tidal moods

Depressed moms make depressed kids

2008-09-30T16:54:00.003-07:00

A new study out of Minnesota found that adopted children with a depressed mother were more likely to suffer from depression that those with a non-depressed mother.

That certainly makes sense to me. Children tend to spend quite a bit of time with their moms and a depressed mom is less involved, less enthusiastic and less engaging than a non-depressed mom. Being a good parent means being a good role model and that's quite a tall order with major depression looming around. I suppose the knowledge that your pathologies detrimentally impact your kids is a good inspiration to fight harder, to aggressively pursue an effective therapy. At the end of the day, even if you don't think you're worth it, most parents would go through hell and back for their kids.

Speaking of chillins, my moods have been impressively steady since the birth of my first child about 9 months ago. I think there are a multitude of reasons for that. First, she's an alarm clock that I can't ignore and she wakes up just about the same time every morning. Since I love my sleep, I tend to go to bed around the same time each night and getting a regular sleep schedule is useful. I can easily tell if I want to sleep longer (which usually accompanies my depressions) because it changes my bed time.

Second, my diet improved dramatically while I was pregnant and a lot of those dietary changes have stuck around. I haven't been taking any meds for about 2 years and I've lost most of the weight I put on with various SSRIs and lithium. That's something to cheer about.

And third, I think I've been a bit more vigilant about intervening when I feel my moods beginning to slip one way or another. The last thing I want is to stumble into a major depression while I'm trying to raise a child so I've been doing my mental best to guard against it. When I notice my mood starting to dip, I'll purposefully go out and do something fun or go trot around the park or the mall with the baby in tow. Those things won't kill a major undertow, but I feel like they stop a snowball on my moody mountain from becoming an avalanche.

At any rate, motherhood agrees with me and I've been enjoying the longest period of mental stability that I've had since I was a teenager (and we all know how mentally stable we felt as teens). It's been a bit challenging trying to sharpen my mind again after it was dulled by such a devastating depression, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely. I'm starting to remind myself of how I was before this drama unfolded. It's kind of like someone dropped a bomb in the middle of my mental landscape and I have to adjust the plans I had for myself before that bomb went off because life didn't just stop because part of me did. I guess it never does.

BPD in children

2008-09-22T12:50:00.002-07:00

The NYT has an interesting article on bipolar disorder in children, rife with quotes from sources intimately profiting from the creation of this new diagnosis. You can read a good critique of the article here.

Personally, unless my kid was a clear danger to themselves or my family, I would be extremely hesitant to put them on any kind of psychiatric drug that hasn't been specifically studied for its impact on children and developing brains. To my knowledge, there are no drugs that fit those criteria.

I'm not depressed, I'm hibernating

2008-09-12T10:57:00.002-07:00

Or so say German researchers who found that the molecular changes in the blood of a bipolar woman during depressive cycles resemble the changes seen in hibernating animals.

Bipolar linked to older fathers

2008-09-09T10:14:00.002-07:00

The New York Times has more.

What bipolar is like

2008-07-19T09:11:00.002-07:00

The NY Times has a good series of short interviews of bipolar people that paint an excellent picture of what it's like to be bipolar. I highly recommend listening.

Drugs and Growing Brains

2008-05-24T07:37:00.002-07:00

The Huffington Post has an interesting article on the emergence of the bipolar child and the increasing popularity of drugging children and teens with powerful psychiatric agents that have not been rationally tested for their impact on developing brains. Personally, unless my child was exhibiting unquestionable symptoms of an extremely dangerous disorder, I would hesitate to give them medication. Truly life-threatening psychiatric diseases in children have always been rare and having spent quite a bit of time around children, I don't think that their scarcity is due to a lack of diagnosis. A psychotic child is unusual.

Much like a psychiatric drug isn't going to cure a situational depression--prozac won't resurrect a loved one, for example--mood stabilizers are not going to eliminate children's tantrums, nor should they! Fiery tempers and intense rebellion are normal for the three and under crowd.

Drugs that manipulate brain chemistry should be the absolute last resort and if a child is involved, I would get a second opinion before medicating.

I guess drugging unruly children might be part of our Brave New World.

Fear and Mental Illness

2008-04-16T09:34:00.002-07:00

In the wake of the horrible Virginia Tech shootings, a number of colleges and universities created mental health task forces designed to determine whether mentally ill students should be allowed to remain on campus and continue their education. As a result, some students have reported that they were asked to leave school after dealing with a mental health issue through school administrators.

There are a whole host of problems with this approach. First, the vast majority of mentally ill students will never go out, purchase a weapon and butcher their classmates and these task forces make it more difficult for that majority to seek effective intervention and treatment. If I had known in college that there was even the slightest chance the administration would kick me out of school for being bipolar, I would have hidden my illness. I would have hesitated to get the help I so desperately needed for fear that the label "bipolar" would be devastating for my future. And feeling like I had to hide my illness would have made me more ashamed of it.

Policies like this that purport to protect the student body by assessing risk actually make students less safe because they discourage the mentally ill from aggressively getting the treatment we need. It's traumatic to realize that you have a mental illness, that it's out of control and that you need outside help to deal with it. For me, while I was enduring the indignities of my mind's sojourn into reckless impulsivity and wide, debilitating mood swings, the consistency of my education was integral to my ability to pick myself up after the storm clouds cleared a bit. I may have been a complete mess, but I still managed to graduate magna cum laude. I went to grad school.

But that's me and perhaps my experience isn't representative. But maybe it is. Maybe the best thing for the mentally ill is not to pull us out of society and send us to some happy fairy camp where we'll magically recover from our illnesses and then allow us to re-enter society when some risk manager has deemed us safe. Maybe the best thing is for us to continue to try to be functioning members of society, to force us to contend with the reality of managing life with a chronic illness.

Where does that leave college administrators? With the realization that all the risk management policies in the world would not stop something like the Virginia Tech shooting from happening again, but they will hurt students who need help.

A glimpse of the future or modern snake oil?

2008-03-23T16:10:00.002-07:00

The newest gimmick in the world of mental illness? At-home genetic testing kits claiming to diagnose bipolar disorder mailed to your doorstep for just $399.

While I am firmly optimistic that medical professionals will eventually be able to diagnose bipolar disorder with something more accurate than the current nebulous methodology, I don't think researchers are quite there yet. And because bipolar disorder actually describes a broad spectrum of behaviors and pathologies, a test like this is of limited utility because it inevitably has a high error rate, diagnosing only those genetic manifestations this one researcher has identified and leaving the rest undiagnosed.

Right now, this kind of thing is a waste of money. But in ten years, it might be the standard of care. Genetic research and diagnosis will revolutionize medicine in our lifetimes. We're just not there quite yet.

More like this!

2008-03-12T08:15:00.003-07:00

Researchers are developing a blood test to determine whether or not antidepressant medications are working. For anyone who's waited 6-8 weeks for relief from depression only to have a medication fail, this is a fabulous development.

Things that make you go hmmm

2008-02-26T19:07:00.002-07:00

Researchers at the University of Hull have found that anti-depressants are not significantly more effective than placebos at combating depression.

I'm not terribly surprised by that. I didn't find that antidepressants were some kind of cure all when I was miserable. I wonder if they're more effective for men.

Hmmm.

It's been too long!

2008-01-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

At least I have a decent excuse for not posting in so long! My husband and I welcomed the newest member of our family, a baby girl, on December 31, 2007. :)

**

After her latest inexplicable behavior, sources close to Britney Spears have intimated that the starlet is suffering from bipolar disorder, a rather compelling explanation for her bafflingly bizarre and inconsistent behavior as of late. Do I buy it?

Well, it's at times like this that I'm reminded of the vast expanse of behaviors encompassed by the bipolar spectrum. Britney is certainly engaging in the kind of behaviors I associate with uncontrolled bipolar disorder--she's spending loads of money (which admittedly, she has to spend), she's abusing drugs and alcohol, she's apparently been rather promiscuous and she seems completely unable to maintain meaningful relationships with friends and family. She seems almost delusional--running around in wigs and putting on a British accent at random moments--and megalomaniacal--as if she's expecting that the court system exists to serve her whims.

What is certain to me is that she poses a danger to her young sons because her behavior is erratic and irrational. It's unfair to expect people in the grip of a devastating illness to act rationally or in the best interests of themselves or their dependents. But it's sad to watch her and to remember that mental illness extends beyond the individual suffering from it. It's a tragedy for families, friends...for everyone who cares about the afflicted person.

I wonder if there's a point of no return when it comes to illnesses like this, if there's a point you get to when it's impossible to get back your mental health. And even if you can always regain your mental health, I'm certain there's a point beyond which the damage to your interpersonal relationships is irreparable. I hope Britney can get her life in order before she discovers the latter point. And I hope that she'll be able to forgive herself and recapture her dignity and integrity when her reason returns.

A tiny victory

2007-06-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Starbucks settled a lawsuit filed by the EEOC on behalf of a bipolar barista who was fired from one of their stores. I don't know the details of the case, but I think that the new management of the store must have acted poorly for the lawsuit to have been filed in the first place.

Nice to see little legal victories now and then.

Personalized treatment

2007-05-13T17:59:00.001-07:00

Wouldn't it be nice if mental health treatment could be tailored to individual brains? I guess that's the future of medicine.

20 years later...

2007-05-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

Prozac gets a review in The Guardian.

I vividly remember reading Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, her memior about her struggles with depression, and being distinctly jealous of her because at the end of the book, she takes this pill and makes it sound as though her troubles simply floated away. According to Wurtzel, Prozac cured her depression. Lucky bitch.

A Fallow Mind

2007-04-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

While the medical establishment can probably describe the biochemical reactions that occur in the human brain to create a transition from a legnthy depression into a normal or manic state, somehow descriptions of chemistry don't capture the experience of living through it, of being a casual observer as your own mind goes from being in solitary confinement in the dead of the night to capturing the tiniest inkling of light and life. There's an indescribably beauty to that...but it's tempered by the most ominous of horrors--the constant whisper that said inkling may be gone as quickly as it came.

On my morning commute, I drive through several large corn fields that have obviously been rather dead over the winter and I've found a certain sense of kinship with them. I feel as though my mind has been largely dead for the past year or two, that where a garden more spectacular than most once grew, a plain field of dirt remains. When a bipolar mind is flowering with ideas and enthusiasm, I think it obtains an Alice in Wonderland type of exaggerated beauty, something so fantastic and energetic that sustaining it is beyond the capacity of anyone I've ever met. But once you've experienced that type of beauty in your own head, watching it whither and die with your sanity intact is perhaps the height of mental cruelty, an experience so savage and devastating that it's no wonder to me why bipolar has the highest rate of suicide of any mental illness. A life devoid of such beauty hardly seems like a life worth living.

Over the past few years, a part of me has stood by and watched as my mental garden went from being lush and succulent, verdant with ideas and inspiration to the empty mud slab it is today, or perhaps was yesterday. I've survived seeing the most beautiful thing I've ever seen die. I've endured watching truth and wisdom and inspiration fade from the most pleasing symphony I've ever heard to the most bereft, foul, aching silence. Where once there were fruit-bearing trees of thought so laden with their own harvest that they could barely keep their branches off the grass, there's nothing. Not even the skeletons and the decay of what once was remains. What beauty there was has been eaten by the deadened ground. And for the longest time, there was nothing. No music. No thoughts. No ideas. Nothing. Silence and darkness.

But just as the manic beauty cannot be sustained, so too is the darkness fleeting.

In talking to Brendan about this, I told him that my mental garden is still just a slab of mud but now there's life beneath the surface. It's as if I can feel the roots of those future flowers starting to grow, like there's an energy and a vitality there that's been missing for so long. There's no guarantee than anything will grow and whatever growth I have now could just stop at any time, but I don't think that it will. Something's changing....slowly, but it's changing nonetheless. For the longest time, I felt that not only was my mental garden gone, but that it was gone forever because even when I'd try to plant some thought in my head, to harvest even the smallest yield from my mental fields, there was nothing. It could give me nothing but death and decay, rotting corpses of thoughts that had once inspired me. Whatever I tried to plant died and eventually, I just gave up trying.

Those thoughts and dreams and ambitions and inspirations...they aren't dying anymore. If I could just remember how to dream them now, I think they'd find fallow ground. And I cannot begin to tell you how exciting that is.

February's Icy Kiss

2007-02-04T09:07:00.000-07:00

While some people report that their moods tend to shift predictably with the seasons, I've found that mine generally don't. I can be depressed in July and happy as a pig in shit in November. But that being said, for some reason, February is generally a tough month for me. It's as though the chill of winter has finally insinuated itself into my moods, leetching the warmth of joy from my heart and draining the laughter and happiness from me until all that's left is the shadow of my smile. My mood is as messy as my thoughts as everything blurs together in a stew of malcontent. It's as if all my failed aspirations find that February is an appropriate time to take out their wrath, to remind me of the failure of my ambition and intelligence, to point and laugh at the decay of my dreams.

When I was in Phoenix, the dangerous undertow of February lost a great deal of its sway because in the desert, February is a month to be spent outside before the sun starts to burn your skin, instead of warming it. But up here by the Great Lakes, February is a month to draw the curtains and shut the outside world away, to huddle inside with a cup of hot chocolate instead of tromping around outside bundled up like a modern-day mummy because flesh exposed to the elements for more than five minutes turns red and stings from the bitter cold. That divorce from nature is hard on me, I think. And without winter sports to persuade me to combat the elements for an afternoon of fun, I'm stuck inside where my gloom seems to thicken the air. I seem to spend the entire month in search of distractions, telling myself that March will be warmer and even if it isn't, I'll have the NCAA tournament, spring break and the promise of spring to distract me once more. Of course, in February, such thoughts are depressing. Why should I require distraction from my own existence to survive? I dunno. I haven't quite figured it out yet.

Without the safety net of my meds, I find facing February a bit more daunting than it was last year. I keep wondering if every moody hiccup is just one step down or if I've unwittingly stumbled off the edge of a precipice and I'm doomed to keep falling until I discover whatever new horrors await at the bottom of what might as well be an endless chasm. Gee, aren't I feeling optimistic this morning? :)

I hope that my mind will clear by the end of the month. I feel like I'm anchored in a thick fog and I have this irrepressible need to describe the view beyond. It's frustrating.

Hmm

2007-01-11T19:12:00.000-07:00

I've read Lizzie Simon's Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D before and while it's certainly far from the best book I've read about the experience of being bipolar, several things struck me going through it this time. First and foremost, Simon is shockingly immature and she lacks compassion in a way that seems disturbingly common and altogether disappointing. I remember feeling very hostile the first time I read this book and went through her caricatures of people she met at support group meetings. I didn't understand and perhaps still don't understand why she would include passages of text that seem to perpetuate the very type of stigma that she claims to want to eradicate by writing her book. Overall, this reads more like the intellectual prattle of an overcoddled child than an articulate and well-considered treatise on living successfully with bipolar disorder. Simon perhaps unconsciously demonstrates one of the most pernicious aspects of bipolar disorder through her writing and that is a distinct inability to relate and engage the people around her in a way that doesn't center on their impact on her and her own life and dramas. She goes on the road trip to validate herself, not to function as some kind of conduit or scribe for the experience of bipolar disorder in the people. She writes the book for herself, to chronicle some personal journey to find meaning by identifying with the suffering and trials of other "successful" bipolar people. Except, predictably, she doesn't find what she was looking for because she's far too self-centered to experience the kind of empathic breakthrough she was hoping for. Lame.

At any rate, the book does have certain passages that I think everyone touched by bipolar disorder can relate to and for that, it has some value. For example, Simon writes:

"Mental illness interacts with the way you define yourself from the instant it enters your life. There was a whole seventeen and a half years of living before this horrible episode descended upon me. Seventeen and a half years of wondering why I never felt quite right anywhere. Not in my home, not in my schools, not in my cliques, not with my boyfriends. Did this mental illness explain everything that had ever happened to me?"

If only it were that simple.

Tortured Imagination

2007-01-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile, I'll see or read something that captures my imagination and then for days or even weeks, I can't get those thoughts out of my head. It's like they spin around over and over again until my mind has finally digested them enough to let them go.

Most recently, I picked up a book called In the Heart of the Sea. It's about the ill-fated whaleship, Essex, a vessel that sunk in the middle of the Pacific Ocean leaving its crew stranded in three lesser boats with inadequate provisions. The crew slowly began to succumb to starvation and dehydration after weeks of floating around praying for favorable winds. The author describes how they starved and suffered and how, eventually, they resorted to cannibalism to sustain themselves.

And for some ugly reason, I can't get this book out of my head. I keep thinking about how awful it would be to be stuck on the ocean, drifting around aimlessly under the relentless sun entirely unable to escape whatever fate looms ahead. I keep thinking about how it would feel to be dying of thirst, to look on the endless horizon and see absolutely no cause for hope. What horror!

I do hope my brain moves on to its next obsession quickly. I could do well without nightmares of being trapped on the sea.

Eli Lilly's bad press

2006-12-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

The NY Times has an interesting story on how Eli Lilly has been deliberately hiding the bad side effects of Zyprexa for nearly a decade.

While it would be foolish to downplay the significance of finding ironclad evidence of such a cover up, as a pawn in the system, I can only say, no shit Sherlock. Of course big drug companies hide these kind of side effects from the public. It's one of those Catch-22 moments in health care. Major law suits drive up prices and hurt the average consumer. But without major lawsuits, big companies are prone to corrupt decisions that maximize profit at the expense of the consumer/patient. Ugh. What a mess.

The Bipolar Guy

2006-11-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

Will the ladies shun a bipolar guy?

In a comment on one of my other posts, Peter said ...In bipolar support group, I keep finding women who are married and men who are not. I think there is a sadly sexist expectation on women to be inherently "moody" and "mentally weak", therefore they don't necessarily lose attractiveness in a potential partner's eyes if they are diagnosed with a mood disorder. However, in american society, a "moody" and "mentally weak" man can pretty much expect to be shunned by women, even by the most active feminists. I don't blame the women, because a man's depressions are not attractive and definitely not very supportive in a relationship. Nonetheless, what are the man's options? What is your opinion on this dynamic of bipolar women with partners and bipolar men without them? Is it for the best, since women still primarily wish to partner with a man who can function competitively and provide in a capitalist society?

That's a tough question because I do think that society expects women to be more moody and/or irrational than men. There's sort of this concept that a woman's monthly will make her a little crazy or hysterical or what not. Now, is mental illness more acceptable for a woman? I dunno. I don't think anyone really wants to tell their potential future partner that they are bipolar. It's like telling someone you want to shag that you have genital warts.

I started dating Brendan before I was diagnosed. We've been together a long time and we were dating when I was hospitalized, so he could have run if he wanted to at that point. Being with a seriously ill partner is stressful and it's a relationship issue that any couple where one partner is bipolar will have to deal with. But couples are always dealing with some kind of issue, be it alcoholism or illness or financial ruin or heaven forbid all three.

Relationships are tricky and I don't feel comfortable generalizing about women as a whole. I think there are some girls out there who have a thing for guys with broken wings, guys who have problems or issues that these gals think they can solve or whatever. I think there are some women who would be very worried about being serious with a bipolar guy. It's not that all girls are raised with an expectation that a man will take care of them but I think that there's some part of every woman (and every guy) that wants to be taken care of and provided for.

I suppose my grain of wisdom on this, however small it may be, is that people fall in love with other imperfect people. There's no one out there without warts. I guess what's really important is to avoid using being bipolar as a scapegoat for failed relationships. It might be a part of why something didn't work out, but it's not the only reason.

Progress

2006-11-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

While I like to bitch and moan about my condition, it's nice to know that there are people out there constantly researching the human mind and what causes things like depressions and manias.

Mood Tracks

2006-11-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

One of the most useful tools that any bipolar person has in their arsenal is a spiffy mood chart. When I came off my meds, I promised myself that I would start filling one out every day and for the first time in a long time as I was looking at the categories for my moods, I realized that I feel pretty normal. Sure, I was a little anxious/irritable this past weekend, but I'm feeling really steady right now. It's kinda weird.

When I look at the chart, I realized that for awhile there, I would have had to put myself in a significant depression, a funk bad enough to interfere in a very concrete way with my ability to function. I've never been too manic to function before and I suppose that's pretty typical of bipolar II. We tend to spend more of our time depressed.

One of the things that psychiatrists note about bipolar people is that we tend to lack insight into our own behaviors and attitudes and I think that the shrinks are on to something but maybe for the wrong reasons. See, while all those normal people were getting to know themselves through normal mood shifts, bipolar people were getting to know themselves through huge swings and mulitple variations and manifestations of themselves as refracted through different moods and mental states. It's not so much that bipolar people are deficient in insight as that bipolar people have a whole lot more ground to cover in terms of what we need to be insightful about.

I keep debating with myself about the nature of manic depression. I mean, sure, the science tells us that it's a chronic disease. But sometimes I wonder if it's more like a mental flu. Yeah, it lasts longer, but maybe you get it for awhile and then, like a regular ole flu, it goes away, never to return. Maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Agitation most foul

2006-10-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

I think one of the curses of bipolar disorder is the occasional forays into anxiousness and agitation that occasionally afflict me when I'm just starting to venture away from depression. I think the jittery nervousness, gastrointestinal distress and and mental restlessness are simply manifestations of changing brain chemistry, although I think that the nervous anxiety is the way that my mind tries to balance a rise away from lethargy because heaven knows that nothing makes me more upset and depressed than being hyper and anxious. Maybe anxiety is the product of having newfound energy and no outlet for it, as if my mind has become so accustomed to being lazy and slow that the raw products of inspiration cannot find actualization and thus, must find a path to expression even if said expression is frustrating, ineffective and unpleasant.

I'm hopeful that this current malaise is a mere 36-hour hiccup, an annoying sojourn brought on by the inconsistent sleeping and eating that have characterized my weekend. Tomorrow, it's back to work and back to waking up at 5:45, back to breakfast at 6:30, lunch at 12:40 and dinner at 5. Yes, I'm a 50-year-old AARP member trapped in a 24-year-old woman's body.

Three months ago, the first stirings of restlessness were awakening in my mind. I was transitioning from the chronically depressed recluse to a slightly more productive member of society and to that end, I found myself a job that doesn't require brilliance, just an inordinate amount of patience. Now, that restlessness is growing and it needs an outlet or I fear I might nag Brendan to death with my repressed enthusiasm for planning our upcoming move in May, a move I can't plan until we figure out where we're headed. I'm waiting for my muse to more firmly possess my mind before starting any literary endeavors and frankly, I suck at drawing and painting so they offer no relief for my new mental energy. I suppose I'll have to content myself with reading for now. But I'm a bit itchy for action and it's rather odd and uncomfortable given my recent battle with such a sluggish lethargy.

