The Benefits of Bipolar Disorder

When I am manic, I get things done. That is as long as I am not running to the top of the inside stairs and down again seeking something that I cannot remember. Then it is The Great Eater of Time. My depression helps me to see what projects I have taken up that are pointless wastes like the schemes of making a million quickly by stuffing envelopes at home. I can detect what is rigged: I will not spend hours trying to win games that cannot be won or spend money on hobbies that I will never get around to finishing. I have ships in a bottle that I have not pulled the rigging up. I bought these in hypomania.

Depression has a wisdom about it, bitter at times, with a predictive power and insight into the motives of some men and women. I do not trust certain people when I am in depression: This often proves a smart thing.

Then there is the stillness that comes, a beautiful blue film that falls gently over my consciousness calling for silence and appreciation of the moment. If I shut down the voices that hector me for a moment, I find the peace that the racing thoughts of mania do not permit. I may feel fatigued, but I am not agitated as I am in a mixed state. Depression is a better place in the mind than mania or the vicious mixed state.

Ends of a Mood Swing

My mania feels like a fishing line pulled taut to the breaking point.

My depression feels like I am that same fishing line let to fall in a curled mess and tossed to the bottom of the sea.

My mania feels like omnipotence — the power of God — channeled through my neck, my spine, my limbs, and my eyes.

My depression feels like my failure to be of any effect, like I have botched things up, crippled animals, alienated friends, brought evil into the world.

My mania feels like I can do great things, that I have a destiny that will change the world — bring peace, soften stone hearts, make people live in harmony.

My depression feels like a hole that sucks in everything good, that is no place to hide from despair.

My mania gives me energy to glide up the last spine leading to Everest’s summit and dive without a bathyscaphe to the bottom of the Challenger Deep.

My depression makes me stay in my house dreaming dark dreams.

My mania makes me love all humankind — especially women — and spark with anger if the purity of that love is questioned.

My depression makes me the lover of my pillow, my sheets, and my blanket, a friend of the curtained darkness, the noises of the day, and the deep emptiness of the night.

Crossing Zones

Travel is one of the greatest dangers facing someone with bipolar disorder. The majority of medical evacuations from overseas happen when someone enters a manic or a psychotic state. I am no stranger to these issues: I have noticed that when I cross the country to attend DBSA conventions, the combination of the excitement of the convention and the messing up of my sleep cycles — especially when I am compelled to wake up earlier — often conspire to pushing me into a slightly manic and obnoxious state.

So when we made plans to visit my brother-in-law in Senegal, I took the time to confer with all my doctors but especially my GP and my psychiatrist. In addition to the necessary shots such as typhoid and yellow fever, we bought medical evacuation insurance for me. I also discussed my plans at length with my psychiatrist, particularly since I would find myself not merely in one different timezone, but four — Salt Lake City, Paris, London, and Dakar. Together, we hatched out a plan which involved my taking an extra tablet of carbamazepine while I was gone. Two days before my departure, I began taking the increased dose — two first thing in the morning, one with dinner, and one at bedtime.

Not even the hint of mania afflicted me. I kept my temper, didn’t laugh too much, kept my bearings, and didn’t engage in compulsive spending. We stuck to our plan in London and Paris, not doing too much in a day and always discussing our expenses as we went along.

When I came back, I felt so good on the new dose — who in their right mind misses the rages? — I asked my psychiatrist if I could stay at that dose. She let me under the condition that my drug and white blood cell levels were closely monitored at least in the beginning to be sure that they didn’t destabilize me. Four months after my trip, I continue to do well.

If you live with bipolar disorder, you can learn this from my trip. First, talk to your psychiatrist and consider raising your dosages of your mood stabilizer. Second, take pains to adjust your sleeping schedule. For two weeks before I left, I starting setting my going to bed time an hour ahead of when I usually woke until I was getting up at Paris time, about mid-afternoon. When I arrived at Orly, I felt fine. When we arrived in London that evening, I went right to sleep and woke up shortly after dawn. I wore a sleep mask and ear plugs to minimize disturbances. I used an alarm clock to wake myself and it worked. I jumped out of bed and I enjoyed each day. My regimen kept my mind stable. My sanity never wobbled.

What Happens in A Support Group

A few months ago, a spokesperson for a “mental health advocacy organization” likened support groups to appendectomy patients performing surgery on one another. I said nothing at the time, but the remark and all the errors it entails have led me to consider how my support groups help me.

The claim that support groups seek to replace medical treatment is erroneous. DBSA South Orange County, like many other support groups of its kind, has issued a disclaimer indicating that our peer-run support groups are no substitute for a doctor’s care. This fact by itself defeats the glib assertion made above. We don’t try to cure people of their depression or their bipolar disorder. There are people with better skills for doing that than we.

