Mental Health Awareness Month: This Blog

My 2008 bipolar diagnosis suddenly made sense of all the weirdnesses floating around in my head: plunging depressions, paranoias, social anxieties, impulsive behaviors, suicidal ideation, big ideas without consequences alarms, racing thoughts, abject terror in social situations (I once had a full-on panic attack when I opened a party invitation that came in the mail) (remember getting party invitations in the mail?) …

Newly armed with a name for the collective demons I faced, I started fighting back (or at least trying to manage my world) with everything I had at my disposal—which at the beginning wasn't much because my doctor didn’t think I needed medication. So I launched into a homemade cocktail of deep breaths, internal pep talks, more-informed behaviors and decisions, reading everything I could find, looking for a new doctor who might have more powerful (i.e., pharmaceutical) tools for me to use … and the expectation that I might at any moment need to just retreat to the safety of my Chicago condo in the sky to regroup and start again the next day.

I also became self-aware enough to start being embarrassed by things I did in public … mostly bouncing around as though I were on fire, being so down I’d no-show at events I promised to attend, and in more than one instance literally running away when someone tried to introduce me to a friend.
So I did what any self-respecting writer would do: I turned to social media to start explaining myself and apologizing for being so damn weird. And to my surprise, I almost immediately started getting understanding, support … and thanks from people in similar situations for being so open about my mental illness and the challenges it brought me.

Eventually someone suggested that I start a blog to document my thoughts, feelings, experiences, and the highs and lows of my journey. So I launched TMIpolar (get it? It’s BI polar but I overshare so it’s TMI polar, which I will go to my grave thinking is one of my most clever linguistic inventions) and backfilled it with everything I’d posted and started filling it with my new adventures.

There is also a book in the works, but the prospect of organizing my thoughts into something approaching legitimate book form is so overwhelming that you shouldn’t start looking for it in bookstores until 2095.

In a weird way to think this is unfortunate, I unfortunately have been so stable in the last few years that I haven’t had much to post about any noteworthy ups and downs of my personal journey. But I’ve aggregated all my Mental Health Awareness Month essays along with other essays/thoughts/reviews/etc here for my own—along with anyone else’s—reference.

So scroll through my ramblings and even bookmark the site if you want. I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time organizing things by keywords for your perusing convenience. And I hope it helps (or at the very least entertains) you if you find you need it.

The horrors of Depakote

Facebook is reminding me that seven years ago today was my first attempt at functioning in public (specifically at work) on the hardcore anticonvulsant Depakote:

Depakote either works wonders for you or it destroys you, and I was DEFINITELY on its no-fly list. The pharmacist who filled my first prescription actually pulled me into a consultation room, warned me about the horrible, terrifying things I might experience, and literally held onto my hand as she talked to me. I'll never forget the look in her eyes that was a mix of both kindness and visible concern.

[Don't get me started on the hack Chicago psychiatrist who'd prescribed it without saying any of this to me and who obviously made zero attempt to set up a line of communication should I have problems in my first terrifying, confusing days and weeks.]

Once I got home that night, I took my first dose with much trepidation, went to bed on the guestroom bed my parents slept in on their visits so I could maybe feel somehow close to them if I needed to ... and right on schedule I was immediately flooded with such graphic nightmares of being hunted and murdered over and over that they're seared in my brain and I can still replay them in my head with absolute clarity.

That was a Friday night, and all weekend I'd hallucinate intruders in black hiding in my apartment and wake up screaming when I tried to sleep. But psych drugs can have side effects like these as you ramp up, and I was at least self-aware enough to know (or be pretty sure I knew) that the hallucinations weren't real and the nightmares would eventually go away.

Which they never did. I was taking Depakote with the more established anticonvulsant Lamictal (which I'd been on for years) and at least one other drug (but probably two or three) that I can't remember, and in the weeks that followed it seemed to be the tipping point from barely managing my bipolar swings to living in terrifying hallucinations and falling into daylong blackouts where I'd come to riding the Red Line north to parts of Chicago I'd never been to or sitting on a bench in the Lincoln Park Zoo without my coat or my phone.