I suppose it's normal for someone my age to have a bit of ambition and inspiration. What isn't normal is to be so devoid of thought, emotion or energy that a complete withdrawal from life seems comfortable and appropriate. Sometimes it's difficult to have valuable insight into my moods when I was low for so long that the mental tundra that is depression seemed normal.

I guess if I really think about it, I would classify my current mood as normal or perhaps very slightly above normal. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Nothing Special

2006-10-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I received a copy of Ronald Fieve's Bipolar II for review and after finishing it a few days ago, I've been debating about what to say, what I liked and what I didn't.

Whenever I read a book in an analytical way, I'm thinking about not only the content of each chapter, but of how the book is structured and about who the book is written for--is Fieve writing to patients or coworkers or the general public? In a well-planned work, the former two categories rarely enter my mind because the work has a predictable, comfortably flow. That was not the case with Bipolar II. Fieve's work feels very choppy and disorganized, as if he had two dozen topics he wanted to discuss and they were all thrown together. And even as I was reading the final chapter, I wasn't particularly certain that this book was written for patients as it blended the feel of a medical text with the feel of a self-help book, the ultimate result of which was just confusing and frustrating. It certainly was not the guide to tolerating Bipolar II that it was purported to be by some other reviewers.

Fieve's book opens with a preface introducing the reader to his professional work, an impressive record that includes conducting the initial US clinical trials for lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder. In a habit rather typical of Harvard graduates, Fieve continually finds reason to mention that he authored Moodswing and that he studied at Harvard and Columbia universities. The first time, it was informative. The remaining mentions were like nails on a chalkboard to me, unnecessary self-congratulatory inclusions that served to make me think that Fieve is perhaps a bit megalomaniacal and self-important. Doctors have a tendency to be that way, an unfortunate side effect of wealth, intelligence and success.

At any rate, after our brief introduction to Fieve, the book opens with an introduction to bipolar disorder that felt entirely incomplete and was rendered unnecessary by the second chapter covering the bipolar spectrum. The second chapter opens with a discussion of current theories on what chemical malfunctions might cause bipolar disorder. It then dicusses what medications act on which neurotransmitters, albeit briefly as the topic is taken up again later in the book. And after all that, Fieve backtracks and starts discussing the history of bipolar disorder, discussing the full spectrum of moods that can accompany it. Are you confused yet?

The third chapter explores the relationship between genetics and bipolar disorder in a way that demonstrates everything I'm saying about a tragic lack of organization in this book. Under the heading WHAT IS THE BIPOLAR FAMILY, Fieve first looks at research linking a prevalence of substance abuse, major depression and ADD/ADHD to Bipolar Disorder in families. He then uses the example of Sol Wachtler to demonstrate that bipolar runs in families, although Wachtler's particular family--with one suicidal granny--doesn't seem to provide the strongest anecdotal support for the aforementioned research. Fieve then mentions Jane Fonda as a stronger example of bipolar running in families before shifting gears entirely for a moment to talk about bipolar disorder and associated risks of suicide. He then jumps back to exploring how bipolar runs in families with a patient's life story that included discussion of the patient's father, a man with clearly disturbed moods that followed a seasonal pattern. The remainder of the chapter meanders through a discussion of how hypomania can contribute to success, the human genome project and how drugs that work for one family member may also work for another family member. The stories included within the chapter are at best tangentially related to the larger topic being discussed--genetics--and at worst, serve to obfuscate an issue that isn't entirely clear to begin with.

The chapter reminded me of reading a paper that's been revised so many times, it loses any hint of artistry or flow that might have existed the first time it was written.

Moreover, Fieve shoots himself in the foot as he writes this chapter because he says flat out that "it's difficult to give a diagnosis from secondhand information" (p73) but he goes on later in the book to hypothesize that famous people in history like Abraham Lincoln may have been bipolar (p144-145). Uh, because that's consistent. Retroactively diagnosing historical figures to prove a point is unprofessional and frankly, it should be unnecessary if a researcher has a strong point because there should be plenty of current examples to use that can be definitively proven. I find it equally troubling to see this tendency in the gay rights movement...a retroactive witch hunt to declare successful people gay when codes of behavior are so dramatically different that such declarations are useless.

The fourth chapter covers sleep and sleep patterns as obviously, hypomanic people tend to sleep less than their non-hypomanic counterparts. I personally think that Fieve committed a very basic chicken and egg error in his analysis in this chapter as he basically states that changes in sleep patterns precipitate changes in mood. Well, uh, okay. In my own experience, I feel like the chemical shift that changes my moods occurs before my sleep pattern changes. In other words, I feel like how much I sleep is a symptom of my moods and not the cause of them, as Fieve seems to state with so much confidence.

The fifth chapter covers the impulsive misbehaviors that tend to accompany hypomanic periods, demonstrating rather clearly that hypomania can be a temptress of productivity laced with poisonous and occasionally dangerous, self-destructive behavior. After a prolonged discussion of all of the dumb things that hypomanic people do to themselves and their families, Fieve devotes his sixth chapter to a discussion of the upside of hypomania and its benefits. Bwzuh? In one breath, Fieve tells the reader that hypomanic people are impulsive and gamble their money away, have copious amounts of sex that can jeopardize relationships and generally exercise poor judgment and in the next, he tells us that hypomanic people are creative, effective movers and shakers who greatly benefit society. So which is it?

If the answer is both, then that's a serious, perhaps unforgivable and undeniably irresponsible position to take if this book is targeting patients, the vast majority of who lack the insight to know whether or not a given hypomania is of the beneficial kind or of the impulsive kind, particularly if those hypomanics tend to blend beneficial with impulsive as I would wager is often the case.

The second part of the book discusses the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder, venturing clearly into the self-help realm in a way that's been done better by numerous other authors. Two other books that come immediately to mind are The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide and the mildly annoying New Hope for People with Bipolar Disorder. These other books offer more concrete examples of how to help yourself in a clearer, more accessible way.

I'm not impressed by this book given the oft-mentioned accomplishments of its author. It doesn't provide a self-help guide the way that pure self-help books do. It doesn't provide empathic insight the way Kay Jamison Redfield's Touched with Fire does. It's a forgettable contribution to a growing literature on bipolar II.

Another Scientology-induced Tragedy

2006-10-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

On March 13, 2003, Jeremy Perkins killed his mother Elli while in a delusional psychosis brought on by his paranoid schizophrenia. Elli was aware of her son's condition but as a Scientologist, she refused to expose him to modern psychiatry. Instead, she chose to treat his severe mental illness with vitamins. She died after being stabbed more than 70 times. Here's the news story.

Every time I see someone refusing reasonable medical care due to a misguided religious zealotry, it makes me so angry. This stupid woman didn't deserve to die for her ignorance and more significantly, her desperately ill child deserved access to treatment that may have helped resolve his psychosis. Instead, this man has to live with the fact that he killed his own mother not because he's some kind of sadistic sociopath but because his stupid parents refused to get him the treatment that he required because of a patently ridiculous religious belief. Unacceptable.

I may hem and haw about the indelicacy of psychiatric medication, but fact is that for those suffering the most acute forms of mental illness, medicine is not simply an option. It's the only option. Psychosis will not resolve with Vitamin B and any person not in touch with reality is a danger to themselves and others.

It makes me so angry that such horrible preventable tragedies occur when there are viable alternatives. A hundred years ago, there was nothing that could be done for someone like Jeremy Perkins. But today? Help was available. An end to his suffering was within the reach of medical science.

I suppose you can lead people to progress but you can't make them think.

Emerging Pet Peeve

2006-10-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm in the process of reading Ronald Fieve's Bipolar II and while I'll reserve my final judgment until I've finished, I have to confess that I'm getting really irritated with the way that he seems to think that psychiatric medications are just so darn wonderful. Don't get me wrong. I acknowledge that meds help a lot of people and that psychiatry has certainly come a long way since the 70s. But a long way from nowhere doesn't necessarily mean that you've gotten somewhere.

I think part of the problem is that Fieve is approaching medication from the perspective of a doctor and I'm reading his book from the perspective of a patient. Sure, in his mentally stable world, he can analytically say that we've come a long way from the days when being bipolar meant being hospitalized and turned into a drug zombie. Instead of tranquilizing patients into stupors, shrinks are learning to manipulate moodswings more artfully. Great. Really. I'm happy for doctors making $150 an hour than they can feel good about their progress. Fan-fucking-tastic.

In the meantime, the patient has a different experience because while I empathize with my 1970s counterpart, fact is, I'm looking for stability and I want it NOW. I'm not looking for some uber educated doctor man to tell me that medication has come so far when I'm taking some little white pill that's made me gain 30 pounds and now, I can't fit into my freakin pants and I'm still horribly depessed. I don't particularly give a shit that I should be grateful that antidepressants have evolved beyond MAOIs when the crap I took made my mouth so dry I thought I would choke on my own tongue even though it did jack shit for my depression. In fact, with every study that comes out saying something like, oh BTW, zyprexa makes you gain 40+ pounds or some other uninspiring crap, I'm feeling less and less charitable toward these psychitrists who don't take these charming medication, but seem to prescribe them with wanton abandon, happily exposing unstable brains to drugs that were perhaps pushed past the FDA a bit too quickly considering that they tinker with your friggin brain chemistry and all.

I don't want to hear about how great medication is. It seems to me that right now, it's all castor oil. It's all about being so incredibly miserable and desperate that if some doctor told you that eating a cow pie would make you feel better, you might just try it because nothing could be worse than the status quo. That's where medication is right now. We're eating cow pies, ending up full of shit and hoping for the best. Shrinks generally have no friggin idea why one drug works better than any other drug. It's not quite a science. It's more like voodoo with an office.

Fieve's attempts to laud medication as the cure ignore all of us eating cow pies because the alternative of doing nothing seems worse than at least pretending that we're taking some active step to manage this charming illness. Who knows? Maybe he'll get into that in the next chapter. We shall see.

The Quiet Room

2006-10-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

I just finished The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett, a multifacted examination on how Schiller's seemingly untreatable schizoaffective disorder impacted her life and the lives of those who cared about her the most. The views of her parents, siblings and doctors differentiate this book from other memoirs about the experience of mental illness and provide additional insight into the impact such illness has on an entire family.

Schiller started hearing voices when she was about 17 but her illness did not become truly debilitating until just after she graduated college and attempted suicide for the first time in a desperate effort to silence the cacophony in her mind. Thus began a series of hospitalizations that only ended with the creation of a new medication that finally eliminated Schiller's psychotic symptoms to a point where she was able to reestablish a connection with the world around her and regain her independence. The casualties of her illness included 10 years of her life.

After her initial hospitalization, Schiller's parents had to confront the idea that their overachieving daughter was seriously ill. Her father, a psychologist, had earned his degree in the 1950s when the vogue model of explaining mental illness blamed it not on biological quirks in the brain, but nearly entirely on an individual's upbringing. As one might expect, that model caused Schiller's parents a great deal of personal grief as they both tried to figure out what they did to make their daughter so desperately ill. Schiller's mother confessed that Lori's illness put a strain on her parents' marriage as each blamed the other for their daughter's condition. Eventually, Schiller's mom realized that her own mother, Lori's grandmother, had also exhibited signs of schizophrenia, as had one of her cousins.

Her brothers alternated between thinking that Lori's hospitalizations were some brilliant stunt for attention to being frightened that they would end up like their sister, a virtual prisoner unable to function in society. One of her brothers said something along the lines of "when I used to think about my future, I would think about Lori. But I didn't want to do that anymore."

Schiller's own recalling of her illness reflects the confusion of her mind and reflects the fact that she spents years of her life without any true insight into what was happening to her. In that regard--as a recollection of the experience of being personally mentally ill--this book is not as good as some of the others that I've read. The value of this work is in its ability to reflect the impact of a crippling illness on a family and how painful it can be to acknowledge that the person Lori was prior to being incapacitated by mental illness will never return.

Even as Schiller's world was overrun with malicious voices and delusional beliefs, she understood and was frustrated by the fact that her illness was preventing her from living up to the potential that her intelligence offered her. She was frustrated because while she was sitting in a mental hospital making macaroni necklaces, her friends were advancing in the corporate world, getting married and having children. The reality of being schizophrenic meant that Lori's entire life had to be put on hold while she dealt with her illness and the progression of this book makes it painfully clear that there is no effective way to deal with delusions and hallucinations. There is no coping with disordered thoughts and altered perceptions of reality. There's only hospitalization, a complete removal from society.

Schiller was only able to reenter society when she found a new medication that eliminated her hallucinations, silencing the voices that had been tormenting her and easing the paranoia that had been isolating her. Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of this memoir in terms of Schiller's account of her illness is her explanation of the process by which she discovered that the voices were not really there. How could she trust her doctors when they told her the voices weren't real when she heard them as clearly as she heard the doctor's own voice? When your own thoughts and senses betray you, why should you trust anything?

Above all else, this memoir made me so sad for Schiller and for everyone who suffers from being so desperately ill without a medication capable of allieviating their symptoms. This woman lost ten years of her life, her 20s, because psychiatry failed her. How many other people has psychiatry failed because the field wallowed in pseudoscience for so long? And while psychiatry has made huge improvements in the past 20 years, it's still a whole lot of guess work. And frankly, is it that much to ask for a definitive diagnosis before someone fiddles with my brain chemistry?

*

Next up in my book queue is Ronald Fieve's Bipolar II.

Do downs have their upside?

2006-10-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

Now that I've been out of the doldrums for about six weeks, I've been contemplating what value, if any, the downslide I was in for about 18 months had. I'm loathe to just write off that much time, even though the vast majority of it was spent sitting around my house alone, writing and generally trying to avoid other people. But surely I learned something about myself and the world in that time. I mean, even if I kind of withdrew from the world, I didn't just stop living. And while I admit that being out of it makes reentering the world that much more vivid, I still think that there has to be some value to being down and out beyond whatever realizations you have upon getting up again.

I, for one, think I've gained a tiny bit of humility in the past year. I've always been booksmart and since I've spent the vast majority of my life in school, I've always had some external validation coming from that. Even if I was bummed out, I still had stellar grades. But this past year, I wasn't in school and I didn't have anything to look at and say 'even though I'm blue as can be, at least I'm doing ____ or I've accomplished _____.' I wasn't doing anything and suddenly, those people I looked at in high school and thought I was better than were looking way more on top of everything than I was. Hell, at least they can function. What the hell was I doing? Nothing. I was a blight on society, a nonproductive but secretly capable person hiding in the confines of my own home misanthropically judging people when I did emerge from time to time.

I think there's value in renewal and rebuilding, value to the upswing. Everyone can see that. But there has to be value to the descent. There has to be value to riding at the top and watching your life fall to pieces. There has to be a value to breaking down, withdrawing and hiding. There must be some lesson there, some grain of truth or nugget of wisdom that I otherwise wouldn't possess if I hadn't gone through it. I'm different than I was a year ago. I'm like a newborn deer unsteadily trying to walk around when four or five years ago, I was running with the best and brightest. I wonder if I can still run like that or if I'm too far behind to figure out how to get back in the race.

You know, I've been thinking a lot about popular imagery and metaphors that people use that I would take for granted as obvious but now they've taken on a deeper meaning. For example, people talk about getting thrown from a horse and getting back up in the saddle again. I don't think I ever appreciated how hard that could be, especially if you were thrown a great distance from a big freakin horse. Not only do you look at the beast and wonder how the hell you ever did it to begin with, but then you start pondering whether or not riding horses is all that great anyway. Do you really want to get into that saddle again? And once you do, where the heck are you gonna go?

When I was younger, I always pictured myself doing something important but I never had a clear idea of what that would be. Right now, I'm working at a place where I wouldn't need a college degree, let alone a graduate degree. Should I be proud of the fact that I'm working at all or disapointed that I don't have something better? Ugh.

Speaking of that debate, I have a question for y'all. Do you think it would be better for me to keep the job I have until May, when Brendan and I move OR should I keep my job until winter break and then look for some higher paying, temporary positions come January?

Musings on motivation

2006-10-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

I think if I had to pick an adjective to describe the last 18 months of my life, I would pick amotivated. I simply didn't care about improving my life or the world. I just wanted to get through each day and I didn't have very many goals or ambitions, no real concern for what the future would look like.

Thank God that's changed. As my most recent bout of depression is lifting, I'm starting to regain some of my ambition and spunk. Doing that is harder than it might seem and I think that one of the most trying aspects of coming out of a depressive funk is looking back at your time and kicking your own ass thinking about all of the things you could have been doing and how much better your life would be if you had done them. For example, if I had say, volunteered, instead of holing myself up at home, then I would have a better work history to show a future employer. If I had put a greater emphasis on eating at home, we might have a) more money and b) I might be a better cook. And believe you me, there are thousands of examples of this here phenomenon of the if only.

If I would dwell on that, I think I would sink right back into being depressed. It's like quicksand trying to suck me down and there's only so much I can fight that. Right now, my strategy is to silence that particular thought process. I think it might be better to just ignore all those things I could have done in favor of becoming more undepressed so that I can start doing things. And then, hopefully by the time I start thinking about those things again, I'll be able to say, yeah, I wish I did x, y or z, but at least I've started doing q, r and s now. Does that make any sense?

*

I have to say that one of the more frustrating things about coming out of this depression is that my attention span is WAY shorter than it was a few months ago. I mean, I don't have any problem watching a movie or what not, but when I sit down to write or to blog, I lose my focus after about 20-30 minutes whereas when I was in the throes of my latest funk, I would literally write from the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed. Given, my stories were nothing brilliant but my output was undeniably prolific, in excess of 1000 pages. A part of me misses that, misses getting entirely lost in a plot that had nothing to do with my everyday life. Twas a beautiful escape.

*

I have a feeling that in a few years, I'll look back at this time in my life and think that there is something significant in the fact that my favorite part of my day is my morning commute. I get to see the sunrise over the misty corn fields and I confess that this is the most beautiful commute I've had, far prettier than the trek I was making in Phoenix this summer to retrieve Brendan. My commute to and fro ASU in grad school was also very beautiful; if I was driving home at sunset, the fading light would illuminate Red Mountain, Four Peaks and the Superstition Mountains. I hope that wherever Brendan and I end up, I'll have another pretty commute. It makes the morning so enjoyable. I can't wait for winter when the sunrises promise to be pale and the roads miserable and slick.

The Daily Grind

2006-09-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

So, after about 18 months of unemployment, I finally got a job. I just finished up my first week and I'm happy to report that I think that I'll be able to stick with this until Brendan graduates from Notre Dame. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though.

One of the things about having a mental illness is that for me, it's not necessarily something that's acute all the time. It comes and goes, flaring up with ferocious intensity and slinking away into the shadows. I live in constant anticipation of the next time my mind is going to freak out on me and the hardest part of my new job hasn't been adjusting to working or learning the ropes of a new routine. The hardest part has been overcoming my personal anxieties that I'll be overwhelmed by my own mental hang ups and find myself incapacitated.

But I keep telling myself that if 90% of life is just showing up, then I can do that. Maybe life is all about taking baby steps, about not thinking about climbing the entire mountain when you have 10,000 feet to go.

I'm trying to keep a positive attitude, but sometimes, that can be very challenging. I'm naturally a bit pessimistic. Sigh.

The Dairy Cow's Mind

2006-09-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

I would imagine that a dairy cow doesn't think about all that much in any given day. It hunkers over to a patch of hay or grass and eats, investing a great portion of its time chewing regurgitated food while standing beside an equally dull comrade in a stinky field in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if the cows know where their milk goes after the massive machines suck it from them. I wonder if they form some kind of attachment to the machine, as though its a mechanical calf, a child the cow is instinct-bound to support and nurture.

I would imagine that the mind of a dairy cow is rather devoid of any abstract thought or originality. If we could peer into a the minds of a herd of cows, I'm not sure we'd be able to tell them apart aside from the fact that one might be thinking about eating while another might be thinking about the ideal place to lay down. The mind of a cow is devoid of the multiplicity of thoughts that should be floating around a person's brain at any given time.

I'm feeling a bit like a dairy cow these days. My mind is a rather boring place to be, devoid of the incessant chatter and occasional brilliance that used to dwell there. It's not that mundane things have replaced the extraordinary or that what was once extraordinary has become mundane. It's more like a resounding silence on all things, great and small.

Another bipolar voice in the crowd

2006-09-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

I confess I don't have access to British TV and thus, didn't have the opportunity to see Sophie Anderton's supposed erratic behavior on a recent reality television show. However, the supermodel did "come out," so to speak, and confessed that she's bipolar. Hm.

Maybe sometimes dumb is smart

2006-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

In the course of my hectic summer, I occasionally missed a few doses of my meds, a hiccup in my regimen that I studiously avoid when I'm feeling unstable. Oddly enough though, I noticed something a bit unusual. I actually started feeling better when I missed my meds than when I was taking them. I regained a bit of my motivation and eagerness to participate in the world. And so, when I misplaced my drugs on a recent roadtrip, I wasn't overly concerned about finding them again.

To make a long story short, over the course of about two months, those hiccups became more frequent and finally, I decided to take the plunge and stop taking my meds altogether, a choice I'd reviewed in hypothetical terms with my shrink. After all, I am at that childbearing age and I don't want three-headed, four-armed children thankyouverymuch.

Of course, as I'm prone to do, I'm thinking about the complexities of my decision to stop taking my meds and the potential consequences thereof. I mean, obviously I feel fine now but that could easily change in a month. So why stop taking them and what changed that I went from needing my meds to apparently not needing them?

First and foremost, I think one thing that's important to understand about meds is that they are imperfect solutions. Lithium doesn't only block lows, it blocks highs as well. Antidepressants don't only keep some highly nasty emotions at bay, they also pack on unsightly pounds and quash healthy sex drives. There is no such thing as a medication without a side effect.

The question is, when is the side effect worth the benefit? When is the cure worse than the disease?

Personally, I think one of the follies of current psychiatry is the concept that the medicinal cocktail that worked for me two years ago will work for me now. Brains change just like my skin ages and my hair style evolves. Maybe...hopefully...something in my chemistries shifted and I don't need to take my meds anymore. Or at least, not for the moment. Maybe in six months, I'll be back on the pill popping wagon.

But for now, I'm drug free. I'll keep y'all posted on how that's working for me.

And, in the meantime, while I'm not taking any prescription drugs, I do still take my daily multivitamin and an omega-3 supplement.

Well duh!

2006-08-21T21:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why people are at all surprised when research concludes that medication and therapy combined are more effective than either medication or therapy alone. What surprises me is that in the long run, a combination of medication and therapy actually proves more cost effective than medication alone.

Of course, we're not talking about bullshit therapy that involves staring at pretty colors, breathing jasmine scented air and rambling about past lives or our unusual relationship with dairy products. That crap is a waste of time and money. We're talking about therapy that actually addresses functional strategies for coping with a major illness and said illness' impact on every aspect of our lives.

