Category Archives: Depression

Saving up for depression

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The title sounds weird, right? Incoherent and non-sensical. How can you “save up” for depression? What does that even mean? Well, I like to think I coined this term and it means that whenever I feel happy, experience a positive event, feel energized, I try to engrave these moments into my memory so that when I feel depressed, I can revisit them and somehow see the light at the end of the tunnel. Therefore, I “save up” good memories to counteract the awful moments that I sometimes find myself in. It’s not easy, and it didn’t come to me through a psychiatrist or self-help book, although those help as well, but rather through a self-realization that thinking about happy thoughts helps me get through the tough times, usually.

The last time I had depressive feelings was over a month ago and through the entire period I concentrated on my daughter’s birthday that had just passed, and her elation at the event. It helped me get through the depression. I also thought about eating watermelon with my family on a certain hot summer evening and how Isa, the youngest, got watermelon all over her hair, ears, and of course, face. It was enough to bring a smile to my face and motivate me to shower and be ready for my kids.

I am sure that we all have good memories we can look back on, either recent or in the past, that can get us through those tough moments when we feel nothing but despair. It helps to remember that there is a light at the end of the tunnel after all.

Should We Lock Up the Sane?

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A new study — the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study — found that those living with classic mental illness — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression — alone are not likely to use guns when they commit acts of violence:

“For the small group of people with mental illness who are at risk of committing gun violence, improved collaborations with the criminal justice system are clearly indicated,” the researchers stated. “However, directly targeting mental illness as the major driver of gun violence is misguided. … Prior violence, substance use, and early trauma are more likely to contribute to subsequent violence than is mental illness per se. In this regard, the politically inspired haste to focus gun control efforts on people being treated for a mental illness, rather than on people with demonstrated indicators of violence risk, such as restraining orders related to domestic violence, seems particularly misdirected.”

This contradicts the latest psychophobic reign of error that comes upon the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. It isn’t the mentally ill who shoot people, but those who have no psychiatric diagnosis. So what are we going to do about them?

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What I know and what I don’t

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I have never attempted suicide myself, but an uncle of mine did once, and well, paid the ultimate price, his life. He was unofficially diagnosed by my mother and her sisters as Bipolar, whether or not that was true, we will never know. What I do know for sure is that he was pushed to a point where he no longer found meaning in his life. I also know that I have felt such despair that I wish someone would take my babies and just let me sleep. I have felt so depressed and in the midst of nothingness that all I wanted to do was lay in my bed and do and be nothing. Just nothing. This would usually come after a late night, a restless, sleepless night. Or, when I “forgot” to take my medication because I know better than the psychiatrist. Wrong!! So wrong!!

I now know that I don’t know more than any psychiatrist no matter how flawed I may think they are or how much higher my IQ may be, I am at the mercy of their education and experience. I put it so dramatically because that is how I sometimes feel. I feel as though I am helpless sometimes and not only at the mercy of the psychiatrists, but at the mercy of my mind. Why? Because it leads me to think things, things I should not be thinking. Like, “don’t take your meds, you’re fine”, “your mood swings are totally typical”, and my favorite, “you are not Bipolar, everyone else is.”

I also know that everyone’s life has meaning, no matter what you or others may think. And sometimes it’s hard to see through all the mugginess and fog, but believe me, your life has meaning. Whatever it may be, make it your mission to find it. Make that your daily goal! I dare you.

 

Review: Rethinking Positive Thinking

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Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation by Gabriele Oettingen

I don’t know how many times I have listened to people in support groups declare that they have decided to apply positive thinking to their lives and then watched them crash and burn. People declare all kinds of objectives for their affirmations. They will lose weight. They will master their drug problem. They will control their anger. They will grow rich. Money will come to them without effort. They will find a millionaire and marry him. They will find a fabulous new job and leave all the cares of the old one behind them. Some goals are realistic. Others are simply fantastic.

Studies show that plain old positive thinking drags people into a depressive rut. Oettingen cites the example of her work examining the attitudes of East Germans versus West Germans. East Germans spend a lot of time thinking positively. They see themselves as rich, as coming into opportunities of a lifetime which change their life situation for the better. But they still end up at bars trying to drink their melancholy away, and they never get anywhere with these plans. West Germans set reasonable objectives, put in the work, and succeed. Even though their goals are less grandiose, they are happier than their former Communist counterparts.