I seem to recall that seven years ago today I was able to hold myself together at work, but I do know that the abovementioned blackouts caused me to start missing entire days of work. I can't remember how long I gave Depakote to finally level out in my head and maybe start working, but I do remember it never did. And my hack psychiatrist eventually had me quit it cold-turkey as he threw some other random drug at me. And I was too meek and confused and overcome with self-doubt to challenge him on any of it.

And it was all awful. Just ... awful.

But it DID give me an opportunity to make a big-gay-musical pun (that wasn't half bad, imho) about it on Facebook seven years ago today. So there's that.

And it took another four years before I found my magic psych cocktail that's kept me stable and functioning and able to laugh at everything I went through. Especially that awesome big-gay-musical pun.

And if you're struggling through your own parade of trial-and-error psych meds (hopefully not with that hack psychiatrist at the helm), try to be be patient and diligent and even optimistic about your adventures. I made it. There's every chance you will too.

My nephew brought his dog over to bring me back to life tonight!

Bridget (the dog, not my nephew) is the best medical dog in the world except 1) she has no accredited nursing degree 2) she keeps asking to borrow my stethoscope and I'm beginning to suspect she doesn't even have one of her own 3) her scrubs are decorated with little superhero kitties, which—I'm sorry—is COMPLETELY implausible for a dog nurse 4) she is way too fidgety to just lie down and snuggle 5) she's even worse when you try to get her in a picture, like this tender loving emotional nursey one of us both sitting upright and attentive and side by side in front of the lit tree.

So I swear my bloated woe-is-me ramblings on here every time I spiral out of control aren't thinly veiled solicitations for love notes in the comments. In actuality, they're not even veiled at all. I know I have a vast support network, I am humbled by its size and sincerity, and sometimes getting lengthy lists of Facebook comments reminding me you're all out there does more good than you could ever imagine. So thank you. Between you, my parents (who are the fiercest, most devoted advocates a crazy bipolar man could ever hope to have), Bridget the dog (who at this moment is selfishly in the next room not doing a damn thing on behalf of my mental health), a workday highlighted by two Diet Cokes, a bag of Famous Amos cookies and my favorite shoes, a 500-hour nap and a bowl of store-brand Jell-O that was so deliciously limey that no other lime in my past or future will ever measure up, I am exponentially better than I was when I started typing my unfocused manifesto 24 hours ago. I'm not out of the fog yet and I'm gonna spiral out of control again sometime but I learn new ways to cope each time and when I brain-dump on here again to organize my thoughts, my Facebook support army will come out of the woodwork again and make me feel able to keep on keepin' on.

The therapeutic benefits of ice cream

Misery is feeling so shitty at work that you have to admit defeat and come home early from the job you love and never want to jeopardize.

Cozy is getting home to find your folks have made up the couch like a bed so you can climb in it the second you get your shoes off.

Happiness is being awakened in time to have a home-cooked dinner with your folks.

Frustration is choking down the newest mountain of evening psychotropics in the hopes that this cocktail will finally—FINALLY—be the magic bullet that promotes social confidence and friendly comfort and eliminates embarrassing side effects like wiggling and grunting and face touching and hair swirling and eye rolling and knee shaking and foot tapping and diminished motor skills in my hands and fingers and time-sucking distractibility with Facebook or rubber bands or the shoes I'm wearing or how many 5 Hour Energies or Diet Mountain Dews I can nurse before lunch.

But there is a mighty cloud of joy amid all that complicated emotional mess: the unbridled happiness I get from slurping up a giant chocolate malt my dad made for me (with extra malt because we're not savages) and enjoying it along with my parents as we discuss the news of the day interspersed with attempts to fix my mom's perpetually broken iPad even though none of us has even a modicum of a clue what we're doing. It's a small gesture of love and goodwill for what I often feel is an irreparably broken man.