Living Bipolar (14 page)

Today my life is good and I am happy. I'm happy more than I'm not happy. For a person who was so miserable, and who wanted to kill himself for a long time, things are drastically different today.
Today I have happiness in my life, and I attribute being happy as a result of being on medication and being sober, and not disrupting chemicals from working.

My message to other Bipolar people would be
it's very important to stay on your medication, and to not drink, or use drugs while on medication, because you will not get the full affect
. When I was under the influence drinking it gave me the courage to kill myself, but today that is not the case.

It wasn't until I changed how I lived that things got better in my life
. I live a good life today, I live an honest life, I don't hurt people anymore, I work on myself today and I'm in therapy once a month. Today I have great relationships with my family and with my friends. I help out a lot of other people today, other people who are suffering.
Helping others is the best way for me to get out of my head and get out of myself
. I know today that I can't stop taking my medication and being Bipolar is a fact that I've had to accept as a part of my life.

I accept that I’m going to be on medication for my entire life, and I know it's vital that I continue taking my medication because I will die if I don’t
. Also, I never want to have to live like I was before because
I know I will eventually kill myself if I'm not medication
. When I'm off of medication killing myself becomes an option very fast. It becomes a reality to me.
Aside from medication what I do to help myself is I stay very busy. I make sure that I'm always doing something, whether its work, or school, or being social with others.

Also, it's very important to
listen to what your doctors have to say
. It’s been over three years since I’ve been in a psyche ward, and during this time I haven’t tried to cut myself either. I don't deal with being Bipolar the way that I use to. Today I view it as a maintenance portion of my life. I don't even think about it.
I don't think about being Bipolar everyday, rather it's just something that I have, but I don't allow the Bipolar illness to define who I am
. I don't walk around with the Bipolar illness on my shoulder and I don't have to tell everybody that I am Bipolar.

I compare being Bipolar to someone who is diabetic who has to take a shot every day to take care of themselves. I'm okay as long as I take my medication, and my medication keeps me stable.
I want to tell others do not stop taking your medication, even when things get good, because even though you are feeling good it’s almost an illusion within you, because the illness is still there waiting to rear its ugly head
. If you stop taking your medication it’s a recipe for disaster, because that can lead to mania, hypomania, and just because you're doing okay today, it doesn't mean tomorrow, or two or three days from now that you will still be doing good.
The illness almost tricks you because once you're feeling good you feel like you no longer need the medication but you're still Bipolar
. You still have a portion your brain which can simply switch.

How Can I Manage My Disorder?

• Track your mood through a daily chart.

• Maintain regular routines and sleep-wake cycles.

• Avoid alcohol and other mood-altering substances.

• Develop and maintain social supports.

-Miklowitz 2002: 153

What's significant for me today is that I live in the middle ground; I live in the middle of life. I try to stay a five, and I try to stay out of 10, and I try to stay out of the one -- I simply try to stay in the middle
. I’m not going to lie because I still have fucked up thoughts, however, I don't act on things, I talk to other people, and I stay med compliant. My therapist tells me I have a right to say no to my doctor regarding what medications I take. It's important for me to remember that I'm the one paying the doctor, and I don’t have to take anything I feel like I don’t need. Remaining sober and taking my medication is the most important thing for me to do to be all right.

The hope I can offer other people is that life will get better
. You might have to change the way your living but it will get better if you make those adjustments.

From a deeply emotionally disturbed childhood, Jane has risen from the ashes to live a life chasing her academic aspirations and living a full life with other friends.

Jane’s Story (Bipolar I)

I’ve seen doctors and psychiatrists since the age of four. As a child I had night terrors, and I really don't know many details about the night terrors. Apparently, my mom would catch me walking, or running around the house at night, screaming, and crying, and I'd still be asleep. So at the age of four my mom took me to therapy for this problem. I continued with the therapy once I hit depression in middle school, and I’ve seen psychiatrists and therapists since.

The transition from elementary school to middle school was a big shock to me and I did not handle it very well. It got to the point where I thought about hurting myself and I came up with very creative ways to accomplish this. I was placed in a psych hospital at the age of 12 just before turning 13. The stress and transition from going from one school to another, being around more people in middle school, changing classes, and changing friends overwhelmed me to the point where I just couldn’t function anymore. I didn’t want to go back to school, I was scared, and I wanted to die. It was really bad.

My mom didn’t know what to do, because this was the first time something this major had ever happened to me. So she took some advice from the pediatrician, and took me to the Miami Children’s Hospital to have a psyche consultation. I was placed in the hospital, where they diagnosed me as having depression and anxiety. I was in the hospital for about three weeks.

I was placed in a Severely Emotionally Disturbed Program which is inside a normal school, but it’s more like an emotionally handicapped place for children. It was a very small room, you dealt with the same kids every single day, and it’s an entirely different environment from normal school classes.

At the age of 13 I was depressed, but at the age of 14 and 15 I was given the diagnosis of being Bipolar. I was placed on meds during my first hospitalization right before I turned 13, and I’ve been a guinea pig on medicine for years. The doctors changed the medications I was on, and there were different side effects which came with the medications. I think I gained 80 lbs when I started lithium, I had severe acne, and the combination of the medications, and the side effects, lead me to becoming agoraphobia. I sunk so low that I wouldn’t leave my house.

Side Effects from Medications

The most important point is that side effects represent a problem for which there are solutions other than simply stopping your medication. Informing your doctor on a regular basis about you side effects will help him or her consider and discuss with you the alternatives to your treatment plan.

