Demons of Manic Depression

[mazbut]

OCTOBER 19, 2009 3:53PM
Demons of Manic Depression
Casandra Woolf

Note: Some readers seem to have the impression I don't take meds. I have been on medication since 1985. My next post will discuss my experience.

Serious mental illness might be grossly overdiagnosed, but it is not a myth. Some of us are different. The same phenomena has been given different names historically--demonic possession, witchcraft, spiritual emergency, spirit walk, mania, schizophrenia. My diagnosis of manic depression is accurate.

When I am manic, I have not been a danger to myself and others in the traditional sense; I have never been at all physically violent. I don't get drunk, use drugs, sleep with strangers, max out my credit cards. But I am dangerous to the people I love the most. When I am manic, my inner bad witch awakens and steals my laptop, my phone, my voice. I am cruel and vicious, inflicting possibly permanent harm on my closest relationships. I get hired and fired and quit jobs when I am manic.

When I am not manic, the witch vanishes, the writer withers, but I function, am loving and supportive, and everyone relaxes, including me. If I have a job I can keep it; if I am unemployed I can't get a job. Whether this state is normality or depression that should be treated more seriously is a mystery I, my family, and my therapists and psychiatrists have never solved. Twenty-seven years of treatment I have failed to integrate my manic and depressive sides, even though they have shaped almost all my 64 years. Since my primary ambition is to write, my not writing when I am not manic and trashing what I have written are devastating.

Mania is seductive. I need little sleep; I have unlimited energy. I exercise and have to remind myself to eat. I feel and sometimes act 20 years younger. My memory comes back. I remember high school geometry. Suddenly I start quoting college lectures. People tell me their long-buried secrets. My best boss told me she knew I was manic when she heard gales of laughter throughout the library. At first she didn't notice that no one was doing much work, because I seemed to be doing everyone's job. People start calling in sick.

My first husband is a radiation physicist. Coincidentally, his linear accelerator sometimes went on the fritz when I was manic. I never needed to ask John to explain why he considered me "his personal Manhattan project." I am safer alone in a room with a computer and music, entering a church, any church, or walking the streets of Manhattan. Strangers sometimes seem angels in diguise who tell me exactly what I need to hear. Then I experienced a magical mystery tour, not a hellish nightmare.

My normal boundaries are porous. What I have read or viewed or dreamed blur into my consciousness as if I had directly experienced them. I am a different person depending upon whom I interact with. My porous boundaries turn the loony bin into hell. Suddenly my psyche is bombarded with the issues of all the patients and staff. I excel at evoking the insanity of sane people and the sanity of insane people. When I was exerting my witchlike powers, it was very hard to distinguish the patients from the staff What happened to me in the loony bin would not happen to to someone who wasn't a manic witch My psychiatrist observed that when I was hospitalized for ten days, he spent all his time talking about me. Most of his patients and the staff needed to vent about me, either positively or negatively.

Agonizingly, I am better off alone or with strangers than with the people whom I love. I sometimes feel I am draining energy from the men who love me. As I get less sleep, they need more sleep. My husband or my children get sick. When I am manic, past traumas bleed into the present, and I experience them as if they just happened. My second husband brilliantly explains it as "emotional hemophilia."

Much as she wanted to help, my mother was not the best person to be around because of what had happened in our pasts, although we had dealt with and gone beyond past problems. What came crashing back when I was manic was my fear of telling my mom that my father molested me when I was 12 because she would never believe me. I had trouble distinguishing the inadequate childhood mother from the wonderful present mother. Tragically, I could not be around my first husband when I was manic; we literally drove each other crazy. My mania and his depression and anxiety undermined what had been a good marriage for a very long time. We struggled valiantly for our daughters' sakes, but our marriage therapists failed us.

I need to retreat to my room and write when I am even hypomanic and not depend upon the people I love. The internet has been a miracle. But I am often painfully lonely. The Bible passage that means the most to me is Christ's agony in the garden, just before he was arrested and crucified. His apostles sleep and cannot stay awake with him. The most loving thing I can do for the people I love is to leave them entirely alone.

I am leary of facile genetic explanations. People are born with vulnerabilities that are affected adversely by life experiences. Too often the family's identified patient picks up all the secrets, emotions, and conflicts everyone else is hiding. Both my mother and I had five brothers; we learned to cry alone in our room and lock the door.

