Actually that sounds awesome compared to TX. I’d like to check that out.
Everyone seems to have a label for themselves & if they don’t, people have one for them. This label often becomes their ID; but not always.
I think that is unfortunate. In the last few years BP has been diagnosed more frequently. This is both good and bad. It’s good in that people who actually ARE bipolar are getting treatment that might not have been available to them in years past. It is bad though becuase as in years past with other disorders (like ADHD) I think there are a lot of misdiagnosis.
I think it is important with any disease with any consumer to do their homework. To do your own research to make your own informed decisions and get second and third and fourth opinons. Psychiatry is like any other discipline. There are good doctors and bad ones and it is even more critical because the diagnosis are so subjective. Be INFORMED! But at the same time, don’t use anything as a crutch.
So you have Bipolar, ADHD, OCD, or anything else. That doesn’t mean you can’t lead a fully functional life. I have three beautiful children, I have a masters degree and make a six figure income. I wig out occasioanlly, I drink too much and I have a really difficult time having intimate relationships but, hey WTF…overall I have had a pretty good life looking back over it all. I can’t complain.
I have no doubt that I am bipolar. My Dad was and stil in Bipolar (in those days it was called Manic-depressive and I have a whole famioly history of various weird mood disorders so it isn’t somethig I have made up to gert sympathy from my peers. I tis very dibilitating but dammit, I will fight it, I wil teach my kids to cope and to fight and to survive. You got to live with the hand you are dealt and make the best of it.
I have had an opposite expierce then mipiace. For one i did not accept that i had a mental disorder untill moths of therapy. I don’t lean on my disorder for a crutch but at time i am litterally unable to help myself. I am in such a dark place i can’t even think about eating with out feeling like i am going to vomit. I get so scared of the shower i will go without one for weeks. I mean, i think mipiace’s “go get it attitude” is great but i don’t think some people are are able to cope with that. Everydays a fight and you will lose sometimes and sometimes it will be to bad of a blow…
Also i was wondering most of you guys are older then me, and i was wondering if your age ever got in to self-mutilation as a coping tool?
Upper cow,
i think you might have misinptepreted my intention. I have succedded but I haven’t beat Bipolar. I still have very fucked u p days and very often. You need to read my poetry, my stories, some of my emails, see some of my artwork. There are some very painful and very macabre things that I couldn’t share on a public message board. My life hasn’t been all positive and painless. Bipolar is a lifelong fight. Some times are highs bright and blue and non stop until you simply fucking burn yourslef out adn you can’t go anymore and y ou just can’t stop and you still go and go and you want to stop and you still go adn you crash into deep hopeless engulfing strangling blackness that will not let you out no matter how you fight or what you do and it is terrifying as each breath becomes a fight for your very survival and each minute you fight to live adn you don’t know where to turn or who to trust and you are all alone with no where to turn and you want it all to end but there is no end in sight and it goes on and on and you don’t know how long…a day, and hour, a week, a year, and it might be a little better today and hell tomorrow, and good the next day only to crash into inky dispair again and no one understand and no one can help. Your family looks at you and they try to help and they pity you and that makes you angry and then they get frustrated and they get angry adn that makes you really angry and you blame them and they blame you and you hate them for not understanding and for being normal and for not feeling what you feel and there is no end in sight and it lingers on a knife in y our side a pain in your heart and it goes on and on never ending pain and one day a crevice of sun starts to shine and then a breath of air…just a little and another day a smile and one day you wake and you can breath and you are afraid and you pray to God to please let this last just for a day “Please let me have just a day of freedome from my prison” and it starts to feel good a little but you are a little like a colt on wobbly legs, shakey and tired easily…you feel good in short burst and you tend to go full speed and then rest a lot and befor eyou know it you are going ful speed ahead because it feels so good to feel so good again. You smile and laugh and you are happy again. You laugh with friend and talk and talk and talk and uh oh…am I talking a lot? Am I laughing too loud? Is THAT my credit card bill? Did I spend that much? Adn there you are back on top again it feels so good…you don’t want that to end because you know what comes next…
This is my experience as an untreated Bipolar. My personal experience. I started trying to prolong the high by not letting the high get too high. So I drank, a downer to keep from over doing it. That is how I got started self medicating. When I crashed, I would caffeinate and eventually use stimulants to kick myself in the ass to make myslef go to work. I made it through college and raised three kids and had a career but it was not without pain and certainly not without a HUGE personal cost.
