Bipolar Off Meds Success

If it hasn't become apparent by now, I'm pretty much done with this blog. It served it's purpose, which was to get me writing again and to help me figure out just what it was I needed to do with that whole "bipolar incident".

I wanted to finish off on a positive note, though, and here it is:

A couple of weeks ago I went to my regular doctor for a "med-check", and as he was going through my records, the conversation went like this:

Dr. R: So are you still seeing the psychiatrist?

Me: No, I haven't seen him in three years.

Dr. R: And you're not taking any of the psych meds any longer.

Me: No, I went off the mood stabilizers and antidepressants five years ago…and I haven't taken trazodone in over two years.

Dr. R: And it doesn't look like you've had any mood issues in that time.

Me: No, I haven't. I've had fewer mood swings in the last three years than ever. I'm pretty sure they were caused by the aspartame in the diet soda I was drinking.

Dr. R: Really? Not the caffeine?

Me: I don't think so. I still drink tea, and it doesn't cause me any trouble. But the mood swings started when I was nineteen and started drinking gallons of diet soda a day to stay awake to study. When I stopped the diet soda, the mood swings stopped.

Dr. R: Wow. That's really interesting. So this bipolar diagnosis we have on here really isn't relevant any more. I'm going to take it off your records.

So that, my friends, is that. I am officially undiagnosed.

No prizes for guessing whether or not the psychiatrist would agree with that assessment…

I'm going to leave the blog up in the hope that it might help someone else in a situation similar to mine begin to ask questions and seek answers. While we all have to find our own answers, we don't do it in a vacuum. The people who helped me come to terms with what happened to me and helped me during the journey of figuring out just what that was all about are the authors of the blogs listed on the sidebar. Thanks to all of them, and thanks to the people out there who read my entries and asked insightful questions, provided comfort and support, and were just good blog friends in general.

Adios, dudes!

Medication Madness: A Recovery Story

Gianna first asked me to write this back in December for the Recovery Page at her blog, Beyond Meds. It was posted there about a month ago, but I thought I'd put it here, too, since this blog is kind of about reclaiming one's life after being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and buying into the bullshit for a while before finally seeing the light.

In retrospect, I find it interesting, tragic, and infuriating that a gp and a psychiatrist were able to take an otherwise healthy woman suffering from situation-induced anxiety with a history of two brief periods of depression probably caused by as-yet undiagnosed hypothyroidism, and parlay that into a bipolar diagnosis and a life-sentence of medication-or-else.

I'd always had ups and downs. As a child, I'd been very anxious and very creative. As a writer I'd experienced intense writing highs when I could write for hours at a time and get by with very little sleep, and I'd also experienced intense creative lows where my mind seemed to be mired in muck and I couldn't eke out a single sentence for weeks on end. It never occurred to me to medicalize of pathologize that behavior...it was just part of me and who I was and how I operated.

In the fall of 2003, I went to my gp to get something to help me sleep. I'd taken Ambien before, when I had my creative periods and just couldn't get the wheels to stop turning long enough to fall asleep, and figured that was probably what I needed. At the time, we had a very difficult, anxious family situation going on—my best friend, who was in the process of getting a divorce, had moved in with us, and had promptly met and began an affair with my then-married brother-in-law, putting me smack in the middle between her and his bewildered wife. When I lay down to sleep, I couldn't stop thinking about what was going on and how to fix it. When I went to see my gp for help, my regular doctor wasn't there, and I had to see one of his partners. I was running on maybe three hours of sleep a night for the past week, and felt like I had way too much energy for having had that little amount of sleep.

The doctor asked me if I'd ever been depressed. I recalled two six-week periods, on in 1999 and one in 2001 when I had felt really down, unmotivated, and exhausted. Each of these periods of "depression" resolved on their own without medication. Sure, I'd felt horrible, but I was a young mother stuck at home with two small children and no car (let alone no time to write), which hadn't exactly been part of my career-oriented game plan. The doctor decided that I might be bipolar and asked me how I felt about seeing a psychiatrist. I was a bit surprised, but figured she probably knew what she was talking about and said I would make an appointment. She told me it would probably be a number of weeks or possibly months before I could get in to see anyone and that she would prescribe something for me to take to "bring me down" until I could get an appointment.

She gave me Zyprexa.

She also drew blood for a thyroid test, saying it was possible that my thyroid levels were high.

