The Bipolar Brain on Drugs

Every brain is unique. Bipolar brains are unique in a similarly maladaptive way to each other, but even then, they are unique from each other too. Because of this, drugs that affect the brain can affect bipolar brains differently than they affect nonbipolar brains and other bipolar brains.

That’s why it can take years to discover the right cocktail of medications to help and/or stabilize a bipolar brain.

That’s why the drug I was prescribed for heartburn could send me into a raging suicidal depression.

That’s why so many people discover they have bipolar when they are prescribed an antidepressant and end up with an episode that sends them to the psych ward.

That’s why the drug I’m on to (hopefully) attenuate the nerve damage in my leg, which the pain specialist said might make me “a little groggy,” has me holding-the-walls stoned and thinking one thought on repeat for five minutes at a time.

Every new drug is an experiment. Every combination a risk.

Just another perk of being bipolar.

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