BEING BIPOLAR, Part Twelve: Report on Mixed Episode

Being Bipolar is a series that began nearly fourteen years ago in the winter of 2011.  It is an occasional look at what it is like to live with bipolar disorder, or manic depression as many still call it.  This blogger posts a new article whenever he feels the time is ideal to write about an aspect of bipolar disorder, so that others might have deeper understanding of this disease and appreciate what it is to have to exist with it on a routine basis.  In doing this I do my best to be as honest and forthcoming as is possible.  I am not a medical professional.  However I spent several years as a peer support specialist - a person with mental illness who undergoes extensive training so as to help others with like and similar conditions - for a major state department of mental health.  I believe that this may put me in a unique position to examine bipolar disorder.  Perhaps writing this series will be in some way how I get to make up for many of the things that I have done while in a depressed state or exceedingly manic (ESPECIALLY manic).  If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please consider calling 911 or if you are able to then visit your nearest hospital emergency room.  You may also find help and encouragement from a support group, such as those sponsored by mental health advocacy organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI.org).

 

Hey hey!  Once again it has been quite awhile since I have posted anything under the Being Bipolar brand.  That last one came almost two years ago.  And a lot has changed since then...

When last you read this space, I was still working at the South Carolina Department of Mental Health (the very first mental health department among any of the fifty states, and they're dang proud of it!).  And I would still be there too, had the economy not turned so rotten.  That compelled me to seek out employment that paid better.  I spent two weeks at the car manufacturer near here...

...And then had to leave voluntarily.  The meds I take to manage manic depression made it impossible to have the fine precision finger mobility and speed to keep up.  I quickly realized that when it came to critical car components my presence was more a liability than a benefit.

After that I was at another manufacturer.  I was doing really good too!  And then two months into that job I was dismissed.  Because they discovered that I was taking medication to manage bipolar disorder.

Well, I can't really talk about that much.  There were legal proceedings and an out-of-court settlement.  It ended as best as it probably could have.  But that still left me unemployed.

Several months of work drought followed after that.  And then I was able to sign on as a substitute teacher for a local school system.  But as was reported almost a year ago that didn't last long (because ahem... I was accused of teaching high school juniors how to make high explosives).

THAT led to a job that nearly killed me.  The less said about that one, the better.  It was destroying me mentally, physically, but also spiritually.  I was never able to attend a place of worship with others on weekends, or during the week either for that matter.  My relationship with God is something that has always been precious to me, even during my worst of moments with manic depression.  For those reasons and more I left the job just before my birthday this past March.

What happened after that was practically a God-send.  A friend got me involved in training artificial intelligence systems.  We're talking real cutting-edge stuff here.  I've been able to see the AI industry from a vantage point that few get to witness.  I'm now beholding all that goes into making AI work.  Its good points as well as things that I don't believe computers will ever be able to surmount (I very strongly doubt that AI will come close to approximating real human thought, and that's a great comfort).  I consider AI training to be my true career now, and it's solid work that employs much of my educational background and experiences.

Unfortunately there are times when there is a lull between projects.  And it is during those times that I need supplementary employment.

Which brings me to where I am today.  I've been able to be a part of the establishing of the first branch in this state of a respected company that is experiencing nationwide growth.  I've been with the company for almost two months now and have really come to enjoy the community and camaraderie among the staff.  That's all that I can probably say at the moment however.  For reasons which are pretty easy to figure out.

So now we come to August 13, 2024.

I've written about having a depressive episode before, and the previous installment of Being Bipolar dealt with experiencing a manic episode.  Well, since last night I have been having a mixed episode: an entirely different beast altogether.  So I'm going to do my best to describe what this is like.

This morning I had to call in sick.  I was nowhere in any condition to handle the tasks I regularly engage in.  I probably was not even fit to drive the relatively short distance to the location.  Not when I was unstoppably blinking back-and-forth between extraordinary mania and then curling up in a ball on the sofa.

This has been a day of extremes, to be mild about it.

It started yesterday evening.  I felt it coming.  And prayed that it would pass over.  Maybe God let it be not as severe as it could have been.  As severe as it was fifteen or so years ago, when I lacked the proper medication and the counseling and the tools to deal with an episode.  Back when I had to be rocked here and fro by manic depression.  The time in my life when I caused so much damage and destruction to relationships that I cherished so deeply with those who I loved.  But that's digressing, sort of.

I sensed this coming.  And braced for the storm.  It could have been worse.  But it was harsh enough.  By 8 a.m. this morning my thoughts were racing furiously.  At 9 the swings toward the opposite direction began.

It's funny.  A little after 9 there was a brief respite.  And I found myself inspired to post the following on Facebook:

Dear God, thank You for giving me this morning. May I have a great day today. Let others see not myself but You within me, that they might be drawn to You and You alone.

 

I was hoping that the day would turn out well, in spite of how it was progressing.  And maybe I was trying to bargain with God: that I would surrender to Him and that in return He would make my day a blessed one after all.

It was not to be.

Ten o'clock.  The mania had been roaring for some time.  About this time I plummeted back into depression.  It was what ever since the symptoms first began nearly a quarter century ago I have called "the Dark Fountain".  Winston Churchill called depression his "Black Dog" that hounded his steps wherever he went.  Mine is the Dark Fountain.  When it erupts it sends dark viscous fluid seething across my neurobiology, and it takes a supreme effort to fight against those black waters or else drown in them.  And it has come close to drowning me completely at times... make of that what one will.

Today around noon I could almost hear the Dark Fountain bursting forth.  Could almost feel the waters creeping throughout my brain.  And then it stopped for a little while.  Enough to post on Facebook that I needed prayer, from whoever might be reading my words.

 

Several people responded, and I am very thankful that they did.  I believe in prayer, now more than ever.  Prayer is nothing more or less than talking with God in a personal way.  He hears our prayers.  He may not answer them as we would like for Him to... and trust me, I have prayed to Him many times over the past two and a half decades to relieve me of my own "thorn in the flesh" (as Paul described his own ailment).  He hasn't done that.  I doubt He ever will do that.  Not on this side of the veil, anyway.

 

Maybe God needs me to have a mental illness.  It's a way of keeping me humble, of having to rely upon Him, and to rely upon the prayers of others.  It would be a pretty sad and miserable world if we didn't lift each other up, somehow or another.  But again, I digress...

