What’s your deal? What is your mental illness, apart from using run on sentences?
I was misdiagnosed with major depressive disorder (commonly just known as depression) when I was eighteen. For five years, I went off and on antidepressants. The reason I went on them was because I was depressed, but a few weeks or months on an SSRI like Zoloft, and I would shoot into hypomania, a very happy state just short of flat out, batshit mania. Once I hit hypomania, I decided that life was grand — the flowers were blossoming, colors were brighter, I was getting everything done — and I certainly didn’t need Zoloft anymore. Why would I when there was NOTHING WRONG WITH ME? This cycle repeated for five very long years, until Zoloft stopped working for me and my general physician put me on Effexor, the biggest drug mistake of my life. And I am even including the time I got drunk and walked home naked.
Effexor picked me right up out of a depression and flung me past hypomania, straight over mania, and landed me in a mixed state. A mixed state is when a person experiences all the suffocation of depression and the frantic mental pacing of mania at the same time. For two months after I went on Effexor, I spent my days hiding under the blankets, riddled with an anxiety like I have never seen before in my life, and I spent my nights frantically doing eighty projects at once and never finishing one of them. My flight of ideas made my mind feel like a giant, rushing river of thoughts. I was standing in the middle of the river, cupping them in my hands, but I couldn’t hold onto a single one long enough to process it before it slipped away and was replaced by another one. Mixed states are dangerous. They are when people are most likely to commit suicide — it’s a deadly combination of being too sad to live and amped up enough to do something about it. My husband and family got me into a psychiatrist before I got to that point, for which I am unspeakably thankful.
I went to a psychiatrist in mid-April of 2009, and after a six hour appointment where I consulted with two psychiatrists and was seen by a panel of twenty more, I was diagnosed with bipolar II, the less horrific of the two bipolar disorders. However, while they felt that I am a strong bipolar II, I am (at the time of this writing) rapid-cycle bipolar I due to the Effexor that I had been prescribed. Effexor sent me into a mixed-state where I was rapidly cycling daily, and having or being in a mixed state automatically qualifies as bipolar I. I have been prescribed a new set of medications, and we’re all hopeful that the mixed state will break and I will return to being a boring old bipolar II.
What medications are you on?
Right now, I am on a low dosage of lithium and a high dosage of Klonopin. The lithium is for bipolar mania and bipolar depression. The Klonopin is being used to treat my stratospheric levels of anxiety (which will hopefully help with depression), and to sedate me enough to allow me to sleep.
I am also titrating off Neurontin, taken for neuropathic nerve pain but has the side effect of making me sort of nuts, as well as Effexor, the devil medication. (Effexor, I’ve heard, can be a great antidepressant. I am just a bitter old hag about it because it propelled me into the worst two months of my life.)
Who gives a tiny rat’s ass about your mental health?
I have no idea. I started Delicate/Demanding as a way for me to just siphon off some excess mental energy regarding being crazy, and I also started it to help me remember. A downside to being bipolar is that between all the highs and lows and medications, my memory is fuzzy. Remembering is the reason I write other blogs as well, one to remember my life, one to remember my secrets and jokes, one to remember the stuff I find. I scribble furiously in a notebook most days as well. Mental illness has taken so much from my life, and I don’t want it to take my memories as well.
However, it seems like this blog isn’t just for me anymore. It’s got some followers on Tumblr, and I’ve gotten a few emails from people who say they read Delicate/Demanding. Every single email thrills me to no end, whether it’s someone offering comforting words, someone thanking me for writing something they identify with, or even someone saying I’m ALL WRONG AND HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID. The emails thrill me for a couple reasons. First, it’s because, frankly, it’s nice to reach out into the void of the internet and feel someone reaching back. But mostly it’s because people are reading and thinking about mental illness. The more it’s talked about, the less it’s stigmatized.
Are you crazy?
Yes, but unless you are a family member or close friend and using the term lovingly, I’ll get pissy. Crazy is a reclaimed word; it’s along the lines of fag, slut, bitch, nigger, homo, and spic — don’t say it unless you are one.
January 01, 2009, 10:00am Comments
