Being Bipolar is a series that began in the winter of 2011. It is an occasional look at what it is to live with bipolar disorder... which some still refer to as manic depression. A new chapter is posted whenever this blogger feels that the time is ripe for a further examination. In doing this I try to be as honest and forthcoming as possible, within reason. I am not a medical professional. I am however a former peer support specialist in the field of mental health, and though I have recently left that post I am still dedicating myself toward advocating for others who experience mental illness. If you are experiencing a severe crisis and are having thoughts about self harm or harm toward others, please do not hesitate to call 911 or reach out to your most available health care professional. You may also find help and encouragement from a support group, such as those through National Alliance for Mental Illness (nami.org). In the previous installment of Being Bipolar, I documented what it was like to have experienced a depressive episode. Although in hindsight I see now that I could have done "better" and by that I mean that it was so minor an occurrence that it couldn't possibly be called a textbook case. A truly severe depressive episode lasts much longer, and is so debilitating that one finds it taxing just to get off of the sofa to use the bathroom. I got off easy that time.
Some things have changed since that last chapter. I'm no longer a peer support specialist with South Carolina Department of Mental Health. Tomorrow I begin a new career, one that will be rather challenging I think. It will also afford me some more breathing room so far as being in the proper mindset for writing. I won't deny it: being in peer support has been rewarding. But it also doesn't pay as much as other mental health professionals earn. My new job will be earning more money than I would have once thought possible for someone in my position. So with that worry gone, I think I'll be able to write better than I have in the past few years up 'til now.
But you're probably wondering why I'm writing a Being Bipolar this time.
It so happened that last weekend I was in a severe manic state. I confined myself to my house for its duration, which certainly bewildered my dog Tammy. She had to watch me pacing back and forth through every room in the place. Too wide open to sleep. Being incapable of writing for a website that I'm committed to contributing toward. I was WIRED last weekend.
Fortunately I was able to see it coming and I knew what to expect. And that afforded some capacity to observe and note what was happening to me.
I have said before that I have lost a lot because of having bipolar disorder. Most especially friendships, family, even a marriage. It was both extremes of manic depression that wrought devastation but as I've gotten older I can see that it was the manic phases which wrecked the most havoc. Mania takes whatever you have -- be it good or bad -- and wildly magnifies it to horrific extremes. Mania makes responsible decision making impossible. It robs one of any modicum of self control. It lays waste inhibitions.
Thankfully, the mania has withdrawn in large part, due in no small part to medication and counseling. I've had to address other aspects of my diagnoses in addition to bipolar disorder. Especially post-traumatic stress disorder: the spawn of abuses from my childhood. Mania fed off of that, too. As I've confronted that, the mania has had less to work with. I wish I could have been the man fifteen years ago that I am now. But that's a post for another time...
So, last Friday afternoon I began noticing that my thoughts were beginning to run faster than usual. There were too many of them, all playing at once. I'd already committed to working on a story for the Western Journal website and was looking forward to that. But over the course of the next few hours my thoughts wouldn't hold course.
By that evening I knew that I was having a manic episode. A bad one.
I tried my best to sit down at the computer and start writing. But as soon as I did I had to stand back up again. Had to walk back and forth as I struggled to keep the thoughts straight in my head. At 8 PM I thought if I laid down on my bed for awhile that it would give me a little relaxation from the madness. Five minutes later I was back up again. Trying to sit at the keyboard and typing SOMETHING but there was too much clutter in my head.
It only got worse.
I had to be careful, that night. I couldn't sleep. Neither could I trust myself to not do something stupid. I would have probably started running circles around my yard if I let myself out the door, just as I found myself running up and down the dirt road when I was back to living with my parents following the separation.
Driving was out. I also remember the night I was coming back from Greensboro on US 158. That long stretch of road near Bethany. Not another car in sight. I turned off the headlights and floored the pedal, screaming into the darkness and not caring if I went off the road or whatever. And then sanity returned and I turned the lights on and slammed on the brakes just short of hitting a deer.
Being on the computer was fraught with peril. I'm mindful of the time that I was manic, after having watched The LEGO Movie, and I decided that I wanted to replicate those characters on my desk. So I went on eBay and bought two hundred-some dollars of LEGO sets.
So there was really nothing more to do than endure it. Suffocating with mania. Trying to stay afloat in the flotsam of madness.
The very worst of it was the realization by Saturday afternoon that I had become hyper-sexualized.