 

One o'clock.  Two.  Three.  I was SERIOUSLY fluctuating.  It was almost making me physically sick.  I've been trying to eat healthier lately (because, hey, it's time to admit the truth: I'm no longer in college and it's way past time that I start eating like a responsible adult, so no more frozen pizza for awhile) and later on a friend suggested that maybe this episode was triggered by my turning to healthier food TOO suddenly.  I suppose it's possible.  There can be any number of triggers of a manic or depressive (or both) episode.  Sometimes there's no apparent trigger at all: they just happen.  I mention this now, just openly wondering if the change in diet is what precipitated this latest bought with bipolar disorder.

 

And then, almost as suddenly as it began... the episode stopped.

 

Well, it was more of a tapering off.  Fortunately that occurred quicker than an episode usually does.  I could literally feel the episode coming on and now I could feel it abating.  Like a hurricane that passes over a beach, the rain decreasing until there is a measure of peace.

 

The episode was over.

 

Cost to me: a day's lost wages.  And I needed that work.

 

The alternative however, would have potentially been much worse.

 

This is what it is to have a mental illness.  But the good news is that it is controllable, to some considerable extent.

 

I no longer believe that I'm too dangerous to be with others.  Including colleagues on the job, wherever that may be.  Nor do I believe that I would be too dangerous to be in a relationship with someone, if  God were to ever bring a woman into my life (and I would never cease to be thankful to Him for that if He did).

I'm not the person who I was a decade and a half ago.  I think about the Chris Knight who existed then, who was struggling to fight against his own mind and losing that battle ever more with seemingly each passing day.  That Chris is long gone and in his place is the Chris who was always meant to be here.  Someone who can love and be loved.  Who is a hard worker, without depression being a regular hindrance. Someone who isn't going to go out on eBay one night and buy two hundred dollars of LEGO models, just because he saw The LEGO Movie and decided he needed to recreate those characters on his desk.

It's not a perfect life.  But it never will be, for any of us.  We each have our burden to bear.  Sometimes it's just more apparent than others.  I should be thankful, about mine.  I've never turned to drugs or drink to make myself not feel numbness incarnate or to stifle the excess energies.  I've never been homeless.  I've been blessed with a wonderful support system of people who sincerely care about me, just as I care about them.  When I was in southern California I got to see many people who were not so fortunate.  They were obviously mentally ill, had no permanent places to sleep at night, whose meager belongings fit inside grocery carts that were no doubt stolen from supermarkets.

In a different reality, that could have been me.

I'm not thankful enough.  To God or to the people He has put into my life.

I truly hope that someday I can make amends with the people who I have hurt, which stemmed from this disease.

That is the true burden of bipolar disorder that I bear.

Maybe God can make that be so.

 

He has done miracles before.  He can do it again.

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part Eleven: A Weekend with Mania

 

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.

 

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No, I do not "hate" anyone LGBT

Sigh...

I shouldn't have to make this post.  But as it seems how EVERYTHING today is supposed to be qualified, quantified, factionalized and most especially sexualized...

Contrary to what some have claimed, I do not now nor have I ever harbored any kind of hatred toward those who have chosen the homosexual lifestyle.  Or who are bisexual.  Or transsexual.  Or whatever.

As a Christian, I am called to not hate anybody.  I am in fact commanded to hate my own sin and my own fallen carnal nature, before I dare levy hatred toward another.  It is part and parcel to the "dying unto self" that those who follow Christ are told that they must do on a daily basis.

That does not mean however that I can or must acquiesce to any activity that is self-destructive.

And that, is what LGBT behavior is.

I've seen the damage and disease and ultimately death that is wrought by homosexuality.  Have looked at the photos of lacerated anal tissue.  Viewed images of penises wracked with things that no healthy male should have.  I have read the journal articles, about gay men and lesbians being far more prone to cancer than those who are not.  Human papillomavirus is a really nasty thing to subject one's genitalia to.  I have looked into the faces of people who have contracted full-blown AIDS, and those are eyes that I pray I never have to look into ever again.

Homosexuals have, on average, a lifespan twenty years shorter than that of heterosexuals.

Let that sink in.  A gay or lesbian person is likely to have two full decades shaven off their life expectancy, because of the all too physical consequences of homosexual behavior.

These are not things that can be "wished away" for sake of sexual license.  These are stone cold hard facts.  This is reality, that can NOT be escaped from because of one's "feelings" about the matter.

LGBTwhatever is incompatible with human design.  Its myriad of associated diseases and disorders attest to this.

How do I, as a person called by God Himself to love others, reconcile that love with the expectation that I am to celebrate a "lifestyle" that leads so very often to death?

I can not.  I can no more endorse the LGBT community than I can endorse cigarette smoking, or abusing crystal meth.  Because those are self-destructive behaviors also.

I can love homosexuals.  I can love lesbians. I can love bisexual individuals.  I can love transsexuals, though what they do to themselves is especially haunting.

But as a Christian (who fails and falls more often than not), as an objectivist who understands the concreteness of reality, as merely a human being trying to be decent... for those reasons and more, I can not love their kind of behavior.  Because when you scrape away everything else that's Chris Knight, you're left with someone who simply does not want to see anyone die.

No, "love is love" is not true.  There are many kinds of love.  There is philios: love of brothers and sisters.  There is the love of parents to children.  There is logos: the love of God.  And, yes, there is eros: love expressed sexually between man and woman.

What the LGBT community and its supporters demand we accept is not love at all.  It is lust.  And they want said lust to be without the burden of personal responsibility.  And THAT again is a denial of reality.

If you love a person... and I mean really love someone, you will NOT selfishly lead that person to demean themselves for your own desires, at risk of their health and even very life.

I love my friends.  There are men who are as close and dear to me as real brothers.  I love them and I would die for any of them.  But not for an instant have I been tempted to take it to an entirely different and inappropriate level.

Once upon a time, not very long ago, most men and women were capable of accepting that.  That love is a many dimension-ed notion and that each kind had its own unique place in the scheme of things.

We were a better people, then.  Not a perfect people.  But we were at least striving against the baser instincts of carnal nature.  And we accomplished great things because of it.

As a historian, I know also where unrestrained sexual pleasure leads a society to.  And that as much as anything else persuades me about the truly insidious nature of the LGBT lifestyle.