In an entirely unrelated note, the above linked article lists bipolar disorder under psychoses. Frankly, that classification is incorrect. A psychoses implies a separation from reality that is not always present in bipolar disorder, hence BP's classification as a mood disorder as opposed to a thought disorder. The distinction is so important and obvious that it made me hesitant to link to the site at all and in fact, if the article wasn't syndicated, I wouldn't have done so. Grumble grumble.

Medicating Kids

2006-07-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

A column in The Albuquerque Tribune tackles the thorny question of the rapidly rising number of children being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While some might argue that the columnist is being overly cynical when he credits the rise to profiteering corporations and lazy parents, I think he's right.

Frankly, unless my child was having active hallucinations, delusions or suicidal impulses, I would be incredibly hesitant to put him/her on a psychiatric medication. I suppose I would take what I've labelled the Dr. Phil approach to the problem. That kid would have to earn that medication. I would try every other available treatment, from traditional counseling to massage therapy, before attempting to mainpulate my kid's brain chemistry in order to correct a troubling behavior. And the definition of a "troubling behavior" is the crux of the issue when medicating children.

When does a child's temper tantrum cross the line from normal to pathological? That's a question I'm very happy that I don't have to answer as a professional because it would very difficult to tell a parent that actually, their child isn't mentally ill, he's just a brat.

On the flip side, I think it would be horrible to have a child that isn't clearly well or clearly sick. Personally, I don't think people should medicate children unless they are clearly sick, but I have a lot of compassion for the borderline kids because mental illnesses do come on a spectrum of severity and there are bound to be those who fall into the nebulous zone of might. It might be beneficial and it might be detrimental. Do you gamble?

The Mentally Ill Soldier

2006-07-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

Barbara Boxer and several other lawmakers have been pushing the military to revise the way mental health and deployment is dealt with so that soldiers are not sent back to combat with PTSD or other serious psychological problems. Of course, any military hopeful diagnosed with bipolar disorder knows that bipolars aren't allowed...kind of like openly gay people.

This got me thinking though. Bipolar disorder often presents in the late teens and early 20s and isn't properly diagnosed as such until three to five years after initial contact with a psychiatrist. The disorder itself, like schizophrenia, is often triggered by some kind of stressful life event--death of a family member, a break up or divorce, moving etc. It's very possible that the trauma of war and being so far from home is enough to stoke the embers of bipolar disorder into a full blown fire.

I wonder if being bipolar could be an asset to a soldier--not that I would advocate sending bipolar people into combat. But as a thought experiment, it's a provocative thought. If I was a certain type of manic, I think I could make a better soldier than a psychologically "normal" soldier. Think about it. I would to sleep or eat as often as my "normal" peers. My thoughts would be endlessly swirling in my mind, meaning that I would be thinking through strategic problems just to have something to think about. I would understand that people die, but my inflated ego would dampen my own fears of mortality. There's a lot to be said for that.

Of course, trying to manipulate a certain strain of mania from the masses is pretty much impossible, which leads me back to the whole reason I thought to post about this. Other diseases have known causes. AIDS is caused by a retrovirus, for example. Because scientists know that, they could develop a test for it and viola, we know who has AIDS and who doesn't with a fairly decent accuracy. The same can't be said for any mental illness. I could send my husband to a psychiatrist with a fictional account of his life and he could walk out diagnosed with depression or ADD or bipolar disorder or whatever. I'm increasingly understanding the value of being able to say with some finality that a particular person has the affliction they claim to have.

Now, bipolar is an interesting case because you can look a scan of someone's brain and see how the illness has changed their brain...or how their abnormal brain causes the illness. Chicken or egg. But how many bipolar people have had their brains scanned? I have, but I don't think I'm in the majority.

Why is it important to have proof like that? Because there are dozens of other medical conditions that can mimic the symptoms of bipolar disorder and if those are treatable and curable, then why the hell would anyone condemn a person to a life of taking psychoactive drugs with their charming array of side effects? We need a test.

And if we had tests for mental illnesses, it would be much easier for mentally unstable soldiers to stay home because they could prove it. Tests aren't so important to people with extreme manifestions of these illnesses because few people are going to question the fact that those people are ill. Tests are invaluable to people in the middle of the spectrum, people who have symptoms that are disruptive but maybe not so bad.

Psychiatry, like all medicine, is supposed to be a science. It takes an uncanny amount of trust to allow physicians to manipulate brain chemistry without knowing if they're even manipulating the proper thing. It's the best we've got, but man, it kind of sucks.

The baby debate

2006-06-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

So I was perusing this article about the genetics of mental illness and the story ends with a discussion of whether or not those with a history of mental illness in their families should have children or not. While some people do choose not to procreate because of a mental or physical handicap, there's something very 1984 about people taking genetic tests to determine whether or not to have kids based on a statistical liklihood that their children may develop a serious mental illness.

There's definately an Orwellian tone to discussions about procreation these days. Only the "best" and brightest should reproduce because our planet is critically overpopulated as it is. That's how the story goes. And apparently, there is a contingent out there who believe that the mentally unstable are automatically discarded from this idealistic future.

I say, fuck you. Honestly. "Regular" people have to create drama to make their miserable little lives more exciting, but not me. My drama is built in and those who frown at my lazy streaks and envy my ups can kiss my ass when they start talking about breeding me out of the gene pool. Grrr.

I understand deciding to refrain from having kids if you have a terminal genetic condition. For example, one of the women in my graduate program had a terminal disease that caused the destruction of her liver. She had a transplant and she'll be able to live as long as that new liver keeps working but she doesn't want to take the risk that her kid would have to suffer like she did, laying in a hospital bed dying at 18 waiting for someone else to die so that she could live. She probably couldn't have kids anyway, given the nature of the steroids and other drugs she was taking.

But that's a choice and a personal one at that. It really pisses me off when other people start saying that a particular group shouldn't reproduce. Now, I think it's fair game to disapprove of those who have children without the means to provide for those kids or those who get preggers when they don't take care of the brats they have already. But disapproving and telling someone not to have kids are two very different things.

In a way, I think that people who contend that those with mental illnesses shouldn't reproduce are worshipping a false idol of normality. While I have no doubts that being bipolar is abnormal, I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with that unless the afflicted pose a danger to themselves or others. My moodiness isn't going to kill anyone. It might cause a few extra fights and my irritated phases might drive my husband nuts, but that's part of life I think. Some "normal" woman might be obsessed with maintaining a perfect weight. I occasionally sleep 14 hours a day. Where's the extreme difference between those behaviors that makes one acceptable and the other unforgiveable? I don't see it. And if anything, I think that diversity in the gene pool is desirable because after all, if everyone was like me, the world would be totally screwed. Cars, refridgeration, air conditioning...none of that would exist because I don't think like that. My mind doesn't wrap itself around that kind of thing.

Why bow to a god of genetic blandness? And if you follow this yellow brick road too far, who decides in the end what traits are the best and which have to go? What consitutes a weed in our collective genetic garden?

Because let me tell you, nothing pisses me off more than someone calling me a weed.

Well duh!

2006-05-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

As I was toodling around on the internet today, I stumbled upon a recently published study that concluded oh-so-brilliantly that depressed people are more likely to be introverted. The author was apparently shocked by the rather obvious correlation between how depressed someone is and how introverted a person is. Do we really need a study to come to that conclusion?

Not all introverts are depressed, clearly. But it seems to me that more often than not, introversion is a manifestation of depression. Who wants to go out and remember how fucking happy everyone else is? Sure, leaving the house is healthy and all that crap, but when you're stuck in a depression where getting out of bed is a challenge, it seems like a no brainer that you're not going to have the motivation or energy to get up, get dressed, look cute and act all nice to people. Duh!

What's next? A study that says depressed people are more unhappy than the average bloke?

From 0 to 60 in no time at all

2006-05-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. I haven't posted in forever. I keep having that reaction about things in my life that I used to do all the time but haven't because of this nasty depressive funk I've been in (and am currently WAY out of. More on that in a second). Honestly. I haven't posted since March, I haven't gotten my ass to the lab for blood work since September, I haven't called my friends in forever. I haven't gotten my hair cut since December. I haven't looked at our finances since last April. I haven't bought a single article of new clothing since December. I haven't done much of anything really.

And then came a random high out of nowhere. What is up with that? Haha. Get it? UP with that. Teehee. Anyway, yesterday I was alright until about 10:00pm and then I got that nervous sensation. I swear that must come from an overstimulated vagus nerve because my stomach gets so tempermental and what not. But anyway, 10:00pm-ish, that nervous/panicky feeling comes on and so my answer to all of life's troubles kicked in. When the going gets tough, I go to bed. But I, me, the queen of sleep, couldn't get to sleep. I had a story plotline dragging through my mind, swirling with a few different pop songs and then a little practical voice chirping about all of the things I need to do. I tried to cut in, to calm the neverending swirl of thoughts in my head, but everytime I managed it, I would fall into that half-sleep stage where I lose my conscious ability to control my thoughts and BAM, they were back and I would wake up. And the odd thing was that certain thoughts and people and lyrics seemed to be tied directly to that nervousness and a shot of OMIGOD! WARNING! WARNING! is not conducive to proper sleep.

So then my pooch woke me up at about 8:30am for a walk and even though I hardly ever wake up before noon these days, I didn't even consider going back to sleep because my mind was like, hell no. And honestly, I had the most productive day I've had all year long. Now, when you're mired in apathetic laziness, you really don't do much of anything. Unloading a dishwasher can seem like a Herculean feat. So from that mindset, I suddenly jumped to normal and functional overnight. I did three loads of laundry, folded and put away and all. Honestly, that would have taken me two or three days as of yesterday morning. But today, I was on it. I picked up my scripts, got blood drawn, tackled the enormous pile of mail that we'd accumulated over the past two weeks, collected paperwork so I can effectively take over our finances next month, brushed out one of my cats much to her ire, uncovered the surfaces of tables and dressers so I could dust them and tackled our massive dishes back-up that was growing a new civilization in terrifying, man-eating mold. I even snagged Brendan into helping me take out some of our massive back-up of trash and we're now just about eight garbage bags less cluttered than we were before. Pretty sweet stuff. Oh, and I wrote about 15 pages of random crap (AKA ridiculously bad fiction) in there too.

Where did this energy come from and can I keep it and get rid of the gnawing stomach ache and the jittery nervousness bit?

I can't tell you what changed, only that something changed and it changed in the course of a few hours. Whatever changed creates a dramatic shift in my life. When I look at what I'm going to do tomorrow, it's black and white depending on how I feel, on if this up remains in place for awhile.

I don't have a great plan for how to ride the wave. At this point, I'm content to use this influx of motivation to try to bring my life up to speed after sitting in park for almost an entire year. But what happens if I clean this apartment top to bottom<--a much larger task than it may seem given Brendan's pack rat tendencies--> and still have energy after that? I guess that would be an excellent problem to have. In fact, let's hope that I run into that problem.

Come on a thought experiment with me, though. If this motivation and dare I say ambition sticks around, then I'm in a position to sell myself as a highly productive employee to some business. And I might be highly productive for a month, or three, or six, or an entire year. But in a bipolar world of peaks and valleys, the fall will happen and it's just a matter of when. And since no one can tell me when, I can't tell anyone else when. So I run into the classic hypomanic dilemma because I can rule the world...for awhile. But you can't just take on everything you're capable of and then flake out on people. That's not fair. But at the same time, I'll go mad if I have this much drive and nowhere to unleash it. Again, a good problem to have, I guess.

You know, after all the what ifs, I bet you I'll go back to apathy and amotivation in 12 hours and this mythical energy will seem as but a dream within a dream. <--For those who might not get that reference, see the poem below. I love Edgar Allen Poe.

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Adverts impact on consumers

2006-03-14T15:49:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, I used to think that doctors were like the clergy--they were good guys who were trying to help people. I still think that doctors are usually good people, but I've come to accept that medicine is a business like any other. Doctors quit practicing when they aren't making a tidy profit and move in to other more lucrative careers like law or finance.

Every business advertises and the fat-ass, tv-watching population sees dozens of adverts for anti-depressants and an assortment of other drugs. Nearly everyone I know can identify the blobby smiley face as an image from a Zoloft ad. Is that a bad thing?

This study doesn't think so.

A few relevant excerpts:

Antidepressant advertisements are ubiquitous in American media, and there is emerging evidence that these advertisements have the potential to confound the doctor-patient relationship. A recent study by Kravitz et al. found that pseudopatients (actors who were trained to behave as patients) presenting with symptoms of adjustment disorder (a condition for which antidepressants are not usually prescribed) were frequently prescribed the specific brand of SSRI that they requested.

I have no trouble believing that. It's amazing what GPs will throw antidepressants at. Sometimes I feel like you could walk in with a sprained ankle and walk out with a four week sample of Prozac.

What remains unmeasured is how many patients seek help from their doctor because antidepressant advertisements have convinced them that they are suffering from a serotonin deficiency. These advertisements present a seductive concept, and the fact that patients are now presenting with a self-described "chemical imbalance" shows that the DTCA (direct to consumer advertising) is having its intended effect: the medical marketplace is being shaped in a way that is advantageous to the pharmaceutical companies.

The implication of this statement is that a medical marketplace beneficial to pharmaceutical companies is de facto a medical marketplace harmful to consumers. I don't know if I buy that. While antidepressant advertising has undoubtedly increased the number of people on antidepressants, it has also made huge strides in de-stygmatizing depression. The ads normalize an illness that is not all that uncommon and in doing so, they make it easier for patients to address concerns about mental health with their doctor.

The problem with the system is not advertising and patients' vulnerability to its seductive ploys. The problem is general practice physicians playing psychiatrist. If a depression is severe enough to require drugs, then it's severe enough to justify a trip to the shrink. It's silly to look at health care as a one-stop shop. Your GP's office isn't Walmart.

*

In other news, My brother has been a bit blue lately. He ends his thoughtful post with this comment:

On balance, I would never choose to eliminate my mood swings, even if I could. Although I have periods of antisociality that are an inconvenience which I would rather not impose on others, I also believe that I appreciate my own life in a way which would be impossible if I were emotionally flat. I think this allows me to make more interesting friends, even if they are often times mad at me for not returning calls and the like.

I think that everyone with mood disorders probably felt like he does at one point or another. There is something tantalizing about the inspiration and energy that comes with good moods and the introspection and morbid creativity that accompanies the bad ones. I certainly don't blame him for enjoying the ride.

I think there is a blurry space between healthy and needing medication to function properly. Those who fall in that haze have the option of taking medication or not. That's a lovely choice to have at all and I envy his options because they simply don't exist for me.

There's a marked difference between a one week slump and nine month one. There's a calculable difference in severity between suicidal thoughts and suicidal actions. (Don't get me wrong, suicidal thoughts are serious and clearly signify the potential development of a larger problem. It's just that suicidal actions reflect the fruition of that process.) There's an important distinction between staying in for a few days because you don't want to inflict your mood on others and not having the motivation to shower, clean or even eat.

It's when depression or bipolar disorder starts preventing you from living your life or severely damaging your relationship with your family (or whatever supportive unit you've got) that intervention is necessary. If you're so irritable when you're depressed that you lose your patience and kick the dog or slap your kid, clearly that's an issue. If you're so down that you can't drag yourself out of the house to go to work to pay your bills, it's a problem. If you can't focus long enough to read a page, let alone a book, it's time to go get help.

*

Personally, I think that people have active depressions and passive depressions. I vividly remember sitting in my apartment my senior year of college fighting off horrible panic attacks and thinking, 'if this is the way my life is going to be--if I'll always feel like there's an ominous spectre of impending doom on my shoulder, then I don't want to be alive.' That's an active depression. I was poigniantly miserable and I knew something was wrong and it wasn't getting better soon enough for me. It's like having a broken arm. You don't want to wait 4-6 weeks. You want it fixed NOW because it hurts NOW.

Contrast that with my recent bluh state. Emotionally, I'm not unhappy. I'm not happy, but I'm most certainly not sad. I'm just kind of bluh. I can sleep for 14 hours and wake up feeling so exhasted that I don't even want to dress, let alone shower and doll myself up. I can be sitting on my couch like a Dali-esque blob literally ten paces from my fridge and be too lazy to get myself something to eat. I can be overwhelmed by having to write an email or make a phone call. But I don't feel like a bad person and I'm not actively miserable. I'm just Becky's life in slow motion. Very slow motion.

I'm starting to perk up a bit. I think the prospect of leaving South Bend for the summer and working with some really spiffy non-profits in Phoenix is cheering me up. I feel like just the idea is like someone injecting a dose of life into my veins. It's kind of nice to wake up after hibernation.

Impending March Madness

2006-02-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

You know, it might just be some quirk of being bipolar, but since I caught the flu from Brendan, I'm actually feeling emotionally better. Figure that one out! I have a fever and I'm so congested that I can't sleep--which is very unusual for me when I'm down--and yet, I'm being more productive than I was when I was physically healthy.

Anyway, lots of exciting stuff is going on. On February 25th, Brendan and I celebrated our dating anniversary--->six years! And I can tell that he's rubbed off on me because I'm soooo excited for the NCAA basketball tournament to begin. I can't wait for Selection Sunday so I can start agonizing over my bracket. To boot, we're heading down to St. Louis for a conference tournament so we can get a sneak peak at how good the bracket busters are this year. I love basketball and I have a theory that March Madness helps pull me out of my yearly February funk.

Spring Break is also right around the corner and anytime I can leave South Bend and reset my internal mojo is a good thing. There's this kick-ass Renaissance Festival that I go to every year. It was actually there that I decided that I wanted to adopt a greyhound after asking about a bazillion questions to the volunteers for the greyhound adoption tent. And of all the crazy decisions I've made, adopting my pooch is one of the best.

So anyway, here's hoping that the storm clouds will lift sooner rather than later.

The haze of 'bluh'

2006-02-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

As I was considering the last six months or so, it comes to me that I'm rather depressed. I was paging through Kathy Cronkite's The Edge of Darkness and as she was describing her emotions--hopelessness, irrationality, hyper-emotionalism and apathy--I was like, "aw shit." I never feel motivated to go out or to socialize. I've lost interest in almost everything, although I have developed a disconcerting habit of watching college men's basketball, mostly because I can sit catatonically and alternate gazing at my computer screen and gazing at the TV, occasionally absorbing what's going on. I've been a complete bum about calling my old friends and I'm certainly not making any new ones--not that I'm particularly fond of other people at the moment. I'm more self-conscious than I've been in years; I feel like I'm 13 again.

Brendan keeps poking me, telling me to clean the house or get a job or at least make him dinner. But I just don't have the energy or the motivation to do much of anything. This sloth is all encompassing. I go days without a shower. I'll wake up after sleeping for 11 hours and flub on my couch all day long. And it's been like this for months.

It's kind of odd that I'm just realizing it now. I can't actually dismiss this pattern of behavior as normal situational depression; it's too persistent and symptomatic for a simplistic cause--effect funk. I've been waiting for it to pass for too long, been stuck in these frustrating mental doldrums for months. More problematic is my aversion to doing pretty much anything. Brendan's been picking up my slack and he doesn't complain all that much to me about it, but it's not really fair to him that I'm wallowing in some relentless sadness when life is walking by.

Being the goal-oriented girl that I usually am when I'm moderately cheerful, I recognize that I have a two-pronged attack I can take against this monster. First, I most definitely need to talk to my doctor about my sudden insight into my rather blatant depression. And second, I need to dig out my old "this is what you should do if you're _____" forms. When I was in the hospital, one of the therapists had these real fun worksheets about how to cope with extreme thoughts, feelings and behaviors. At the time, I just colored them--evidently, crazy people like their crayons--but after I left the hospital and went home, I kept those forms so that I could fill them in when I was a little more stable and rational. Those forms actually do help. It's almost like reading a letter from yourself; if someone else says I should walk my dog every morning, I'll roll my eyes but if I say I should do it, then I better bundle up and get my ass outside. I'm not sure if that makes much sense and when push comes to shove, I'm still far too lazy and tired to do half the stuff on my forms, but I suppose it's a start.

In other news, I'm officially an aunt as of yesterday. I wonder if I'll sleep more often than my niece does. :)

Fat, Depression and Brain Chemicals

2006-01-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

As someone who would love to blame something other than my own laziness and poor diet for being overweight, I love reading studies like this one that suggest that a shortage of a chemical called leptin which may help regulate fatty stores could potentially factor into the cause of depression. So hey, the same chemical shortage making me chubby is also making me depressed. How happy would that make me?

When studies like this come out, though, I can't help but wonder if doctors and pharmacological researchers have any clue about what they're doing and why it works. I mean, if depression could be caused by one failure in an interaction involving more than 40 chemicals and the cure is based on which chemical is malfunctioning, then clealry, we are in the stone ages of treatment when psychiatrists basically toss the same SSRI at every patient. I'm not comforted by the lack of scientific rigor involved in tinkering with my brain chemistry at the moment. At best, it makes me nervous and at worst, it makes me entirely paranoid that I'm a desperate guinea pig willing to endure unhealthy side effects and damaging amelioratives in a fruitless search for an impossible cure. With that kind of attitude, it's not wonder that I'm nervous.

I had a lovely brain fart this week and forgot to take my morning meds two days in a row. That's the easiest way to discover that your meds are actually doing something, even if you don't think they are. I have to say that I think that erasing a hiccup like that takes twice as long as the duration of the hiccup, at least. So, for example, because I missed my meds for two days, it'll take four days before I start to feel more stable again. But anyway, I've been ridiculously emotional lately, which is rather tricky for me because I've never been one of those weepy girls and I'm not sure how to deal with this influx of utterly dumb emotions. For example, somewhere in the middle of Glory Road, I was crying my eyes out for no particular reason. When I was planning the final details of my wedding in December, I had similar problems when I'd listen to certain songs on the radio or on my iTunes. Listening to the radio shouldn't be accompanied by a 30% chance of tears, but these days, I can't help it. Like if I hear that country song...um, the 'If this is Austin, I still love you' song, I'm a goner.

And I never used to be like this! Ugh. I'm getting soft in my old age and I'm not sure whether I like it or not.

2006 is lookin might fine from here

2006-01-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

My life has 0 to 60mph so fast I swear that I have whiplash. A month ago, I was hanging around in South Bend, trying desperately to find the comedy in the fact that my car doors were iced shut and thus, I was left tugging fruitlessly on them in a feeble attempt to crack open my own car like a can of peaches. Today, I'm kicking back in Maui on my honeymoon, watching Brendan sleep off his exhaustion brought on by yesterday's excursion into the Haleakala crator (which technically isn't a crator, but for all practical purposes, it looks like one, so yeah). In the past two weeks, I've gotten married thereby schmoozing with nearly all of my family and friends, celebrated one of the most memorable New Years of my life with a fabulous group of buddies--we climbed up a tiny mountain, more like a big hill really, and watched the fireworks explode over all of the Phoenix valley cities--and, as if that wasn't grand enough, I'm hanging out in paradise with the one guy I love more than anyone else in the entire world.