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The Rock Inside My Skull

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When I am very depressed — which is not now — my brain feels solid and hard. It’s the surest guide that I have had the Big One, the low that can only be borne by plodding steps and lowered head. Yea, they will write it off as merely bad posture. I will marvel at the adamantine of my cerebellum, the heaviness of my medulla oblongata. I will ponder the sharpness of the rock inside my skull and, when the feeling has toppled away like a raven falling from a cliff towards its nest, I will desire its return because it is only then that I can feel that I have a brain and am, in fact, alive.

What Do I Do When I Am Manic?

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I waste time. But not in the same way that I usually do it. I’m always up nights, twittering, reading, working on recent photos. My day ends somewhere between 3 and 4, at which point I go to bed, which alerts the cats to begin their trills of demand for food from my softhearted wife. I use a cocktail of Xanax, Benadryl, Doxepin, melatonin, and my nighttime anti-psychotics and mood-stabilizers to stall my brain into torpor. I sleep well and I sleep deep until about noon or one o’clock in the afternoon, an unconventional hour but one that I can manage thanks to my unemployment and insistence on afternoon appointments.

If I am manic, I forget to take the meds until a later hour and do not feel their slowing until after Lynn has gone to work at nine. I lay in bed, staring at the pockets inside the sheets, groping for rest. Mania purposes me to a different set of activities, First, reading is impossible. My eyes fly over the words, ignoring the middles of sentences and barely noticing the presence of paragraphs. I have missed whole scenes and whole characters when I am in this state. For this reason, as my condition advanced in the late twentieth century, I read less and less. Volumes I wanted to peruse stood on my shelf for years, unopened and stinking of dust. There was no accomplishment during this time except as resulted from my strange habit of digesting dictionaries.
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The Medical Marijuana for Bipolar Lie

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Everyone seems to have a friend who has been helped by medical marijuana. When my wife had chemotherapy, we had it as a backup in case the anti-nausea drugs did not work for her. Glaucoma is a disease with medical research proving the effectiveness of medical marijuana. But the medical marijuana industry goes beyond what is proven by science. It welcomes those who use it for many other diagnoses despite the absence of peer review studies. In other words, if you can get a doctor or a nurse practitioner to write you a script, you can get high legally for any disease you can name. And the worst of the lies medical marijuana prescribers and retailers let fly is the lie that marijuana helps the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

Here is my full disclosure: First, I do not oppose legalization of marijuana provided it is regulated at least as well as alcohol. There need to be laws governing its sale to minors, bans against driving under the influence, etc. But other than that, I have no problem with seeing it available as a leisure drug. There’s considerable evidence that the liquor industry does not want this, but alcohol is worse than cannabis in some regards. Second, I have smoked marijuana. Here is where my strong feelings about the subject come from. When I was in college, I was talked into toking by my peers. They did not force it down my throat, they did not blow smoke into my lungs, they did not deceive me in the sense that they told me things that they knew were not true. I started using the drug by my own choice.

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Bipolar Steals Your Life

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Life begins at….?

They say life begins at 40, well for me it was two years earlier at 38. Two months ago, as I type this, I had my 40th birthday which was rather a dull affair – no party and just me, my fiancee, four cats and two dogs at home. This was my decision not to have a full on fortieth party like I have seen my school friends have via Facebook. I suppose I should explain why.

Bipolar diagnosis

At 38 years old I finally went to see my GP (General Practitioner) after constantly breaking down in tears one minute and then feeling on top of the world the next. The GP diagnosed me as textbook bipolar, especially as my mother has bipolar, and her mother was thought to have committed suicide due to manic depression (manic depression is now named bipolar affective disorder). Thus started the cocktail of meds I am now on. Although now I am said to have rapid cycling bipolar it is actually ultra rapid (according to my own research) but my doctor doesn’t like saying that for some reason. I can cycle between the two poles of mania and depression up to three times a day which is quite exhausting. The big problem in treating rapid or ultra rapid cycling is finding the right medication solution.

Bipolar medication

At the moment i’m taking an antidepressant, mood stabilizers and antipsychotic daily, with an occasional benzodiazepine when required. Now, this sounds like one helluva cocktail and you’re right, so how did I cope with an illness I most probably had since my early teenage years for 25 years?