I managed to get an appointment with a psychiatrist six weeks out. In the meantime, I thought it wouldn't hurt to do some research on bipolar disorder. What I learned did not make me very happy. I read the DSM laundry list of symptoms of bipolar disorder, and realized that I had had all of those symptoms at one time or another. I began going through my journals and noting times when I had been down and times when I had been unusually creative or energetic. No pattern emerged, but there were an awful lot of ups and downs.

A week after my initial appointment with the gp, the thyroid results came back, and I learned that my thyroid levels were low and that I would need to start taking Synthroid. This was no surprise, really, as my mother had been diagnosed with the same thing years ago. But I have to wonder now just how long that had been going on, and whether it might have played a part in those two periods of "depression" I'd experienced a few years earlier.

The Zyprexa took a week or so to kick in, but it did seem to help. By the time I went to see the psychiatrist, I was sleeping better and my anxiety levels had come down somewhat (former best friend had moved in with brother-in-law, so I wasn't having to deal with that situation on a daily basis), though they were still a lot higher than normal. When I finally went to see the psychiatrist, I believed I had educated myself about bipolar disorder, and was fully prepared for him to diagnose me and medicate me. After a 45 minute interview, this man whom I had never met before and knew nothing about me other than my answers to his standardized questions, diagnosed me with bipolar II and told me that I would need to start medication immediately and that I would need to take it forever.

He did not once ask about anything that might be going on in my life.

To his credit, he wasn't too thrilled that the gp had prescribed Zyprexa. "We don't like Zyprexa," he told me, "but I'm sure she was just trying to help." He prescribed Depakote for the mood swings and trazodone (an older antidepressant with the helpful side effect of making one extremely sleepy) to help me sleep.

In my research, I had read that many writers and artists who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder refused to take medication because it stopped them from being able to create. I told him I was a writer, and I was concerned about my ability to write while on medications. He gave me a condescending look and said, "Depakote won't kill your creativity." I took my prescriptions and dutifully made an appointment to see him again in four weeks.

At my next appointment, I told him I was still feeling a lot of anxiety, although I was sleeping better. He prescribed Lexapro, an antidepressant, because he said it would help with the anxiety and that he was concerned that untreated anxiety might lead to depression.

I swallowed all the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. I became a student of my moods. When I felt good, I was "hypomanic" and needed to call him and ask him to increase my Depakote. When I felt lousy, I was obviously becoming "depressed" and needed to have more Lexapro. There was no room for normal, human emotions in my illness, for any emotion I felt might be the herald of disaster. My doctor told me on every appointment that the medications were "saving my life" and that if I ever stopped them I would ruin my life.

My Depakote dose went up and up and so did my weight. Within six months I had put on sixty pounds, and within a year I was suffering from terrible pain in my feet from plantar fasciitis, which the foot doctor whose advice I sought told me had been brought on by gaining so much weight so quickly. He prescribed orthotics and stretching exercises, but also told me that it was likely that I would not find a whole lot of relief until I lost some of the weight. I tried the orthotics, I tried the stretching, I tried to lose weight, and finally I submitted to painful cortisone shots, which brought some relief, but alas, only for a few weeks, and then the pain would return.

Pain became my constant companion. It was so bad that many evenings I was in tears. I couldn't be on my feet for more than ten minutes without excruciating pain. Housework had to be done in fits and starts. Grocery shopping became a nightmare, and I had to strategically plan shopping trips that would keep me in just one area of the store for the minimum amount of time. I missed out on taking the children places like the zoo, the science museum, and the amusement park because I just couldn't be on my feet for that long.

Soon after starting the Lexapro, my moods began to cycle rapidly. During my first year on Lexapro, I experienced three depressive episodes and two hypomanic episodes. My doctor took this as validation that being on medications was the right course, because obviously my illness was worsening, and it was a good thing we'd caught it before things really went off the rails.

It never occurred to me that the medications might be the cause of the mood swings.

As the doses of medication increased, my mind started to shut down. Where once I had possessed a rapier wit, now it was all I could do to get the right word out without stuttering. My hands shook and I couldn't do the fine needlework I'd always taken pride in. And worst of all, my verbal abilities disappeared. I couldn't write. I couldn't remember things. I couldn't even find the right words half the time. I also lost all interest in sex, and I found myself unable to care about anything. Life just drifted by, and nothing ever seemed to touch me. In fact, the only time I really felt anything was when my moods cycled up or down.

But I had to keep taking the medications, right? Because if I stopped, I'd "ruin my life", and I was damned lucky that we had caught this problem before things got really out of hand. A doctor had told me so, and he was Educated and Informed, so he had to know what he was talking about, right? After all, he was a professional psychiatrist—an expert on mood disorders--and a professor at a respected university, to boot. I could trust him...right? And after all, my mood swings had become much more frequent and much more severe in recent months. All proof to me that I was doing the right thing.