How cool is that?

Life can't always be this exciting, of course, but it's a welcome shift from my previous plodding and I'm hoping that I'll be able to retain some of my momentum when I plunge back into the icy depths of winter in South Bend. For now, I suppose I'll just stick my toes in the golden sand and enjoy how warm the sun is and how cute all the little kids are running away from the waves when they crash on the shore. Awww.

Bipolar's latest bow in the media

2005-12-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard, the media is buzzing with the story of a bipolar man who was shot and killed by federal air marshals earlier this afternoon. Although it's difficult to separate the rumor from the fact at this point, apparently, the man stood while the plane was on the tarmac and ran down the center aisle, acting erratically. His wife started screaming, telling authorities that her husband was bipolar and hadn't taken his medication. Her husband then said he had a bomb and when he failed to listen to the commands of the air marshals, they shot and killed him.

Some people are suggesting that the air marshals behaved inappropriately. Those people are wrong. A clearly insane person can still have a bomb and just because someone is behaving bizarrely does not mean they aren't dangerous. This man said he had a bomb and authorities have no choice but to take him seriously.

As a person with bipolar, I'm outraged by the media's obsession with the fact that the man's family claimed that he suffered from bipolar disorder. It's irrelevant. It doesn't factor into the air marshalls' deliberations about whether or not the man is a threat and the only reason the media even mentions it is because it makes the air marshalls look like assholes when they aren't.

At the risk of sounding like a heinous bitch, I have little sympathy for this man and his family. By the time you're 44 years old, you know what it's like to live with bipolar disorder and you know whether or not you're one of those people who requires medication to maintain sanity. Clearly, this man could not behave normally without his medication and there is absolutely no reason for him not to take it. It's not like a bipolar person is going to fly off the handle if they miss one dose of their meds. For his wife to be aware of his failure to take his meds, he had to have missed more than a dose and at that point, my sympathy dies. Even if he lost his bag and his medication was gone, he could still go to a hospital or contact a pharmacy and his psychiatrist to get more. There is no excuse for not taking your meds if you know that you pose a danger to others without them. None at all.

Perhaps he was taking an ineffective cocktail or he hated flying and the stress exacerbated some underlying, festering aspect of his illness. The blame still rests solely on his shoulders. As a patient, it's his responsibility to pester his doctor relentlessly until they find meds that work. It's his responsibility to take those meds. And ultimately, the consequences of failing to do so fall plainly in his lap. Clearly, it's unfortunate that the consequences were so dire.

Bipolar disorder is not an excuse for idiotic or dangerous behavior--an explanation, perhaps, but not an excuse. Being bipolar doesn't give me the right to flaunt the law. It gives me the right to explain that my periodic short tempered, cranky moments are a biproduct of the disease. It gives me the right to whine about my occasional need to sleep for 16 hours a day, or conversely, to sleep for 3 hours a day. It gives me the right to be hyper and full of zest and energy, or slow and devoid of all unique thought. It also gives me the right to acknowledge that without my little pills, I'd be in serious trouble. While I most likely wouldn't pose a great danger to other people, I know I'd be a danger to myself. I know that while I'd be productive and thoughtful, I'd also be dealing with suicidal depressions and manic shopping sprees and sexual adventures. That's why I take my meds every day.

Having bipolar disorder is like having any other major chronic illness. If a diabetic doesn't take their insulin and then goes for a drive, slips into a coma and kills an oncoming driver, are they any less responsible for that death than an alcoholic who does the same while drunk? Having an illness that has predictable consequences when you fail to take medication requires sufferers to take responsibility for themselves and their actions if they don't take their meds.

There are grey areas, of course. Not everyone can afford their medication (although lithium is like $25-50/mo, so buck up!) and some state agencies are less than helpful when trying to transition medicaid patients to non-charity psychiatric care. For many, maintaining specialized psychiatric care is challenging and my heart bleeds for those people because bipolar disorder, particularly bipolar I, is not something that can be handled without medication and regular doctor's visits.

But this man is not one of those people. Clearly, if he and his wife had the resources to fly to Equador, they have the resources to provide him with regular care. I mean, unless he's in the beginning stages of his illness, which I highly doubt, he should only have to visit his shrink once every 3-6 months to check in and report any issues or problems he's having with a stablized medical routine.

When push comes to shove, I think the air marshalls did exactly what we pay them to do. They saw a clear threat to the safety of the people on the plane and they eliminated it. They are not doctors and they are not given the luxury of sitting down with a suspect over tea and chatting about his motivations for blowing people away. To be honest, the fact that this guy was an improperly medicated mentally ill person only makes him more of a threat because there's really no telling what he'll do and if he was in the middle of some psychotic fantasy, he could do anything.

I hate that bipolar disorder is connected to this story at all. I feel like it gives the general public this impression of bipolar people as insane maniacs who pose some kind of danger to 'normal' people. And in some ways, I'm frustrated because that perception is accurate. An unmedicated bipolar person can be very dangerous, depending on the severity of their case and the depth of their delusions or hallucinations.

Speaking of which, I keep smelling spoiled milk and I've searched the house high and low for the source of the smell, but I can't find it anywhere and I'm convinced I'm having some kind of olfactory hallucinations or something. Or I suppose it's possible that I've been watching too much Deadwood.

One less pill in the box

2005-10-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

For some mysterious reason that I doubt I'll ever understand, shrinks like to pile one psychiatric medication on top of another until teasing out what might be a side effect of one drug from what might be a side effect of another drug is virtually impossible. I've always been a bit irritated by this and since my own cocktail has varied from two to five different medications throughout the years, I decided I should probably back off the pills a bit.

So, with my doctor's blessing, I finally took my last lexapro a few days ago. It took about 5 months total to get off the drug completely and even with the impressively slow weaning I tromped through, I can still feel my body wtihdrawing ever so slightly. It's a funny thing about antidepressants in general.

For the longest time, doctors didn't actually put two and two together; when you have a patient on a chemical for years, they can't just stop using the chemical without consequences. Duh! Sounds simple, eh? But in reality, prozac came out about 1990 and the first studies about chemical dependence and withdrawal from SSRIs didn't start until 1997. Of course, SSRI withdrawal is just as dangerous as depression itself and if you take a depressed person and add a dash of withdrawal, you might have yourself a psychiatric emergency.

I know because I've been there with Effexor which is miserably difficult to stop taking. Of course, the doctor I was with at the time wasn't on the ball, I came off it too quickly and I just have to thank God that my professors were so understanding that semester because I missed weeks of classes. There was a time during that withdrawal when I thought I was dying. My sensory perception was whack and I swore there were bugs everywhere, I had a horrible fever and ugh. It was awful. I stayed with my parents for a week and man, if they weren't a doctor and a nurse, I definately woulda been in the hospital because I couldn't take care of myself very well.

But enough reminscing. Effexor acts on different brain chemicals than Lexapro does and so withdrawing is different with each drug. Lately, I've been having problems with a rather persistant, yet not debilitating headache. I also occasionally get a flare of anxiety, which I hate more than anything else. I can deal with my mental radio, but I loathe anxiety something fierce. I also get these very very occasional flashes of sensation, like someone is pouring icy-hot water on my shoulders. A bit disconcerting if you ask me.

The best thing about this withdrawal is that my first was so hideous that this seems like a walk in the park. It's a wee bit uncomfortable, but it'll pass in another week or two. I mean, I would be more surprised if I didn't have any symptoms seeing as how I took Lexapro for nearly four years.

Alas, my medicinal cocktail is down to two drugs: lithium and wellbutrin. If I take anymore wellbutrin, I'll be at risk for seizures and assorted nastiness because the higher the dose, the higher the associated risks. Dammit. I miss my buffer space. It'd be nice to be able to bump up the dose if I needed to, but alas, we can't have everything.

Being a hippie, I also take a fatty acids supplement as well. Supposedly, Omega 3, 6, and 9 are mighty good for the ailing brain. And well, who could survive without taking vitamin E and a multi-vitamin?

So cheer! I'm down to 8 pills a day!!! And, only 5 of those are mandatory! Woohoo!!! Go me!

Love is not jealous

2005-09-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

A few people have asked me in recent days if Brendan's public expression of his feelings for Sarah bothers me. Quite honestly, I'm baffled by the question.

One of the reasons that I love Brendan the way I do is because he is a kind and generous person with enough room in his heart for the most prickly among us. Brendan loves easily and openly; he's a different type of ladies' man. I have long come to accept that beautiful women tend to befriend Brendan easily, mostly because he treats everyone with respect and kindness. Unlike some men, Brendan sees women as individuals and he wants to know the individual and not "get some."

Brendan's nature reflects on his expressions of grief over Sarah's suicide. She was a beautiful woman and he's haunted by memories they shared in happier times. Brendan cared deeply for Sarah. But just because he speaks of her with such affection does not mean that he loves me any less. I never doubt how Brendan feels about me and I don't have to do so. He shows me in 10,000 different ways.

It does not disrespect me that Brendan found Sarah beautiful. Indeed, I interpret his obvious affection for her as a compliment to myself, because obviously he feels much more strongly for me than he ever did for her. At one time, nearly six years ago, Sarah and I held a similar place in Brendan's heart. He liked us both, but couldn't have us. She was across the country and I wasn't ready for a relationship. But eventually, he made his choice and pursued me. And he had to wait months until we actually started dating.

That's ancient history now. I was 17 years old and a freshman in college. Six years later, I have a graduate degree and we're getting married. Our love has evolved and grown through an incredibly tumultuous period in our lives. We've survived distance, illness and family squabbles and with every challenge we overcome, we get a little closer.

Mature love is not jealous. Brendan's heart is not my posession and he is free to love whomever he choses. Just because he loves many people does not besmirch the love we share. I'm entirely secure in our relationship and the fact that Brendan has affectionate friendships doesn't bother me in the least.

If I were petty, or if we had been together for 6 months, I might be more concerned or feel more threatened by the way Brendan remembers Sarah. But we've been together for 6 years and I know that Brendan will always be faithful and that he and I share something that I often see in old married couples. We've got "it." We built our relationship on friendship, trust and respect and that foundation is invaluable. I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if Brendan was feeling conflicted or confused about his emotions, he would tell me. The two of us are chatterboxes and we tackle our problems together.

Anyway, I do not feel threatened or upset that Brendan clearly held feelings for Sarah. When he remembers her smile and her laugh, he's not doing so in a sexual way, but in an affectionate way. For the last few days, I've been missing my buddy Shannon a lot and when I think about her, I think about how adorable she looks when she's laughing really hard. Her laughter is contagious and refreshing.

Should Brendan be worried because I admire Shannon and miss her? No, that would be stupid. There's plenty of love to go around.

When you've been together as long as Brendan and I have, you don't really have to explain these things. I know how Brendan feels about me. And I know how I feel about him. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

Swan songs

2005-09-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Brendan found out that his one-time prom date killed herself.

She was my age, like 23 years old. And now, all that's left of her is a corpse decaying in some funeral home.

I never really knew Sarah, and so it's easy for me to think about her death as a part of a larger phenomenon. For my age group, suicide is like the second or third leading cause of death.

But suicide is a funny thing. I mean, in some ways, if she was suffering so much that suicide seemed like her best option, maybe she'd better off dead. In other ways, the decision seems short sighted. I mean, a year ago, I was really happy. Today, I'm kind of bummed. There's no telling how I'll be a month from now.

People who have never seriously pondered or attempted suicide don't get it. They don't understand what could motivate someone to go to the extreme. But I understand it. Aside from the obvious depression accompanying suicidal ideation, there has to be a sense of panicked hopelessness. You know that life wil never get better, that everyday will bring more pointless suffering.

People say, well, she was selfish. She didn't think about how her death would impact other people. But maybe, she did. Maybe she understood that her presence was a burden, that no one wants to be around the messed-up chick. When you believe that no one wants you around, removing yourself from the picture is a gift to other people.

And feeling like that, suicidal, is painful. Every second you believe that your ominous misery will get worse is a second you spend planning your death. The old saying is that hope dies last. And that's true. Without hope, you stumble through life and notice only the horrors our world has to offer.

Suicides can be premeditated and planned, but that doesn't make them any less desperate.

It's hard for people to understand the impulse and the mindset. But really, the only thing those left behind need to understand is that it wasn't their fault. Sure, they might have said or done something crappy and the accumulation of said crappy things contributed to the depression that fostered a deadly mindset. But suicide is a choice that requires conscious thought. The act inherently demands the participation of the person who wants to die.

Observing the reactions of Sarah's friends and family from afar is heart breaking. Parents mourn a child, siblings mourn their sister, classmates mourn their friend. It's foolish to think that your life hasn't touched those around you.

Ultimately, I wish that schools talked more openly about suicide.

God. If only people didn't have to feel crappy enough to think that being dead is more promising that being alive.

Anyway, if you feel suicidal, my advice is to go to the zoo. Really. Go to the zoo and ponder life in all its forms. Watch the primates and think about how luck you are not to express your displeasure by throwing feces.

I always find the zoo therapeutic. Animals give life perspective. I mean, if my cat can be happy batting around a bottle cap, surely I can find something to be happy about too.

There's no snappy conclusion or moral to the story here. She's dead and she's never coming back. On the battlefield of suicides, there are only casualties. Never heroes.

Creative Drought

2005-08-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

As you might have guessed from my blog silence, I've been on a bit of a hiatus from writing. I'm not exactly sure why I'd rather drool catatonically at the wall than type out my thoughts, but that's been my attitude as of late. My thinking has undergone a bizarre change that it kind of hard to explain--I'll give it a shot.

Typically, when I think about things, I tend to think in text and words. Abstract concepts in particular become like essays, endless black and white pages stored in my mind for future use. The advantage of thinking this way is that when you go to put your thoughts on paper, they translate fluidly from mental concepts to logical sentences that actually convey the precise thought. When I was in school, thinking this way was always fabulous because if I couldn't actively remember a concept, I could picture what the text would look like and sometimes, I could just read my mental text. Other times, the words were blurry, but at least they were there to start with.

I'm comfortable thinking in text. I am totally baffled by my recent mental paradigm shift. ugh. Now, I'm thinking in pictures that I don't have the right words to describe. I had a job interview yesterday and I was talking about Russell Crow in A Beautiful Mind (don't ask) and I could not, for the life of me, remember the name of the movie. All my mind would process was a picture of Russell Crow in a psychiatric ward getting ECT. Yesterday, Brendan and I were talking about our favorite memories and for each memory, I had this vivid picture in my mind, a picture so pristine that it could never really translate into words at all. I mean, I could imagine the smells and tastes and emotions I experiences when I was living those moments. And it's not like overwhelming sensations. Like one of memories is from scuba diving and I remember how the thingy you put in your mouth tasted. I remember how the compressed air tasted. These sensations have little to do with the good part of the memory, which involved watching sea turtles swim around, but they were there, cluttering my ability to actually describe the scene.

I've never really had trouble verbally expressing myself before. I've got the gift of the gab. Or at least I did until July came around. I suppose I could be out of practice due to my recent self-isolation. But being out of practice shouldn't change my way of seeing the world.

The other thing is that I've gained this whole new appreciation for music. I dug out my guitar and my saxophone and I've found myself longing for a piano and sheet music. Music has become some kind of refuge, but in a weird way. First, I've caught myself listening to the same song over and over and over and over. iTunes counts the # of times a song has been played, and in the first week I downloaded it, one song was played more than 100 times. Ask Brendan about how much I hate it when he repeats himself and you'll understand just how much of an oddity my listening patterns really are. I've also caught myself downloading songs from the ole days, like 1995ish. And they're some of my long time favorites. But when you put them together and listen to them, you kinda get the impression that I was a really demented little 13 year old. There's a bit of Metallica and Marilyn Manson , squished together with The Nixons (sister) and Three Days Grace and then Pink Floyd (comfortably numb) thrown in for good measure. I suppose Papa Roach and Puddle of MUD have gotten a bit of play too. But I mean, who sits there and listens to the same song over and over again. It's just weird. And I am SO not one of those people who actually knows the names of the bands that play pop music.

I used to have this nightmare about being on a boat that was in the harbor during a storm and the captain put us out to sea and when the storm cleared, we were just lost in this endless ocean. The odd thing was that the ocean was comforting, like a companion rather than an obstacle. And the ocean was calm. And black. Like oil.

Which reminds me, I hate gas prices. I like to drive around when I'm aimless and I can't afford to toodle around the countryside when it costs a small freakin fortune.

*Changing train of thought*

My sleep patterns have been totally wacky too. I'm getting that back under control now, but for awhile there, I was staying up for 36 hours, sleeping 10, then staying up for 5 hours and sleeping 15, then staying awake for 30 hours and so on. At one point, I was joking with Brendan that we should go Austrailia cuz they're 12 hours time change and I was literally waking up at 3:00pm and going to bed at 7:00am.

Alas, I'm wasting my potential at the moment. I just wish I could bring myself to actually care.

Myth, History and Mental Illness

2005-07-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that we've all herad about Tom Cruise's brilliant remarks stipulating that "there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance" and that Brooke Shields should have "exercised and taken vitamins" in order to deal with her post-partum depression. Brooke Sheilds was obviously none too happy about Cruise's anti-psychiatry rant.

But before I dismiss Cruise's commentary out of hand, I have to ask, does he have a point?

Let's take it point by point.

Tom said: "Matt, you have to understand this. Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people, okay, against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?"

ECT has always been controversial and yes, people are forced, against their will to have ECT. Of course, ECT has been used for centuries. In the past, physicians used electric eels to shock patients, theorizing that this therapy would reverse severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia. In the 1950s and 1960s, ECT was vogue and patients often underwent 100s of shock sessions to induce changes in the brain. However, oftentimes too much electricity was used too frequently and the result was severe memory loss and brain damage. After One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came out, ECT was all but abandoned. However, more experimentation in the 1990s led to the development of better ECT, which has proven itself the safest and most effective treatment for severe depression or mania today. According to several different mental health organizations, ECT has a success rate of around 80%, while anti-depressants sit at around 50-60%.

Next, Tom claims that we drug children against their will. That's also potentially true, but as many parents know, the medical treatment of children is a parent's responsibility. Whether or not children know the potential side effects of cough syrup, anti-febral agents or antibiotics really isn't relevant. Moreover, parents are informed of the side effects of medication that were uncovered during their FDA trials. That information is readily available and if it isn't or if side effects were not uncovered, the fault lies with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA, not with the practice of psychiatry.

Addera,, and Ritalin. Well, I've taken both in the past so I can speak to what they are. They are amphetamines, derivatives of what most people would think of as speed. They act in a contradictory way, slowing down afflicted individuals while normal folks will get hyper. They gave me a headache. Regardless, Tom's claim that they are used as street drugs and therefore, are bad, is stupid. Everything and anything could be used as a street drug. I mean, it's almost like saying, do you know what super glue is? Do you know that it's used a street drug? Well, so what? I'm not going to stop using super glue because some idiots sniff it to get high. People abuse substances.

Next Cruise quote: "All it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance."

First point, do drugs mask the problem? In some instances, I'd have to say yes. We all know people who actively make horrible decisions and become unhappy as a result. Instead of working on their decision-making processes, they hope that taking a little pill everyday will make everything better. Those people abuse psychiatry when therapy would help them change their lives in a more meaningful way.

That being said, it would be and is an absolute mistake to assume that just because such people exist, that all mentally ill people fall into that category. Perhaps one of the most frustrating experiences a person can have is feeling anxious, scared or paranoid and running into a well-meaning loved one asking, "why are you anxious?" Well, if I knew why I was anxious, I would take active steps to prevent anxiety in the future! Sometimes, there is no psycho-spiritual reason for unhappiness or hallucinations or whatever. They just happen.

I would be fascinated to see how Mr. Cruise would explain the well-documented changes visible in a bipolar or schizophrenic brain. Tell me, Mr. Cruise, would exercise or vitamins decrease the size of a bipolar patient's enlarged basal ganglia? Or perhaps you would like to tell the obsessive compulsive person who has plucked one side of the scalp completely bald that taking more vitamin C would cure her?

Tom's next quote: "But what happens, the antidepressant, all it does is mask the problem. There's ways, [with] vitamins and through exercise and various things... I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying. That's an alteration of what I'm saying. I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt."

I have to say that I agree with Tom. Drugs are not always the answer and they most certainly can be dangerous. When friends ask me if they think that they should start taking a drug, I always tell them to try EVERYTHING else before they start. Taking anti-depressants or any other type of psycho-active drug is a serious decision. Of course, by the time a patient makes it to a psychiatrist, chances are they need some serious help. That's another thing I tell my friends. Never NEVER take psychiatric drugs from a general practitioner. NEVER. They aren't qualified. I don't care if they did a rotation in psychiatry. Nope. This is the only life you have and you deserve a specialist. Rant over.

Psychiatric drugs are absolutely dangerous, much moreso than Tylenol or other over-the-counter drugs. They can easily kill you, but there's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to go on here. Would you rather take a drug that has side effects, or would you rather kill yourself or risk hurting yourself or others?

"They're mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs." Well, no. These drugs are mind-altering in that they change the chemical interactions in your brain. However, they're not mind-altering like LSD, which dramatically changes perception. And they're not "antipsychotic," either. Antipsychotics are a very specific type of psychiatric drug and Tom's conflation of antipsychotics with antidepressants clearly calls into question the validity of anything he's trying to say. Psychosis and depression can go hand and hand, but dare I say they don't commonly cuddle with one another. Psychosis is an altered perception of reality to the extent that real and unreal are not as black and white as they should be. Seeing things, hearing things, and smelling things that aren't there is quite a bit different than being sad. Very different. Believing that you can fly, that you're invincible, that aliens are communicating with you is different from feeling weepy. Slicing your skin open with a knife to let the bugs out is different from insomnia. Failing to recognize that destroys his credibility.

The history of psychiatry? Now that's a topic. Psychiatry runs back centuries, millenia really. Hippocrates mentions characteristics of mentally ill people. Bipolar disorder was being studied as early as the 1500s. Psychiatric medications really only bubbled up in the 1950s. Previous to that, psychiatrists typically followed one of the European philosophers, Jung or Freud or Erikson to try to help people. There was a branch of psychiatry that believed that in order for women to recover from their hysteria, orgasms were necessary and as such, vibrators were originally marketed as a medical tool. Yep, people had some odd ideas. But fact of the matter is that people were suffering and medicine has responded to that. Early Cesarean sections were butchery just as early ECT was butchery. Now these procedures help people. I'm curious to know what particular history Mr. Cruise is referring to. There's so much; it's a very rich field. From Robert Stoller's gender identity clinic to the develpment and administration of thorizine, there's a lot there.

Tom's next quote: "You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?"

