I'm an 18 year old male and I've been diagnosed with bipolar for months now, but that isn't really what matters. I've been on medication for depressive symptoms for about a year now (Wellbutrin), and medication for manic symptoms since March (Lamictal). Both have worked but not as well as I'd hoped, but that's mainly my fault. I'm currently going through a depressive episode right now, and one of the biggest symptoms I get is issues with sleep. I will be completely unable to sleep until 6 AM some days, and end up sleeping until 12 PM. Other days I'll fall asleep fine, but sleep 14-18 hours and waste basically a whole day away.

Now, I've been in a relationship for nearly 2 years, and I love my girlfriend to death. But this has been effecting her more and more recently, and I need to change really badly. She already is an early riser, and falls asleep around 8 most of the time, waking up around 5. You can see how this would give us hardly no time together sometimes. She's been very understanding about all of this but I can tell that it's getting to her, and I don't want to ruin such a great thing.

I've tried all of the usual shit that I've been told by my doctor and my old therapist, get more exercise, take sleep medicine, no electronics at night (I keep my TV on, at a very low brightness though); if I can't fall asleep fot more that 30 minutes I'll get up and do something small for a bit then try again, etc. etc. I just can seem to find anything that will work for me. I'm starting to be afraid that it looks like I'm not trying, and that's all that my girlfriend really asks for. Even now I'm writing this after sleeping for almost 15 hours.

Another big problem for me is going back to sleep once I've already woken up. It's almost second nature for me sometimes now and I don't know how to even begin changing that because I'm already so out of it when I wake up. I just check the time and go back to sleep. On the days where I sleep for way too long, no matter how much I wake up I still feel like I didn't sleep at all.

If anybody has gone through anything even remotely similar, please please PLEASE give me some advice on things that might work. I'm getting really desperate and I'm extremely disappointed in myself. I just want to change and it feels impossible.