I wrecked my marraige and I highly suspect that even though I have always worked out, using a lot of alcohol and stimulants has probably not been good for my health.
I switched to psych drugs and it has been MUCH more effective. This is my silly story. Be smarter than I was but all I am saying is that these were my coping mechanisms and you can develop your own [smarter] ones. ther IS an end to the depression. Mania comes and goes and unfortuantely so does depression.
Good luck uper Cow…Email me if you want.
I noticed a couple of people mention that there were different types of bipolar disorder, some less extreme that others. Can anyone explain further?
I’m asking becuase over the past few months I’ve discovered a history of mental illness on both sides of my family, and, now that I’ve left secondary school and into a new crowd of friends, I’m starting to wonder if a lot of my school-related misery wasn’t normal teenage depression. Actually, I’m kinda paranoid about it, which means I tend to second guess everything I do, which means I don’t sleep or drink too much which worries my friends which worries me… and on, and on, ad nauseam.
But then I’m awfully sceptical of self-diagnosing myself as bipolar, because I’ve never experienced anything much like what others expressing.
I’m part way through a very interesting book,
A Remarkable Medicine Has Been Overlooked by Jack Dreyfus. Through the Dreyfus foundation, he has funded a tremendous amount of research into brain electrical imbalances. From my read, there has been quite a lot of talk about chemical imbalances over the last decade or so, but he’s been funding research into the electrical imbalances. And from that he really became the push behind using drugs, that formerly were only used for epilepsy, for other imbalances in mental functioning. It’s a fascinating read, so far, and while I can’t vouch for the content, it seems Well Worth checking out the book, as support for educated questions with your p-doc. I know one friend who has migraines with her bi-polar cycles found that treatment with drugs formerly known as ‘seizure drugs’ have helped on both fronts, while still leaving her alert and ambitious.
My work demands that my ‘creative aspects’ be on-call, but during a major bout of wishing-to-have-no-future, I started using the over-the-counter hormonal supplement “SAMe” (best price I’ve found for it has been CostCo and Trader Joe’s, but they have it in any health food store and most drug stores, now. My understanding (I have no cite for this) is that the SAMe part is only mfg. by one company in the western hemisphere, so the basic stuff is all the same, just different vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other ‘healthy’ additives for the different “brand” out on the market. The advice I received was, "It is the same main part, buy the cheapest you can find and take it every day.) and it’s made a terrific difference for me. I’m not in the BiPolar battle, but, if you’re not able to do the Doc. thing, SAMe is available everywhere, and has made a terrific difference for me, in the going-into-darkness battle.
The other part I’ve seen/ heard for bi-polar And depression is that the Eastern art of Qi Gung (“Chee Gong”) is a terrific adjunctive “therapy.” I’ve certainly experienced a number of validating outcomes in my life that support many of the Eastern theories of Chi Flow, so in my world it is as real as any Western theory of brain chemestry. The basics of Qi Gung are all structured around the concepts of increasing the “reserves” of “life force” in your body. Seems many find these “balanced reserves” actually sustain them into those ‘lower highs’ as well as carrying them across ‘more connected lows.’
I don’t have any answers, just my own thoughts and experiences. … but the truth is, in these arenas that is basically what the experts are working from, too. I echo mipiace in the basic truth is each person has to take it unto themselves to seek, educate, consult with experts and do their own research … toward a balance that works for them!
Damn Wyatt! You surprise me all the time. You are just a plethora of different personalities in there aren’t you (and I don’t mean that from a mentallly ill perspective either!! LOL)
You know I have heard of a LOT of alternative therapies and have never tried them. But that is something very worth exploring because what I neglected to mention is that with psych drugs - there are a lot of negative side affects. Should you decide that is a route you choose to take. You might want to research long term side affects and get regular testing of organ function etc (depending on the drugs you take) and switch around what you take. Particularly if you start at a young age. However you look at it - it sucks. Not a death sentance but certainly not a picnic by any means.