Well, the National Institute on Drug Abuse seems to disagree with Tom on the value of Ritalin and the nature of the chemical imbalance that causes them. In terms of blood tests, that's an interesting point and one that I have made myself. While I'd like to see physicians invent some kind of definitive test, I think it's dramatically stupid to say, "well, there's no test for that so it doesn't exist." Clearly, AIDS existed in the 1970s before there were tests for it. Where's the blood test that can tell you you have a cold? Moreover, the amount of medication each person needs is highly specific. One 120lb person might take 10mg of ritalin and another might need 30mg. It's a severity issue. And if a blood test could tell me how severe my cold was, I'd be hella impressed.

And Tom's final idea? "Matt, but here's the point. What is the ideal scene for life? Okay. The ideal scene is someone not having to take antipsychotic drugs."

Well, who couldn't agree with that? It would be excellent if there was no disease and if I could snap my fingers and not be bipolar. But we don't live in a fantasy world where taking a walk will cure hallucinations and popping a multivitamin and eating kiwi will make a manic person come back down to earth. I don't think there's one ill person who wouldn't agree that being well and not having to take drugs would be much, much better than being sick. But what kind of point is that? It would be ideal if I could fly too! Let's live in the real world.

Is Tom Cruise being insensitive? Absolutely. He clearly still believes that psychiatry is how it was 60 years ago.

There are nuggets of truth in what Cruise is saying, legitimate criticisms that might be useful if expressed with some degree of intelligence. It's a shame that Cruise is the one saying this stuff. An intelligent advocate of mental health reform could actually sit there and say that the FDA should have more stringent testing on medicinal trials, that states should actively chart the effectiveness of ECT and other controversial procedures, etc. Cruise, on the other hand, is useless. Worse than useless, actually; as the American Psychiatric Association said, "It is irresponsible for Mr. Cruise to use his movie publicity tour to promote his own ideological views and deter people with mental illness from getting the care they need."

I'm saddened by this media frenzy because a great opportunity to talk about the benefits and detriments of psychiatric care has been missed. Psychiatry is a mixed bag and someone with the visibility of Tom Cruise could really educate himself and talk about it. Instead of saying divisive and unhelpful things, he could have facilitated a national conversation about something other than his curious relationship with Katie Holmes.

Heat wave!

2005-06-25T23:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this happens to anyone else out there, but I find that my body has serious issues regulating its own temperatures. In some ways, I wonder if the perception of hot and cold can be simultaneously due to environmental influences and be the product of a psychosomatic interpretation. I mean, do I feel hot because it's actually hot in my house or do I feel hot because I think it's hot? Regardless, I'm uncomfortable and it's 11pm here.

I should be sleeping. But sleep has been unpredictable these days. Last night, I fell asleep at about 2am and woke at 4:45am when my gorgeous pooch, Robbie, demanded his morning bathroom run. Of course, after waking, I couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to trek down to Chicago for a marine aquarium conference, which was amazing.

Beside the point. What was super discombobulating was going to bed at 11pm on Thursday, waking at 5am to walk the damn dog, going back to sleep and not waking up again until 4:30pm. Seriously, I was expecting to wake up around 11am. The funny thing was that I could have easily slept longer but I was thinking that my fish would be expecting their morning meal!

One of the things that my psychiatrist mentioned to Brendan is that he should watch my sleep schedule because changes typically indicate some kind of shift in mood. Considering I've been paralyzed with depression lately, a change in mood is welcome.

RANDOM ASIDE. One of the funny things that having pets or kids does to the responsible party is force you to consider their perception. I mean, when you take your kids out, you need to provide for their potential needs until you'll be home again. Don't wanna go out with a diaper.

Well, I've been thinking about my fish. They peer out at me and I wonder if they have any idea that they're stuck, that they could have been born in the ocean or a river or lake, but instead, they were spawned in an aquaculture facility.

I wonder if my betta fish gets lonely. I was thinking about getting him a gal so they could mate and have little betta fishes. After all, that's what we're all here for in the end. My fish exists to create more fishes. I exist to have kids. Further my genetic signature.

I had to raid my piggy bank today to get enough money to pay for the tolls to get to Chicago. I still ran out of change because I got lost. Try paying a toll with pennies. They don't appreciate it. Neither do the people behind you. Kind of embarassing. That's why I don't like to go out. It's the little things that make you feel like a complete ass.

At this conference today, I was reminded about the first time I was absolutely certain that I was different from other girls my age. I was 17, doing a semester abroad in London and I spent my time in museums and churches instead of pubs and clubs. The other girls in my program stayed out until 3am and I went with them a few times. But really, I felt no need to drink away my money when I could stroll on the Thames. Alas. Seeing museums, movies, plays, churches and general sites alone didn't bother me. Eating in a cute cafe with a good book didn't bother me. Going to the Proms and watching the band morph into this living entity alone didn't bother me.

The other girls were scandalized by having to ride the tube alone.

I was by myself at the conference today too. And when I looked around, I realized that women just don't do that. There were men there by themselves. But women? Nope. I was the only one. Upon realizing that, I actively looked for other women who came by themselves, but there were none.

Is being by yourself so hard?

I've been feeling fairly misanthropic lately, so predictably, I've been fairly anti-social. I don't particularly like a whole lot of people. I tend to be a bit paranoid. Not like, everyone's trying to kill me paranoid, but more like, the evil superficial bitches of the world are trying to fit me into a stereotype of humanity that I don't belong in. Maybe everyone feels this way. We're all a little suspicious of each other.

This type of thinking can easily be a side effect of depresson as well. I mean, I can usually tell I'm depressed when someone does something nice or says something nice and my first thought it, why are they being nice to me? I conclude that they either want something or they feel bad for me. Greed or pity.

That's why my pets are so refreshing. People can be duplicitious little shits. Cats, dogs and fish? They're predictable. My cats want food, a clean litter box, fresh water and occasionally, a nice lap to hang out on. My dog wants three walks a day. He likes other dogs. Tennis balls. Open spaces. A comfy bed. My fish? Clean water and food.

Animals are simple. And in some senses, when you treat people like you treat animals, people become simple too. After all, people like good food, a clean habitat, affection and entertainment.

Hmmm. My playlist just jumped from Metallica to Bach. It's good to be me.

And I'm sure that it's good to be you too.

Where did June go?

2005-06-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

There's something about being depressed that makes time blur together in a relentless series of mundane tasks that feel insurmountable. It's wonderful to snuggle in bed with a beloved teddy bear, but not so joyous when you stay with your stuffed animal to escape the seemingly daunting task of making the bed. When stupid things like laundry and putting dishes in the dishwasher feel as difficult as taking four pets to the vet or getting the car to the shop, "life" is reduced to a series of sheer rock cliffs and rainy days where a clear path once stood, and in reality, does stand.

That reality becomes confusing when depressions lift and you look back on a period of time that felt so arduous and exhausting only to find that the landscape was smooth and easily navigable. You look around at the vestiges of what felt like the result of Herculean struggle only to find yourself angry that the clutter and filth of days gone by is hanging around to infect the first inklings of your potentially good mood. Because around here, good moods are like the most delicate flowers in the world and when the hurricanes come, you want to shelter them as best you can lest they be ripped to shreds before your eyes.

Of course, life here is either a violent storm or a sunny day; the middle is missing. Once upon a time, that middle was my master plan. When moods threatened my sanity or my existence, I could always cling to the stability of a fairy tale future and the fabled steps I needed to take to get there. The elusive success was supposed to be born of hard work and dedication and so, even if I partied every night, I would still wake up for 8am classes and viola, my GPA never dropped below a 3.6. But now crap like GPAs doesn't matter. In fact, my college and graduate school training works against my ability to get a job. And the jobs I apply for are positions that I could have gotten before I graduated from high school.

Opportuntiy in this town is like a shriveled, rotten prune. What once was ripe is now crippled with decay. Ugh.

I have a theory about my difficulties finding a job. And it's not just that I haven't applied very much. There's more than that. I keep running into the wall with the managers interviewing me; there's this inherent hostility to the interview that really pisses me off. It took me a minute to recognize that these dimwits are afraid that I will steal their jobs. Most store management positions require a college education and as soon as these guys hire a college educated employee, they're looking at competition for promotions and opportunities. Can I really expect some moron who graduated from Ball State to hire me when they know I could easily replace them? Dumb little people are very defensive over their tenuous grip on success.

Alas. I'm stuck. I'm cranky and cheerful. I'm frustrated, unhappy and yet, surprisingly content.

But most of all, I'm waiting.

Book Review

2005-06-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished Avery Z. Conner's book, Fevers of the Mind: Tales of a Roaming, Wounded Critter, after weeks of putting it down and forgetting about it, only to pick it back up again. I confess that I'm thrilled to have stumbled upon this work, because if something this poor can be published and labeled a memoir, than surely I could write something that some company would put out there as well.

In all seriousness, Conner's tome is self-indulgent and ultimately, unrevealing. When I read Kay Jamison's books, I felt as though she had stationed a reporter in the depths of my mind's most intimate sensations and darkest thoughts and exposed them to the world in their painful, pathetic glory. In other words, her book was intense; it evoked pity, jealousy, laughter and pain. That's the way a book is supposed to be, particularly when you're writing about an illness of relatable extremes.

Conner's work takes bipolar and guts it, eviscerating his emotional experience of the illness from his logical rationalizations and their eventual failure to explain his life. At the risk of sounding sexist, his account is dry and technical where Jamison's is heartwrending and painful. Both detail their post-bac education in science so the discrepancy is not borne of immensely divergent experiences. Rather, the difference lies in Conner's inability to explain the vagueries of the illness that has indelibly marked his life.

He tells us he was sad and proceeds to ooze out pages of his manic ideas without giving them an adequate context. He doesn't contextualize his behavior well, leading me to suspect that he actually doesn't understand the extent to which being bipolar has taken his life and thrown it in the wind like a billion grains of sand. He's detached, completely unable to separate relevant information from tales of his life that we would rather not hear about.

For example. he indulges us with a discussion of his average childhood. Who cares? His childhood experiences before his disease manifested itself are not relevant, nor are they interesting. If, however, his childhood was marred by emotional outbursts and atypical behavior, then it might be more compelling.

Honestly, if you only read one book about bipolar disorder in your life, don't make it this one. If you read 15 books about being bipolar, I suppose you might include it and then wish that you hadn't.

A good editor who could look at this book and tell Mr. Conner that simply describing a mental institution does not constitute compelling testimony on the nature of being bipolar was desperately needed and clearly, a keen eye checking over the manuscript is lacking.

Not impressed. Definately not impressed.

I don't mean to knock my own writing, but in all honesty, if I can write a better manuscript about my experiences with bipolar disorder, there's no way this drivel should be in print.

Living in Circles

2005-06-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

This might be a recurrent theme on this blog, but I can't help it. My mind seems to be lost in its own grey matter, tossing electricity in useless directions trying to stimulate a way out of the maze.

I can't help being frustrated. So frustrated that I'd love the cultural permission to shave my head, grab a drum and sit in the mall, thumping out an endless rythym like the one trapped in my skull. I swear, if science would take snap shots of my brain right now, they'd see the biochemical equivalent of a rodent stuck in an exercise wheel, trotting in the same useless direction ad infinitem. They would see synaptic activity that's completely formulaic and boring, useless and aggravating.

I feel like I'm trapped in a pitch black room and regardless of how hard I try to picture color, I can't remember what it looks like. I have no ideas. No inspiration. No emotion.

I am completely flat. Nothing excites me. Nothing makes me want to cry.

Now, some people would say, "hey dork, tweak your meds," but honestly, I think that's kind of part of the problem.

Every now and then, every patient is stupid and forgets to take their meds for some reason or another. Well, yeah, I forgot for a day and predictably, I'm suffering for it now. Check in with me in about 3 days and I'll be back to my normal depressed self. For now though, you can watch my frustrated agony as I sit, utterly unable to do anything.

Thank God for Brendan because without him, the dog would be getting freakin fat.

High as kyte, I just might, stop to check you out

2005-06-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

According to British researchers, who have been much more open to the potential benefits of medicinal marijuana, everyone's favorite green weed may have the potential to aid in the stabilization of those with bipolar disorder. A recent study revealed that two substances of the 60 we typically associate with pot are actually beneficial to those with serious mental illnesses. The bonus? One of those substances is THC, the darling chemical which gives that pleasant, stupid high.

This research flies in the face of most common knowledge about marijuana use and mental illness, as repeated studies have shown a link between drug use, particularly in an individual's youth, and the development of serious mental illnesses.

This research is only in its most juvenile phases, but here's hoping that by the time I'm 30, someone will be advocating that getting high is good for me! LOL!

On our own convoluted shores here in the US, researchers are just now beginning to take a look at the potential medical benefits of illicit drugs. For decades, politics and the "war" on drugs had prevented this research, despite its demonstrable potential.

The conflict between politics and science can be so frustrating. In many ways, I feel that preventing research on illicit drugs is as heinous as preventing stem cell research. Perhaps moreso, seeing as how the hazy ethics of stem cell research do not impact the study of illegal drugs.

At any rate, hopefully researchers in the US will be able to duplicate British studies on the benefits of mary jane.

Pause

2005-05-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

Unemployment strikes again, not that I mind too terribly. While I don't mind working, I have to confess that this past temporary job was an exercise in administrative inefficiency and frustration. My supervisors purposefully kept me out of the loop and as such, I was unable to perform my duties excellently and I'm a big fan of excellence. Honestly, I can deal with a crappy job, but I hate feeling like I'm a bad employee. I'm a good machine cog. I like positive feedback. I suppose we all do.

So, now that I have some time to myself, I've been enjoying doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ahhh.

And I have some questions.

Why do women wear high heels that smoosh their little toes?
Why do people who work at the post office seem either miserable or happy, but never just alright?
If we can make a hybrid car, why can't we make a movie theatre ticket seller microphone that actually transmits words instead of static?
Why do little towns have streets where the left lane turns into a left turn only lane without advanced warning?
After the road kill folks pick up their carcasses du jour, where do they put em?
Why is it that Wolf Blitzer can be a successful media personality but all of his female counterparts have to look like Twiggy (Amanpour aside, of course. She's around because she speaks 8,000 languages)?
Why is it that I can be so unhappy while my cats are content with a soft spot to sleep?
Why does the city of South Bend have such crappy side walks?
If the internet is so revolutionary, why can't I find a job with it?
Why is it that when a Mormon needs help (say finding a job), they go to their church while when a Catholic needs help, we're shit out of luck?
Is it okay to look at my old boss and think that she wouldn't last 5 minutes in NYC with people who are actually important?
How can a mushroom mysteriously disappear in an aquarium? For that matter, how can star polyps do the same?
Can tangs become obese and if so, is it wrong to think that's adorable?
Is it okay to really need money, but refuse to work at Starbucks (sorry Adra!)?
Is it okay to be pissy because books are expensive when you buy them, but cheap when you sell them?
Is it okay to be jealous of those freaks out there who have everything all figured out at 22?
Is it okay to be FREAKING OUT because your birthday is coming and you don't feel like you've done that much with the last year of your life?
Can a person actually be stressed out by the fact that they have to move in 2 years?
Is it worth it to set up a mini propagation tank to sell coral to subsidize my other aquarium expenditures?
Why is plumbing so easy, and yet so incredibly confusing?
Who decided to call plumbing parts male and female?
In fact, who decided to name anything what it's named?
Is it wrong to want to stomp around swearing when you discover that your local Home Depot will not allow dogs in it, even though it's a fucking hardware store? What, is the dog going to drool on your nuts?
Is it wrong to desperately wish you had a dagger so that when the incompentent cashier at Home Depot tells you she can't do returns, you can stab her through the heart and use her blood to paint fuck you on the exit door?
Why does every goddam stoplight in South Bend have a lefthand turn signal except the one on Edison and SR 20?
Do my cats get lonely?
Is it okay to super glue Brendan's testicle to his leg because he hasn't done laundry in two weeks even though he said he would?
Is it sad that my current inspiration comes from the African Tree frog I bought at Walmart for $2.97?

Yep. These questions aren't exciting. Nothing deep or profound.

I'm feeling a bit like I'm a thick fog; I can't see or hear very much and every breath I take is laboured because the air seems thick. It's like I'm swimming in jello.

Hmm. If that's the case, I hope it's strawberry jello. mmmmjello.

Me against the pill

2005-05-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

disclaimer I am not going off my meds, just sharing my thoughts.

Post

As I was munching on my Cinammon Toast Crunch this morning, I looked over at my pill box and realized that the contents of this cheap plastic container cost me more than $250. I continued munching, fighting off the occasional yawn, before I noticed that my house is a chaotic warzone filled with old take-out boxes, crumbs from the dog's expedition into the cupboard and shipping boxes from eBay and Amazon transactions.

Why exactly am I taking these meds again? Their lovely addition to my life has added nearly 40 lbs to my frame, which was by no means gaunt before my sojourn into mental illness. I still cry because I'm unhappy and my depression is as bad as it always has been. I'm teetering on the edge of complete melancholy and an excruciatingly slow trek out of my comfortable depressed haven.

The problem is, medicines are like the ripples a pond gets after you throw a pebble into it. They start in one place and act on one thing, but then they start bumping into other things and eventually, you end up with a turbulent puddle where a glass smooth one used to be. And, just as dropping the pebble into the pond is distracting and miserable, retrieving that pebble is much worse. By the time you tromp throught the puddle, grab your pebble and walk about again, there's a whole bunch of chaos that'll take hours to settle.

It's summer now. If I want to even think about tinkering with my meds, I need to tinker now. It's not like the status quo is so incredible that I'm eager to maintain my stability or something like that. I suppose I'm just more afraid of pushing the swing, so to speak. Going up and down and up and down and up and down.

If this were a movie, at this point someone would jump into my office and give an inspiring speech about how life isn't worth living if you aren't willing to conquer your fears and live beyond your comfort zones. Of course, those morons don't understand that in this instance, it's not a case of comfort or discomfort, it's a case of sanity versus insanity, comfort versus harm. Decisions, decisions.

I suppose I'll have to chat with my doctor on this one. We had been discussing decreasing one of my meds, but unfortunately, my move to South Bend and turbulent adjustment has made that impossible up to this point.

But with baby ducks, comes my happiness. And they are hatching like mad. All fuzzy and yellow and clumsy. Awww.

The illusion of help

2005-05-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

In a move that I'm not too enthused by, a southern suburb of Chicago has implemented a new mental health policy in an attempt to help the most severely mentally ill people get on their feet.

Problem #1. In a population of 155,000 mentally ill people, the .08% who will actually be "helped" by this program most likely represent those who are unlikely to ever become productive members of society. The craziest of the crazy need a helluva lot more help than meeting with a psychiatrist with an insurmountable case load.

Problem #2. How is it that a psychiatrist gets paid $70,000/year to meet with 40 patients a week, and a bilingual social worker gets paid $58,000/year to meet with 30 clients per week. WHAT!?! Why the CRAP are you paying your social worker that much money? Not to belittle the difficulty of the job, but seriously, that should be a position with a MAXIMUM salary of $40,000 that you might get after working for 30 years.

This is part of the reason that I can't deal with the government up here. In Maricopa County (in AZ), the desperately mentally ill are put through a state program for several months. The program mandates that they see a doctor, a counselor and attend what basically amounts to school to learn basic life skills. By the time they are put out into the world, these folks have a stable medication regimen and experience with learning how to balance a budget, stay out of dangerous relationships and most importantly, apply for work. The genius of the AZ system is that the state will hire some of the new graduates to train other mentally ill patients going through the system. So, under supervision, some of these folk will be empowered by helping others like them. Great experience.

Most amazing about the AZ program, however, is the fact that the government will provide low cost drugs to graduates for a generous period of time, during which the mentally ill folk should have been able to find a job, start working and get health benefits.

And you know, that system work pretty damn well. You can't change a person and if people stop taking their meds, nothing good can come of it, but at least you've given people a structured chance for a better life.

Somehow, the Chicago formula feels like a way to justify the creation a couple of cushy jobs. That pisses me off because there are people out there who desperately need help.

My opinion? Better than nothing. Barely.

The Seasonal Shift

2005-05-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

While this might not come as a surprise to anyone, the vast majority of bipolar patients experience changes in their moods that coincide with the changing of the seasons. For example, when spring starts to get its butt in gear, many bipolar patients report feeling slightly more energized. Manic episodes are more common in spring and summer than they are in the dead of winter.

I notice this particular phenomenon quite a bit in my own life. Back in early March, I'd come home from work and fall asleep, exhausted, at 7pm only to wake at 7am unrested and cranky. Now, I can stay up until 11:00 and wake up at 6:30 without any problems. Oddly though, I do tend to binge sleep when I don't sleep as much during the week. For example, last week, I followed a pretty consistent weekday sleep pattern of 11:00pm to 7:00am. I wasn't overly sleepy, just mildly lazy during the day. But come Saturday, I was utterly incapacitated by exhaustion. I fell asleep at about 7:00pm and only woke intermittently on Sunday. In fact, I think I spent a total of about 5 hours out of bed all Sunday long. And I slept through the night on Sunday night.

Anyway, I notice that my moods tend to vascillate with the seasons as well. In Phoenix and Los Angeles, this was not so much of a problem, but in South Bend, the impact is a bit more pronounced.

And so, stupid things like weekly bowling keep me alive when the sun sets at 4:00pm. And in the summer, life is good.

Summer is like falling into the garden of Eden. At the moment, I feel like my brain is coming alive just like the earth around me has. Dirty snow piles and drab skies have been replaced by baby ducks and vibrant flowers.

Damn the pessimist in me who quietly whispers that winter will come again.

A duel with dyads

2005-05-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

One of the first things that kids come to understand as they are growing up is the nature of dualistic relationships. Male or female, day or night, hot or cold and so on and so forth. Along with the more basic dyads, we also learn that there's happy or sad, crying or laughing, reasonable or unreasonable.

And that's where my daily dilemma has left me. I'm sitting quietly at my desk and I have no task or purpose other than to sit here. There are certain requirements of my sitting, however. I'm not allowed to sleep, despite my desire to take a nap. I'm not allowed to sing, or watch TV or put my feet up. I have to maintain an illusion of professionalism just in case someone happens to stroll in.

Needless to say, sitting here pondering why my betta fish likes to attack my fingertip when I put it on the glass side of his bowl has me wondering why I even bothered learning how to read. Truly, sitting in this office has led me to conclude that my education was a gigantic waste of money. A dear friend of mine who dropped out of community college in her first semester makes more money than I do. She's a beautiful girl, both inside and out, but book-learning was never her thing. I'm beginning to wish it wasn't my thing.

While some that I complain to believe that I should not be content with my position because I'm to intelligent to be satisfied by the more menial tasks involved, I think they are mistaken. I actually enjoy my job when I come to work and there is actually work for me to do. Indeed, I always enjoyed my job at a bagel shop because it had its own frenetic pace that made the hours flow by.