What we offer is a safe place where people can talk about their struggles with the illness. Doctors and therapists know how to treat, but they don’t know what it is like to undergo treatment. They don’t encounter stigma. They have not experienced the catastrophic loss of community that can happen when one is diagnosed with a mental illness, when friends and family members run away.

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Self Control

Hello all, this is drunk Quinn. But don’t discount me now- I have some things to say and being drunk shouldn’t turn you away. I want to explain myself, my drug use and bipolarity. Specifically I want to discuss self control.

There are two opposing parts of me. It is slightly difficult to explain. I am both very in control of myself and very out of control. I am incredibly impulsive, I can’t stop myself in many situations, but if there is one thing I cannot stress enough is that I know exactly what is happening and the consequences of it.

Tonight I went out drinking with my friends. I was essentially a “third wheel” but this is my little group of friends- just the three of us. I don’t have any friends I hang out regularly with until I met them. I talk to a few people but we never hang out. These friends I actually hang out with. And tonight, we went drinking at this pub.

I had been there before. I had to drive and I had class early the next morning. I figured just one drink would be fine. I was wrong. After they closed I had to sit in my car for quite a while until I was “safe” to drive. I had one drink, a Mai Tai, and I was gone. It is rare that I get that drunk. I learned though. That drink at that pub will do a number on me.
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Twelve Myths About Bipolar Disorder

I have to rebut these when they are said by family members, fellow patients, and random members of the public. Every one of us who lives with the condition has heard some if not all of these time and again. You might even have a few of your own to add. You may note that I don’t include “It’s all in your head” (though the issue of faking is covered below). It is all in my head! Bipolar disorder is an organic brain dysfunction and the brain resides inside my skull. So I don’t count that a myth, just a misapprehension of the truth.

Here are my twelve most common myths:

Bipolar disorder is just something psychiatrists made up so that they can get rich.

Not too long ago, a Fox Radio commentator told a caller that she had been duped by her psychiatrist. They just made it up to get your money, he told her. She begged to differ but he was having none of it. Even when he was forced by his employer to apologize, he equivocated.

There are a few things wrong with this belief. The first any person with bipolar disorder can tell you: the highs, the lows, the paranoia, the hallucinations, and the delusions are all too real. Physicians have observed the disease in patients since the time of Hippocrates. And patients have suffered, suffered mightily.

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Outside Perspective

Sometimes I don’t notice changes in myself. They come on gradually. I don’t think of them until someone mentions it.

People have been telling me for awhile that I seem less anxious. I have been able to give presentations, start conversations, some things that might not seem like much but have been hard for me in the past. I even took part in a podcast once.

I was telling my therapist that I have had trouble with some physical things like fingerprinting (for work) or mammograms where they have to position you. I get tense and the more I am told to relax the worse it gets. Today. I had a mammogram. i warned the woman that I have had trouble in the past, but 1, 2 3 she was able to easily take the pictures.

I also told my therapist I have these brief periods when I feel at peace, happy out of the blue. She thinks I am finally starting to come out of a depression. That my meds are working on anxiety and depression. I really hope so.

11 Commandments for People Living with Bipolar Disorder

Recovery from bipolar disorder is almost like a religion or an ethical system. Certain devotions must be part of our lives if we are to recover our balance.

  1. I shall hold myself accountable for all works of my body and my mind including those which I wreak when I am in episode.
    It is important, I feel, not to separate the illness from ourselves. We did the things that happened while we were in episode. There was no second soul seizing control of our bodies. Our mind is a stream that flows continuously, sometimes over rough ground, sometimes in placid stretches, and sometimes over cliffs. We own all these states of our being.
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Skipping a Dose

Last Friday night, I forgot to take my meds. When I discovered this on Saturday afternoon, I didn’t feel unusual so I left the meds in their compartment to be taken in a week. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday passed without incident; so I forgot what had happened. Tuesday, however, brought light-headedness and euphoria that peaked in the evening. I battered it down with my usual night meds and eleven hours of sleep. I still felt a little high on Wednesday which made me worry that I was ramping up into something more serious. Thursday found me a little below level-headed but no longer hypomanic. Then Friday arrived. I woke to a crashing depression and general fatigue, sluggishness, and stupidity.