I could easily sit here all night, and rattle off a dozen reasons and more why I can not celebrate homosexuality and transgenderism.  Just as easily as I could tick off all the reasons why I must condemn it.

And I hope that my many friends who are LGBT will at last understand where I'm coming from.

Finally, know this: sex is a sacred, holy thing.  It is something that I believe should be celebrated within the boundaries of husband and wife.  In my sincere philosophy ALL sexual sin is equally abhorrent.  I can not disapprove of LGBT behavior any more than I can of sex outside of marriage.  That makes me come across as a prude, I know.  But there it is.  I have plenty of friends who do not agree with this.  And that is fine.  But so far as I know none of them have called me "hate-filled" or "polygamaphobe" because of it.

Sex is not a toy.  It's not something to be engaged in frivolously.  It is meant to be a sanctified act.  "The marriage bed is to be honored by all," scripture tells us.  If that was done more often, maybe we wouldn't have things like children without fathers, venereal disease and shortened lifespans.

That is all.

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part Ten: Anatomy of a Depressive Episode

Being Bipolar is a series that began in the winter of 2011.  It's an occasional attempt to explore aspects of the life of a person with manic-depression, or bipolar disorder if you will.  It's never meant to be a regular feature of The Knight Shift.  It comes along whenever "the time is nigh" for another installment is called for.  In this series I do my best to be as honest and forthcoming about this condition as possible, within reason.  As with anything else of this kind of subject matter, it should be noted that I am not a medical professional.  So don't take anything written here as solid medical advice in the way of drugs etc.  If you need immediate assistance, please go to the emergency rom of the nearest hospital, or call 911 on your phone.  You may also find a great deal of assistance from a local support group, such as those sponsored by National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami.org).

 

For the past three years and nearly four months I have been a peer support specialist employed by a state department of mental health.  That's supposed to mean that as someone "in recovery" from mental illness, that I'm in a unique position to help others who likewise must deal with having emotional and behavioral disorders.

I wish that I could tell you that this means that I have a handle on my own diagnosis.  But over the course of nearly a year now that assumption has been solidly put to rest.  Because I've discovered that in many ways I'm the same way I am now that I was six years ago, when I first left my old hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina and began looking for a new home.  That was supposed to have been a fresh start for me (and my dog Tammy).  And for awhile, when we initially set out, there was that breath of fresh air that comes with expanding one's horizons.  With casting destiny to the winds of the Lord.  And then came a year after setting out, and a situation that triggered my bipolar disorder as it had never had been before and what led to friends having me live with them until I could get my mind situated again. That was five years ago and I'm no less thankful for them and what they did for me.

Maybe it was "the plague" that triggered me this time.  Nothing has been the same since COVID-19 came (and I was hit with it this past December, I'm pretty sure I caught it when some friends and I went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home because they came down with COVID also).  I worked from home for more than six months and it changed me.  Made me consider and reconsider my life.  I got the "vaccine" early on, because my job puts me at the forefront of public health (namely visiting patients at their homes among other things) and in the year and a half since then I've come to wonder if that was such a wise thing to have done (it's not being called the "clot shot" for nothing, but I digress).

Back to being a peer support specialist and being in recovery.  The more I have recovered, the more I have found that I still have a long way to go toward that.  It's a lot like "the Hell Curve" that I first described in 2011: I'm forever getting closer to that Y line of total recovery, but never going to cross it or even touch it.  I realized that even before last September, and the day my neighbors found me dancing in the rain in my sweatsuit and socks and trying to open other people's car doors.  I don't remember that at all.  Neither do I remember the next day and being found lying face-down next to the road beside my house, my face beaten up like hamburger from the fall onto the asphalt.  Eleven months later and I still can't wink my right eye without feeling some residual pain.  None of that, I remember transpiring.  It was all because of a medication reaction between my "current" meds and one that I have since stopped using.

I lost very nearly a solid month of work because of that incident, which encompassed one week spent in a mental health facility while I was detoxing.  It led to some changes of my work: changes I haven't been crazy about (no pun intended, or is it?).

Long story short, this past week and a half or so I've had a depressive episode that wrecked havoc with me in nearly every aspect.  Were it not for taking care of Tammy, my miniature dachshund, there is no telling what I would have been compelled to do during this time.  Depression sucks the vigor and vitality out of a person.  Takes away nearly every interest including the desire for eating (and sometimes not even getting up to use the restroom, which is no problem if you're not ingesting food anyway).

Today the episode finally began to abate.  I must thank many friends on Facebook who I reached out to, who have been lifting me up in their prayers.  I hope that I can be just as much there for them when they need my own prayers.  I have pretty much wasted an entire weekend except for this afternoon.  So I thought, maybe since it's fresh in mind I could do another Being Bipolar installment (it's only been THREE YEARS since the last one!).

This depressive episode crept up on me.  In hindsight I can see that it was bedeviling me for almost the past two weeks.  It's been so severe, and I was so subconsciously holding it at bay, that I didn't realize it was happening until two days ago.  During this episode I was robbed of any interest apart from the meanest of caring for myself and my dog.  I was eating candy bars for breakfast and nothing else for lunch or dinner.  I fed and watered Tammy but I didn't feel like playing with her.  She "gets" me when I'm like this.  When I curl up on the sofa, unable to move, she curls right up next to me.  Tammy understands me even if no one else does.  I'm pretty sure that I lost some weight during this time.  When I went to see a doctor this past week I had lost seven pounds since the previous visit about two months ago.

My hygiene has suffered.  I went two days without showering for work.  It didn't seem to matter.  I just didn't care.  I brushed my teeth, but that's mostly out of dire habit.  Something ground into me about seven years ago when I realized what depression was doing to my dental care.  I haven't lost any teeth and I don't intend to.  So whenever I eat or drink something I'm inclined to brush immediately afterward or at least as soon as possible (which has become a religious ritual after getting home from work, before I even take Tammy outside).

I have been trying to cook better for myself (thanks in no small part to the encouragement of a good friend, hello Heather!).  A week and a half ago I visited the nearby grocery store and pharmacy to pick up two prescriptions and I had no other interest in shopping for anything else.  Well, I take that back.  I did purchase a box of Froot Loops, and that was "dinner" for a few days.  But again, my overall desire for a good meal had evaporated.

