TO WRITE: Coffee, anyone?
If you are living with a mood disorder, I'm betting you have a special relationship with caffeine. Depressed? You may down coffee, tea and colas all day long trying to get an energy boost. Bipolar? You may need to avoid the stuff like the plague to keep it from nudging you up into hypomania or mania. And what about the large numbers of us who just can't sleep reliably, or who sleep too much, or who feel sedated by meds? Chances are you have thought deliberately about your caffeine intake. I've certainly pondered mine over my third cup of java.


I've always assumed that caffeine helps me stay more alert and focused, especially when I haven't had all the sleep I need. But a new study of coffee's effects says: NO! A new study in the Nov. 3, 2008 Human Psychopharmacology journal tested people taking caffeine or a placebo, both when they were rested and when they were sleep deprived. While some brainwaves did look different, they concluded: "The findings do not support the use of caffeine as a means for enhancing human function or as an antidote to the negative effects of sleep loss."

Are the effects of caffeine different in those of us with a mood disorder? We don't know. And that placebo effect resulting from our common assumption that it helps or hurts may play a role too. But it's worth considering all the evidence.

Play with this. . .
Write continuously for 20 minutes about your sleep patterns and your alertness and how you cope with any sleep or alertness problems. Have you found practical solutions? Share them! This is a big factor in improving and maintaining our health.

TO WRITE: Your Sleep Life
Sleep is a crucial, and often disturbed, part of life for those of us coping with depression. Whether problems are due to medications or the condition itself is not always clear. And the symptoms we experience can vary from slightly disturbing to exasperating to just plain weird.

I'm blessed in some ways, I suppose, because I rarely have insomnia. No, my sleep life leans quite the opposite way, leaving me wanting -- sometimes absolutely needing -- to sleep two to four to even six hours more than what most people consider a good night's sleep.

I've had many bizarre and unsettling sleep experiences when depressed, or even months after my mood has recovered. On one first-generation antidepressant, for example, I regularly sat up and opened my eyes during the night to watch amazing and often funny scenes play out in front of me. When I enthusiastically urged my husband to look at these hallucinations, he would have to talk to me or shake me a bit to wake me from my strange state.

Play with this. . .
Write continuously for 20 minutes about your sleep life. Do you have lots of wonderful dreams? An occasional frightening one? Do you need extra medicines to help you get a few hours of rest, or do you feel nearly narcoleptic when you're depressed? Do you find you have unusual thoughts just as you fall asleep or wake up? How does your sleep, or lack thereof, effect your mood? And how do you feel about all this -- angry, frustrated, bemused, relieved? Don't think too much, just let it rip and see where this topic takes you.