The Medical Marijuana for Bipolar Lie

UPDATED

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 backing 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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Random story time!

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One day an incident between my mom and I sparked something like mania in me.

I was offended that she still felt she had control over me, so I was determined to move out. And not just move out, but completely erase any trace of me in the house. I wanted my bedroom to become a guest room, so that there was no returning.

In that time I spent hours cleaning my room, throwing anything and everything out that wasn’t necessary. I got rid of a lot of junk, which was good in the long run. But I also knew I’d have to get a job to support myself since I knew my parents wouldn’t pay for an apartment- and I didn’t want them to either.

I went out shopping for clothes to wear to interviews. I did end up buying a very nice outfit- which was another good thing because I did end up wearing it to an interview that got me a job (months later).

Another weird thing I did was completely shut everybody out of my life. I told my then-boyfriend that I couldn’t talk to him at all. I didn’t contact anybody, I barely spoke to my parents. I was in auto pilot.

I tore down half my posters, only half because I was manic. I was in this… trance. Where everything I did was to move out and distance myself from my parents.

This phase lasted about a week before I suddenly became very tired and realized I wasn’t capable of supporting myself and going through college at the same time.

It was an interesting week, I’ve never had a similar phase. It did end up with good things- cleaner room, clothes for a job interview.

But it also left things half done- like the posters that took me months before I put new ones up. This phase was about a year and a half ago, at least (I don’t remember exactly when, it must have been when my school suspended me because I didn’t have any school obligations keeping me from my task). And it is only now that I threw out one of the posters I torn down.

I just remember the productivity was through the roof and then it collapsed all at once.

I guess I’m remembering this because I’ve been cleaning my room. And also because I kind of want to move out again… but I know there’s no way that’ll happen anytime soon. It won’t happen for years. And plus, when I did live alone, it was a bad time for me. I would talk to myself, which is understandable but it disturbed me a little. It was just weird and I realize that it’s good I’m not alone. I need people around to keep me in check. If my boyfriend and I broke up, I’d be able to go back to cutting. If I lived alone, it might turn into a very very severe problem again. I know I’d be drinking a lot, maybe abusing my prescriptions more than usual.

I’m in a good situation right now and I need to stick with it. I just wish that my life was different in some ways.

 

Post Partum Psychosis in news TW graphic

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A mom who beheaded baby had been diagnosed in January with PPP and was not supposed to be alone with the baby. This is what Andrea Yates had and she was supposed to be supervised.

I know we with mental illnesses are rarely dangerous but when you are told we might harm someone, please listen. These were tragedies that didn’t need to happen.

I think my family overreacted. They took me away from my children for a couple of weeks after a psychotic break. I wasn’t dangerous. But, I do understand they were trying to protect them.

Introduction

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Hello, everyone. I’m Misrael. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get in on this blog. I was extremely reluctant at first, but then Joel reminded me that I had previously agreed to write for him. I tried to back out, but then Joel told me that I have a bad habit of backing out of commitments to him and that i’d better follow through this time. So i’m here.

One of the reasons I was reluctant to write for this blog is that I actually have very little to say on mental illness. Other than the lithium and risperdal pills that I pop in the morning and at night, and the weekly therapy (which everyone would benefit from, in my opinion), and the weekly socializing and chitchat at support group, mental illness really doesn’t affect my life much. Maybe it’s so normal to me now that I don’t notice it anymore.

On the other hand, mental illness has affected my past. Bipolar runs on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family. Schizoaffective and schizophrenia run in my ex-stepdad’s side of the family. Asperger’s and autism also run in my mother’s side, and I have a schizophrenic uncle on my Dad’s side. That’s a lot of mental illness for one family, and it has affected me quite a lot.

I have bipolar 1 and high functioning autism. I don’t show a lot of the symptoms of autism anymore, and I really don’t have typical autistic issues. As a result, although I am technically autistic, I don’t identify with the label much.

In other news, I am genderqueer and gray-ace/asexual. I am also gray/aromantic. I have a best friend that I try to see every week, who has issues with anxiety. I will call him Abaven on this blog. He’s 73. I’m 20. I don’t know whether I can say i’m in love with him yet, because I haven’t known him long enough for that. He’s also definitely not interested in me that way, which is a relief in some ways and a pain in others.

But this blog is going to be about mental illness, not about my love life (unless the two intersect). So you probably won’t be hearing much about Abaven on this blog, unless you tell me in the comments that you want to know more.

Any question and suggestions as to what to write about would be appreciated. Like I said, the reason I was so reluctant to write for this blog is that for me…blogging about mental illness is like blogging about having brown eyes. Yes, my brown eyes are beautiful. Yes, I can see because of them. Yes, I need glasses. Yes, I have been gifted with a beautiful pair of tortoiseshell glasses that bring the brown out. It gets boring after a while, because there’s only so much you can say on brown eyes.