As time went on I became more and more drugged and disillusioned. I couldn't write anymore so my dreams of writing and publishing novels for a living went down the toilet. By the fall of 2004, over-medicated and overweight, the future no longer seemed bright and full of colour and energy. It looked cold and numb, the colour of ash. And I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that this is my life now. I have bipolar disorder and I'm lucky to have a life at all.

I tried complaining to my psychiatrist about some of this, but although he listened, I do not think he ever really heard me. And he had an answer for everything:

"I'm concerned about the amount of weight I'm putting on," I told him at one appointment. "When do the risks of carrying around this extra weight outweigh the benefits of taking the medications?"

"You are taking the best medications we have available," he told me, and his manner made me feel like an ungrateful child asking for a second helping of dessert.

"What about going off the medications for a while and seeing what happens?" I persisted, aware that weight loss wasn't going to happen on Depakote—I'd already been trying, and was having no luck.

He gave me a severe look and said, "You are an intelligent woman. Your episodes have been more frequent during the last year, and you know that if you stop taking your medications, you will ruin your life."

Eventually, in the winter of 2005, after months of me pestering him at every visit, he finally agreed to let me try Lamictal. I was very excited at the prospect, because I had read that Lamictal was not as sedating as Depakote—I might actually be able to think and write while on this drug—and it was weight neutral, so I might be able to lose weight as well. I was instructed to cut my Depakote down over a few weeks from 2500 mg to 1000 mg, and then start the Lamictal, then taper the rest of the Depakote after I was up to 100 mg of Lamictal a day. Within three months, if all went well, I would be off the Depakote entirely.

Unfortunately for me, I developed the dreaded Rash, and was told to stop the Lamictal immediately. Cold turkey. I was on 100 mg at the time, and stopped as instructed. A week later I came down with the worst "flu" I'd ever had and was in bed for six weeks with the worst fatigue I had ever felt. I was so exhausted I could barely get off the couch to stagger to the bathroom. I didn't have the energy to make dinner or do laundry, or anything I normally did. My husband had to take over pretty much all the household chores as all I was capable of doing was lying on the couch sleeping 18-20 hours a day. At that time I'd never heard of Lamictal withdrawal, and my doctor had not mentioned anything about the risks or symptoms associated with stopping it so abruptly, and so I assumed I'd had a rotten bout of flu. I know better now.

So the Lamictal experiment had failed, but I was down to only 1000 mg of Depakote, and was beginning to be able to think a bit more clearly. My memory was better and I didn't feel like I was groping for the right words all the time. The shakes had mostly gone away, although I still couldn't do really fine needlework. And I was starting to care about things again. I felt so much better on the lower dose that I told my doctor I wanted to stay there for a while. He agreed.

The turning point came that spring when my husband suffered a severe heart attack. In a cold, numb daze, I dealt with it. I called the ambulance, I called the neighbor to take care of the kids, I drove (with my terrible sense of direction and fear of getting lost) into the big city to a hospital I'd never been to before, and I held it together. I didn't cry. I didn't feel much of anything, actually.

Fortunately, my husband survived. He had a catheterization procedure done, which he came through with flying colours, and was out of the hospital within three days. But I still couldn't feel anything. I couldn't even cry, and I knew that wasn't normal.

At that point, I decided that I'd had enough of being drugged numb. I was completely unable to respond to normal human emotion, and I began to fear that I was not able to respond to my children appropriately. When I told my doctor that I was concerned about the fact that this traumatic, life-changing event had occurred and that I had been unable to react to it, his response was, "Well, the medication protected you."

Yeah. Thanks ever so, doc.

That was my last visit to him. Without having a clue what I was doing, I tapered my medications down over the next month, and by the summer I was off of Depakote and Lexapro. I was still taking trazodone to help me sleep, because I still believed I had bipolar disorder, and that I needed to do everything in my power to stay stable. I embarked upon a program of healthy living—excellent nutrition, supplements, regular bedtimes with trazodone to make sure I got my sleep. I even gave up caffeine. I'd been a regular Diet Coke drinker for years, but I knew that caffeine could mess up my sleep, and I'd had it hammered into my brain for the last year and a half that proper sleep could be the difference between stability and a manic episode. When I was on the medications, caffeine was often the only thing that allowed me to see through the drug fog long enough to get the kids off to school in the mornings, but with the dulling effects of medication gone, I found that I didn't need caffeine any more. For exercise, I started a simple yoga routine because that was about the only thing I could think of that didn't involve impact that would hurt my feet. I found that I enjoyed yoga a lot, and this naturally led me to an interest in meditation, which I added on to the end of my yoga program.

