Bipolar Mum Journey

Living with a mental illness is an endless battle, a constant push and pull between extreme highs and complete numbness. It’s not just in your head it spills over, touching every aspect of your life, including your family, your relationships, and your ability to function day to day. Although I’ve not been taking meds long due to refusing to take them, I realised last night that my medication, Quetiapine, was no longer doing its job.

I started taking Quetiapine again under the urging of my family. My mood had been elevated for a while, and they were worried. But I’ve always struggled with the side effects of this medication, particularly the lethargy and weight gain it brings. The thought of feeling like a zombie again made me hesitate to take the full dose right away. Instead, I started with a small amount, enough to dull the edge of my heightened energy but not enough to make me feel completely flattened.

At first, it worked. That tiny dose seemed like a miracle, I could sleep, I felt a bit more stable. But it didn’t take long before it stopped being enough. The last two nights, I’ve been tossing and turning, my thoughts racing, unable to find rest. And today, I feel it creeping back, the elevation, the energy that’s too much, the buzz that makes it hard to think straight or focus. 

It’s a cycle I know too well. The small dose that once brought relief no longer cuts it. My brain adjusts, demanding more of the drug to achieve the same effect. This is how medications like Quetiapine often lose their effectiveness. Over time, your body builds tolerance, and the balance you’re trying so hard to achieve starts slipping away again.

I can’t help but wonder: why can’t I just have a normal brain? Why does everything have to be so extreme, either charged with high energy or smothered in numbness? Why isn’t there a middle ground, a place where I can just be? It’s exhausting, this constant management of something I didn’t ask for and can’t control. It’s not just my burden to carry either, it consumes my whole family. They feel it in my moods, in the tension that hangs over every interaction, in the ways my illness shapes our lives.

Mental illness is a full-time job. It’s there when I wake up, when I try to sleep, in every decision I make about medication, routines, relationships. And unlike a job, there’s no clocking out. There’s no escape from this constant awareness that my brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. I hate the way Quetiapine makes me feel sluggish, but I also hate the chaos that comes when I’m not taking enough of it. 

Another cruel irony of living with bipolar disorder is how stress undermines the very medications we rely on to maintain balance. Stress whether from external pressures or the internal strain of managing this illness can weaken the effectiveness of medications like Quetiapine. It’s as if the heightened cortisol levels and racing thoughts send the brain into overdrive, overpowering the stabilising effects of the drugs. But here’s the catch: having bipolar disorder is a constant source of stress in itself. How are we supposed to lower our stress levels when the disorder makes everything, from decision-making to relationships, more complicated and overwhelming? It’s a vicious cycle, stress makes the illness harder to manage, the illness amplifies stress, and the medication struggles to keep up. It feels impossible to break free, as if calm is always just out of reach.

What even is “normal” have I ever felt it? I don’t know all I know is this: I’m tired of living in extremes, tired of the constant fight for balance. But I keep fighting because I have to. For myself. For my family. For the hope that one day, this exhausting rollercoaster might at least slow down in old age.