Therapy can be a mixed blessing for manic depressives. Sometimes the therapist needs to realize that the behavior he is treating is the behavior he is evoking. Therapists who have not been adequately analyzed are dangerous. You could be better off with your local minister or bartender. Manic depressives need to practice denial and repression; otherwise past traumas seem like present traumas when you are manic. The effectiveness of psychiatric drugs has been oversold. Too often the drug just masks the symptoms as it erases the personality. No one understands how they work. Few psychiatrist know how to help patients go off a drug that is not helping.

I often wish I had sought in God what I sought in my male psychiatrists. I go back to church when I am manic, and it is usually healing. I have had some particularly wonderful experiences in African America churches. They have amazing sensitivty to a lost child who needs nurturing.

We don't know how to help people who are mentally ill. Listening to the patients would be the best way to learn. But even someone with my intellectual arrogance has muzzled myself for 25 years, because the stigma and discrimination are so great. I am writing under a pseudonym. The substance abuse field welcomes wounded healers into their profession. But the mental health field obviously doesn't believe in their own treatments. I am unemployable as a social worker if I disclose my illness. I can only work with clients privately. I have never had trouble working with patients directly. But how my colleagues treat seriously mentally ill clients has often been unbearable.

Denying mental illness is abandoning too many vulnerable people to the streets. When psychotropic drugs first burst on the scene, they seemed miraculous; psychiatric hospitals emptied out and then were closed down. The community mental health centers that were supposed to replace the hospitals never materialized, and society abandoned the seriously mentally ill who could not fit into the fast-paced, inhumane American economy. As I pass by homeless men sleeping on the street in New York and don't stop to see if they need help, I think of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and wonder what I am going to tell my toddler grandson.

[sexysadie]

Wow, she certainly knows how to write. She says in her first sentence that she`s been on meds since 1985, do they help at all I wonder? The reason I ask is because she talks about when she is manic and when she is not....I'm curious as to whether or not the periods when she IS manic are times when she's not taking her meds, if so, I find it a bit weird that she'd leave that out.
All I can say is, God love her and thank you for sharing.

[~ Anna ~]

Originally Posted by sexysadie

Wow, she certainly knows how to write. She says in her first sentence that she`s been on meds since 1985, do they help at all I wonder? The reason I ask is because she talks about when she is manic and when she is not....I'm curious as to whether or not the periods when she IS manic are times when she's not taking her meds, if so, I find it a bit weird that she'd leave that out.
All I can say is, God love her and thank you for sharing.

Had to google it up...as i dont know much about it or know sufferers..
We have a daily soap *eastenders *where one character just diagnosed,but refuses to take the meds and got addmitted to a clinique now by her mum
for her own good
googled this up...
Bi polar Disorder Medication and Treatment

In most cases, bipolar disorder is much better controlled
if treatment is continuous rather than on and off.

Even when there are no breaks in treatment,
mood changes can occur and should be reported immediately
to your doctor.

The doctor may be able to prevent a full-blown episode by making adjustments to the treatment plan or medication.

Working closely with the doctor and communicating openly about treatment concerns and options can make a difference in treatment effectiveness.

[~ Anna ~]

Medications for Bi polar Disorder

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness,
is a mental illness that causes unpredictable shifts in a person's mood,
energy and ability to function.
Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through,
the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe.
They can result in damaged relationships,
poor job or school performance and even suicide.
Bipolar disorder can be treated,
and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives.

[mazbut]

Originally Posted by anna_hun

Medications for Bi polar Disorder

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness,
is a mental illness that causes unpredictable shifts in a person's mood,
energy and ability to function.
Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through,
the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe.
They can result in damaged relationships,
poor job or school performance and even suicide.
Bipolar disorder can be treated,
and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives.

does the 'blue' pill help?

[squirt]

I know several people who are bi-polar, my youngest son's wife is one, it's not an easy thing to live with by any means, the internal war between "sides" is a constant battle, but with my son's patience and love, and the help of medications, she's able to lead a relatively "normal" life

[hortysir]

I screw Penguins AND Eskimos....does that make me bi-polar???

[squirt]

didn't realize they had either of those things in Florida?! lol

[hortysir]

and snowbirds, and yankees, and even a few smart Texans

[mazbut]

Originally Posted by hortysir

and snowbirds, and yankees, and even a few smart Texans

are you sure, injun??