The temptation not to leave the house was strong, but I defied it and went for a long walk in Whiting Ranch. Golden Stars had made their first appearance and Blue Dicks their last along the trails. A single Splendid Mariposa Lily signaled that there were more things to come. I had my instant camera with me and set myself to the task of taking five good photos with the last of the film: I succeeded at four. The exertion slowed the whirling of my head, but didn’t stop it entirely. I pumped the blood through my veins by walking fast up the hills and finished my circuit in two hours; leaving me enough time to work on the computer a bit and enjoy a large snack to curb my massive appetite.

Do I insert here a warning to take your meds? Do you need one? Because I had skipped one dose, the foundation that I relied on for existing cracked and slumped. The funk that I find myself in will linger for a few days more. I’ve made plans to exercise and take pictures as I usually do on the weekends. The fissures should heal, my cocktail should plane off the undulations, and my equanimity return. This is a course that I have often run: I know what happened and what works to improve things. There’s no hammer that fixes it all. Only time and attention to my routine repairs my brain.

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My Name is Not Bipolar Disorder

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The roller coaster analogy never really spoke to me. I didn’t experience a thrilling ride. It was more like a tornado or a hurricane, a central column of madly swirling air that threw everything in its path asunder only to die and leave a still, bleak landscape of broken trees and shattered homes where no one could live. “Things fall apart,” goes the Yeats poem. “The center cannot hold.” Mania causes us to lose sight of our center and depression causes us to forget that we ever had one.

I count myself fortunate that I never ended up in jail though perhaps some might have made a case for it. Drugs and alcohol, at least, never presented themselves as ways to temper my emotions — I distrusted them. I let whatever flew out of the maelstrom hit me square on and I did nothing to numb the pain except hide in my room or rage unexpectedly.

Bipolar is one of those illnesses that everyone who has watched a Lifetime Channel movie thinks that he or she knows, but they have no clue. The illness doesn’t make us evil. Most of the things that I did in my rages and panics were moved by an innocent heart. I have found the same to be true of others. But often what we do is hurtful. It is no wonder that outsiders see us as brutes. When I have acted with the most vigor and erraticness, I have done so the name of one or another great crusade, marching against problems that often only I could see. Heraclitus once said that “The waking have one and the same world, the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” Bipolar creates in that waking world a sub-world that we who labor with the illness experience on our own. In it we sleep a sleep of wakefulness. Perhaps this is due to the restlessness of mania that keeps us up night after night, day after day.

Eventually things fall apart and we find our minds in bizarre places.

My worst psychotic episode happened when I was working over Christmas break in college. The world became a maze of passageways like I see in my dreams, the doors to the rooms hazy and difficult to find. I believed that I was God and that I had messed up the world. Once that a coworker asked me what was wrong. I did my best to deny that the veils between us did not exist. It was a tricky maneuver but I pulled it off. Every night I returned to my room and found darkness. When the other students returned, I felt less lonely, but I felt I wasn’t one of them. I hid in my room, held my tongue and kept my condition to myself. They knew nothing of my obsession or the distortions that blurred my cognition. Sometimes they would find me staring into space and wonder if I was on drugs. I was stone cold sober. An ill gift of prophecy settled over me. I believed that I could predict what people were going to say. I became sensitive to the occasions when people would utter words that I had encountered in my reading with no connection to the class or the context. My skin jumped at their mention and my shivers from remembering the incidents of my day kept me up. The episode slowly lifted over the semester, though I did have to drop a class.

Sixteen years passed before I sought the aid of a psychiatrist. Eleven more needed to turn over before I started telling the truth about my experiences. Oh the rages, the insomnias, the dark nights of the soul, and the mind-crushing paranoias that troubled me even though I took antidepressants and thought myself cured! The word “bipolar” was, at last, used. During the eleven years of denial, I refused to believe that it applied to me though I numbered it in others. One day in the hospital, it caught up with me, though. The new attachment to my identity electrified me. I read all I could, kept finding myself between the pages, and in the end surrendered to my diagnosis. Then I took my pills as prescribed, dieted, exercised, and broke down the walls that kept the world outside of my dream.

Though my doctors named my condition, my condition was not me. I had always had doubts about this wreck of a brain that always seemed to say and do things against my better judgment. Outsiders sometimes tell me that mood stabilizers erase the personality. They have no clue. When I got on lithium and it started working, I found myself able to be the me that I knew I always was, free of the control of the randomness-loving demon who operated my body like a slot machine whose prizes were shame and sorrow. Over the years, I have added and subtracted more medications to my cocktail until I had a firm foundation upon which I could finally build a brick house. When the madman tried to seize control of my inner weather, I had a series of steps that I could take to seal myself inside my house and wait out the storm. This security enabled me at last to separate myself from my illness. I knew, at last, who I was. Life was no longer a bad dream.