Hi (waving) I'm new

**** you guys crack me up. Yes I'm sure you can feel her husband's pain! Oh to be in such pain! Mildlybipolar, I'd say any week without those things you mentioned is a good week indeed! Well... You know what I mean... It does feel good to be able to talk about something that (for me, anyway) has been such a source of shame all my life. And to even be able to laugh about it! Right now I'm just grateful that I don't have carpal tunnel ****. Thank God for um... Batteries!

Did you listen to it? It's about being yourself and no matter how hard ppl try to figure you out, they never will. And that's ok.

I've had very similiar experiences, though I've gotten it pretty well under control the last four years (at the cost of avoiding any kind of situation that could turn sexual), but I still find myself uncontrollably thinking about hooking up or using the internet to look for possible hookups, I just never send out that email anymore, and I've long since burned all my real life bridges to sex.

As far as relationships, my longest one ever was probably a month or so. When I fall for someone I fall hard and feel connected and give them way too much love in the form of compliments, attention, gifts, romance. All of my relationships have been characterized by over the top, hard to resist, first dates, followed by a few weeks of intense connection and way too much time spent together. Interestingly enough I have always more or less seperated sexual relationships from emotional ones. I.E. having sex with someone I care about makes me feal bad. It's like I feel that I'm hurting them or doing something against their will, or just being a typical douchebag guy, even though typically they initiated the sexual contact and clearly wanted it to happen.

One of the core issues around my depression stemmed from guilt I felt for my sexual promiscuity. For the first part of my life (up until about age 20) I was a very conservative and strict christian. After a fling or one night stand I would feel so bad, the guilt was unbearable. I would then wipe the memory from my mind. To this day there are things that I know I've done, I can see the memory in my brain, I feel guilty about it still, but I can't live the memory or remember what it was specifically or whom it was with.

It's hard to talk about, but it helps, thanks for bringing it up :)

hey thanks to all of you but believe me I have hard times to. I just loved my spouse enough to look at myself and realize I didn't want to loose him to what ever I was struggling with. I do mean I was struggling wondering wth all the time trying to get a grip that I just couldn't grasp. I lost a job I was at for 4 yrs and had to give one of my children to thier father which is severly bipolar knowing it was the wrong choice and also knowing if I did not then one day I might not wake up to take care of my other child and wondering if my other child would be killed in the middle of the night. I met a great man in the midst of all this crap not to mention I was newely divorced to. My last boyfriend I thought was possiably poisioning me still unsure on that. Hospitilized 4 times in 8 months for being poisioned. So guys it was finally time to meet someone whom I could have a little happiness with and what did I do I went into total depression at the fullest extent and almost ruined everything about us luckily I went to pdoc and was diagnosed. He sure did feel better about knowing he wasn't just with a cruel cold hearted B. He said well now we know we can fix it and move on. I am still work in progress I didn't always have someone beside me. With this illness it is very typical to either run people we are close to off or never be close with people at all. So essentially I had a nervous breakdown and then realized ok why can't I deal with things. Generally I was hypomania and I seen no problem. Yeah I would get sad but I found ways around it. Now I am BP and living with it. This was not the end of my road it was actually the beginning for me to live a normal happy life. By the way Bill he is suffering from my excess sexual energy. When I don't have it I am a lil moody. It sure helps when I wake him up to it because he has no time to think about a no answer. Being able to jump on it 3 times a day isn't helping his energy level very much you know. I usually check this site a few times a day so yes I am a site addict because all of you guys help me deal with my reality and thanks very much.

darn. Missed you by THAT much. Hopefully you're clock turned ahead seamlessly :)

Wow, you described the exact thing that happened to me when I was on both of those drugs.  Effexor is extremely difficult to get off of. I've never quite been able to explain what happens when you don't take your meds at the same time every day.  I always just called it feeling 'off'.  Brain zaps sound much more accurate! My experience with Lexapro and Effexor was not good.  They never really 'worked' and I did give them each a sufficient amount of time to kick in.  The w/d was very difficult.  Just my 2 cents!

I also had a terrible time on Effexor, but my DH has been on it for a few years, and has done fine. He doesn't even feel weird if he misses a dose. I had TERRIBLE brain zaps for 3 weeks when weaning off it. I'm on Luvox now, and I dread trying to wean off it.

serafena