Regulating my sleep cycles is the most effective thing I can do to keep stable, so I use meds that help me get to sleep and stay that way. I started off with prazosin (a blood pressure medicine used to treat PTSD and other sleep disorders) that worked really well, but it made my sinuses close up. That would actually keep me awake unless I took a nasal spray to keep my nose open. Once I started getting bloody noses I asked for a better sollution. At the same time, I'd also had a really bad mixed episode that resulted in me losing my shit in a McDonald's and scaring the hell out of everyone around me. My pdoc is very risk averse so she gave me some litterature and told me to research some of the options so we could discuss what would work for me. I'm the one who came up with the seasonal strategy, but it makes sense for my particular needs. With that in mind we tried trazodone in the winter. It's an atypical antidepressant that is also used to treat insomnia. It won't work for everyone and it can trigger manic switching, but in my case it works pretty well. In summer we switch to quetiapine which also helps with sleep and also helps the hypomania. The nice part is that the two drugs are not contraindicated so they can even be used at the same time, but I've never tried it. One thing that should be noted: I'm using both at the lowest dosage (I think they're both 50 mg) because thats where they're both most effective for sleep. At higher doses they start to have different effects and trazodone can even cause insomnia. But the low doses also allow us to make immediate changes if an episode comes out of nowhere. For example: If I were to have another McDonald's meltdown (and let's admit it, Micky D's can be triggering even for neurotypicals) I could take a full-stregth dose of quetiapine to bring it to a halt. Since my system is already used to it, and it would only be used at that dose until I'm out of the episode, I have a low risk of side effects and it won't stop me from resuming normal activities afterward. Using it short term also gives my system a chance to "recover" for the rest of the year so I shouldn't have as many long-term risks (though it's still very possible). Like you said, this isn't a conventional method, and while it's supported by the litterature it may not be effective long term, and it probably won't work for everyone. We're still experimenting, so it may not even work for me.