Interest in fun things and activities crashes and burns.  All that's left are the ashen remnants of something that once moved you.  I've been stoked about the current season of Stranger Things lately.  Especially the music.  I had been listening to the soundtrack and reveling in the return of "my kind" of music.  But interest in any music has gone away during this episode.  I've tried to make myself watch stuff like The LEGO Movie, a film that I usually adore, but that failed to move me too.

Depression has caused me to lose interest in my work.  Has led me to seeing it as all a vain effort.  I haven't been able to help others, in the way that I usually can and have loved doing.  I drove a patient to a physician's appointment this past week and I was barely talking at all, when usually we are readily engaged in conversation.  He could sense that there was something wrong, and he told me as much.  It has caused me to forget tasks, has made me indifferent during phone calls to patients.  It's ironic, that I work in a mental health office and my own mental health has caused that work to suffer.  But then again, my life has been filled with a lot of cruel irony.

This coming Wednesday would have been the twentieth anniversary of my getting married.  A marriage that was destroyed in vast part by my bipolar disorder.  I still can't make sense of that.  It was something I was committed to as much as anyone could commit to something.  And it wasn't enough.  Why did God let me have something that was going to wreck such havoc on an institution that He Himself created?  That has been a thought that has run rampant through my mind during this time.  I suppose that no matter how happy I might be, I'm going to forever be running that through my mind.  It hasn't been made any easier because of this latest episode.  And the proximity to the date has only made it worse.

Strangely, my faith in God this time is something I'm not doubting.  A quality that I must ascribe to not only my friends' prayers, but to all the other times I've had depression.  In its lesser moments I can find myself able to pray, and to solicit prayer.  I don't doubt God, even when it seems the depression is something cruel He lets happen.  I have to remind myself that being a Christian does not mean an escape from pain: something I wish I had known during the first few decades as a believer.

I would be remiss if I did not mention, that there have been moments during this latest episode when I have not wanted to be here any more.  When I've actually prayed to God to please let me die.  But that's a different thing from having full-fledged suicidal ideation.  Something I've come to learn increasingly during my work with those with mental illness.  It's almost okay, maybe perfectly "normal", to have thoughts about not wanting to be alive any more.  It becomes something else entirely though, when those thoughts turn toward contemplating getting a knife to open one's veins, or ingest a whole bunch of drugs and hope that they will lull one into an eternal slumber.  I will admit, that I have tried the latter at least twice.  Both times failed, thankfully.

Also thankfully, the episode seems to finally be abating, and maybe writing these words out is aiding toward that.  More irony: I've lamented in the past week or so that I haven't been able to write anymore, and here I am, composing a new blog post.  Not just blogging but really pouring my heart and soul into this new installment of Being Bipolar.  Maybe if I can write this, perhaps other things that I've thought I'd lost will come back.  Writing is a gift that I first realized I had when Mrs. Rutledge in my freshman year of high school told me I had.  I've been trying to use, develop and hone that gift ever since.  Manic depression over the past two decades and more took a LOT out of me toward that.  Maybe writing this post means I still have it.  Maybe I can write more.  Perhaps even work anew on that book that Dad wanted me to write.  Dad was proud of me.  I was very fortunate to have had him in my life.  I want to finish writing that book, and dedicate it to his memory.

And, that's all that I know to write about this latest bout with bipolar depression.  It is my "dark fountain": a term I have been it from the very beginning, when it first erupted in the spring of 2000.  Its black waters trying to swallow and drown me, and I doing everything that can be done to keep my head above its currents.  Maybe writing about it this time will help to stop the fountain, if only for a little while.

Maybe doing this will help others also, who are going through their own times of depression.

If so, please know: you are not alone.  There IS help.  Your local mental health department is one resource.  So are groups like National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI (nami.org).  If you are in a severe crisis, you can call 911.  It's okay, it really IS an emergency.  And as of yesterday there is a simple three digit number - 988 - that you can call to get help from a national suicide help line.

And if you need a friend to talk to, I'll do my best to be here for you.  My e-mail is theknightshift@gmail.com.  I've communicated with quite a few people over the years that Being Bipolar has been a feature on this blog.  I'll do what I can to be here for you, too.

 

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The CDC: Too much power given to an agency

One February morning in 1997, I was at a gas station in Burlington, North Carolina.  At the counter someone was complaining about new cigarette laws requiring that people under a certain age must show their photo ID.  He said it was a stupid law.

"Wait, let me explain something," said the bearded man behind the counter.  "What you are protesting against is not a law.  You are instead protesting a regulation.  A law is something that has gone through the legislative process and is voted into being by people that you vote for and who are accountable to you.  You don't get to vote for people who make regulations.  They can do whatever they want to do.  They don't answer to you at all."

It remains one of the most eye-opening exchanges I've ever witnessed.  It changed my perception of things.  Ever since that morning, I have cast a wary eye on things like mask-wearing: is it a law, or is it regulation?

For the past two years the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has mandated wearing of masks in public places.  And worse, there have been the mandated "get vaccinated or else" proclamations.  Most of those have come from decree by Joe Biden (I refuse to honor him with the title "President").

NONE of this has been "law".  Congress did not order masks or "vaccinations".  That's what unelected government bureaucrats ordained.  And no matter what a sitting president demands, he or she does not have the authority to insist that civilians get jabbed (the military is another matter, and the Supreme Court just decided 6 to 3 against members of the armed forces who want to refuse the shot: Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito were the dissenting justices).

Masks and "vaccines" against COVID-19 have become the most egregious and blatant power grab in American history.  Thankfully, earlier this week a federal judge struck down mask mandates on public transportation.  You may have seen the photos of airline passengers tearing their masks off and rejoicing.

The Biden "administration" hates that.  And they are already trying to appeal it or work around the judge's decision.

Remember people: it's NOT a law that we've had to be putting up with for the past two years.  It's a REGULATION.  One whipped up out of thin air by our alleged "betters".  A thing dreamt of by people we don't vote for and who will probably never be held accountable.  For the damage and injury done, both physical and mental.

I received the COVID vaccine very early on.  As a health care worker, and someone who is in constant contact with the general public, getting "vaccinated" made sense.  I'll never know if it worked to ward away COVID.  I do know that I contracted COVID late this past December (the symptoms were mild).  But in hindsight if I had a chance to have a do-over, I would not have received the shot.  As much as being an "up yours" to people like Fauci and Biden as it would be to regard my own health and well being.

Remember: if the mask mandate comes back, you don't have to comply.  Because that's not a real law at all.  And it never was.