But if you still want to hear about me, let me know. Post suggestions and questions in the comments. And until then, see you on the first.

Sandy Dumont R.I.P.

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We lost one of our first and oldest members, Sandy Dumont, from an infection complicated by gastrointestinal issues and Parkinson’s. She came to us at our second meeting and stayed with us until just a few weeks before we lost her. Lynn and I visited her in the hospital and talked for a couple of hours about the years we had known each other and her plans for recovery. Her daughter Stephanie joined us on that Sunday afternoon only a few weeks ago. She kept us informed about Sandy’s progress as she entered a convalescence home and about the first onset of the infection. Stephanie is, as you might imagine, taking this very hard. Before I heard the news, I felt tired from a morning planting and dibbling at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy Native Seed Farm. The news put more weight on my shoulders and limbs as I made calls and posted notices in various places on the web.

Sandy saw our Monday night support group as a second family. The younger people in the group — and I include myself — listened to her stories about her shock treatments, her struggles with Parkinson’s, and her sojourns in various mental hospitals in the days before lithium let her go home. She had tried living without the meds and she was grateful, at last, for having them. Her admiration for her psychiatrist was immense. It was through him that she found us. We, in turn, took hope from her story and became convinced through her that we could have a life with this illness riding in our skulls.

I don’t know who will fill the chair to my right at Monday meetings. I leaned on Sandy not only to give great and timely feedback to those who needed it — she was no self-appointed pundit or expert on bipolar disorder but spoke only from her own experiences and insights — but to be my backup as Vice President of the chapter. She was a good judge of character who I relied on when deciding who to appoint to the Board, who to trust as a facilitator. There’s a hole that needs filling, one that isn’t just a position on a board of directors but also for a friend and confidant. I am not sure where to go now. She is already missed.

Not sure which is worse?

I think we’ve all done it. The smiling through our tears. Putting on a facade that we are happy even though we are miserable inside. I do that a lot. I don’t want people to worry. Sometimes, I can’t help it. It would frighten my children when I would cry for no reason so I got better at hiding my feelings.

But, other times, I tell people how I am feeling. But, I still have the smile. I can laugh at a joke after I told them I was contemplating suicide. They don’t take me seriously because my words don’t match my affect.

So, sometimes I am hiding and sometimes I am not believed because I am scared to show outside how I feel inside. It seems better to cry inside than to shed actual tears.

Just Another Manic Blip

I take a prescribed Ritalin to prepare myself to study, to give me the energy to get through the remainder of the day. This last night before the final is the most important. I’ve had a whole quarter off, a whole 10 weeks plus winter break, because of my manic episode. It has given me time to finish a class that I took an incomplete in because I broke my wrist (but, in reality, it wasn’t so much the broken wrist, as much as it was my cracking mind that forced me to take the incomplete).

My dad comes home with food and the coffee I asked him to buy me. I start sipping at it and realize what’s happening. The ritalin is kicking in, the coffee is too. I’ve got too much energy racing through me. My thoughts are going off left and right like a firework finale. I’m agitated. I’m texting long rants to at least 4 people, I’m writing blog posts. I feel amped up, wired.

Sometimes these little mini-episodes happen to me. I think the Ritalin and coffee set me off. My therapist says that, since I’m so young, I may sometimes have episodes more like a child’s- rapid and short. And I do have these, quite often. I’ve also been told that these may happen when you’re stabilizing on medication. All I know is that they’ve always happened to me.

My day has been long. I had to wake up, go to psychotherapy, then immediately go to physical therapy, then immediately take my cat to the vet and then immediately start studying. But plans never go accordingly. I managed all the doctor’s visits fine, but it was the studying that threw me off. I tell myself I can relax a few minutes, but here I am- 5 hours later, and I haven’t studied. What went wrong?

Well, after the Ritalin and coffee kick-started me, I felt I had to run an errand. You see, I had an infection recently (of a nature I won’t describe) and I’m afraid it has come back. I already called the doctor to make an appointment, but I am impatient to know. I get the idea that maybe the drug store sells tests for them. I text my boyfriend, who manages a drug store, and he says they do sell those.

I figure maybe getting out of the house, getting the test, that’ll ease my mind. So I go, and I walk around the store, buzzing with energy. I look everywhere, my mind racing so fast it is hard to focus on the words on the labels. I feel lost but determined to find them on my own- which I do.

I get home and I read the directions, my eyes are glazing over as I read it. The words aren’t processing. I try to slow down. It takes a while, but I think I get how to do it. Which is ridiculous, I realize, because I used to conduct these same tests at my old job.