I loathe having nothing to do, and yet having so much to do it's not funny. I have a pile of laundry sitting at home that could kill a man if it toppled over. I need to take my pooch for a long stroll today--we have a standing date. I really should give myself a pedicure. But I'm trapped. And that makes me want to run around screaming and drooling on myself simultaneously to add to my disheveled, undone self.

Bluh.

The unusual thing is that in the midst of this rather stupifying position, I am also quite happy. I have an amazing significant other who makes me smile and laugh every day, I have a puppy who trots to the door wagging his tail whenever I walk in, I have cute kittens who demand love and attention, but sometimes get distracted a fall asleep in their place du jour, I have a fantastic saltwater fish tank, with zooanthids and zenia, coralline algae and blue-legged hermit crabs, damsels and clown fish and chromis, a goby with a gas problem and a mandarin who is finally getting his figure back after going on a crash diet.

I love my life. I can walk around my neighborhood and not get shot at (although someone did get mugged at gunpoint not too far away the other day). There are flowers and bunnies and baby ducks. A world with all of that stuff really can't be all bad.

But in my office, when I have nothing to do, the world seems do dismal, pointless and punishing that it can be hard to remember flowers and sunshine.

That's why my dream is to run a cat kennel. I can and do pet cats all day long. I love them and I don't mind changing litter boxes and dealing with little territorial spats.

I think my dreams are why I can survive the doldrums. I spend countless hours thinking about the schematics of my potential kennel. I think about business plans and market share and all that jazz. It passes the time.

I just wish I didn't have to pass time. But I suppose that good things come to those who wait.

If only I wasn't so impatient!

Courting Success

2005-04-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

When a 20-year-old bipolar guy gets sent to court in Alabama, he might not face the same consequences as his non-bipolar counterpart. This is due to the actions of what some may call "activist judges" who think that those clearly suffering from a mental illness that impairs their ability to make reasonable judgements should be put on a regimen of therapy, medication and supervision.

Apparently, the system is working pretty well, as even the ill can see that they are getting a good deal. The program is only designed for non-violent, non-sex offenders. And, the consequence of noncompliance is jail time.

While I like the idea of a separate system of punishment for those who suffer from mental illness, the practice makes me somewhat uncomfortable. If I break into a store, why should I get a "softer" sentence than Brendan if he committed the same action? I suppose courts exist to discern the significant differences behind people's motivation for crime and bad behavior. It is different to break into someone's house because you want to steal their stuff and to break into someone's house because you think it's your own and you lost your keys.

Of course, that doesn't mean that mentally ill folk aren't capable of doing extremely dumb things. But their culpability is fuzzy; they are culpable, no doubt, but are they as culpable as the next guy?

This reminds me of a case in San Diego where the cops were involved in a high speed chase that resulted in the death of three innocent travelers who just happened to be from the Phoenix area. It was a big news story because the boy in the car lost his father and his fiance and his mother was critically injured; the family didn't have enough money to bring the bodies back from San Diego and there was a big fundraising effort that ended when some businessman anonymously donated all of the money necessary.

Anyway, this was a truly tragic story, but what was more tragic is that the woman running from police was not running drugs or trying to hide some horrible felony. She was psychotic and convinced that the police were going to kill her. This particular case was made all the more upsetting because the woman had been unsuccessfully appealing to the state to maintain her medical aid.

Regardless, does this clearly ill individual deserve the same punishment as some smarmy drug runner motivated by greed and street status? I certainly don't think so, and I think that's exactly why we have courts to suss out the underlying factors in crime.

And yet, I don't think there are many criminals who wouldn't benefit from therapy and intense supervision without the jail time.

Ugh. Sometimes I'm very happy that I don't make public policy.

A Saturday Snowstorm

2005-04-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

We need not mention that it's Saturday, it's snowing and it's the end of April. Nope. We're not going to say a word about that.

Life has been trudging along for the past few weeks and I suppose I should be thankful that my moods have been comfortably stable. While I have been tired, I've also had moments of normality...or what I think normality would be like. Sure, I've been trying new meds to inspire wakefulness, and we all know how wonderful going on and coming off of medications can be for moods. And yet, I've been stable. And I like it.

For the first time in years, I'm starting to think about achieving things other than a modicum of mental stability. I've had the opportunity to think about religion in a deeper way than the "why me?" whirlpool I get stuck in when my moods are off kilter. My faith has been sorely tested throughout this whole ordeal and there was definitely a time when I figured that God was some sadistic jerk poking us like little voodoo dolls. I was very angry. I still am sometimes, but I like the basic message of the church quite a bit. Be of service and love people. I can do that.

The problem with feeling slightly better than I've felt in a long time is that I don't know what to do about it. Before I started having serious problems with bipolar, I was very involved in the community and excited about my coursework at school. Now, I have a dilemma about how to live my life.

Do I slowly build up my goals and ambitions in number and expansiveness or do I let sleeping kittens lie and coast in the anticipation of another bout of moodiness shredding my life once more? The fact is, if I start a bunch of projects and fuck them up because of a bipolar snap, I'm going to feel like a total jerk.

I'm both nervous and excited for the next few months here. Brendan and I will both be working, so we'll have some money to put into savings. We'll be able to take day trips on the weekends...maybe even take Robbie to the sandy lake shore so he can run around. Maybe I'll put the mini harness on the cats and let them walk around outside a little bit. Ahhh. I love the summer.

I did make my first mini-commitment today actually. After I made a trip out to my favorite saltwater fish shop to buy some snails for my tank, I stopped by PetSmart and signed a volunteer application to work with a local animal rescue. I think I'll probably volunteer for one night a week, from something like 6-8pm. I'm curious to see how the cats tolerate a shelter environment and to help everyone get adopted if we can. Maybe I'll drag Brendan along sometime and he can take some pictures of the cats for the adoption website.

Besides, I think getting out of the house and chatting with some people who aren't affiliated with Notre Dame would be good for me. Not that Notre Dame is evil, but there's more to this town than the university...maybe.

Anyway, despite my best efforts to take things slowly, I'm sure that I'll quickly over-commit myself and end up feeling frazzled. Oy.

Like falling on your ass in a puddle

2005-04-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

I'm moderately frustrated today, I confess, mostly due to the fact that the internet is being horribly cruel to me. Who knew it would be so difficult to find a gyno with a sub-specialty in endocrinology?

That's a trick question, of course. The fact is, there are reproductive endocrinologists, but that ridiculously long title is code for "infertility specialist." Now, I'm not looking to become fertile or to get IFV or any of the other assortment of bizarre procedures these poor couples pay for in their quest to get pregnant. I just want to get an annual check-up and figure out something new about my hormonal situation.

It's all because of my ass. See, in medical speak, I have a unique body shape because technically, for as heavy as a am, I should be more flubby around the middle. But alas, God blessed me with lots of hormones that give me a GIANT ass, a small waist and nice tits. All in all, not so bad. Of course, that's not what my shrink thinks.

Although he hasn't shown his whole hand on the issue, I'm thinking that he thinks that a hormonal imbalance may account for my weight gain with lithium (hurray for 30 xtra pounds before ya get married!), and possibly, for some of my sleepiness and mood swings. This naturally makes me want to punch him in the head after eating a bar of chocolate.

At any rate, life has been a bit trying as of late. I suppose everyone goes through periods in their lives that aren't the best and we just have to get through em to find more happiness.

In my case, I really think I should hook up with a sleep clinic and get paid to be a specimen for them. Considering provigil made me even more sleepy and 54 mg of concerta might as well have been a warm glass of milk, I think I'd make a fabulous specimen. I can sleep any time, day or night. I can sleep 18 out of 24 hours in a day upon request.

I'm telling you, being a sleep study subject is my calling. I know I wouldn't be chosen to be in a study like that because of all of the drugs that I take, but dude, I still think that science is missing out on a fabulous opportunity to study "the great sleeping Becky."

I think part of my current urge to doze is caused by the slight, but cold draft coming from the wall of windows behind my desk. It's cold in here, but it's warm under the covers, surrounded by purring kittens and a sleepy Brendan. Ahhh. Could heaven possibly be any better than that?

I suppose another part of my sleep craving is brought about by my hovering mental malaise as of late. Don't get me wrong, I'm not depressed in a "i wanna kill myself" way; nope, I'm depressed in a "everything sucks" kind of way. Brendan can attest to this next thing.

When I get bummed out like this for an extended period, I'll make that superhuman effort to life myself out of the clouds so I can see and feel all the happiness in the world before I bounce back down to life. It's almost like jumping on one of those netted trampolines; if you picture the net as a black wall and yourself as a jumping little kid, if you put enough energy into it, you'll be able to see over the top of the wall for a second, glimpsing the beauty you'll see when the walls come down.

Naturally, after seeing the beauty of it call, the absence of beauty feels all the more painful. This generates the mourning response which typically manifests itself as me crying on Brendan that I'm lonely and I hate South Bend. This self indulgent whining generally subsides after about a half an hour, at which time I tend to sleep because everything will be better after I wake up.

Man, I need a nap.

The lottery

2005-04-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

So I've decided that I want to be rich, or maybe not even rich, but I want to have more disposable income, er, uh, any disposable income to buy myself silly things like a protein skimmer for my fish tank! So, I decided that I'm going to win the lottery.

I like buying a lottery ticket. When I do, I sit back and dream about all of the amazingly wonderful things I would do with my millions of dollars. I'm sort of a dork, so I know that I'd probably invest most of it and then live off the interest for awhile. If I did spend it, I would buy a house...a really beautiful house, with a giant aquarium built into one of the walls. It would be fabulous. Truly a work of art.

I would do cool things like use the interest on the money that I'm not using to pay off people's student loans. Wouldn't that be cool? Of course, I suppose all this would depend on my jackpot. Obviously, I can't be an uber philantrophist if I win like $10,000. Of course, that would go a long way toward paying rent.

I think you buy a dream when you buy a lottery ticket. It gives you the chance to escape the daily grind, or if not escape, then at least to buy some nice clothes.

The lottery is a little rollercoaster for me. I always manage to convince myself that there's more than the most infinitesimal chance of winning. I get nervous when I watch the numbers come up and I convince myself that even one number in common with the winning number is a victory!

Then, I get disappointed. I feel cheated out of my imaginary car and house. I get cranky. The winner obviously didn't deserve the money. They'll probably just spend it on a collection of fabrige eggs or something equally horrible.

And then I return to my cynical self and decide that everyone else is stupid because if they weren't stupid, then obviously I would have won the lottery! :)

Then, I pet the cats and all returns to normal.

Sometimes when I need a boost, I buy a lotto ticket.

I could win, right?

A lil' bit of nature, a lil' bit of nurture

2005-04-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

From McMann's newsletter:

A University of Pennsylvania/Vanderbilt University/West Chester University study of 204 patients with moderate to severe major depression has found that 43 percent responded to eight weeks of cognitive therapy vs 50 percent of those on medications and 25 percent on a placebo.

The same group of researchers followed up 104 patients who had responded to treatment over 12 months. They found that those who were taken off cognitive therapy were significantly less likely to relapse than patients withdrawn from meds (30.8 percent vs 76.2 percent) and no more likely to relapse than patients who stayed on meds (30.8 percent vs 47.2 percent).

It seems to me that significant evidence is building to suggest that cognitive behavioral therapy has palpable benefits and should be a part of the mental recovery/maintenance of every psychiatric patient. If only insurance would pay for that!

I wish they would have taught me some CBT methods instead of trigonometry when I was in high school. I've never, not once, used trigonometry in my entire life, nor will I because if I would stumble upon a project requiring it, I would hire someone else to do it for me. But CBT? It would be nice to know more about the techniques and how/why they work.

Twang

2005-04-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

Picture a guitar chord right after it's been plucked--an ample representation of my moods.

Yesterday, I was bawling on Brendan, complaining about everything from our apartment to my job so my extra belly flub. Today, I'm content to be at work. I've been watching my new betta fish, Patriot, swim around his tiny betta cube and his tail swishing movements are hypnotically relaxing.

I don't quite understand where this new wave of instability has come from. I can only hope that it passes soon so that I can get on with doing that thing I do. I miss the days when the students dropped in on me more frequently and I could rib them about the MCAT, a gorilla on the horizon they were all so desperate to ignore. Alas, the MCATs are this weekend and my crop of potential future doctors is hunkering down for some serious studying.

I'm feeling angry with myself today. I feel like I've been running a fantastic race and then I stepped in cement and now I've stopped to try to pick the cement out of my shoe instead of dusting myself off and running some more.

And, I discovered today in the mirror that I have serious back fat. Believe me, no woman wants to look in the mirror and see back fat oozing over the lines of their bra. Not to mention that the shadow of my belly button is visible through this shirt. But it matched my skirt so well. Of course, it's hot today and because I'm wearing a skirt, my thighs are rubbing together and they sweat and stick to one another--supremely uncomfortable. I even did the ole trick of tossing some baby powder on my thighs, to no avail. Ugh. These are the concerns that skinny people never have to think about. But at least I have boobs.

And fish! Despite a rather tenuous financial situation, Brendan and I decided to keep our marine fish tank going. Little by little, we'll add livestock and rock until it looks fantastic, which it already does, but you know what I mean. The most wonderful thing about marine aquariums is that, barring a few necessities, it's actually better to add livestock to them slowly.

Of course, the best thing about it is watching the fish zoom around like little maniacs when the cats come around and start pawing the glass. I was thinking that some day, when I start my cattery (like a cat kennel), I'll put an aquarium in there and write it off on my taxes as a business expense. Well, at least part of it. The cats have to be entertained while they're away from home after all!

This whole emotional volatility thing is slightly worrisome. I'm sure it will pass eventually--or not.

Maybe a girl needs to get all snot-nosed and sobby before she wins the lottery.

hey, you never know.

Stumbling after another day

2005-04-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

Right around 4pm, I always get so tired. It's as if my eyelashed gorge themselves at 3pm and settle into a post-prandial daze just as my workday is starting to wind down. Not that it ever particularly winds up, but if it did, I think that by 4pm, I would feel tired and ready to go home and play with my pets.

This exhaustion stays with me for the rest of the night. It's like being covered in gooey vaseline and trying to wipe it off with vaseline covered hands. I'm completely compliant to its will. Naturally, this makes doing regular chores like dishes or making dinner more difficult.

The light and the coming of spring have made me happier, but I still can't shake this supremely tired, lackluster feeling. I suppose my attitude is fatalistic; I trudge to work everday and while I do enjoy my job, I could have done it when I was 11. I need more stimulation and challenge or my brain truly will wither inside my skull, becoming smooth as an undisturbed pond instead of wrinkley, like an old person's smile. I'm sure that I'll look back on this time with regret because I could have done more but didn't.

Alas. I can cope with disappointment. I started a saltwater fish tank and that baby keeps me going through my workday. I've read about corals and filters and water purification. I love this hobby. I can come home, stare at my fish and play with the kittens. There's something amazingly comforting about watching my fish goof around with each other. They are so enchanting.

So off I go, to watch them swim in this little piece of ocean trapped in my living room.

Viral Depression?

2005-03-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

The psychiatric world is obsessed with figuring out the precise mechanism by which people become depressed or bipolar or schizophrenic etc. Well, this guy notes that the Borna virus, a nasty infection that causes behavioral changes in animals, afflicts nearly 100% of the mentally ill community while only 30% of mentally stable people have had the virus.

He hasn't found a causal link, but the theory is intriguing.

In news de Becky, I'm a benign mixture of happy and slightly overwhelmed. First off, I really need to get myself a job that pays more. Secondly, my house looks like an elephant had its friends over and last, but not least, it's finally spring!!! I love spring. The weather has finally changed. It's wonderful.

Well, the downside is that I sometimes fall asleep when it's still light outside. Alas.

I've spent a lot of time ignoring my moods lately because I don't think it's very productive to wallow in a cavern of endless sorrow. I've been living a bit like a robot, just going through the motions because I have to move to survive and someday, I won't feel so bummed. That day is today, but I find myself covered in the residual slime of a rather arduous and draining depression.

Hopefully the spring sunshine will light all of those dark places in my mind and rip away the cobwebs and dust that have gathered there all winter.

And I'm going to feed some ducks.

quack

Rat mania?

2005-03-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

So, researchers have taken another step toward finding a better way to treat bipolar disorder. These white coats pondered why lithium has worked so well for many bipolar patients. And their solution is way too tricky to explain, so click the link!

As for me, my doc put me on Concerta (I think he thinks that I'm narcoleptic or something) to help increase my wakefulness. I find that it's making me a bit more cheerful, but not particularly unsleepy.

I think part of the problem is that I just love to sleep.

To irritation and back again

2005-03-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

I knew today wasn't going to be entirely stellar when I kept waking up last night with a funny pain in my neck. Of course, you're irritated, every pain becomes the end of creation and suddenly, the fact that you have a muscle ache means that everything in the world is DOOMED.

I've had a slow, undulating headache all morning and if I close my eyes, I feel my body wanting to rock back and forth like my office is really a boat. The great thing about headaches is that noises become more palpable. When someone across the hall shreds paper, they might as well be sitting on your head.

I'm also irked because, although I lost weight this week (hurray!), I'm still pudgey and even though my skirt is huge, when I sit down it doesn't cover my ass completely. So naturally, I'm having what feels like hot flashes all morning and my freakin ass keeps getting STUCK to my office chair. Dammit.

To boot, I checked out the lunch I so laboriously packed at 7:15 this morning and realize that in my sleepy morning, brain dead haze that I forgot to pack myself any kind of main course. Not that I have anything against bananas, but they just don't fill you up like a sandwich.

And last, but not least, in the midst of all of this intense irritation, my boss decided to make changes to his schedule without telling me. The problem is that I schedule all of his advisement appointments. So, naturally, we've double booked some of his time and I feel so bummed out to have to email these student to change their appointment times. They are so busy and most of them are taking the MCAT in April so they're freaking out and stressed and the last thing they need is this minor annoyance sideswiping them in the middle of their day.

Hmmm. I suppose that last paragraph speaks more to my mindset. There are definately some stupid little chores that feel entirely overwhelming to me. Like laundry. Or washing the floor. It's awful. I really wish that I could have a better attitude about these things.

Maybe I'll have to confront some of the chaos in my world this week.

THE FLOORS WILL BE VACUUMED!

The Constructive and the Deadly

2005-03-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

Upon reading this story about a comedian who killed herself, I find myself thinking about why some thoughts become actions and some don't. Obviously, this comedian was having serious issues with getting her medication and as anyone who has changed medications could tell you, coming off a med is not a stable time for anyone. Coming off a med unexpectedly is plain old stupid and intensely uncomfortable.

But alas, I digress. I think I have a lot in common with this here comedian. I'm sure that we're both sad because the weather sucks. Depression breeds hopelessness which breeds negativity which infects every happy scenario you could think of. Seriously, I get so negative sometimes that when my brain is like "you should go take a walk. that will cheer you up." I just sit there and think, "I could take a walk, but I'd probably get hit by a car, and end up a quadraplegic for life." D'oh!

Anyway, my whole point here is what people do with their thoughts. Sure, I might be really down and really sad and really hopeless and negative, but when I feel like I can't take it anymore, I go lay down in my nice comfy bed. Inevitably, one of my cats will come join me for a nap and then I tell myself that when I wake up, things will be better. Typically, that works. I mean, no one has enough mental energy to stay in a hyperactive depression for very long. Besides, life can't be that bad with an adorable, drooling kitten snuggling up to the small of your back.

I guess my point is that there's a point that comes around when you have the choice to start thinking about jumping off the Sears Tower or to think about how, someday, you'll have the coolest marine aquarium around. Sometimes all you can do is distract yourself until it passes.

I often think that bipolar is like a thunderstorm. In the worst parts, you might want to shrivel up and sink into a black hole, but then you'd miss how the air smells after the storm. Awww. This reminds me of how my kittens are afraid of thunder, but curious about rain and when we have thunderstorms, they'll RUN under the bed and HIDE when it thunders, but they'll venture out to see the rain. And the process repeats itself.

Awww. See, I started writing this post all sad because another person with bipolar took the easy way out instead of fighting the good fight and I'm ending it with the adorable image of my kittens peaking their heads out from under the bed to be sure everything is safe.

That's why we need to be patient. This too shall pass and when it does, the light will look even more beautiful.

Such a Shame

2005-03-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't read McMan's excellent newsletter, here's a rather sobering story.

"In November 2004, Iris Chang, author of the heart-wrenching The Rape
of Naking and other books, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound,
leaving behind a husband and two-year-old son. Last week, her family
finally spoke out. Speaking at an event to raise mental health
awareness among Chinese-Americans, her parents and her brother
described Ira's shame after a psychotic breakdown and how she
resisted taking meds.

Said her mother, Yin-Yang Chang: "In Asian culture, it's considered
shameful to have some mental patient in your family. But mental
illness is a disease, a chemical imbalance in the brain. We should
treat it just like a heart attack or diabetes."

Ira was at work on a book about the Bataan Death March during the
time of her breakdown. Asked if the disturbing subject matter of her
books may have contributed to her depression, her father, Shou-Jin
Chang said it was "certainly a contributing factor."

Disease is the great equalizer. Black, white, Asian or Indian, we all have the same basic bio-chemistry commanding our brains and indeed, we all suffer from the same stupid mental illnesses. Kind of sucks. How cool would it be if say, Hispanics or the Aborigines, didn't get bipolar? Then we could study their brain chemistry and try to figure it out. But alas.

I'm a bit cranky myself. Why is it that bipolar treatments are almost as bad as the disease itself? I mean, when I started this oh-so-fun journey, I had a normal BMI, clear skin, and a healthy dose of ambition. Now? I've shifted from an overweight BMI to an obese one, I have acne and if life would allow it, I think I would prefer to stay in bed all day instead of doing anything. Seriously. Even watching TV takes too much effort sometimes.

While I can confess that I definately had difficult periods while living in Phoenix and LA, South Bend contributes additional complicating factors that I haven't had to deal with before. For example, in Phoenix, when I wanted to go outside, I'd grab the dog and go outside. We'd go to the dog park and I could play with puppies and that would cheer me up. In South Bend, when I want to go outside, I look out my window and see a neighbor walking through my apartment complex all bundled up and miserable and I just stay inside. So, not only is the dog disappointed and lonely, but I'm forming ass grooves on my couch.

Because I'm on the max dose of two antidepressants, my doc decided that perhaps my problem has more to do with daytime sleepiness than with an all consuming depression. So, our current thinking is: "bring on the stimulants." Of course, I'm prone to anxiety, so I'm not sure how well this experiment is going to work.

I think my primary concern with taking stimulants is that I'll have to endure this depression wide awake. I keep questioning if the status quo isn't better than having to be fully cognizant that I have a job out of sync with my education level, that my house is a disaster area and that despite working 40 hours a week, my finances are chronically in the red. To bitch, my father makes about 40 times what I do in a year, and he's retired. Investments.

