Recovery from bipolar disorder

A Multitude of Recoveries Through Alternative Mental Health Treatments

My story starts 3 years ago when after many, many Dr. visits and evaluations my 10-year-old son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It was more of a relief to me, finally a name to what was going on with my son, but my husband was devastated. After a year and a half of trying different medications, different doses, and mixing meds we'd made no progress whatsoever. The side effects of all the meds were making him sicker than the bipolar disorder itself. He seemed to cycle faster on the meds and be down more. He missed so much school he was failing all his clases, his teachers were calling constantly, my work was suffering greatly, Alex had virtually no friends, they couldn't begin to understand what was going on. Alex's self esteem was zero. Thats when we tried Equilib. I can't remember exactly how I found it, I think I was surfing the web, or maybe it was from one of the support groups for Moms of bipolar kids. I remember taking Alex off of meds and finding the right dosage of Equilib to be tricky, but once he was completely off his meds and on a full dose of Equilib he only continued to improve. Alex could focus, his cycles mellowed drastically, his anger leveled off. My older son is an overacheiver, always geting A's and B's, which was so hard for Alex to see. Alex's brother would bring the bumper stickers home that said "honor student" I felt I had to put them on my car for his sake, but felt so bad that that would never be something Alex would be able to accomplish. If he could just make it to school and get passing grades I would have been thrilled, it would do so much for his self esteem. In 7th grade things slowly improved, we took a break from the social stress of public school and home schooled. It was very structured and he did beautifully on his Iow basic tests. Alex said he wanted to go back to public school for 8th grade. I was reluctlant but thought if he wanted to go, I didn't want to hold him back. He was stable on his Equilib and had been for a long time. I was worried about him getting up early, he's nocturnal by nature. We were so structured in home school I was concerned what would happen if it was all up to him to get his papers done, and turned in on time, not to mention the social aspect. Last week we had conferences, I was blown away to find Alex had all his work up to date, I asked if there were any disipline issues and his teachers all looked at me like I was nuts. But what topped it off was Alex has 2 A's, 2 B's and 1 C, the B honor roll!! Alex brought home his own "honor student" bumper sticker! I keep thinking I'll wake up and this will all be a dream. I have so many friends that suffer from depression, and some that are bipolar too, they're so reluctant to try Equilib. How can a mineral supplement help them, they ask? They continue to try new meds, mix the different antidepressants, and bump up their doses. It's a constant struggle for them. I guess we had hit rock bottom and thought what do we have to lose? But how I wish we'd tried Equilib sooner, so much of Alex's childhood was robbed from him in a downward spiral of mental illness.