid cycling has gotten way worse. I was having a great day, did some bike riding, went to church, got ticks off me and Moppet, talking to some friends. And suddenly, BAM! I'm sitting here typing and wondering why I'm even still here. It's brutal. And I cannot get a psychiatrist appointment until June 4th. That's pretty damn far away. My options are very limited right now, and it seems like the number of meds I got from the hospital might not carry me all the way through. So I might be royally fucked. (They know this, btw, but the therapist said there's nothing they can do about it).

See, it's hard when you are going through medication changes. They're expensive as all hell, 2/3rds of them can kill you, and the side effects are brutal. Depakote, for instance, literally says on that little hand out that it can cause and/or increase suicidal thinking. What the hell is the point of that? If I already want to kill myself, why do you want to prescribe me something that could make me want to kill myself quicker? That boggles my mind. And the psych who prescribed it goes to me, literally, "if your suicide plan hasn't changed in 2 years, you should be fine." Really? Because I think if I've kept this same suicide plan in mind for 2 years, one day I might pull it out and see if it works.

I just don't understand. Part of me wonders what would happen if I just said fuck it and stopped taking it all. The other half of me thinks that a REALLY BAD idea because I could lose any scrap of sanity I still have--and I don't think it's much. My sanity is in short supply as it is, and I don't really have much more to lose. 😜😜

My drive to do anything is also non-existent right now. I have a crap ton of stuff to do, and all I can do is just stare at a wall. Once again, I'm smiling to bite the lie and say everything is okay when it's not. But then again, how many more people, or have many of the same people, can you keep turning to when you're losing your mind? And, more to the point, how many people are going to listen when you start bitching about the meds? No one.

I'm going to keep taking the meds, you know, gonna preserve that sanity, as best I can. And see what happens. A bit of a leap of faith!