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Living in Crazy WorldWhat is bipolar disorderWhat is bipolar disorder? Well it is "a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function." Wow what an understatement. Let me try to explain. Everyone has their normal periods of ups and downs. Sometimes you feel pretty low, sometimes you feel on top of the world. Well try to take this concept and multiply the severity by 100,000. Yeah, it is that bad. And the worse part is that when people feel themselves getting carried away, they can stop before it gets out of hand.. but I can't do that. I want to so bad, I despise acting the way I act, but I can't control it. It makes me feel so hopeless, it makes me feel like a bad person, It makes me want to die. depressionI go through "episodes" of emotion.. generalized into two catergories, mania and depression. Depression is the easiest to explain. I feel bad. Really really bad. I'm talking despair, intolerable internal pain, hours of crying, wailing, screaming, heart ache, impaired perception, self-loathing, paranoia, and much much more. It is so painful to experience episodes of depression. Before I found out I was bipolar, I used to think I was just depressed. They put me on prozac, didnt do a godamn thing! Of course, my doctor only prescribed me a whopping 20mg, I doubt he knew how bad it really was for me. I stopped taking the prozac after many months (this was during my sophomore year of high school) and by this time i started drinking and doing all kinds of drugs. I thought I was so badass at the time. HA. right. I wasnt doing anything that most other teenage kids didnt do during high school. At least the kind of people I started to hang out with, but i guess not the preppy smart kids at school who were grade-grubbing, delightfully prudent, american eagle cookie cutter, school-revolved bible thumpers. i doubt they ever did drugs or drank when they were fifteen. The funny way life works, i wouldnt be surprised if they were doing that at thirty though. ManiaNow mania is harder to explain because its not something that everyone experiences. In fact, the mania is what makes the illness. Without the mania, you are depressed. Ok when i'm having a manic episode, i usually dont realize that its happpening. I couldnt even identify it before I started reading about bipolar. I get very excited and hyper. My mind races, i want to do a million things at the same time. I can feel my blood pumping through my veins, I feel alive. I cant seem to concentrate on any one thing and i can talk for hours and hours, rambling on and on. I feel awake, dont want to sleep, maybe for days. This part isnt so bad, in fact i kind of like when i feel like this.. its so much better than feeling sad. BUT there is a definite downside! The irritability, the "bitch", the poor judgement and inability to forsee consequences to my words. Extremely aggressive behavior. Unrealistic beliefs in myself and others. The inability to recognize that anything is wrong. "Blocking out" things i have said,sometimes my brain wont let me remember what ive said in an outrage. Fiery temper, hurting myself. "Sometimes, severe episodes of mania or depression include symptoms of psychosis (or psychotic symptoms). Common psychotic symptoms are hallucinations (hearing, seeing, or otherwise sensing the presence of things not actually there) and delusions (false, strongly held beliefs not influenced by logical reasoning or explained by a person's usual cultural concepts) Nothing helpsSo anyway, i let myself go without medicine until my senior year. During this time period I had my first serious boyfriend and my first serious break up. Break-ups are the worst immaginable pain for anyone, but im pretty sure it was worse for me. Because I felt bad at random for no apparent reason, actually having a reason threw me into psycho mode. I didnt sleep for like an entire month unless i was drinking and i passed out. Because the first 3 weeks after it happened I was constantly trashed. I would skip school and drink, I stopped doing things i cared about, i didnt do my school work, spent most the day in the bathroom crying when i did go to school. It was lucky it happened during christmas holidays because i would have missed so much more school if it hadnt. I was in a state of deep despair. I drank so much, im sure i almost died every single time. I embarrased myself on many occasions, did alot of things im not proud of. I just wanted to forget, but i was making things worse for myself. During the summer before my senior year I met my boyfriend Josh. Yeah im not too proud of that story either. I drank around 6 beers before we found the beer bong we were looking for earlier. We did beer bongs of forties around the fire. Like 4 of them! I dont remember anything else, except like a field and a waterbed. Joshs waterbed i guess. Anyhoo, we didnt start dating for like three weeks later. He is wonderful. Even before we knew i was bipolar he put up with my bullshit. Its gotten much worse since then, and he still puts up with it. Sometimes he doesnt deal with it very well, but i know he would never leave me no matter how crazy i acted. I just wish i didnt act like that. I wish he didnt have to go through this. I wish i could just be normal, even if that meant boring. During my senior year my doctor put me on another anti-depressant called celexa. it made me sick and my stomach hurt, gave me aches and pains throughout my entire body, and other bad side effects. So my moms work gave her some kind of variation of celexa called lexapro in like a million free sample packets (i still have alot of them) and they told me it would work. I waited and waited and it never did work. My condition was getting worse, i was missing alot of school because i would wake up in the morning and not be able to stop crying or calm myself down or breathe. I knew i had bad anxiety, breathing problems and panic attacks, but it was such a horrific experience to not be able to breathe, or to pass out all alone and wonder if you might have died when you wake up. Or you wake up and not remember anything and your lying on the floor in the hallway and have no idea how you ended up there. Its scary as hell. RevelationI went to a therapist about 40 minutes away. I drove there by myself about once a week. The lady was nice, but she didnt have a fucking clue. She had no idea what to do when i started freaking out, just like everyone else. She watched me gasp for air while tears streamed down my face and i grasped onto the armchair for dear life. She just offered me a tissue, like that was going to fucking help. I told her about my father and my parents divorce and my boyfriend and alot of other things. She seemed to think my dad was the problem i think, and wanted him to come in with us and i refused. She sent a letter to me about things that "had to change" if we were to continue therapy. She made me feel like i had done something wrong, and i hated her for that. I never went back to her for another session after that. Finally i told my dad about the things that were happening to me. He is a psychologist and he said he would get help for what he was sure was an anxiety disorder. His boss Donna reccomended Dr. Hoffer to me. He is a psychiatrist, which means he prescribes medicine. Dr. Hoffer is God to me. I came in there, told him what was happening to me and he figured me out right away. He was really really nice and he had beatles posters everywhere and he let me borrow one of his beatles books. He told me i had a severe mood disorder and prescribed me lithium. I take the lithium to this day, although i cant say ive made much progress. I still have alot of episodes and i still cant control them at all. I go back there soon and im sure he will have to up my dose, but carefully, because lithium can be lethal in large amounts, and there is a fine line between therapeutic blood levels and toxicity. I get blood tests every 3-4 weeks to monitor the levels. I think that my dad is hoping he prescribes me something else to cope with the episodes until my medicine works better, like xanax. They make me fall asleep, but at least they calm me down. After i found out i had bipolar, i started reading alot about it. I cant believe i lived with this for so long without treatment. Its upsetting how many relationships i ruined and opportunities i missed out on because of it. Someday, ill be stable and happy, i just know it. After all, the first step to recovery is identifying the problem. |
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