I come out positive, figures.

That’s over. But I’m still alive with energy. I realize it’s been long enough, the Ritalin has peaked in my system and I should be settling down, the coffee can’t possibly be keeping me this abuzz. It dawns on me that it’s the stress. The fact that I am unprepared for a test I had ample time to study for. I should ace this test (given all the time I had), but I know that I’ll barely pass it, if that. I was too manic over my break to study. I was barely able to do what I did. And now it is my last day- and I am so panicky that it set my brain off. The stress caused me to crack, to have a mini-episode.

I know I need to shower, that should calm me, right? Don’t they always say showers will calm your nerves? I hop in and the water pours over me. I put my hands to my face and run them back over my hair. It’s always this way when I’m manic- it feels like I’ve never showered before, the water is foreign. It is so bizarre. At first, it’s overwhelming, overstimulating. But then I get lost in my thoughts, consumed by obsessive thinking.

A thought pops out at me like a big red stop sign that’s been unusually placed in the middle of the road. I realize I am self-narrating. It’s a phenomenon I’ve never heard anyone else have or even describe, but I’ve never bothered to look it up to see.

Self-narrating is as follows: My thoughts have made a transition in their style. Instead of just thinking, I am writing a first-person story in my head. I am tracing my every movement, my every thought, as if I am writing it in a book. To put it simply, what you are reading right now is exactly what my thoughts are like.

It took me years to realize this is something I only do when I am very sick. I did it all throughout high school and never thought much of it, but I was also in an incredibly deep depressive episode. It wasn’t until my last manic episode, when I started self-narrating again, that I realized I had stopped for a while. It is now something I use to judge how sick I am. If I self-narrate, I am very sick or stressed out (although the two seem to go hand in hand).

I continue my shower, all while being obnoxiously conscious of my self-narrating. I wish I could write out what my self-narrating sounds like, but I can’t. It is literally what you are reading right now.

I may be a writer, but sometimes it is not by choice.

I step out of the shower and snag my towel. I put it to my face as usual, but I hold it there for a minute and let my tears soak into it. The moment passes and I continue on. I feel strangely calmer. Maybe it was the shower but I figure it was probably the Ativan I took before.

I’m annoyed with myself, I realize I am going to have to write this out before I can start on my studying. Sometimes the thoughts in my head get so built up that there is a pressure, an ache to get it on paper. It is not a want, it is a need. This is also something that only happens when I am very sick. In high school, during my depression, I would write obsessively. I was un-medicated then and if you ever look back at my writing, it is painfully obvious that I was a very sick teenager. After I was medicated, the writing stopped becoming a need, and soon faded into a past habit.

But I was inspired to start a blog and ever since then the need to write has engulfed me. When I had my manic episode, I not only wrote many long blog posts, but I also started writing a “book.” By the end of my episode I had over 60 pages of a single-spaced word document written. I believe that translates into easily over 100 pages of a standard size book? I’m not too sure though.

I am still not completely stable after that episode. I get these little spurts of mania, other times I get depressive lows. They happen almost every day, I am always a little up or a little down. But today I had an especially strong high.

And it is only now that I have written this out that I feel calmer. There is still an agitation residing in my heart. If I didn’t have to study I would be out, shopping or maybe hanging out with a friend. Just doing something.

Sometimes mania is described as feeling extra happy. But unless I am euphoric (which is brief but welcome), I am never happy during mania. Instead, I am incredibly agitated. It is not fun, it is frightening. I want it to stop, but at the same time I never want it to end- and I have no idea why. But that word- happiness- it does not define my mania. It does not belong in its definition. Euphoria may, but happiness does not.

Mania is incredibly uncomfortable.

But now… now that the thoughts are on paper, I can rest a little easier. I can study, I hope. All that remains is proof-reading this, closing the laptop, and sitting down with paper, pen, and notes.

I can do this. I can do this. I can pass this class. I won’t let my bipolar stop me. I will not fail, I won’t risk my dreams of becoming either a psychiatrist or psychologist be stopped by the fact that I had a manic blip in my day.

I can’t fail.

And it is that fact- I can’t fail- that drives me to feel such madness.

-Quinn

How About Using Another Disease Sometimes?

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Every now and then, a well-meaning giver of feedback in a support group tells a distressed and uncertain newcomer that her illness is “just like diabetes”. You don’t think twice if you have to take Metformin or insulin to treat your condition goes the argument. So why balk at psych meds?

Just today I saw a writer in The Guardian put a slightly different twist on the analogy:

We wouldn’t accept misinformation about diabetes being widely circulated without correction so why should we allow it for bipolar and other mental health conditions?

