BP Type II: Background

October 2005

October 12, 2004

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Background

Being bipolar sucks, that's the long and short of it. After almost 20 years of trying to pretend I did not have it I have finally accepted the fact that I am sick, or "mentally ill" to be exact. This blog is my attempt to make sense of what goes on in my own head, and hopefully help all you "normal" people understand what its like to be crazy like me.

I should warn you about several things before you read too deeply into this blog:

1. I have a very dark sense of humor, this may include making fun of taboo topics as suicide, completely screwing up your life and destroying your finances in the midst of a really good mood (mania).

2. I can't spell cat without double checking the dictionary. If typos annoy you, reading this blog will probably drive you nuts (maybe not as nuts as me, but nuts nonetheless). Feel free to point out misspellings, grammatical errors and typos to me. I will ignore such suggestions, but feel free to send them to be.

3. Finally, I am keeping my name out of this, I am one of the few biploars that holds down a steady job, and is making it in the professional world. Therefore, I can't risk my "secret" being exposed. This sucks, but that's the way it goes, I think I should be able to talk about my illness openly and honestly, but I can't, so I won't.

Back to background information. I was diagnosed BP when I was about 14 years old. At the time they didn't know much about the illness (1986) so they did the best to try and help me. Unfortunately this including prescribing a tricyclic antidepressant. These are old school antidepressants that fight depression, but also, for me at least, make you feel like your swimming in mud.

Unfortunately, since the time I took them, they have found that these drugs should not be given to BP individuals. They actually increase the frequency and intensity of our mood swings. At one point I was actually experiencing deep depression and mania sometimes within a 24 hours period.

Needless to say, the whole experience pretty much turned me off doctors. So, for the next 17 years or so, I avoided any kind of long term treatment. I would simply go to a general practitioner when I was feeling particularly depressed, say what I needed to say, and get some Zoloft or other antidepressant. I actively avoided therapy, and I stayed very far away from psychiatrists.

I did do some therapy during college, but I didn't trust the guy, and never gave him the full story, so you can imagine how helpful that was.

Finally, over the summer I almost destroyed my marriage (I tried my hardest, but thankfully my wife wouldn't allow me to accomplish my crazy goal) and I came very close to killing myself on several occasions. Somewhere along the line I finally got scared, scared enough to admit I needed help. First, I started seeing a phsyc. on a regular basis, then a couple months ago I started therapy, this time I am trying to be honest with the guy, it seems to actually be helping. I hope it does.

The worst thing about this whole experience is accepting the fact the BP is a permanent condition, it can't be cured, it won't ever go away; instead you have to treat it like the mental equivalent of diabetes. You have to manage it every day, and accept the fact that you will always be mentally ill (crazy) and that you aren't sure when another attack of mania or deep depression may hit.

Well that's the story up to now. I will try to be posting daily; hopefully I can find some patterns and figure out a way to head off mania/depression at the pass. If you notice 10 or more posts in a single day, I am probably manic, so please disregard what I may say. Similarly, if I fail to post for 3 to 6 weeks, I am probably in deep depression and will post again as soon as I can.

October 12, 2004 in Background | Permalink

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October 2005

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