-Miklowitz 2002: 140

Throughout my teenage years, there were a lot of hospitalizations. The hospitalizations started at the age of 13, and have lasted until this past January when I was 26. I believe there were six in total, and they were all scary -- especially the first one. Being a young person it was difficult being around other mentally challenged people who were older than me. The first stay in a mental institution, seeing the other patients with their different behaviors was hard for me to deal with. I remember having a roommate who put things in the electrical sockets, and she would also get very angry and scare me.

During my first stay I was still very pure as a person, and the whole experience was very different for me. I’ve hated every hospital I’ve gone to. At night I would stay up as long as I could, just to make the night longer, because the days were so painful to me, having to go to the therapies and everything else that I had to do while there. One hospital that I stayed at, four people had to share a bathroom, and you had to shower in a hallway in a little room, and this was very awkward for me, because I was not used to having to do this sort of stuff. I always liked my privacy; therefore, it was very strange for me.

After graduating from middle school, the transition into high school at the age of 15 was also a problem, and high school was overwhelming similar to middle school. I was placed in a gifted severely emotionally disabled program. I was doing 12
^th
grade work when I was in ninth grade, but I was also dealing with being unstable with the Bipolar illness. I finished my year there, but I just couldn’t go back. I tried a couple other different schools, and finally became so frustrated that I decided to give up. I ended up staying in my room for a year, or two, and I did not want to leave the house. I kept eating, and watching TV, and I really had no life. When I wouldn’t leave the house for a couple of years, if I needed new clothes my parents would have to bring them home, and I would try them on, and I would send them back if they didn’t fit. I wasn’t doing much during this time period.

Around the age of 16, or 17, I went back to high school. At this point they had changed my medications, and I had lost some weight, but I went through a manic episode, and I became very promiscuous, engaging in negative activities. I would communicate with people online and then I would go meet them in person to have sexual encounters. This was really crazy. I don’t know if it was low self esteem, or the mania, or perhaps it was just the hormones. I think it was just an act that came along with the mania, and it was simply thrill seeking behavior.

Changes in sexual desire, thought, and behavior during depression and mania were observed centuries ago. Aretaeus of Cappadocia (150 AD), for example, observed that “a period of lewdness and shamelessness exists with the highest type of (manic) delirium” (Jelliffe, 1931, p. 20). In our century, Kraepelin (1921, Bleuler (1924), Campbell (1953), and Mayer-Gross and colleagues (1955) also have described heightened sexuality during mania and decreased sexuality during depression.

-Goodwin and Jamison 1990: 310

I set myself up in a lot of bad situations, and I put myself in danger with the people I met online. For instance, I met people in secluded areas and during one encounter they had guns in their car. I continued these defiant acts, placing myself in bad situations until the age of 18. Right before I turned 18 there was a big rape scenario, and it sort of changed the way I thought about my life.

I had met a girl on the Internet and I was going through a bi-curious phase in my life. We decided to meet and her male friend brought her to my house. We went back to the girl’s house to hang out, and then she got into a car with her boyfriend, and I got into another vehicle with some other people. We headed out to Fort Lauderdale. Of course with the medications I was taking you shouldn't drink on them, but I took a swig of rum and then ended up drinking the entire bottle.

Before I knew it everything was blurry, I couldn't see anything, I was very hot and I was laughing my ass off. We arrived somewhere in Fort Lauderdale, and when they opened the door I fell out of the car. I was laughing hysterically, and the girl that I met over the Internet kicked me in the head, and she said to the others let’s leave her here. The guys told her no we will take care of her. They threw me across three guys in the back seat, and I blacked out until we got back to the house.

Once we got to their house, I was vomiting, and one of the guys grabbed me and took me into the back room and raped me. The next morning they took me home and threw me on the doorstep to my house. A good friend of mine took me to the emergency room, and the people at the hospital avoided what I claimed happened by saying I was a drunk teen who did something stupid. As a result I was unable to report the rape with the authorities. After this incident I decided I could no longer live the way that I was. I knew I had to do something different. I no longer met random people over the Internet as I knew in my heart I could not go through another situation similar to the one I just went through.

I ended up getting into a relationship with a person who was not that great, but at the same time it was nice to know that someone cared. He was cheap and took advantage of me in many ways. I had low self-esteem, I had gained back some of the weight I lost previously, I wasn’t stable, I was depressed, I was not functioning to the level that I could, and I was unaware at the time that I could do better than the person I was with. For all these reasons I ended up staying with my boyfriend for a considerable amount of time dealing with all of his crap and negativity.

Next, I started college taking one class at a time. I was very scared of the whole college scenario, to the point that I would have my dad drive me to college, and wait in the car while I was in class, and afterward he would drive me home. I was afraid of people, I was afraid of being looked at, I was afraid of being judged by other people, I didn't think I was good enough, and there was just fear in general with lots of anxiety. I feared everything; I feared the entire world and its entire people.

At first I took prep courses in college which weren’t that bad, but as soon as I advanced, I had such a fear of not doing well, that if I didn't think I was going to get an A in the class on the first day I would drop the class. I was a straight A student my entire life, and it scared me to think of not doing well. As a result I dropped many classes, and I dealt with a lot of depressions in between. Eventually I got more comfortable going to school, and even though I was not 100%, I could still manage to get to class. Yes, I was a nervous wreck but I would still go and do my thing.

Then, my boyfriend and I had a fight and he hit me and that was the end of that relationship. When I turned 21, I lost some weight and got cocky. I moved on to dating a guy who was younger, and he was a virgin. Our relationship became all about sex. He had problems with his friends, because he would spend more time with me than he would with them, and we fought constantly. He finally broke up with me and this lead me into self-mutilation, severe depression, and taking pills.