“technical” difficulties

I know we all have our issues, difficulties, problems, and relatives who drive us batty. I don’t think I’m one of those people who has to have a more fantastical story. Someone who has no idea that she must “one up” people when they tell her their own stories of difficulty, problems, struggles, issues, and that irritating cowlick that she can never seem to tame. Am I? But I must admitt that the overall range of issues I have the privilege of juggling is a bit, well, let’s say “character building”. I want to tell my own stories as honestly and authentically as possible. I know I have discovered the secret to my sanity and success. The secret is to accept my challenges and limitations, look at them realistically, talk about them honestly, see them for what they are, be blessed, and use every thing that I find in them to give to others. At times, when I look at my life through that lens, I’m stunned. I'm stunned. Among the challenges I'm privileged to face are, found in my Blog title, “Gay Christian Crazy”

Part I: Crazy
Only I can call myself crazy. It’s just like someone’s out of control child. A parent can say to you, “my kid is out of control”, but you may not have that same right.

If you look at a national average, my diagnosis, Bipolar I (formerly Manic Depression), the prevalence in the population is 3-5%. But many studies have concluded that there is a mere 1% prevalence rate of the illness world wide. It is considered one of the most severe mental illnesses to have. It is very surreal for me when I look at a sentence like that. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it. I also feel kind of special. Not only in a hostile and bitter sort of way, but in a David and Goliath way too.

Here’s a summary of the illness:
“Bipolar I Disorder is one of the most severe forms of mental illness and is characterized by recurrent episodes of mania and (more often) depression. The condition has a high rate of recurrence and if untreated, it has an approximately 15% risk of death by suicide. It is the third leading cause of death among people aged 15-24 years, and is the 6th leading cause of disability (lost years of healthy life) for people aged 15-44 years in the developed world.”

I was diagnosed with manic depression a few months after returning from my teaching position over in China. But I only actually accepted the diagnosis about a year and a half ago. That means it took me only, uh, 14 years. I constantly questioned it, half accepting, half denying it. “I’m not really sick, I’m just a mess”. “I’m fine, I can make myself better.” “Only really crazy people are mentally ill. I’m just an artist.” But people in my life beg to differ. I have to agree now. Now I see my illness for what it is. I still hate the label “mentally ill”, but it is about as appropriate a label as it gets. I am ill and it affects my mental capacities.

After I was initially diagnosed in ’93 I was prescribed the psychotropic drug Lithium. On the periodic table, which you studied in middle school, it is atomic #3, just after hydrogen and helium. It is a naturally occurring salt, and according to popular legend its therapeutic affects on mood disturbance was discovered when it was introduced as a table salt substitute at a prison. A decrease in inmate violence, acting out, and hostility was eventually attributed to the introduction of lithium to the prison population’s diet. I don’t know if that is entirely true, but I really like that version of the story.

When lithium was first introduced to my diet in the form of a little pink pill taken 4 times a day, I was overjoyed at the peace I experienced. One day, really, I suddenly realized that it was quiet. There was a frenetic activity in my brain that never seemed to quiet down. In fact, author and fellow manic depressive Dr Kay Redfield Jamison wrote a powerful and informative memoir of her journey from undiagnosed mayhem to her own acceptance. The book is appropriately titled, The Unquiet Mind. The inner noise of a bipolar mind is like the chatter of the radio as you surf from station to station. It is like the roar of surf and like the distraction of a jack hammer while trying to study for a statistics exam (please refer to my former post “if/then”).

Unfortunately one of the primary problems faced by us manic depressives is that we seem to eventually tire of both the side-affects of our medications and, more importantly, the lack of excitement, color, and vibrancy of our lives before meds. We frequently suffer serious memory lapses in that we forget all the devastation, pain, and general lunacy that was also endemic in our former unmedicated life.

After 5 years on meds, in 1999 I made a deal with God. I know what you're thinking and I agree. However, at the time I thought it was a brilliant idea. I said, “If you let me go off this stupid medication that is causing more problems than it is supposed to correct, I promise I’ll listen to anyone who tells me I’m obviously in the middle of a manic episode.” Well, anyone who knows ANYTHING at all about manic depression knows that among the many symptoms is the inability to personally accept or even identify the symptoms when they are present. And to compound the situation, the manic person will rarely listen to those voices of reason around them anyway. “La, la, la, I can’t hear you,” we sing as we stick our fingers in our ears, “I’m having fun and you are trying to ruin it”. Unfortunately for me, 5 years after that deal with God I had people around me in late 2004 who were unable, for whatever reason, to identify and/or confront me when I was, as one person described after the fact, “completely gone”.

The course of an "episode" -BP is episodic and symptoms are generally only present during eposodes- looks like that grading curve that some sadistic teachers use to humiliate those of us who really suck in academia. The manic episode starts, always, at the “normal” mood stability range. This is the range most “stable” people hover around. It ranges from peace and contentment to the temporary psychosis of PMS. We all experience trauma, pain, grief, and bad news. Mostly we journey through these things experiencing a wide range of emotions that tend to be abnormal, outside the average range. But they are temporary and somewhat manageble. The manic depressive can no more control the course of their moods as control a vehicle skidding on black ice at 80 mph. You slowly, or rapidly, climb up and up into the manic range of mood instability.

