Memories

The first time I remember feeling something, that I later recognized as a sign of bipolar disorder, was  walking down the hall in junior high feeling like I was in a bubble or a cloud.  I remember observing how odd it felt, to be there but not really be there.  I also remember running around our house until I couldn’t run anymore, on a very different day.  It just felt good, but I didn’t ever exercise into injury or exhaustion.  So it never occurred to me that anything was wrong.

I have been around full blown bipolar people.  A friend of my husband’s was well-known as an extreme exercise fanatic and surfer back in the eighties.  He would be seen sometimes running at night from golf course to golf course in Carmel and Pebble Beach, probably covering 20-30 miles at a time, and then would disappear for weeks.  He was also a famous philanderer, though his live-in girlfriend was one of the most loyal and attractive girls I’ve known, and he often spent money irrationally and used various dangerous drugs despite his otherwise healthy diet.  This Adonis-of-a-man killed himself by jumping off a bridge, thinking he would fly, after using what turned out to be a "bad batch" of cocaine.  It was shocking, but looking  back, his outcome was tragically common to many undiagnosed bipolar sufferers who self-medicate illegally and unwisely. 

Bipolar 2 people don’t experience extreme highs and lows.  We get tired, self-critical, discouraged, and unmotivated, but not often suicidal.  I would call it garden variety depression.  On the flip side, we over-plan, overdo, have trouble focusing, and overspend, but we do not usually gamble away the house or run credit cards to their limits or exercise dangerously.  We self-medicate, but with melatonin and caffeine, maybe marijuana and alcohol (I do not recommend the last two for obvious reasons), but not usually the harder stuff.  Psychotropics are largely ineffective, which is probably a good thing because the side effects are not usually worth the benefits and the good effects don’t seem to last.  That has been my experience.

Bipolar 2 sufferers tend to blend into the general population and are often unaware of the nature or even the name of their problem.  If the highs outweigh the lows, we are considered very upbeat and agreeable, if somewhat annoying, characters.  We don’t socialize much when we are down.  We hide out, read books, do just the bare minimum to get by until we are back to “normal.”  But what is normal, really?  Many artists, most of the best writers and creative people of all kinds, have some sort of mood disorder.   It goes hand in hand with inspiration, that indefinable quality that makes any artistic expression timeless and wonderful.  In song-writing, this quality has been referred to as "window-to-the-soul."  The “muse” does not often visit the even-tempered.  I am a song-writer, a singer, a  musician, a fledgling novel writer, a baker; I love to create something out of nothing and I feel dead when I can’t. 

My next post will deal with specific things that have helped me.  I don’t benefit in any way financially from any of the things I’ll mention, btw.  That’s not what this blog is about.