At least when I think about it, life could still get worse. My cats could get sick. Brendan could break his arms and not be able to blog.

A part of me wishes that I had just stayed at ASU for my doctorate. I would still be living in AZ, I would be making more money than I do now working part time, and I would have the stability of my house and not having to relocate again. I feel like I can't settle here. I'm suspended here for 2 more years and I feel like laying down roots would be a waste of time.

I'm being stubborn really. If I were smart, I would embrace South Bend with open arms. I would explore its nooks and crannies and learn to love its idiosyncracies. But I don't. Maybe I should've moved here in the spring.

Introspective Distortion

2005-03-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Shall we dance?

One of my listservs has instituted a daily mood check. I don't always submit mine, but the practice has forced me to acknowledge how little I consciously think about my moods and managing their impact on my life. I tend to ride the wave and after I've swept up on the beach, I look out on the ocean and think, damn, that was one helluva wave.

Wouldn't it be nice to know that I'm riding the wave while I'm doing it? Brendan and I were talking today and I got to thinking that I'm actually in a horrible mood and I have been for quite some time. I can't blame myself. I've been gaining weight, living in a town that I despise and my only conversations are with my fish.

I had so much more to say when I started this post, but my thoughts died faster than an ant sizzling under a magnifying glass. Oh well.

Sigh.

Winter's Frigid Hand

2005-02-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

Old man winter is hanging onto the weather like it's a floppy fish, giving us glimpses of spring before closing his icy hands around us again. Winter is dying but spring has yet to take hold and so the world is fully of death and decay.

I'm in an odd mood today. I keep thinking of digusting things, seeing visions of my animals without skin, covered in flies and maggots like unloved carrion. I feel like half of my body is dead weight, dragging me down and destroying my joints with every step I take toward the fridge. I walk around campus and think about how it would look after a nuclear bomb exploded, how bodies can turn to dust in seconds and the wind could wash us to the sea.

I think about diseases in the third world, of curable ailments left to fester, disfigure and ostracize. I think about rats in a meat grinder and salivate for Taco Bell.

I just feel death and disease, but it's not ugly or horrible. It's like falling asleep after injesting a fatal dose of arsenic. There's something still and stunningly placid about it all. The decay is comforting.

Spring is coming and with it, a frenetic burst of life and growth. The calm will be broken by a cacophony of bird calls and the shrill laughter of hideous youths in love. And when that fucking robin is chirping at the sun at 5am, the death and decay of winter may seem idyllic.

Yup. Today is one of those days when I can walk beside Death, scythe and all, without being the least bit frightened. He seems more like a partner than an adversary. He's not a spectre, but an angel in his own way. He clears the decay so life can begin.

Told ya I was in a funny mood.

Causes and Symptoms

2005-02-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this article from CNN which details the sob story of a 15 year old boy found guilty of murder. The boy is a product of a troubled homelife and he was institutionalized at 12 after threatening to commit suicide to get away from his abusive father; his mother is not in the picture. After a week in the psych ward, the boy was released and moved in with his grandparents. He switched medications and was put on Zoloft by a local shrink.

The boy quickly started having intensely negative reactions to the Zoloft. He complained of painful restlessness and hearing voices. As his behaviors became more unpredictable, his grandparents resorted to threats, telling the child they would send him back to his abusive father. Desperate, the boy sat around, mulled it over and in his not-so-sane state decided to kill his grandparents and burn down the house.

The defense argued to the jury that Zoloft made the boy incapable of making rational decisions and therefore, he could not be held to the same standard as other 12 year olds. In the Carolinas, the jury has the option of declaring a person guilty but insane, in which case the person is institutionalized by the state in a hospital rather than a prison.

This case is the second high-profile case of a homicidal young male on Zoloft, the first being Eric Kleobold, one of the infamous Columbine murderers. A pattern has most definitely emerged.

But the central question in both of these cases has been left to the wolves. Some people are clearly sociopaths while others are so delusional that it is clearly unfair to expect them to behave in a rational manner. Were these boys delusional? What drove them to murder?

To me, the commonality I would point to before I would finger Zoloft is the utterly turbulent family lives of these kids. To be mentally ill is a trying experience, to have a chronic disease of any sort is difficult, but to be 13 years old trying to cope with a chronic disease that warps your perceptions? That's hideous. Add in the additional angst of an abusive parent. Yikes.

And yet, there are hundreds of thousands of kids in the US living in similar situations with similar disease who don't murder people. What translates a thought into an action? What shatters the moral compus to such an extent that murder/suicide becomes an acceptable action?

I suppose the biological explanation behind it all is a little bit like trying to understand why I like apples and you like oranges.

What stops us from crossing the line between destructive thoughts and destructive behaviors?

Royal Blood

2005-02-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Back in the middle ages, people used to believe that blood and the quality of a person's ancestry determined their fate on this earth. While the application of that idea was obviously not so splendid, the concept is frighteningly accurate.

Whenever I fall ill, the first thing a doctor wants from me is my blood. My blood can tell them more about my health that I can. It is an indicator of my most basic ability to function.

I stumbled upon this article while toodling around the web. Basically, scientists have devised a blood test with a 97% accuracy rate in determining whether or not a person is bipolar or schizophrenic, or whether they're "normal."

My brother had this really cool idea for a story once and in it, everyone's DNA sequences were stored with the government on discs. The government used the discs to eliminate diseases etc.

Anyway, I wonder if his vision of the future is that far off.

In some ways, scientific progress like this makes me nervous because I feel like some doctor I'll never meet will be able to tell me what kind of perfume would smell the best on me or what kind of ice cream I like the best. Where does DNA stop and sentience begin?

On the flip side, I know that progress is inevitable, and indeed, beneficial. I often complain on this blog about the utter inadequacy of current diagnostic measures. It would be nice to know in a day whether or not you are bipolar, instead of having to wait years for a doctor to make an official diagnosis.

I wonder if children who will become bipolar adults but have not yet manifested with the disease themselves will have indicators present in their blood. I wonder if the markers for this study would look the same in someone with an acute psychosis, someone on a period of normal time and some in a serious depression. Would the markers change if the disease was present for more than 5 years as opposed to say, less than 6 months? If the markers are not present in childhood, when would they appear in adults? Before the first episode? After? During?

That's the lovely thing about science. Every answer generates myriad questions.

what goes up...keeps going up!

2005-02-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm SO happy today. Although I'm not fond of South Bend, for the first time since I got here, I finally feel like I can survive two and half years of this. For quite some time, I was secretly thinking of turning tail and running back home to Phoenix, but alas, my location has ceased to dominate my existence.

Instead, my moods have reasserted their prominence. I am happyhappyhappy. I think I spent more money this weekend than I can make in an entire month. (Worry not, my darlings, Brendan has cut me off).

The world fascinates me today because while it is ugly, grey, raining and cold, beneath the surface lies the budding potential of a jovial spring. Life is like that too. Sometimes when everything seems awful, a little bit of effort and a lot of faith are enough to germinate a renewed, brighter outlook.

As if you can't tell, my thoughts are rigid and choppy. They're slimey and I feel like I'm trying to pick up a vigorous fish and the little bastard keeps slipping out of my hands.

But I'm still happy, tenuous though my current state may be.

The Call of My Bed

2005-02-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

It's official. I'm entering my fifth week of being unemployed and utterly bored. My sister, a brilliant PhD-hopeful at UCSB, empathized with my situation, having spent her own purgatory in Scotland, waiting for her husband to finish up a degree at the University of Edinburgh. Being unemployed sucks. It's boring and this sense of laziness infects me until I can barely move at all.

Of course, the fact that it's the dead of winter isn't entirely helpful either. It's cold and isolating. There are definitely days when the most entertaining conversations I have are with my cats and somehow, pretending a purring kitten is a great conversationalist only cements that pathetic and despondent feeling that a fruitless job search generates.

Honestly. My goal this week is to apply for two jobs every day. I know it doesn't sound impressive, and that's probably because it's not. Somehow, when I drop my application at a movie theatre or an office or the library, I always feel silly because I know I'm ridiculously overqualified for the post. Every interview I have, they ask me, "so, why are you applying for this job when you have a master's degree?" I feel like throttling these people and ranting about how I need to feed my damn kittens and pay my rent, same as the idiot with a 70 IQ they'll hire after I leave. Growl.

The repitition of these experiences breeds such a hostility for the process that I'm content to lay around in bed all day doing nothing at all. In fact, I'm one of the few people I know who has the remarkable ability to sleep 15 hours a day. Of course, it helps when there's no good reason to be awake. I mean, if I have a choice between cleaning my house or sleeping, which option do you think I'll choose?

Naturally, I then become depressed that my house is dirty and thus, I sleep even more to ignore the obvious chaos around me.

Harumph.

I'm lethargic and unhappy. My meager savings is dwindling. I feel like I'm watching a car crash develop, but there's nothing I can do to stop it.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. And maybe a hundred monkeys typing on a hundred typewriters will produce the next great American novel.

Following the bread crumb trail

2005-02-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

Reuters is reporting that a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that half of patients with bipolar disorder treated in an academic setting have experienced some type of childhood abuse or trauma. While not pathbreaking, the study replicates the conclusions of numerous previous studies that have found a similar link.

Of course, there are some oddities in the study's conclusion. For example, while in the general population, women are more frequently the victims of all types of abuse, particularly physical and sexual abuse, in the bipolar population, the rates of abuse are not impacted by gender. Interesting, eh?

The study also found a link between the severity of abuse and the incidence of adult suicidality. So, for example, if man A was physically abused and man B was sexually, physically and emotionally abused, man B would be more likely to commit suicide. His bipolar disorder would typically manifest itself sooner that his counterparts as well.

Abuse was linked to rapid cycling and substance abuse as well.

Personally, I don't find these conclusions all that shocking. The study was unable to explain the mechanism by which abuse impacted the development of a child's brain. Moreover, it did not attempt to explain why one child exposed to abuse would develop bipolar disorder while another would not.

The study also didn't explain or examine the 50 percent of bipolar people who do not have a history of serious childhood abuse. After all, it seems odd that a child raised in a nuturing environment could manifest with a more severe case of bipolar disorder than a child raised by abusive and neglectful parents.

I don't deny that it's fascinating that the rates of childhood abuse in people with all mental illnesses, not just bipolar, are higher than the rates of childhood abuse in the rest of the population. But to me, this study simply raises questions without providing any concrete answers to any of them.

It almost feels like these psychiatric folk were staring at two kittens and trying to determine why one slept while the other groomed.

Hibernation

2005-01-31T14:42:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I've let so much time past since I last posted. I'm getting lazy in my unemployed stupor.

Honestly, I think that little kids have it made. They have the consistent pattern of school combined with parents who feed and clothe them. Man. I wish I appreciated what I had when I had it!

Over the ages, a few people have asked me to talk about my relationship with Brendan and how my being bipolar impacts us. I can only speak for myself, but I think that the downs of bipolar are much more harmful than the ups in terms of our relationship. When I'm down, I don't want to do anything and that includes having sex or cooking or cleaning or going out.

Brendan seems to understand that, and he also understands that I still need to do all of those things. So he encourages me and finds activities that I can participate in. For example, we joined a bowling league and even when I'm sleeping 16 hours a day, I get excited about bowling. We also go to Notre Dame sporting games together and once I'm up and out, I'm much more likely to stay up for a little while.

I think that he worries about me the most when I'm in a manic impulsive spell. I tend to be more like a teenage boy—reckless, rash and rebellious—while retaining my natural girlyness. Impulsive shopping and being a bit more friendly than I typically am tend to mark my manic phases. My confessions about life, love and life philosophy tend to emerge.

One of my quirks is that I'm a huge goal setter. and I try to use that compulsion to better our relationship. So, for example, I try to cook at least five nights of the week. I aspire to have sex three times a week (and Brendan happily obliges, imagine that). I attempt to give out three compliments a day.

I guess our relationship works because Brendan respects my boundaries and my limitations. He understands that sometimes I can't help acting the way that I do. In return, I focus on controlling my behaviors. I don't take my moods out on Brendan. Sure, he has to live with them just like I do, but I don't (always) blame him for how I feel, unless it's his fault, which it rarely is. I respect his quirks and needs, and we're also getting good at determining when I need help and what kind of help I need. So, for example, if I'm spiraling into a depression and I feel suicidal and miserable, Brendan typically tries something pretty simple to cheer me up--like taking me to the zoo! I love the zoo and if I'm not happy there, then he knows that I need to call my pdoc.

I guess every relationship feeds off of respectful communication. I love Brendan deeply and that's always on my mind, even when I'm angry with him. I also know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Brendan and I are committed to each other 100%. That knowledge gives us the freedom to fight and resolve all of our issues. Besides, Brendan is adorable when he gets angry. When he's really mad, he stomps his feet and I just think that's so adorable. It's hard to fight with someone when you're simultaneously thinking about how cute they are.

There's a lot of love and mutual respect in our relationship. And we both have lives. Brendan goes to school and if I stay home all day, I'm always reading and doing things that I can share with him later. We enrich each others' lives.

When my bipolar gets ugly, some part of me thinks that I owe it to Brendan to take care of myself. I mean, I owe it to myself as well, but if I won't do it for me, then I'll do it for us.

I think that bipolar is like a little terrorist and it's my job to contain and control periodic violence. And if things get out of control, then I need to recognize that and ask for more help.

Meds are getting better all the time. And finding one that works is so satisfying.

So anyway, love, respect and commitment. If you've got those, your relationship is doing pretty darn well.

California Dreamin

2005-01-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, I used to love the snowy weather. I associate the snow with fun—shoveling, building forts, hot cocoa, snowball fights. Now, I'm slowly learning better. The snow is a freakin pain in the ass. My car is frozen and filthy, but I can't clean it because my hose would die. My dog shivers in the snow.

The sun rises after 8 am here. WHAT!?! I suppose that living in LA and Phoenix for the past six years has spoiled me rotten. I'm soft. I can deal with 115, but this 8 (Fahrenheit, not Celsius!) crap needs to end immediately if not sooner. What keeps people going here? How do they get their work-outs? I mean, I would walk my dog religiously in Phoenix. Here in South Bend, both of us prefer to run outside and get back in the warmth as soon as he finishes his business.

Moving officially sucks. I was writing to my parents, trying to figure out why I feel so damn sad. My conclusion was fairly brilliant. I'm freakin bummed out because I just moved to a new place, I don't have friends here, I don't have a job and I hardly ever leave the house unless I'm applying for jobs that I'm ridiculously overqualified for but need desperately. Yep. I can't blame bipolar for this depression.

Although, my bipolar tends to exacerbate regular ole depressions. If a regular depression is like trying to keep your head above the water when you're utterly exhausted, a bipolar depression is like attaching chains and anvils to your legs. Right now, I feel like my synapses are playing this lovely game wherein I'm trying to keep swimming and these little imps are trying to slap on their fiendish shackles to drag me down. Ugh.

Oh, And, I bought my drugs today. Seeing as how I'm unemployed and I'm not carrying good health insurance right now (yup, I've got catasrophic coverage and that's it), these bastards were just horrible.

One month of lithium: $36.00
One month of wellbutrin: $321.00
Three months of lexapro: $238.00
Three months of seasonale: $137.00

Damn dude. Like, after I pay my rent and pay for these drugs, I'm going to have to support me, Brendan, the kittens and the dog on, well, nothing. Oh money tree, where art thou?

Forgive my self-indulgent whining. I'm rather cranky.

Shot Through the Heart

2005-01-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

So, by now, most people who keep an eye on bipolar news stories have heard about the former Pro-Bowl player who was shot in an office building. According to his agent and close friend, Robbins may have stopped taking his medication and thus, when he was shot by a police officer, the linebacker was in a complete psychotic fugue.

That's not to say that the police officer should not have shot him. If some 300 lb linebacker is trying to take my gun away from me because he thinks I'm Satan incarnate, I'm sure as hell going to shoot him.

But my problem lies with the article linked above. More specifically, this line, "Bipolar disorder is a disease that causes extreme mood swings. It is treated with lithium but, experts say, patients too often choose to go off the medication."

To me, a mood is distinctly different from a psychosis. I mean, moods, like paranoia, certainly can contribute to psychotic states but believing that you are somewhere you are not is not a reflection of a person's mood.

Similarly, I'm sure that hundred of thousands of bipolar sufferers would be overjoyed to know that if we simply took lithium, then everything would be okay. I mean, surely pharmaceutical companies are throwing away millions of dollars on R&D for alternate mood stabilizers when lithium works for everyone. GRRR.

I don't know Robbins' case intimately enough to know if he was off his meds. I don't know how well his meds were working. I don't know if they had untolerable side-effects.

With piss-poor journalism like this, I'll never know. And neither will the rest of the idiotic public out there. They don't understand what we live with. They think we can just take a pill and be better. And articles like this perpetuate that belief. It's such crap! I'm all cranky about this.

It makes me feel hostile toward my meds (not like I'd come off them, no need to worry mom). It's like these little bull crap pills control my perceptions and my actions. Am I enhancing my free will or obliterating it?

Ugh. A conversation for another day.

The Movers are FINALLY here!!!

2005-01-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

So, I just got a call from my movers and my days of sleeping on the floor may be over! Huzzah!

In other news, the Yale DailyNews is reporting that psychiatrists are finding more of a biological overlap between bipolar and schizophrenia. Personally, it would not surprise me in the least if these illnesses were like inbred cousins. The symptoms are frankly astonishingly similar.

As researchers show how the two diseases are very much alike, I'm waiting with baited breath to see what kind of biological differences, if any, these eggheads might find.

On an unrelated note, one of my fabulous readers asked me to describe what auditory hallucinations are like. I can't say that what I experience is what everyone experiences, but sometimes, I'll hear muffled radio commentators. It's almost like there's a CD player on under some clothes, or a television on in the room next door. When I lived alone, I would get up and look for wherever the sound was coming from. Occasionally, I also hear people whispering or calling my name. That's the annoying one because if I'm walking around and someone really is calling my name, I'll sometimes ignore them because I think it's all in my head.

Other people get mood/perception delusions, like being totally paranoid that even though your hubby loves you, he's actually cheating on you with his secretary. When I'm high as a kite, I sometimes feel like I am so damn hot that everybody in the world wants to have sex with me. Or I feel like I could probably learn French in two weeks because I'm just an undiscovered genius. :)

I suppose right now, my big challenge is with employment and opportunity. I can't believe that I'm going to be working as a secretary for $9/hr when I have a master's degree. Something about that is just brutal. But oh well. I'll keep my eyes open for the golden opportunity—like a job petting kitten's that pays $50,000/year with snazzy benefits. :)

Hey, a girl can dream.

Nature versus Nurture: Round 1203938487

2005-01-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

As one of my favorite bloggers points out, the debate about whether illness is caused by nature, nurture or some combination of both is still as healthy today as it was 20 years ago.

While some would like to believe that all of our mental illnesses arise from genetic susceptibilities of one kind or another, there is still more research suggesting that our environment has a significant impact on the development of mental illness. Personally, I don't understand why there's any debate on this issue at all. If we found a child living in his own feces who also had a fever, we would probably link his living conditions to his unhealthy countenance. Does it not make sense that the same child, placed in an environment filled with hostility, violence and abuse might manifest the mental version of a cold?

What I would like to see more research on is the chronicity of these illnesses. People talk about bouts of depression, as if depression is like a recurring rash that disappears with the proper course of medication.

If I'm bipolar now, will I be bipolar forever?

And why did lithium work for me where a host of other medications have failed?

And why do I only have auditory hallucinations when I'm entirely stressed out?

I know that somewhere out there, people are looking for answers to these questions. I wish they would let us know how our own experiences could help their endeavor. I wish that we could be more involved in finding a cure, in forming a support system for fellow sufferers who aren't doing as well as we are.

I wish there was more I could do to help.

And that's how I know I'm heading for a minor manic period. I want to do so many things—volunteer to help kids learn how to read, work at the local no-kill animal shelter, get a nice job at Notre Dame, cook healthy meals for Brendan, find the dog a sweet field to run around in, etc. I'm incredibly good at over-committing myself when I get ambitious and hyper.

I confess, it's nice to be ambitious again.

Who moved my cheese?

2005-01-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

I've successfully moved from Mesa to South Bend although all of my stuff (ie, my bed and clothes etc!) is stuck in a moving truck somewhere on the continent. Brendan and I are sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of our new apartment, watching CSI and blogging. I suppose there's something comfortable in our domesticity.

Starting life over again in a new place is difficult for me because I was very happy in Arizona. I'm frustrated because I don't know my way around South Bend yet. I don't know where the movie theatre is, which grocery store is the best, where I can take my dog to let him run around, which restuarant has the best sandwiches. I miss home.

I keep telling myself that I can't form any kind of judgement of South Bend until Valentine's Day. By then, I will have settled in a bit and I might know someone other than Brendan. :)

I have to say that I've been having a minor problem with anxiety. I guess that's only normal, seeing as how my bank account is slowly approaching zero and my evil bank of death refuses to cash a dual-signature check for me because they hate me.

Man, I need to get a job. I applied for 5 positions today and contacted the HR person at Notre Dame, so hopefully something will come through within the next two weeks.

I'm so stressed out. I'm surprised that I haven't fallen into some sort of serious mood swing. I have caught myself trying to disappear under the covers, pretending that I'm really on a beach in Maui and I'm only having a bad dream. I suppose dreaming of paradise when you're freezing isn't terribly unusual.

Alas. I'm surviving. I'll keep posting updates about the joys of being me.

The Anxious Bipolar

2004-12-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

I suppose the laws of probability dictate that I should be a member of this statistic, but I'm still cranky about it. According to an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry, more than half of bipolar people also have anxiety disorders. When both disorders are present, it typically indicates a younger age of onset and a diminished hope for a functional life. Ugh.

My foray into learning that I was bipolar actually started with a gastroenterologist because I was so keyed up all the time, my stomach was slowly dissolving itself with acid. Yummy. A couple months and several panic attacks and trips to the ER later, I finally figured out that my body wasn't actually dying, my mind was merely FREAKING out. That's unsettling. I mean, we're supposed to be able to trust our minds and our perceptions. When they become warped, the world becomes a very unpredictable and frightening place. Or a very sensual and welcoming place. Or just a freakin place, like any other damn place.

The holidays are making me slightly irritated. Well actually, everything is making me irritated, but the holidays are like the straw that broke the camel's back. I can't help but thinking that we're all ants. We run into our consumerist temples and grab a shirt and some lotion to let a loved one know that we care. Does that seem messed up? I mean, aren't there other ways of sharing the love? Do we have to participate in this capitalist orgy?

Of course, I love getting presents. I love giving them too.

I suppose a Starbucks latte makes the bitter pill a little more palatable.

Or not.

Ramblerambleramble.