I live with both bipolar disorder and Type 2 diabetes. Let me start out by saying that the treatment for the two diseases is alike in some ways and very different in others. It is true that I have to take medication for both. Exercise helps both conditions. But as a diabetic, I have to keep checking my blood sugar, test my toes for loss of sensation, and examine my feet for lesions that could lead to amputation. An optometrist checks my eyes every year for retinopathy. Eating right is critical. Diabetes is a chemical condition, but the story about bipolar disorder is more complicated than that despite what the pharmacy reps tell our doctors. So the analogy goes only so far.

If we want to concentrate on the medication angle and false information angle only, why use diabetes all the time? I have other comorbitities that require regular medications such as my heart condition which I treat with anti-cholesterol drugs and blood pressure pills. Thyroid conditions have more in common with bipolar disorder so why don’t we use these parallels? Vary the example. And be very aware of how diabetes and bipolar disorder aren’t alike and how our oversimplification of the root causes of bipolar disorder is wrong.

The Dangers of Online Mental Health Quizzes

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Alright so this is a big topic for me. A fellow author posted a link to a ridiculous quiz on Facebook that I feel the need to (and was asked to) write about.

I am going to take this quiz, step by step, and report exactly what I think about it. And after I will tell you why these quizzes aren’t just silly or stupid, but dangerous (with my anecdote evidence- reliable I know).

Alright, so when you click on the quiz, it starts off by saying, “Are you prone to dramatic and unpredictable mood-swings? What about anxiety and frustration? What’s your level of uniqueness? Find that all out right here.” Right off the bat I am annoyed. This perpetuates the stereotype that bipolar is sudden changes in mood. Going from happy to sad and back in a second. Unless you have extremely rapid-cycling bipolar, this is very unlikely. Bipolar is experienced in episodes. Generally meaning they have to last at least a few days. Although I do have little spikes of bipolar feelings, they aren’t full episodes and are mostly just annoying.

And for anxiety and frustration, yeah those can happen. I have anxiety that is sometimes correlated with my bipolar. But bipolar itself doesn’t specify that you need to have anxiety. Additionally, “frustration?” Really? Who doesn’t experience that? And lastly- “What’s your level of uniqueness?” That makes me want to hit my face on my keyboard. Being bipolar is unique in a sense, because a small amount of the population experiences it. But in this context it is taken in a positive way. In the United States we have a culture where individualism and self-expression is very important. If you’re unique, then it’s usually considered a good thing. But as far as I’m concerned, bipolar is not a good thing.

And then, of course, it adds that this should be used as a diagnostic test. And I’ll explain later why that really doesn’t matter.
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Arguing with the God Within

Near the end of Ingmar Bergman’s classic Winter Light, the troubled minister who is the film’s main character, can’t decide whether to hold the 3 o’clock service or not. His day has been especially depressing because he gave counseling to a parishioner who subsequently committed suicide that very afternoon, he fought with his mistress, and he has the flu. The church sexton, a disabled survivor of a railroad accident, talks to him about the part of the Gospels which he has been reading, the Passion.

Jesus, the sexton reasons, didn’t suffer all that much on the cross. Why, the janitor goes on, he personally suffered more pain in his life than the four hours that afflicted Jesus and his pain was probably much worse. No, the crucifixion is not the most important segment of the Passion. Think of the Garden of Gethsemane, he says. The Last Supper is done. The disciples who have accompanied him have no clue about what is about to happen, so they go to sleep. Jesus is all alone, so he kneels down to pray. And what does God the Father say to him? Nothing. God is silent. And that, the sexton reasons, is the most terrible ordeal that Jesus endures.

Agnostic that I am, I still value the Gospels as a guide for understanding the suffering that is happening in my life. But what I would give for a silent God at times! In the void, my depressions fill the emptiness with the voice that is the worst of the Old Testament combined with Catholic guilt. I call this my inner god — a false god to be certain — because its primary purpose is to torment me. My illness exists, according to this voice, for the purpose of punishing me. But therapist after therapist has asked me What have I done that is so terrible that I deserve this constant hammering at my self-esteem? I can throw out a number of things, but they are all trivial compared to the actions of some of my peers who feel no shame for what they wreak against others. Surely there should come a place where my penance is over? But no matter what amends I make, the god inside me continues to berate me and declare me worthless.

One reason why I value my manias is that they shut down this voice entirely. Only my own ideations occupy me — obsessively. My thoughts race from project to project, propounding desperate philosophies that enthrall me more than methamphetamine. The evil god, the blasphemer against my happiness is put to death and does not rise again until I crash. Then for more than forty days at a stretch, the god assaults me with shame.

For the depressed and the anxious, the silence of God is a scream.