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 37

Today's blog post sort of suggested itself, in the wake of events during the past three days.  Maybe what I'm about to say will help others who are finding themselves in the grip of depression, or some other mental health situation.

You see, this week my path has crossed those of two people who I care about: one in my personal life and another who I know from my work as a professional peer support specialist.  Each of them is having an emotional crisis.  Much like the ones I have had at various times over the course of the last twenty-some years.

In each case, I have suggested that inpatient care at a behavioral health facility should be considered.  Checking one's self into a specialized hospital for a few days or a week or so.  Letting trained doctors and staff work with a patient toward reigning in their depressive or schizophrenic episode.  Sometimes - as happened with me several months ago - it's because medication needs balancing out and I had to be monitored for any side effects.  The reasons vary.

One thing that it is NOT, is an "insane asylum".  I have never been inside a real asylum (apart from a haunted one I visited when I was younger).  People are not caged like animals in a behavioral health center.  It is not like The Snake Pit or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.  It is almost like a vacation away from it all.  The food tends to be quite good.  I would recommend bringing along a book to read (my most recent stay in inpatient found me reading Bitter Blood, a book that has sucked me in at least half a dozen times over the years).

If you or someone you know is in a mental crisis situation, there is NO shame whatsoever in asking for help.  Including checking yourself in to a behavioral health center.  Sometimes a little help is needed to get back on even keel, and that’s okay.  That’s more than fine. I’ve been in such places no less than five or six times and I’ve always come back out on top.

It’s NOT like it used to be on TV and movies.  Those days of mental health medicine in the western world are gone.  Apart from one place waking me up at 5 every morning to ask if I’d had a bowel movement (I blame the nurse), the care was always with dignity and compassion.

It can be nervous-inducing to think about checking yourself into inpatient care.  But I’d rather “nip it in the bud” (to quote Barney Fife) than let something run amok and out of control.  I know the darkness of which I speak, and I would rather no one else have to go through anything as I have had to endure.

 

 

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So, I got hit by COVID-19...

It was only a matter of time, I suppose.  And based on what those who were in close proximity to me have said, it seems like it's the omicron (anagram for "moronic") variant.  Which is the most wildly contagious as well as apparently being the least malign of the strains found so far.  Two friends and I were at a movie theater on Christmas Day, watching Spider-Man: No Way Home and one of them believes she picked it up during a trip to the restroom.  She tested positive two days later and our other friend got a positive result the next day.  My symptoms began a few hours later.  It hasn't been as severe as theirs, but still... this has been a pretty cruddy way to end 2021 on.  Or a fitting one.  Or something.

It's almost miraculous that it took this long to contract it, given my work as a health care professional involves interacting with the public on a constant basis.  Two years' keeping ahead of the Wuhan Flu is a pretty good record, all things considered.

I'm day four now into fighting this thing but happily I'm on the tail end of it.  Body temperature had been oscillating like an accordion but that seems to have ended last night.  There hasn't been as much mucous produced as I had originally thought.  My chest feels like there's a weight on it, even now.  I never lost the sense of smell, however there is a weird taste in my mouth.  But that's been happening lately anyway, because of iron infusions I've been receiving to offset anemia.

I still do not believe in COVID vaccine mandates: something I've expressed on numerous other forums.  The choice to be vaccinated should be a very personal one, for a lot of reasons.  I was vaccinated this past winter, but I have chosen to not receive boosters.  Indeed, I wonder about the efficacy of the vaccines, given the reports that have accumulated of people being severely injured and even dying after getting jabbed.  We should have been addressing this with medications like Ivermectin, which is what countries like India have been doing to counter COVID.  But I suppose "big pharma" couldn't make enough money on something they tout as a horse dewormer (and the drug companies have better paying lobbyists too).

In hindsight, I'm taking a perverse view on getting COVID-19.  Coming through like this, my body has been working overtime to cook up some all natural antibodies.  My chances of catching COVID again are significantly diminished.  I'm going to be able to head out the office door to meet my patients with much more confidence, and that's a good thing.

Until the next plague that our friends the ChiComs whip up in their laboratories...

 

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EMDR, Part 2

A little over a month ago I wrote about beginning Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR for short.  It's a therapy technique that, with the aid of a trained and experienced facilitator, I am employing to address the matter of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD and I promise that's the last acronym) that I was diagnosed with two years ago.

We are now well into the treatment, and it has begun to bloom forth some enormously positive results.  That, despite the unusual circumstances that have sent this procedure onto a wildly parallel tangent.  This past week was the third session that we had to conduct via video conferencing as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.  COVID-19 has affected pretty much every aspect of health care in our area.  The building I work in  - a mental health facility - has five entrances.  Right now passage is only allowed through one, and you have to answer a series of questions ("Have you been out of state in the past fourteen days?") and have your temperature taken before entry.  Even then the place is eerie quiet, absent the usual presence of our patients and most of the staff: all appointments are being conducted via telephone.  And then this past week the order came down that cloth masks were to be worn at ALL times apart from individual offices.

The location of my treatment is something of a "sister site" to ours.  It's having the same lockdown.  Hence, having to use tele-therapy, with the facilitator and I in our respective homes and working over the Internet.

How has that been working?  Surprisingly well, believe it or not.  Fortunately we were able to lay down most of the basic groundwork for everything that has come since, but we are still not at the real heart of EMDR: the use of light and motion to "rewire" the brain to steer away from traumatic memories.  I don't know how or when it's going to work when that part of the process sis entered into.

But still, a number of tools have come about that are already helping me to aggressively counter the trauma.  For example, there are two places that I can "retreat" to when things become almost overwhelming.   They needed to be places that have some kind of special significance.

For my second place, I chose this:

The desert of New Mexico near Socorro,
home of the Very Large Array

I spent over a month in Albuquerque around the end of summer in 2016.  Had things gone the way I had hoped, I would have been able to settle down there.  New Mexico is one of the most beautiful places I have ever discovered, and it was beckoning my heart the closer we got (my dog Tammy and I).  The scenery, the people, the opportunities there... well, the timing didn't quite work so well on that last one.  Maybe someday I will get to return there to stay.  It would definitely be a sweet place to have a family.

A few days after we arrived I went looking for something I had always wanted to see with my own eyes: the Very Large Array radio telescope near Socorro.  I knew what it looked like - it's been featured in many movies, particularly Contact - but to gaze upon it just from afar... that thing covers almost as much area as most counties in the United States!

