October 2011
J is overrunning and I am living on 6
years and 7 months of borrowed time by my last calculation. After
living with The Condition for as long as I can remember, flirting
with varying degrees of seriousness with putting a name to it before
running terrified in the opposite direction, I have finally thrown in
the towel and come here, to a discreet institution in south London,
to Seek Help.
I’m reminded in the waiting room of
the previous attempts I have made to Seek Help, which, like many in
my situation, have come in dribs and drabs throughout my life. The
most concerted effort previous to coming to J was after failing to
die when I was supposed to and – on the intervention of my family –
undergoing psychiatric assessment in my university town. The
frustrating thing about mood disorders, however, is that their
symptoms are cunningly akin to those also associated with the chronic
condition known as Being Nineteen. These typically include, but are
not limited to:
A) Frequent
changes of appearance, beliefs, principles, even accent – the
putting on of a new personality and identity at the drop of a hat.
These coincide neatly with:
B) Obligatory
severe mood swings, which make it nigh on impossible to commit to
anything long-term. The troughs and peaks of these are broadly
experienced as follows:
C) Self-loathing.
This typically leads to:
i) Social anxiety,
which in turn gives rise to awkward behaviour in group situations and
repeated incidences of self-medication through controlled substances
(a nicer way of saying ‘development of alcohol and drug
dependency’).
ii) Inability to
fulfill work, study and relationship commitments.
iii) Deliberate
self-isolation and immersion in the works of Sarah Kane, Georges
Bataille, Nietzsche, insert further clichés as applicable.
D) Feelings of
invincibility, as though the normal rules of the world do not apply
to oneself. This typically leads to:
- Uncontrollable spending and financial trouble.
- Excessive casual sex with scant regard for emotional damage caused to self or others.
- Putting oneself into dangerous, unstable and/or risky situations with scant regard for the consequences to self or others.
Tricksy. This is also further
complicated by the fact that bipolar exists – like most things in
life – on a spectrum, ranging from severe depression to full-blown
mania. Just before you get to mania, there’s a state called
hypomania, characterized by a burst of fizzy, sparkling energy in
which everything is faster and brighter and funnier and impossibly
wonderful. It’s suddenly possible to survive on no sleep and still
be more productive than your ‘normal’ self three times over. The
feelings of invincibility start to creep in here, too, and can have
detrimental effects (see above). It remains distinct, however, from
full-blown mania which at its peak can veer into the realms of
psychosis, incorporating auditory and visual hallucinations. Whereas
a hypomanic person might think they’re a bit special, a manic
person can literally believe that they are Jesus. Whilst I have
experienced a couple of isolated psychotic episodes (terrifying and
not recommended), I do not experience ‘true’ mania as part of my
condition. Recently, this led J to give me a diagnosis of Bipolar
Affective Disorder, Type II (a lady called Karla Dougherty wrote a
guide to living with this entitled ‘Less Than Crazy’ which pretty
much sums it up). Aged 19, however, it was suggested that I could
not possibly be bipolar as I didn’t get ‘proper mania’, and
that whilst I had suffered with a speck or too of severe depression
and anxiety, I was also a bit wild and silly, and should really try
harder to be stable and pull myself together. The best course of
action in the immediate term appeared to be providing me with a heavy
dose of a tranquilizer so addictive that you’re not supposed to
take it for longer than three weeks, ‘just to take the edge off’.
In the end, I took it for around five months, with one GP advising
that I keep a prescription in a drawer as ‘some patients find it
eases their mind, just being able to look at it and knowing that
there’s some if they really need it’, and some Prozac.
Unsurprisingly, medicating extreme highs and lows with strong
medication inducing extreme highs and lows was not especially
effective, but more of this later. My very northern mother, K, and stepdad, T,
eventually brought me home, took me in hand and weaned me off the
opiates. Following the spiralling high they had brought about, K, T and
I also needed little persuasion that the uppers were a bad idea, and
all of us were put off psychiatrists for the time being. Perhaps
they were right on one thing though, I reasoned, unreasonably.
Perhaps the highs and lows I had lived with for as long as I could
remember were just adolescent character flaws and I really did need
to just…well…try harder. In any case, the alternative was that I
actually was bipolar, and that, as I had discovered, was proper
mental. So, for the moment, a chapter of the recovery process I
like to call Trying Really Hard Not To Be Crazy (TRH) looked like the
best course of action.