Overly enhanced libido is a common feature of mania. Something that has sent many a manic-depressive sailing over the cliff of sanity. Books have been written by those who have been driven by mania to satisfy sexual longings with anyone and anything. The risks are enormous. And yet these do not matter to many who are manic. Limitations dissolve. All that matters is the orgasm.
Sophocles is said to have remarked that the male libido is akin to being chained to a lunatic. How much more so, then, when reproductive biology becomes saturated with frenzy?
There are ways of dealing with inflammation of sensuality. None of those are very appealing to me, for a lot of reasons. I believe that intimacy is something to be shared between one man and one woman in the union of marriage. It isn't to be indulged in thoughtlessly. Nor is "self satisfying" a solution. Also, for reasons which do not need divulging.
I will not deny it: I have as healthy an interest in beautiful women as most other red-blooded American men. I also have a photographic memory for EVERY beautiful woman I have ever seen. And when one is overcome with mania the tendency is to mentally replay those images in one's head.
It does not make things any easier.
And so turning into a hyper-sexual had to be endured also. And I did my best to drown out the lust to be satisfied sexually. Reading from the works of Tolkien helped (lately I've been re-reading The Silmarillion). So too did music. By late evening I had decided to lose myself in Fallout 4. That lasted half an hour, roughly.
I still hadn't slept. Still hadn't eaten anything either. I was too energized to be tired.
At some point I found myself dancing throughout the house. Then I was scrubbing the bathroom sink. Then doing laundry at midnight.
I felt unstoppable. I felt invincible.
I had taken my regular nightly schedule of medication about 6 PM on Saturday. That had done nothing to quench the madness. But I am thankful for them. Without medication, the episode would have been worse.
It was now 2 on Sunday morning and I was finally, at last, beginning to feel some slight measure of exhaustion. I took a sleep aid and some Benadryl for good measure, and crashed headfirst into bed.
I couldn't tell you what time I woke up the next day. Still manic, but it was abating. I still couldn't put two thoughts together enough to write something substantial. The incensed sex drive was finally diminishing (although some would no doubt consider having that to be a GOOD thing about being bipolar). I felt tired from all of the moving around that I had done the day before.
The need for food began to creep in. I ate some slices of pepperoni that had been left over from making a pizza several days earlier. Chased down with some sweet tea. Then took a look in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. I shaved and showered and that got the funk of the previous few days off of me.
By that evening the manic phase had ended in vast part. My thoughts were beginning to be my own again. This season of madness had joined the many other episodes I have suffered for nearly a quarter of a century.
And I found myself pondering that it had not been so bad, this time. Rarely had I been able to exert that degree of self control over my impulses. I hadn't even bought anything outrageous on Amazon or eBay.
Maybe I am getting better. The Chris Knight who is writing these words today, has come a long way from the Chris Knight of 2007, when I was riding a manic high and doing anything that could make me feel like a cartoon character. That's not just "wisdom with age" either. But I also want to believe that it was more than just medication and counseling.
I don't talk about God nearly as much as I should. My faith is not what it was, now twenty-six years ago this past week when I first committed my life to serving Him. Yet my journey as a follower of Christ has been and remains the most defining element of my life. That in spite of how so many times I have screamed at Him, railed against Him, wanted Him to strike me dead so that there would be no more wretched existence for me.
So far, He hasn't done that (yet).
He has given me strength and grace to endure, though. He has brought me through ice and fire. He has been with me in the valleys of depression and the peaks of mania.
I couldn't talk about God much in my capacity as a peer support specialist employed by a state agency. But I can say now, more than my own desire to recover from having this condition, that God has been at work even more.
That's what I found myself thinking after the episode, anyway.
So here it is, a week later. On the cusp of a new career. I am NOT looking forward to being on site ready to start training at 6:15 in the morning though! But I think it'll be okay. This is a real hands-on job involving precision work (no, I'm NOT going to be a surgeon). When I was fighting some of the worst of depression and mania years ago, I discovered that assembling and painting Warhammer 40,000 miniatures provided a distraction from my mind. I think this new job is going to be a lot like that. It also won't be "work" that I'll be bringing in my head home with me, as happened at times as a peer specialist. And like I said earlier, it'll be providing a lot more peace of mind financially, that I'll be able to devote more to my real passion, writing.
Yeah, I got through that episode pretty good.
Here's praying that it will be a LONG time before the next one.