The euphoria of the climb is what we remember when we romanticize the “good old days” before the "zombie'ing" affects of psychotropic medications. It's the same euphoria drug addicts crave. Mania literally has the same effect as a drug. Manic depressives crave it like anyone would crave a great high. In fact, any of you ever experienced the good, pure, home grown mania you would probably want more of it too. Colors are brighter, you feel invincible and smarter and funnier. To compound your unperturbed grandiosity, everyone really likes you when you're manic (seriously, people just LOVE me when I’m on my way up). You gain new friends, business partners, projects. You can accomplish a lot (mostly because you rarely sleep), you’re productive, creative, you feel sexy and crave sexual intimacy, and it is an overall fantastic and addictive experience. Oh, yea, and you lose weight because you rarely eat. I like that part especially.

Visible and troubling problems begin at the crest of the bell curve. At some point everything goes wrong. Suddenly you are not feeling so great and you don’t know why. You wake up one morning with a feeling dread. People are treating you differently and you don't know why. The euphoria turns into paranoia. Excess energy is gone and you begin to experience rapid successions of restlessness, lethargy, irritability. The brightness and extreme feelings turn delusional, hallucinatory, and hostile.

The unavoidable descent into clinical depression begins to take its course. As you cascade helplessly down the other side of bell curve your brain experiences a severe disruption in its normal metabolic rate and blood flow. Your ability to function normally in this state, already severely compromised, is compounded by the fact that you are now buried helplessly in the wake of devastation of your eratic activity in your mania. Relationships have been hurt if not destroyed. You also can't keep up with all the expectations and projects you accumulated in your mania. Money has disappeared on things you can’t recall (or don’t want to). Bills come out of nowhere. You lose jobs, people, money, respect, belongings, and trust. You can’t even trust yourself. You can’t get a grip on reality anymore because you have run the gamut of unreality like a drunkard in a blackout.

After 5 years on medication I struck that deal with God, and, as is the clinically exact course of the illness, in late 2004 experienced the most severe manic episode of my life. Counting the months of mania (prior to my entering treatment again in February of 2005), it took me about 3 years to recover. And by recover I mean physically becoming stable, for I am still recovering my life from the episode.

Now my brain is back. But my brain was fried! Cooked. In those 3 years I suffered two of the most severe depressions that nearly cost me my life. And THAT was ON the medications!! I was prescribed an aptly named anti-psychotic medication, I was back on lithium but at three times the dosage (as high as can be tolerated), and tried 3 other mood stabilizing drugs in an attempt at achieving an elusive mood stability. Until I was stable I had no chance of even starting to recover my life. I was incapacitated to the point that I was being strongly encouraged to go on Disability. I was on two occasions strongly encouraged to check myself into the hospital. I was “let go” from my job. I lost friends (like losing a $20 bill, “I have no idea where I dropped it or I’d go back and get it again”).

I lost complete faith in regaining any agency in my own life. But I didn’t go on disability because I’m stubborn and far too proud. I didn’t check into a hospital even though I wanted the safety of being watched and controlled by someone other than my suicidal self. I didn’t want it on my record. I reminded myself, while in a fetal position in bed at 4 p.m., that perhaps one day I’ll be okay and try to adopt a child... I did not want a future adoption agency see “psychiatric hospital patient” in my medical records. I didn’t want on my record for a number of reasons. I had some tiny miniscule ability to direct myself, but it didn’t feel like much at all. In fact, all I wanted to do was crawl up in a corner and maybe die if it was okay with God. It wasn't. Obviously.

In a future post I will tell you all that I gained from this. It is all insurmountably good (I mean that in a non-manic way). However, maybe this lets you in to see how this particular illness ravages hope. Ravages? It rapes. The hardest thing to comprehend, for me and others, is that it’s all in my head. I can’t even take a blood test to prove to myself that I have an “illness”.

However, I do have great pride that I am in good company! Many creative and brilliant people have suffered the same wages of an illness for which people in medieval times were burned at the stake. An illness that is the poster child for "insane assylums". But in these more civilized times our lunacy seems to be put to better uses. Here is a taste of the good company I keep: Virginia Woolf
Winston Churchill
Buzz Aldrin
Napoleon (okay, maybe not "good" company)
Rosemary Clooney
Robert Frost
Cary Grant
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emily Dickinson (actually, there are a significant amount of poets who have been BP!)
Jack London
Mozart
Mark Twain
Vincent van Gogh (everyone knows that! The ear thing)
Ted Turner
Abe Lincoln
and, of course, Jim Carrey.

In part II, my next post will look at the “gay” portion of my Blog title. Another piece of me that falls in the lowest percentages of the world wide population. Another piece of who I am that is challenging that sets me apart in some ways and for which I carry a label of "other". I'm not whinning.

In part III I will elucidate that piece of who I am with all the struggles and blessings therein. It beats the struggles and blessings of the other pieces hands down. Part III, my Christian life, my life in the hands of an invisible God.

Oh, yea, about the “technical” difficulties. I wanted to tell you that I have not been posting because I have been experiencing technical difficulties with my computer and also with internet connection. Can you believe the audacity of my neighbor? He went and put a lock on his wireless router and now I can’t freeload off of him! Some people. Then my computer has been doing mean things to me. So, I called the Dell people for some customer support. Dell has fantastic customer support. I told “Christian”, who spoke with somewhat of a strong Punjabi accent, “It’s a good thing you guys provide such great tech support because your computers have a lot of problems.” I’ve never been one to understate the obvious.

But in reality, “technically” the reason I have not posted is because I formed a really bad habit in all my years living with manic depression. I'm moody in my ability to create. I create when my mood is “creative”. So, I have not been writing because I am “technically” bipolar and moody. I'm working on that.