is you is or are you am bipolar?

Lots of people say I am not my diagnosis and there is a subculture saying I am not bipolar, I have bipolar. No argument from me, I’ve always respected people’s identities. I’m a dyke, I’m politicised, I’m good at that stuff.

bipolar
bʌɪˈpəʊlə
adjective
1.
having or relating to two poles or extremities.
“a sharply bipolar division of affluent and underclass”
“bipolar species”
2.
(of psychiatric illness) characterized by both manic and depressive episodes, or manic ones only.

Some nouns just don’t get separate adjectives, some adjectives don’t get separate nouns and perhaps simple semantics are to blame where bipolar is concerned. Depression – depressed,  cancer – cancerous. Etcetera. Mind you, you don’t hear people declaiming I am flu and if you did, you’d probably chuckle and possibly correct their grammar. So we have bipolar, a word which functions as both noun and adjective and instead of making that distinction, some people get grumpy about it. Fair enough too. Mental health + stigma = understandable sensitivity.

Remember, polar is an adjective too, but while pole sounds fine, you never hear anyone claiming to be a bipole. And Bipolish is just a racist entry in Urban Dictionary.

If you want to be all grammar nazi about it, bipolar is the adjective and you have a choice of nouns like bipolar affective disorder, bipolar illness etc. Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat! Bipolar has become a commonly used noun – and language belongs to the people who speak it.

I am bipolar. I have bipolar affective disorder. Whatever.

Before it got its label reboot, it was called manic depression and that one is simpler. I have manic depression, I am manic depressive.

If you’ve got this far, you’re probably wish I’d shut the fuck up about the word and get on to the disorder. Well alrighty then.

Am I this disorder? I wish I knew. If I’m not, then am I the medicated person? And if so, which one? Is it even relevant?

I am bipolar, hear me roar.
I am bipolar, watch me sleep.

Whut?

Of course, if I am the disorder, I can stop trying to peer at my personality and work out which are aspects of it and which are purely mine. Considering bipolar = genes + environment (like pretty much everything else about people), where does one draw the line?

Who the fuck am I? Well that’s one of the basic lifelong philosophical conundrums, isn’t it? Do I even want it resolved? Is resolution confidence or complacency? Am I going to write a sentence without a question mark at the end of it anytime soon?

I don’t know. And the secret may well lie in not caring, but the journey still matters.

Whether I say I am it or I have it, the fact remains that it is only one of howeverymany LOTS of modifiers/descriptors. Just one.

From Marbles by Ellen Forney (want! Need!):

Call yourself whatever you want, define yourself however you like.

Hi, who are you?

lithium day one – down the hatch

Well I’m about to try it. I picked up my script and some blood test forms today; first dose tonight and then bloods next Friday.

In 2009, Japanese researchers found that in places where the drinking water happened to contain natural levels of lithium, suicide rates were significantly lower. It prompted some psychiatrists to suggest we might help prevent suicides by adding a little bit of lithium to all drinking water. This sounds almost like an echo of the past: between 1930 and 1950, the American soft drink 7 Up contained lithium as a standard ingredient. This was done not for the mood effects, which were not yet really known at the time, but because lithium can also help against headaches. It was added to 7 Up specifically to make that drink a good hangover cure.
Lithium Tears

Oh right, like the cocaine in coke. Hmmm, they shoulda called it Lith.

It’s just a plain white pill, like all the other plain white pills. Smaller 250mg for 3 days and then on to the larger 500mg ones. I’d read about variations of it online, so I asked the pharmacist about it. (She’s pretty cool, in a permanently morose way. She went through effexor withdrawal shortly before I did, and had to do the last week of it in hospital. She says she misses the psychosis it caused. Poor woman personifies the words flat affect, but it’s possible to provoke a couple of facial expressions some days.) She looked at me morosely and said, there is only one kind here, it’s just lithium. Lithium is the element. Good, good … that simplifies things.

Swallow pill, wander to lounge with water, light a bedtime cigarette, listen to sporadic rain …

This little round, white moment might be just another box to check along the way, or it might be the miracle that nudges me into remission.

Edit: almost 3am, irritable as f u c k. Grumble … Oh well, I’ll tell my little mood tracker app all about it in the (official) morning. I lose the instasleep of seroquel – but I’ve also had a night free of RLS for a change.

O5h21 – agitated … no sleep, howling wind outside.

positive thought has no logic

As I headed up to the locked ward on the third floor, I checked my reflection in the mirrored elevator doors, and gave myself one last pep talk: “Okay, Miss Sparkle Plenty, get your act together,” I ordered myself. “All right, Stella Stunning—it’s show time!”

The above is Lori Schiller’s mother’s voice in The Quiet Room. It made me lol my ass off, which really isn’t the right response to a desperately worried mother trying to pull herself together before she sees her inpatient daughter. It’s gorgeously 50s housewife style though isn’t it? And is it just me, or does Miss Sparkle Plenty sound like a My Little Pony?

No. It might work that way for neurotypicals with a normal (define that as you will) mood range, but it just doesn’t work on serious depression (erm as opposed to what, frivolous depression?). It didn’t work for Lori’s mom either. There are times when all the proactivity and positive thinking in the world accomplish absolutely nothing.

I had a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy, it’s good stuff) counsellor who endeared herself to me forever and ensured my respect and cooperation too, by saying in the very first session,

Positive thought is illogical.

So instead of putting what is for the morose, a freaking horrific amount of energy into thinking sunbeams and smiling, it’s possible to strip it down to hard logic and see that negative thinking is equally illogical.

Bingo and eureka.

I’m not saying positive thought isn’t a lovely thing, because it often is. It can feel like hell at the wrong time though and not only that, it has the power to make me feel very, very, very inadequate. I have constipation of the positivity sometimes.

Hey little fighter / soon it might be brighter …

One small change and it’s solid fact instead of wishful. There’s freedom and relief for me in not trying to push my sad self through the eye of the positivity needle (storm?). It makes more sense to me to lose the notion of impending doom in favour of a shrug and a well who knows?

I am bipolar. I am a realist.

It’s lithium time

Trigger warning: picture of Hitler.

After an exhausting and exhaustive period of research, I’m going to try Lithium next. While I was in the throes of the aforementioned research, I tried hard not to tell anyone that my willingness to give Lithium a whirl was influenced by the fact that Kurt Cobain (rumoured to be bipolar himself) sang a song about it.

idk how to embed a video using the wp android app, sorry

I mean, that’s a rather whimsical attitude, isn’t it? Anyway, the choice was made after doing a serious amount of reading, canvassing a sizeable group of bipolar people and discussion with my psychiatrist. See, sensible!

It might be genetic though, because when I told my nextofkin that Lithium was on the shortlist, he said Lithium – like Nirvana.

You gotta get your kicks where you can.

Since I’m tracking this whole journey here, let me record that I’m starting with three days on 250mg, then five days on 500mg. After that, blood tests to check lithium level, kidneys and thyroid.

So farewell Seroquel, you hunger-stimulating little beast … farewell urge to eat like Pacman!

I’ve mailed back to ask how the transition works. I don’t know whether I’m keeping or losing Citalopram.

Isn’t that the most bizarre meme? The words are, however, true.

This is kind of a nothingy post hey? Lol.

To Know Suicide:Depression Can Be Treated, but It Takes CompetenceBy KAY REDFIELD JAMISON