A terrible experience (mania+BPD)

Hello everyone,

I'm new to this forum, so please be gentle with me .

Last year, me and my wife (diagnosed in March 14 with bipolar, BPD, anxiety disorder, and is also epileptic) had a devastating experience, that very nearly tore our marriage and family apart.

For the purposes of my query, I'll leave out a lot of the detail, so hope what I'm writing doesn't sound too trivial.

Around May last year, my wife experienced a bout of depression. The Dr, assuming that it was unipolar depression, omitted to review her medical record thoroughly, then prescribed her with Nortriptyline (Pamelor). At the same time she was also prescribe diazepam and sleeping tablets to counter-act the side effects of the antidepressants.

Shortly after this, my wife (though none of us realised it at the time), switched to a manic phase. I noticed that she was becoming erratic, obsessive, emotionally withdrawn, getting tattoos, drinking during the day and more often (generally she’s not a drinker), being impulsive, aggressive behaviour and her sex drive was off the chart. I didn’t challenge on most of this, as I think I was experiencing a hypomania of my own (though that’s another story).
During this time my wife as r***d by a trades person, who she then went on to have an affair with – which is an indicator of her state of mind.

This went on from July 13 – Jan 14 (the manic phase that is)

Apologies for taking such a long time to get to the point. That’s just me generally, and as it’s very emotive subject, it’s a challenge to stay focused on just one thing.

Anyway, the point of this post. Not only did she have the full range of manic features, but also at the same time, she was also displaying all the features of her BPD diagnosis – to the extreme. As it transpires, she experiences a paradoxical reaction to diazepam & sleeping tables, which has a direct impact on her BPD (the psychiatrist put this down to the disinhibition qualities of benzo's etc). I’ve witnessed this on a multitude of occasions – she will go from BPD traits to full on irrational thinking/behaviour once they’ve taken affect.

For example, she became obsessed with the person that she had the affair with, and any hint of a withdrawal on his part, sent her into panic mode and she’d do “anything” to keep his attention. She would demand sex at inappropriate times, and if I refused she would immediately respond with a comment suggesting that I didn’t want her any more. When getting the tattoos, her reasoning was to “cover-up her body” as she had become obsessed by her own appearance. The list goes on…

In short, she was a perfect match for the manic phase profile and all the BPD traits all mixed up in one person.

If anyone's has an experience that reflects this mix of symptoms/drug reactions, I’d really like to hear them.