Ch-ch-changes

2004-12-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

In two weeks, I'll be leaving my home in Arizona and moving into the frigid Northern clime of South Bend, Indiana. Of course, between then and now I have to plan as much of my wedding as humanly possible, pack up my entire life into boxes (again), spend as much time as I can with my siblings and parents, and celebrate the holidays in style.

I'm stressed out.

I feel like plunking down on the floor and having a good solid cry. Then, after my face is all red and blotchy and gross, I could indulge in a stack of my mom's decadant Christmas cookies before getting depressed about my woefully large waistline as of late. At which point, I would naturally have to sit down and cry again.

My mind is stuck in a thousand little cycles like this right now and it's frustrating. Instead of heading in one solid direction with focus and determination, my ambitions are scattered like one of Gallagher's watermellons. I suppose part of vacation is supposed to be about letting your direction ebb and flow as it so chooses, but ugh! My direction is choosing a dumb route.

I feel stuck. Maybe this is a piece of the calm before a tornada runs through my life and settles me in a dying Northern hamlet. Man. I sincerely hope that South Bend turns out better than I'm currently picturing it. Somehow, in my unflinching optimism, I can see myself getting a job that entails asking the ever-so-important question: "would you like fries with that?"

Mmmmm. French fries.

Hurray!

2004-12-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

Woohoo! Today I officially graduated with a master's in history from ASU. I suppose it's only natural that I would compare and contrast my graduation from USC last year with this graduation. Aside from the fact that the ceremoney looked like a poorly run high school drama club production, I felt much more accomplished this time around. Maybe it's because I got to wear a bitchin hood and walk around like I was hot shit. Or maybe it's because I felt like I had to work a lot harder.

Sadly enough, my last semester at USC was a bit of a drag for me. I was so mired in the depths of an agitated, yet ruthless depression that I ended up being a part time student because I was only taking two classes. In contrast, this year, I ended on a high note, with a successful and enjoyable thesis defense. I was laughing because some of the girls in the department were asking me about my defense and they seemed so afraid of having to talk about their own research. I was like, dude, I would do it again if I had the opportunity.

That's the supergirl in me. In some social situations, I can be slightly shy. In others, I am the life of the party. That's part of the reason I chose academics actually. I don't want to get a job at a research university necessarily. I'd love to work at a teaching college because I like lecturing and dare I say, I'm good at it.

My bipolar swings have been subdued quite a bit in the past few weeks. In the past, periods of relative calm have typically been followed by a major fluctuation in my physical and mental state. My only current issue is that I'm utterly exhausted. I don't have a good excuse; watching four seasons of CSI in five days shouldn't be strenuous. I feel like my body is still running on the adrenaline it fed off of while I was tunneled in on my thesis.

I'm getting out of that mindset now, I think. I don't know if other people get like that. Honestly, when my mind is wrapped around something or piqued by something, I forget about other obligations. It's like only my mind and its pursuit exist. Everything else gets put on hold.

For example, I was driving around yesterday and it hit me that we really are in the Christmas season. People have had their lights on since December 1st in my development, but I just absorbed the fact that crap, I need to make a budget and do Christmas shopping and decorating, not to mention writing my Christmas card extravaganza and finding the ridiculous amount of Christmas music I downloaded while Napster was in its glory days.

Alas, all is merry and bright.

I'm totally proud of myself and I think I can ride this high through the holidays.

A New Obsession

2004-12-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've always had this uncanny ability to focus on a task at hand. Even when I was a child, my mom tells me that I could sit and play the same game for hours on end. That's a skill I've never lost.

I think our gifts can also be our weaknesses. The same focus that allowed me to complete my thesis in a month is currently holding me hostage to a new obsession—CSI. As a gift for myself for successfully defending and jumping through all the hoops necessary to graduate, I bought myself the first four seasons of CSI on DVD. I got them on Thursday. Today is Sunday. I started at the beginning, and I'm halfway through season three. That's 61 episodes in two and a half days. Do normal people do that?

My bipolar disorder is as well contained as it's ever been. I don't get those hideous, life-dampening lows—or at least, I haven't for a few weeks. Of course, I've also had my obsessions to keep my mind occupied.

The weird facet of my obsession du jour is that I know I won't be satisfied until I'm finished with the episodes I have in my posession. I NEED to watch them. It's like that's the only thing that really matters to me right now. I mean, I still take my dog to the park and pet my kittens. But I've stopped taking phone calls unless they by chance fall into a break between episodes. I'll be able to call people and talk endlessly, when I'm done. But now, if I talk to people, it's just going to be an exercise lackluster, non-focused communication.

Of course, when I finish with my current CSI binge, I have no idea how I'll keep myself occupied. I suppose Christmas shopping is next on my list, but to be honest, I'm a bit insecure about shopping by myself because I feel like I'm in one of those moods when my finances are theoretically unlimited and realistically paltry.

We all have our quirks.

Bipolar Babies

2004-12-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

As a result of an Instaboost on my Valkyrie blog, I've gotten oodles of interesting commentary regarding my desire to have children despite being bipolar. Some have suggested that the severity of the illness should deter me from procreating and passing it on to the next generation. Others believe that I haven't given it any thought whatsoever:

"Brendan: Wait a minute, Reginleif, the fact that Becky might have to make gut-wrenching choices involving her own health vs. her career vs. the potential health of her (and my) eventual progeny, makes you have less sympathy for her? That makes no sense.

It would make sense if she were actually considering the welfare of said progeny first, rather than merely petulantly stating, "I want to be a young mother." Not once in her post does she actually express any worry about what it will be like to raise kids while having bipolar disorder, or about passing it on to them.

BTW, drugs for manic-depression such as lithium and Depakote, when taken by a pregnant woman, can have serious teratogenic effects on a fetus. But that's merely the rock. The hard place is if she goes off medications entirely during her pregnancy, which can put her life at risk if her behavior becomes reckless (as happens in the manic stage) and/or she becomes suicidal.

I've seen far too many women who aren't so much parents as overgrown girls playing dollhouse with live dolls. Forgive me, but your significant other seems to fit into this category."

Alas, I just cannot let a comment like this go answered.

Ignorance is bliss and apparently, this commenter must be incredibly happy. Permit me to indulge myself in proving this attitude wrong in my particular case.

First and foremost, being bipolar is a treatable ailment and is becoming moreso everyday. Read this blog and I continually post updates on medication and diagnostic advances. Based on the current state of the science, by the time my children would manifest with bipolar if they were going to, psychiatry would be able to help them more effectively than it helped me.

Secondly, while being bipolar does change my perspective on life, I'm not sure I would want to give it up. I am a religious person and I do believe that there is a reason that God chose to make me this way. I see the world much differently than other people and that's a gift. I love my own life. I've found love and happiness. I am intelligent and successful; I'm proud to be graduating with an MA at 22. If I can be as productive as I am with bipolar disorder, I have no doubt that my children will also be able to overcome obstacles it could potentially put in their way.

Thirdly, I do consider the consequences of a bipolar pregnancy. I will not take any of my medications during pregnancy--even those like Lexapro which have been greenlighted by the FDA. I know the consequences of not being on my medications. I know that I will relapse and I am committed to preparing for that. However, I also know that women tend to have the same type of pregnancies that their mothers' did. So, it is my most solemn prayer that my pregnancies will follow the positive experiences that my mom had when she was pregnant. If they don't, I know that Brendan and I will find a way to deal with the consequences.

Fourth, the world needs more people like me. Brendan and I are both statistically above average in terms of our intelligence. We are both involved in post-undergraduate education. We're funny. And sweet. We're good, honest people. If we have ten kids, the world will be a better place for it.

I'm feeling a bit lazy at the moment, and so I'm not going to rant about the frightening eugenic implications of this comment, but suffice it to say that I have thought long and hard about having children. Moreover Brendan and I both believe that we should wait to start our family for a few years until he is finished with his education, so we'll have more time to plan and pray before starting our family.

Just one more thing. Kids are not dolls. I have cats for that. :)

A Diagnositc Tool

2004-12-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

While I've been living in a bubble of thesis writing and pop tarts (mmmpoptarts), the rest of the world has apparently kept on turning without me! The last time I had time to step back and take account of my life was in October and damn, things have changed quite a bit since then.

For starters, my pdoc put me on lithium and despite the minor annoyance of not being able to take NSAIDS like ibprofen to reduce the back pain brought on by hours hunched over a computer, I admit that I am feeling eerily stable. I can't say that this is how it feels to be "normal"—whatever the crap that is—but I can say that the majority of my mental energy hasn't been absorbed by monitoring my conduct.

I don't really have a frame of reference to compare my current artificial calm with because I've been consumed by moods since puberty and it seems to me that childhood moodiness manifests itself a bit differently than adult moodiness so a comparison between then and now wouldn't be fruitful. But from the time this disorder of mine became unmanageable when I was 18, I honestly don't remember a time when I've felt so stable for so long. I suppose that's kind of sad seeing as how I've only been feeling level for about a month.

Getting this thing under some semblance of control has really changed my outlook on life quite a bit. I mean, the amount of energy and time that I previously devoted to holding myself together and keeping my emotions under wraps was enormous and suddenly, it's been emancipated from its previous duties. Obviously, living life with a poorly managed illness is exhausting. I feel like I've been pulling a freakin cart full of books for the past five years and someone just gave me their donkey. It's liberating and strange.

Enough of my musings for now. You should check out this info on the development of a definitive diagnosis for bipolar disorder. Pretty spiffy.

Super Nova

2004-11-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not good with my scientific terms and understanding, so don't quote me on this tale. Supposedly, about once every four or five hundred years, a star dies. They run out of fuel or have too much energy in too little a space or something like that. Anyway, they implode and in the instant they burst, they release more energy than all of the other stars in the entire universe (which I suppose means that in that split second, the star releases infinite energy?). Regardless, this whole process is very bright and on earth, it's as bright as high noon in the middle of the night.

Why am I thinking about super nova?

I feel I'm releasing too much energy. I'm trying to juggle WAY too many balls and I can only keep about 3 in the air at a time. Unfortunatley, life being the way it is keeps chucking more balls at me. Dammit. I keep forgetting things, from doctors appointments to paying bills to exams to calling friends. I'm fostering a sense of optimism, a naive hope that perhaps by working as hard as I can, this mountain of work will eventually deplete itself and I'll enjoy a period of rest.

Thanksgiving has ended all too soon. Rest is elusive.

And the rat race is about to begin again.

The Binge

2004-11-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

From conversations I've had with other bipolar people, I've learned that as a group, we tend toward the extremes of human experience. My recent blog silence is the result of my own latest frenzied trip into the high power world of being flicked "on" all the time.

Rather than shutting down during periods of high stress, my body tends to perk up and while my mind might lag behind a bit, I'm ready to go at a moment's notice. I'm in the process of writing my thesis (due Nov. 22), planning my wedding and planning a January move. When I'm not actively freaking out about everything I have to do, I'm either sleeping or think about sleeping.

I'm on a work binge. I've written more than 50 pages in the past 2 weeks. By the time I'm done with my thesis, I will have written at the very least another 30 pages. I'll also most likely weigh about 20 pounds more than when I started. I'm eating like I spend each day sprinting from morning until my eyes close at night. Mentally, I am. Physically, not so much and my poor waistline will reflect that soon enough.

At the end of the year, I think I'll be able to look back on this semester and be proud of what I (hopefully will have) accomplished. I can lose weight, but I know that if I leave Arizona without my degree, I will never get it.

I'm not sure I'd be able to push this hard without being bipolar. I don't know if I'd be able to focus for 10 hours a day on the same task, particularly when that task becomes tedious and painfully dull. (Footnotes are the bane of my existence). I don't know if I could get through everyday with all the stuff I have to do without knowing that if I absolutely had to, I could stay up for 4 or 5 days straight to get it all done.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it's not an oncoming train.

Managed Care

2004-11-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

Every week, my parents have me over for dinner at least once. My mom is a fabulous cook and getting a delicious, wholesome meal is good for the soul. Plus, my parents are always good for some interesting conversations.

One of the topics we tend to return to whenever my Dad is in a dour mood is the completely ineffecient system of managed health care. My Dad contends that the government needs to socialize the healthcare system and most importantly, standardize all of the paperwork. What's shocking is that my Dad is actually a relatively conservative/Republican guy. He liked Ronald Reagan quite a bit, although he didn't vote for Bush this time around.

Anyway, when I read news stories about managed care trying to screw health professionals, I get very cranky about it. I remember that my Dad was involved in a class-action suit against BCBS and after all the costs were taken care of, I think every doctor received about $1000, which was not even close to the money that was stolen from them by BCBS.

I'm always saying to my Dad that the AMA is a weak lobby. Medicine in many parts of the nation is in crisis because doctors accepted piss poor treatment for so long without fighting back against a system that wants to pay them as little as possible for doing the work they do. Without fighting back, the inevitable happened—they started getting paid less than the people administering the insurance and too little to pay the overhead for their offices, training and insurance.

Out of everything the candidates talked about leading up to this election season, I desperately hope that this is one of the sleeper issues that will inspire some debate in Congress and some progressive legislation to protect physicians and other health care workers against the avarice of some insurance companies and frivalous law suits. And I'm not one of those people who thinks that all law suits brought against physicians are stupid, because there are definately cases of gross malpractice and getting those people out of medicine should be the paramount concern of doctors and patients alike. But, the qualified and concerned docs shouldn't have to pay for the sins of their defective brethren.

I might eventually post some thoughts on the election over on my other blog, if you're not avoiding all political discussions like the plague. :)

Stress Stupidity

2004-11-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

I've always been a bit of a closet science dork, so upon embracing my bipolar diagnosis, I signed up for a bunch of listservs that inform members of the latest and greatest scientific breakthroughs and/or other miscellaneous happenings in the bipolar universe. The latest bit of fascinating research to come through the wire involves a study that found that the action of a chemical that floods manic brains impairs thinking in animals. That may not seem exciting, but it's actually really cool that these egg heads have identified this chemical because the more we understand about the actual functioning of this illness, the more sophisticated medicine can become to treat it.

In other news, researchers have also demonstrated an undeniable relationship between obesity and depression. While the researchers have noticed the correlation between being depressed and being overweight, there is still some chicken-and-egg debating going on, as in does the depression cause the weight gain or does the weight cause the depression? The important outcome of this research is that the scientists were able to demonstrate that depressed people are overweight more often than their non-depressed counterparts—quite a feat considering 65% of American adults are overweight anyway.

So I guess my conclusion of the day is that if you are feeling fat and stupid, maybe it's not just low self-esteem talking. :)

Let there be LIGHT

2004-10-31T22:21:00.000-07:00

Even though we live in Arizona, both my mom and I notice that we tend to slow down a little bit as the amount of daylight lessens. As I headed into my winter blues last year, my Dad bought me a light box to use as an adjunct to medicines. At the time, I didn't think it was working at all, but this year, that light box has become a miniature mecca I turn to at least once a day.

The theory, explained decently by a retailer in Alaska, maintains that less daylight means irritability, depression, lessened libido and massive carb cravings. Ha! And I thought that was just a natural part of Thanksgiving!

Anyway, using my light box, I've managed to stick to my nine hour sleep schedule without too many problems. I still have a very low threshold for stress; stupid things like cleaning my cats' litterbox will loom like mammoth projects when in actuality, they take about two minutes and dramatically improve my quality of life.

In the past couple of days, I've become very frustrated with the state my life. Last week, provigil put me into a bit of a medicinal haze and I couldn't escape from its stupifying clutches. This week, I'm itchy to be back on top of my game.

Looking at my mood chart for the past month helps me understand my confusion about how to articulate my state of being. One day I'm up, the next day I'm down. I'll spend five days up and the next week down. I've never been a rapid cycler. Usually I fall into deep depressions that lift into shorter hypomanic periods. Pinging between the two is confusing.

The mystery remains.

Sleep Hygeine

2004-10-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

In the interest of actually improving my condition instead of just analyzing it, I figured that I should look at some of the stuff therapists, doctors and old grandmothers tell us that we should do to make our lives better.

For me, one of the first ways that I know my life is out of balance is the amount of sleep my body craves. When I'm up, my body wants about 5-7 hours and when I'm down, my body begs for 10+ hours. I can track my sleep habits and the corresponding mood shifts easily when I look at the macro-trends of my mood chart.

Since I'm in a 10+ phase at the moment, I've been pondering what the professionals say about how much sleep I should be getting. Apparently, 8 hours a night is the general consensus and some contend that the number of hours is less important than having a regular pattern. Some folk even posit that electrical lights are to blame for activating bipolar disorder.

Anyway, I've been trying to reset my Circadian rhythym so I sleep from 10:30-7:30. I figure 9 hours should be plenty of sleep for a gal like me. But I've been having problems keeping my eyes open when I read. I find myself sinking into bed for afternoon naps. I get irritable and generally cranky by 8 pm because I want to get to sleep.

There are hypothetical answers to these problems. I could sleep more. I could chug caffeine in the hope that it would stimulate wakefulness and not crankiness.

Harumph. I think that I have a lot of good ideas when it comes to helping myself deal with bipolar disorder. But having the ideas is certainly not the same thing as implementing them. I guess I'll keep trying to maintain my sleep routine as best as I can.

Of course, travel and the holidays are never conducive to a solid schedule but I'll try nontheless. I suppose it only makes sense to start with the most elementary aspects of our lives first. I mean, I guess I need to exert some kind of control over how long I'm asleep before I can have an influence over what I do with my waking hours.

Pop Rocks and Coke

2004-10-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, I was always told that if I swallowed pop rocks and drank a can of coke, that my stomach would explode and I'd die an excruciating death. Similarly, I was told that if I made nasty faces, my face would get stuck that way and I would have to go through life looking stupid. My mom told me that the oil marks on the pavement near the grocery store were the remains of children who didn't hold their mother's hands.

We all believe in a lot of bizarre things when you think about it. Some people believe that there are faeries in the woods who sing and act of little mischievous deeds to bother passerbys. Others believe that there is life on other planets, that the Simpson-esque Kodos and Kang are hanging out above the atmosphere on their flying saucers watching us, as if we're that interesting.

But how do we know when our beliefs transcend a belief to become a reality. For example, how do I know that any of you exist beyond my imagination? How do I know that I have blood pumping through my veins? How do I know that my parents are my parents?

There are a lot of things that we think we know that we kind of take on faith.

When your foundations shake because of the quirks of mental illness, you have a lot of time to think about this. One of the things I think about everyday is why I take my medication. The ladies on my listserv tell that I'm in a phase that I will grow out of eventually, that everyone goes through their rebellious not-wanting-to-take-meds thing.

I don't claim to be different. But I can't help but wonder if taking these medications and expecting them to work is a bit like watching fireflies and pretending that they're faeries dancing in the twilight.

Lab Mice

2004-10-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

In a recent study, researchers found that lab mice who were given antidepressants in their youth grew up to be more depressed and anxious than their unmedicated counterparts.

This information doesn't actually mean anything to the average depressed or bipolar person. In fact, most of us will never even be aware that this study was done. But it does have some wicked implications, particularly for those of us who were given drugs in our younger years, and those of us who are still contemplating getting pregnant.

Man. I need to get over this love/hate relationship that I have with my meds. I know I need them, but sometimes I wish that I could just stop taking them and be done with it. I have this tiny dream stowed away that maybe after I have my kids, my biochemical environment will become overtly hostile to any resurgence of bipolar disorder. Could happen, right?

My perspective, which has been a bit dull, flat and apathetic as of late, is starting to recuperate in an attempt to throw off the medicinal shackles holding it down. It's this epic battle that I can feel in my head. It's like the invading medication is trying to disturb the restless residents of my synapses and no one is particularly happy about it. No wonder I always have headaches.

Hmmm. When I think about the medications we take right now, I make mental notes to pray for people who research these medications, their efficacy and their consequences. Hopefully progress will march on indefagitably.

Some eggheads somewhere have estimated that there are 10s of millions of depressed people in the world today. They've found that despite a low standard of living, people in Nigeria are the happiest people in the world. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Is all of our progress really worth it if we aren't happier or healthier? Are we prioritizing the wrong stuff?

Seductive Somnolence

2004-10-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting next to my light box trying to figure out why I've been so exhausted lately. Last night, I slept for 11 hours. This morning, I woke up and felt like I had only slept for 5. My eyelids felt heavy, my thoughts sluggish.

In fact, I feel like a sloth hanging lazily from the branch of my favorite tree, constantly eating and contributing to my expanding girth. I feel uninspired and overwhelmed by even the simplest tasks. My limbs feel heavy, like each cell weighs ten pounds.

And in my stupor, I'm annoyed. And upset. I've been in one of those moods for about a week. I want to shake some sense into myself. But I'm stuck and quite cranky about it.

Ugh. I'm angry and cranky and I feel like sitting down and having a tantrum any self-respecting two year old would be jealous of. (I can't believe I just ended a sentence with of! twice!)

I desperately need to get myself heading in a different direction. This one isn't working for me.

I wish I knew how to change this crappy mood. :(

tidal moods

Depressed moms make depressed kids

BPD in children

I'm not depressed, I'm hibernating

Bipolar linked to older fathers

What bipolar is like

Drugs and Growing Brains

Fear and Mental Illness

A glimpse of the future or modern snake oil?

More like this!

Things that make you go hmmm

It's been too long!

A tiny victory

Personalized treatment

20 years later...

A Fallow Mind

February's Icy Kiss

Hmm

Tortured Imagination

Eli Lilly's bad press

The Bipolar Guy

Progress

Mood Tracks

Agitation most foul

Nothing Special

Another Scientology-induced Tragedy

Emerging Pet Peeve

The Quiet Room

Do downs have their upside?

Musings on motivation

The Daily Grind

The Dairy Cow's Mind

Another bipolar voice in the crowd

Maybe sometimes dumb is smart

Well duh!

Medicating Kids

The Mentally Ill Soldier

The baby debate

Well duh!

From 0 to 60 in no time at all

Adverts impact on consumers

Impending March Madness

The haze of 'bluh'

Fat, Depression and Brain Chemicals

2006 is lookin might fine from here

Bipolar's latest bow in the media

One less pill in the box

Love is not jealous

Swan songs

Creative Drought

Myth, History and Mental Illness

Heat wave!

Where did June go?

Book Review

Living in Circles

High as kyte, I just might, stop to check you out

Pause

Me against the pill

The illusion of help

The Seasonal Shift

A duel with dyads

Courting Success

A Saturday Snowstorm

Like falling on your ass in a puddle

The lottery

A lil' bit of nature, a lil' bit of nurture

*Twang*

Stumbling after another day

Viral Depression?

Rat mania?

To irritation and back again

The Constructive and the Deadly

Such a Shame

Introspective Distortion

Winter's Frigid Hand

Causes and Symptoms

Royal Blood

what goes up...keeps going up!

The Call of My Bed

Following the bread crumb trail

Twang