Self medicating

The answer lies unfortunately with the same solution as many other victims of bipolar and other mood disorders turn to. Alcohol was my self medicating drug of choice. When I was depressed I would immediately turn to alcohol to lift my mood. When manic I would use alcohol to try and chill and even knock me out so I could sleep. So,you would think that in the stable times I wouldn’t drink wouldn’t you? Wrong! When I was stable or down I would miss the manic highs so would drink to try and find the euphoria I would feel at the top of my buzz. Although I did drink regularly, I abused alcohol rather than become addicted to it. I was however, drinking daily when I had my bipolar diagnosis.

Abstinence

Since my diagnosis I have had short periods of alcohol abstinence, and today I have had almost two months completely off alcohol even though my doctor did say I could have one or two beers a week if I fancied. Part of my abstinence is willpower of course, but its also the medication negating the need for alcohol, and also having the knowledge of why I was turning to alcohol in the first place.

Advocate and stigma fighter

I have now found my inner voice which enables to me speak openly about my mental illness, and I have even been on my local radio station a couple of times to encourage other people, especially men to seek help. A recording of one of my radio interviews can be found on my blog Latest Bipolar News, be sure to check it out.
Thanks for reading and be sure to look out for the next installment.

How This All Started — JoelS & Bipolar_Blogs

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Weekend time on the ward was spent waiting for someone to talk to you. I was standing in front of the nurses’ station, having completed the obligatory morning group therapy, when I was guided to a small room and told to have a seat. Then a large bearded man with a file came into the room and read over the notes that had been collected since my arrival the night before. I had arrived late the previous afternoon after I had texted my last will and testament to my wife and sat on a log studying which vein to cut. A phone call from my psychiatrist interrupted my concentration. We talked for a few minutes and I agreed to go to the hospital. Once I got there, I — the fellow who had been thinking of ending it all — walked up to the nurses’ station and told them that I was diabetic and needed my night meds delivered on schedule if I was going to maintain my blood sugar levels. They nodded dutifully and wrote notes in my chart.

This information was in the manila folder that Dr. Spears brought into the room. After reviewing the annotations, he looked up at me, leaned forward, and asked in a gentle voice “Has anyone ever told you that you were bipolar?”

Many people have told me that they were devastated when they heard the news. Others refused to believe it. I was of that class of people who felt a moment’s pause and then felt relief. At last I had a workable explanation of the torrential moods that afflicted me over the years. I had tried the boot-strap method of getting through my despairs. People had sometimes asked me if I was taking drugs — a question that surprised me because I was the opposite of an addict and a self-medicator — I didn’t touch drugs or alcohol. For 11 years, I had relied on Prozac because it had worked almost instantly to curb my depression. The dark nights of the soul I experienced during that time I wrote off to normal ups and downs. I spent up our credit cards to $40,000, messed up my already fragile teeth by grinding on them, and fought frequently with people on the Net. Was this bipolar disorder? Then, I felt, there was a treatment and I threw myself into recovery.

Bipolar_Blogs arose when I learned that it was possible to set up a special account for retweeting news. I knew that there were many people out there in the world who wrote good blogs about their struggle with bipolar disorder (including me) whose work just wasn’t making it out to the rest of the world. The blogs I knew from my own explorations told many stories about bipolar disorder. I collected a list, set them up at a feed retweeter, and released it into the Twitterverse. What people also missed was recent and reliable information about their disorder. So I added feeds from the various government agencies that provided abstracts on the latest developments in understanding organic brain dysfunctions. When my ADD allowed it, I sought out more blogs, found new news sources, and hand-posted numerous articles that I had found which talked about bipolar disorder and other matters concerning the brain.

But not every voice could be heard via the feeds. Some of them tweeted their concerns directly to Bipolar_Blogs and I made it the policy to retweet them as long as they weren’t hateful, promoting pseudo-science, or simply advertising. When I had the energy, I checked my ever-expanding feed to glean what I could from others. There is only so much one can say in 140 characters even if you are a Twitter master. I kept running into people who wanted their own blogs and didn’t know how to start. The day came when I put out feelers, asking who would like to take part in a group blog. I also asked in some chatrooms and on Facebook. A few people indicated their interest, so I wrote out some rules for the blog and invited those who felt silenced by the circumstances of their illness to take part.

We’ll see how that goes.