Wyatt - dude, you are so cool.
Wow! Mipiace, Thanks!
Yup, not everything that comes out of my brain is silliness! (I’m sure I’d surprise you, quite a bit.)
But back to visit the actual thread. I want to thank each of you who has written about the experience of, particularly the Bipolar “high.” It makes it all make much more sense to me why I’ve seen folks go off the meds. that were keeping them so level. I really appreciate the migraine-like description about external stimuli.
(Frustrating part here, I don’t recall the ‘name’ of the treatment series, at the moment, if you want it, email me, I’ll get it from her) A friend just did a series of treatments (hoping to interrupt her tricotilliamania (sp?)) and was amazed to find that outside stimuli (music, sounds, lights) fell back into “normal background”, instead of feeling like “attacks.” (her words) The whole series was based on brain electrical flow patterns, and reworking those electrical brain states with visual and auditory stimuli. Didn’t stop the Tricotillamania, but did place her in a state of Much More Calm, in the face of day-to-day “reality.”
The other part I wanted to drop in, is that I was just reading an article about psych. meds FINALLY being put into patch delivery systems. (I’d been wondering why they weren’t being put into “norplant” style delivery systems … but that’s another question) Seems they’ve “discovered” that for many people the patch delivery system allows a more directly manageable “portion control” and, according to how I read it, has allowed many folks to actually have more constant, but lower levels of the drug in their system, with the same or better effectiveness. I’m thinking if I were investigating “p-meds.” or on them, I’d want to check with my docs. about that approach.
You know I have wondered that myself, why there isn’t amore reliable appraoch to med delivery. When you are stable medication is easy but when I am depressed, or manic (basically when I need the meds most) it’s hard to remember if I actually took themeds and I may not care if I take them at all or I may get really fucked up and decide I don’t WANT to take them…your mind does strange things to you and that is when you particularly cannot trust your own judgement and probably won’t allow anyone else to help you out either.
Yeah Wyatt…much more than sillines…very cool. [said with much admiration]
I just wanted to pop in here and say to the Bipolar folks struggling with meds:
Thank you for trying.
It might not work out for you. You might choose not to use them. You might choose to use them and still have a lot of struggles. You might choose to stay on them and wonder if you have lost more than you have gained.
I understand that.
The love of my life just couldn’t stay on them. And, well, that means we can’t be together. And that tears my heart apart. I can understand why she made that choice. But I cannot live in the maelstrom that is the result–not and raise two children. If it was just me, I would pick her and the maelstrom. Hell, I would pick her and slow, agonizing death. But the children deserve a home with a parent that can be there, can get them to school on time, can pay the bills, can support them, and can offer some sort of consistency of treatment and a more or less normal existence.
I can not presume to understand what it is like to be bipolar. I DO have enough problems of my own to understand what it is like to live 35 years thinking a behavior is a part of your core personality, and then find out it is a symptom of a disorder. Boy, does that suck.
But, if you are bipolar, there are folks out here that love you. We love you more than we can ever say. Yeah, by the nature of the illness, we get dumped on. But we try. We love you when you are hyper-sensitive. We love you when you are angry. We love you when you are depressed. We love you when you don’t give a shit about us, or our love, and are promiscuous. We are still there, waiting for you to crash and need us. We will be there. Please try the meds a while. Give them a chance. Give us a chance. If, in the end, you can’t stay with the meds, well, that is your choice. We understand.
But, if you can, give them a chance.
For the ones that love you.
I was diagnosed bipolar in 1994. Two of my mother’s brothers are bipolar and my grandfather was schizophrenic (I don’t believe bipolar was defined yet). I’ve been in manic episodes where I have blacked-out and could not account for myself, sometimes for days. I’ve been depressed to the point that I felt physical pain. I take lithium and effexor and they work well and cause no noticable side effects. I have taken them for about 6 years. Valproic Acid makes me excessively violent. Once when I was on Valproin I stabbed an orderly in the bicep with a pencil for some reason. They shot me up with Thorazine and I woke up naked in a pink room. Things are going well. I have a job interview in two hours and I go back to school Monday. The two may even go together. I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell.
Thank you, hlanelee, for sharing that insight into the swings of Bi-polar …