It was the desert in all its wild natural beauty, magnificently married to that system of modern science.  Perhaps the largest research facility of any discipline on the surface of the Earth.  It was all one painting, and I was walking through it.  In those moments, I felt more alive than the vast majority of times throughout the span of my lifetime.

When asked for a place of peaceful retreat within my mind, during our third session, that is what I thought of immediately: the New Mexico desert.

And other tools have come about also, including the knowledge of certain people in my life who are something like "avatars" of aspects of character: the nurturer, the spiritual side, a few others.  There are more tools than I could convey about in a blog post, but you get the idea.

As I said, we still haven't gotten into the part of EMDR that many people consider to be the "real" course of treatment.  But this is all still of tremendous importance.  This is the foundation upon which all of that work will be built upon.  And so far we've been building a strong foundation indeed, according to the facilitator.

That's how things stand now.  What happens next will be impacted in one way or another by the coronavirus situation, and it's conceivable that we may have to delay the "lights-on" part of the protocol until the lockdown is alleviated.  But even so, I'm feeling very upbeat by what has come so far.  They are tools that can be used in the meantime and who knows, it might even strengthen the effects of the next phase of treatment.

Will write again soon.

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EMDR

This blog has been operational for sixteen(!) years now, and it's covered a lot of territory.  Everything from pop culture to weird news to chronicling my run for political office and anything in between.  It's shown readers the inside of a nuclear power plant, to the ancient sanctity of Orthodox Christianity.

But it hasn't depicted everything about my life.  Though there have been times that I've shared glimpses of personal frustration and tragedy, most of what happens on this side of the screen has been shrouded from my audience.  It's been a common lament of mine: how it seems that everyone I know gets to display their blessings and joy over Facebook while I've come up empty in those regards.  And then I'm reminded that people only show the good things on social media, not the bad.  So if that's a crime, then I suppose I'm just as guilty.

However, there are exceptions.  The Being Bipolar series is no doubt the biggest of them.  Hard to believe it'll be ten years later next winter that I began that series, and there is still much more to write about it.  I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder (or manic depression) early in 2004.  By 2009 it had destroyed much of my personal life, including a marriage.  Being Bipolar began as an attempt to take it back.  On that note, it failed.  But I still ended up satisfied that it's documented my thoughts and experiences with a mental illness.

But it's not my only mental illness.

Early in 2018 came another diagnosis.  I now understand that I have Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  The result of numerous horrible experiences across the span of my life, and especially things that happened during my childhood.  That's never really been written about on this blog.  My best friends and circle of close associates though have seen it only too often.  The times when I regress, and have flashbacks and am immobilized by the weight of memories that cannot and will not leave.  My therapists have helped me find a few strategies for dealing with episodes of PTSD: helping me get back into the moment instead of staying thrust toward the past.  And in vast part they do work.

But that's only addressing the symptoms, not the condition itself.

Yesterday I began what we are hoping may be an endeavor to stem the PTSD itself once and for all.  I had the initial appointment of what will be a series of sessions involving a fairly new therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing... or EMDR for short.  It came about during the Nineties as a result of investigations by psychologist Francine Shapiro.  It essentially means that via visual manipulation and use of other stimuli (including the use of a gimmick that I've dubbed "the Walkman") my brain is going to rewire itself to route around the parts of it that the PTSD chiefly operates in.  Or something like that.

Not really EMDR since Alex
can't move his eyeballs around

Yesterday's session was an orientation/familiarization with the technique.  And I'm already very much looking forward to beginning it proper.  EMDR has enjoyed great success in helping others address their own PTSD and we think it holds a lot of promise for my own case.

This was already an exceptional week in regard to my recovery.  I cannot discuss much of what transpired, however.  Maybe someday that will be possible.  Maybe, not ever.  The EMDR though, I can and will be talking about that as the treatment progresses.  So, stay tuned!

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So ummmm... a letter from President Trump arrived...

Several months ago, following a mass shooting incident and some remarks he had made about mental illness, I composed a letter to The Honorable Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.  In the letter I shared some understanding that I, as a person with bipolar disorder, have come to discover.  Namely, that mental illness is a condition of the mind, and not the heart.  Over much of the past year especially I have worked alongside many who also have varying types of mental illness.  Not one of them is a person I would ever consider to be a danger to others.  But I also do realize that there is a stigma, and maybe it will be with us for a long time still.  And I suppose there is little that just one guy with a blog can do about that.

Even so: bipolar disorder has wrecked havoc with my neurobiology.  But it can't touch my soul.  That's something still left as a choice to each of us.  We decide whether we will take the path of good or bad with each new day.  And that is what defines us... and no matter what is beyond our control within our grey matter.

Well, it took awhile for me to receive it - because your Friend and Humble Narrator has been busy with stuff here and yonder - but late in June a letter from President Trump arrived, and in it he addressed many of the matters that I was attempting to bring to his attention.  He doesn't touch upon the thoughts I conveyed about mental illness not affecting moral choice, but neither do I get the sense that it was entirely a "form letter" either.  Somebody in the White House read it, and sent it to President Trump's desk for his signature.  More than likely he has written letters about several issues and the one most appropriate for the situation gets used.  Not that I would blame the guy.  Nor can I blame him for the late reply.  I mean, hey... he's the President of the United States!  Dude's got a lot on his plate.  But it's still quite nice to get a response with his signature on it.

Anyway, here it is.  With my current location smudged beyond any reasonable ability to deduce my whereabouts:

Part of me wondered if I should post this without asking for President Trump's permission first.  Then I rembered how busy he is and that it took eight months to get this letter!  I'm gonna assume that it's okay with him.

Anyhoo, Mr. President, if you're reading this: Thank you.  And your concerns and beliefs on the matter are greatly appreciated.

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part 8: Illumination

"Sir please return to your room.  PLEASE sir it's dangerous!"  A fleck of dark red was on her cheek and plainly she was anguishing to clean off her face, take a shower and likely dispatch her uniform to the incinerator.  Red smears also on front desk.  A crimson palm print, vigorously violent and vaguely human, on one of the support columns.  Not far away on the floor: shards of broken glass.  Some stained red like those among the ancient windows of Notre-Dame and other holy places I had seen in Europe long ago.

But it didn't register that it was blood... lots and lots of blood... until I was heading back up to the fourth floor.  Three hours later, as a commercial hazmat crew was finishing with cleaning and decontaminating the lobby, the desk clerk phoned up the "all clear" signal.  Once again the elevator doors opened onto the lobby.  The pungent smell of ammonia flooded into my nostrils.  And the same desk clerk who had screamed at me earlier, now in fresh clothes, told me what happened.

A man had walked into the lobby, began screaming about things that weren't there, and then he slammed his bare hand through the large-screen television just inside the front door of the hotel.  In doing so he slashed open an artery.  If it had caused pain he didn’t seem fazed by it, I was told.  He just kept raving and ranting about the dirty women all around him, and the irony of his own tattered clothing and penetrating stench was apparently lost upon him.

He had stood there screaming and flailing his arm and throwing blood all over the lobby and onto the two young ladies behind the desk for a number of minutes, then had fled back through the front entrance and into the streets of downtown San Diego.

I never learned if he had been apprehended and given medical treatment.  I've always assumed the best.  That much dark red pumping out of an arm or a leg would require a tourniquet if all else had failed in dire circumstance.  I pray that he was picked up and given attention.  That he didn't become another of the nameless men and women found dead every so often.  Nameless and abandoned and seemingly unloved, like so many other homeless I had seen around San Diego and in places like Phoenix and Dallas during my journey.

Late one night I was ravenously hungry, realizing that I hadn't had a meal since breakfast.  I headed out at 1 a.m. and my dog Tammy riding in my lap as she had for 10,000 miles across America.  There were few empty tables at the McDonald’s near Mission Beach.  Occupied, but not with customers.  Men and women slept at most of them.  The cashier told me that they were homeless.  That they came every night to sleep and that it was pretty much mandatory to give them their space.  It was the only place they had to sleep on a winter night like this one.

It would not be a far reach to declare that of all the homeless individuals that I saw and even had the chance to talk with a few times, not one of them could fail to be diagnosed with mental illness of one variety or another.  They were men and women from so many different backgrounds.  And the one common denominator of each of them was that they suffered delusions or hallucinations or uncontrollable mood swings, or deep depression.

Like me.

That could very well have been me on the streets, with no place to call home and no friends and family to encourage me and lift me up when I needed it.  Particularly in those times when I have been more than a little tempted to end it all and with grievous intent slash open my own wrist.

“There but for the grace of God…”

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Being Bipolar is an ongoing albeit wildly irregular series (the most recent installment was five years ago!) documenting what it is to have a mental illness.  Specifically, Bipolar Disorder Type 1.  As has ever been the case, I am doing my best to chronicle this with candor, with honesty, without embellishment, and also with levity and humor whenever possible.  Because, y'know... this is something you NEED to be able to laugh about when you can.  If you are new to this blog feel free to peruse the other articles in the Being Bipolar series.  And the rest of this site isn’t too boring either!

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"Meanwhile back at the ranch..."

So.  Five years since last time we did this series.  And needless to say, a lot has happened in that time.

Lost a relationship.  Then lost my father.  Lost all desire to live for a while.  Have been hospitalized twice: once voluntary, the other not.  Tried to finish writing a book about having bipolar disorder but Dad's passing took the wind out of my sails on that one, though I’m hoping to return to it sooner than later.  And then through circumstances which don't have to be shared here, there was the need to leave my old hometown in North Carolina.  So I set out with my dog and a car packed with "the barest essentials" and headed out across the fruited plain.

That didn't work out as I had envisioned either: with God leading me to someplace new to put roots down at.  But here it is now, almost two years since embarking upon the road, and I'm in a new place that I had never thought about coming to.

And now?  There is, at last, the shot at real happiness that I've been searching and grasping to have, for so very long.

But the bipolar disorder is still there.  Still throwing a shadow over my mind.   The "dark fountain" erupts every so often, as it has since the winter of 2000 when the symptoms began.  The flood of depression and racing thoughts that I have to struggle to keep my head above those black waters, lest I drown.

Thankfully the meds are still working.  Pretty much the same regimen, albeit with some tweaking of dosage, that I was on last time.  The one significant thing that’s changed is that I’m no longer on lithium.  It wasn't out of vanity that I stopped taking it because of massive hair loss.  But it was out of concern about what else it might be doing to my body.  A few months after stopping the lithium my hair was as thick as ever.  However as I wrote three years ago, being on lithium carbonate seemed to have been a potent anti-allergen for me so far as hay fever goes.  There might be something to that because ever since the use of lithium ceased my seasonal weed and grass allergies have been as wretched as ever.  Oh well.  Guess even in bioengineering there's always a trade-off.

"You won’t be the same."

Something happened to me when I was out on the road.  And I still count myself as being on the road even now.

What it was, is most difficult to express.  Except that I began to come to see my own mental illness in a different light.  Maybe that is a gift that God has given me.  Perhaps it is the prize of my quest, though I didn’t and couldn't see that in the beginning.

Because the Chris Knight who last wrote words for this series was very much a bitter and angry and confused person, who was desperate to find meaning and purpose in his condition.  He was hurting himself in his vain effort to "be normal", to be accepted and recognized by others as "just as good" as everyone else.  I think it's valid to say that he was also doing his damndest to force God to weigh in on the issue.  To make Him explain why it is that even in a world as fallen and corrupted as this and with this weak and failed flesh, that my own neurons are so whacked.

It hasn't seemed fair at all.  And there is a spiritual component to this.  How DARE God let anyone have a medical condition that might imperil one’s very soul?!  Or are there some people who He allows to go mad because, hey, SOMEONE has to be populating Hell, right?

That’s what it's been like for me.  So often then.  And even at times now.  When it's night time and I want God to tell me that He has heard me all along.  That He hasn't abandoned me.

He never does.  I've come to accept that He never will. Not in an audible voice anyway.  But that doesn't mean He hasn’t been hearing me.

Looking back over the past two years since leaving my original hometown, though it wasn't the journey that I thought it would be... it was still being directed by God.  And all the people and situations and predicaments that came about along the way and are still coming about.  Those have had an enormous impact on my life.

Maybe that's how God works now.  Maybe it took making that leap of faith two years ago into the unknown to be prepared for what He was guiding me to.  It wasn’t a "destination" that I was going to be led to so much as it was the journey.  The process that God was going to use to radically alter my life as it had never been altered before.  When Gandalf saw Bilbo again after his adventure to the Lonely Mountain, he exclaimed that Bilbo looked different.  Indeed, he had told him that if he came back "you won’t be the same."

So it has been with me.  I'm not the person I need to be.  Not yet.  Probably never will see that work completed in this lifetime.  But the Chris Knight with bipolar disorder who went out is not the same Chris Knight with bipolar disorder who returned.  THIS Chris Knight is more accepting of who he is and what he has.  He is far more thankful for what he has than resentful about what he does not have.  He also recognizes that despite how his neurobiology might be he has had a life that most never get to experience and it's a long ways from being done with yet.

That could just as easily been me, with filthy clothes and a tattered sleeping bag and empty hopeless eyes and wandering the streets of some major city with no promise of food in my stomach or of being killed for a few dollars of potential drinking money.  Instead, God gave me more than many with mental illness have or ever get to have.

Appreciating the Warmth

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of The Gulag Archipelago, once shared about how he had visited the office of a Soviet general.  The winters are fiercely brutal in Moscow, and the general's office was toasty warm from the crackling fireplace.  Solzhenitsyn – who had lived through winters more brutal still in the distant east of Siberia's prisons – observed that one cannot appreciate the warmth without having first endured the cold.

All of these past several years I have been bitter about the dark, when it could have been far, far darker.  Turns out, things were brighter in my own life than too many ever get to enjoy.

I have good therapists. Good psychiatrists.  The medications are working well.  Most of all, I have been blessed with friendships who are as true as any family.  They have seen me through situations where many would have been abandoned as beyond all hope.  Even when I forget it during those times in the valley, God has provided and has sustained me through much.

I should not be here.  Not in clean clothes and with an iPad to type these words into.  Not even alive.  A dozen times over and more, I should be dead.  But I'm not.

If nothing else was gained from the road behind me, then I will have gained this.  Thankfulness.  Humility.  Appreciation for what I have that others do not.

And I look forward to taking those along the road still ahead.

This chapter of Being Bipolar is dedicated to the many who my life has crossed paths with during the course of the past two years since I left Reidsville, North Carolina.  I could not have come to the place where I am now... in mind and spirit as well as body... were it not for God letting them be met along the way.

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Does this drug stop hay fever? You may not want it...

Please note: I am not a physician or a chemist or a pharmacological engineer or anything of that nature.  I'm only your friendly neighborhood blogger who comes across interesting things to share, and more importantly musings and observations from my own peculiar vantage point on the world.  So you know to take what I'm about to say for whatever that's worth.

That said, this is by now something worth putting out there.  Maybe others have had the same thing happen to them.  I'm very eager to find out if that's the case.

Hay fever is the bane of my existence.  Come every spring and the yellow residue of pollen collecting everywhere, those damnable grains infiltrate my nostrils, set off the chemical receptors and flood those inner tissues with histamine.  And so the cascading effect ends with me sneezing my head off, my eyes and forehead scrunched together in writhing unrelenting nuisance bordering on agony, my nasal breathing nigh impossible because of blood vessels so swollen that they cut off the passage of air.  All the while my nose trickles water that I have come to learn is actually plasma from my blood stream, seeping through the walls of my nasal capillaries.

This time of the year is the second worst for my allergies, after ragweed in August.  April, going on into May and early June, I am a ticking time bomb of histamine-laden mast cells set to explode if even a single point of pollen flits by.  A few years ago it was so bad that I had to miss several rehearsals of our community theater guild's production of The King and I.  Hay fever had reduced my vision to bare squints so, that I could barely see the stage, much less blocking with other actors.

To summarize: I am a textbook study in the deleterious effects of hay fever, also known as seasonal allergies.

But here's the thing: this year so far, in the midst of a pollen-heavy season, I haven't had hay fever at all.

Not one sneeze.  Not one runny nose.  No watery eyes.  No symptom of hay fever whatsoever.

And it's been like this for almost a year.  I went through most of last spring without pollen-induced allergies.  All throughout the summer and on into ragweed season and beyond, there was no indication at all that I'm severely susceptible to pollen particles... and seemingly any other airborne pollegen.

It has totally mystified me.  So of course I set about to understand it.

I've gone over everything related to my medical situation, what it's like now and everything I'm doing to maintain it, and its status more than a year ago.  And I keep coming to the same conclusion about my own case:

I think being on lithium carbonate for treatment of bipolar disorder has made me immune to pollen.

It was late last April when I was put on lithium carbonate - more often referred to as simply lithium - following a very suicidal bout with depression.  The lithium has been a tremendous boon in that regard.  Although the episodes of depression still come and go, I've no doubt that lithium has helped me focus my mind through it, and given me enough grasp over the situation to know that I can and will get through it.  Last April, my depression was so severe that it very nearly destroyed my freelance writing.  I'm still trying to make up for it.  Having a means of managing the worst symptoms of the depression is going a long way toward that.  As well as toward my goal of writing my book about life with manic depressive illness.

Lithium carbonate is a very simple drug.  So simple in fact that it barely qualifies as a "drug" at all.  It's an elemental salt: something that doesn't need a hunnerd-zillion dollar drug factory to churn out.  I don't know if that has any bearing on my case, but there it is.  I'm only putting what I know out for consideration.

I've been taking lithium for almost a year and in that time I have had no symptom of hay fever.  If there's anything at all, it's a very mild "scent" of pollen that my nasal receptors pick up and have a tiny recoil from, but that could be just a reflex action.

It beats the heck out of me.  But in my particular case, it really does seem as though I'm managing my bipolar disorder and completely staving off seasonal allergies, all in one shot.

I don't know if this is something that most people would want, though.  I mean, to be on lithium in the first place you have to be in some pretty dire straits mood-wise.  Definitely not something that I would want anybody to have to experience firsthand (or secondhand either for that matter).  And it's not a matter of simply popping a pill into your mouth once a day either.  Two days ago I went in for periodic blood work: putting my red vino on tap so that it could be analyzed for lithium concentrations which, if too high, could result in liver damage.

I don't know if there's any real correlation between the lithium carbonate and what is now a year-long lack of hay fever.   But, it certainly is a very intriguing coincidence.  And one that, until I know better, I am happy to abide.

So I'm wondering: anyone else out there on lithium and also allergy sufferers noticing this?

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