The first week completely off meds was rough. My emotions were all over the map. But I refused to pathologize them. I told myself that I'd had everything deadened for the last year and a half, and that I had to become accustomed to feeling things again. I told myself that I had a year and a half of chemically suppressed emotion that I needed to deal with, so I let myself cry, I let myself feel whatever it was I needed to feel, and embraced the fact that I could feel at all. After that week, things eased up and I began to feel more like my old self.

I began to lose weight slowly, and the yoga had an unexpected benefit—even before I had lost much weight, the pain in my feet began to ease up (although it did not disappear entirely until I had lost thirty of the sixty pounds I'd put on). Soon I was able to go back to my usual activities, and even take short walks.

I was still taking trazodone, and I still believed that I had become that most dangerous of creatures, an Unmedicated Bipolar. Months went by and I was still unable to write. I was afraid that something, either the bipolar disorder or the medications, had damaged my mind, destroyed my creativity. I tried everything to bring it back, but nothing seemed to work. The ability to write seemed to be intact, but it didn't move me that way it once had, there was none of the sparkle I recalled, and I lacked the drive to do the one thing that I had once believed to be my life's purpose.

A couple of years passed. I was still taking trazodone, and I lived in constant fear that I was going to have an "episode" and not be able to control myself. Eventually, the fear got to me and I decided that, knowing how long it takes to see a psychiatrist, it might not be a bad idea to have one on board, "just in case." I found one not too far from my house, and went to see him. Even though I had been stable off medications for nearly three years, he wanted to put me back on medication. I told him I would consider it, but I also told him point blank that I refused to take anything that would make me gain weight or make me stupid. He named three medications—Abilify, Lamictal, and Trileptal. I told him about my past Lamictal problems (the rash, at least, not the withdrawal symptoms, as I still believed it had just been a nasty bout of flu), and he suggested that if we increased the dose much more slowly and without Depakote present that things might go better. He told me to research the medications he had suggested and we would discuss them next time.

However. In my research I came across Phil Dawdy's Furious Seasons, and Gianna's Beyond Meds, and after doing much reading and thinking, I decided that this new psychiatrist had a hell of a lot of nerve suggesting that I ought to be on medication when I'd been completely stable on just trazodone for nearly three years. And in fact, I decided that I didn't want to be on trazodone anymore either, because from what I'd been reading, it just might be responsible for my lack of enthusiasm for writing.

My trazodone taper was a lot smarter than the others. It took me about four months to go from 200 mg a day to nothing. I had headaches for a few days every time I lowered the dose, and I had a couple of weeks somewhere in the middle where I'd have scary flashes of suicidal thoughts. But I persisted, because during this time, I was reading recovery stories and looking into alternative mental health solutions, and realizing that drugs might well have been part of the problem rather than the solution.

In my reading, I also came across some information about the artificial sweetener Aspartame being implicated in mood disorders. When I thought back over my own history, I realized that my mood swings had started in college, soon after I'd turned to diet soda as a study aid. I'd never liked coffee or tea, and didn't want the calories in regular soda, so Diet Coke became my drug of choice. More importantly, those mood swings had stopped when I'd stopped drinking Diet Coke.

As I write this, I've been off mood stabilizers for over three and a half years, and off of trazodone for about six months. My enthusiasm for writing seems to be returning, and I feel better and more stable than I have in years. The mood swings that followed me through college and beyond are gone, and I've felt neither depression nor hypomania since stopping mood stabilizers and aspartame. I am incredibly grateful to Gianna and others who have shared their recovery stories on her site, because if I hadn't found this resource, I might well have listened to that second psychiatrist last year, and allowed him to frighten me back onto the medication merry-go-round.

I no longer live in fear that I am going to lose control or that the Bipolar Monster is going to rear its ugly head and ruin my life. I no longer believe that I have untreated bipolar disorder. I accept the fact that I had symptoms of bipolar disorder, but as more and more time passes with no recurrence of these symptoms, I become more and more convinced that these symptoms were caused by a toxic reaction to Aspartame, and have nothing to do with bipolar disorder.

For a while, I was pretty angry. Angry that drugs like Aspartame could be put into the food supply because they were supposed to be "safe". Angry that I could be diagnosed with a major mental illness so quickly and easily by someone who had never met me. Angry that the diagnostic criteria for this life sentence left no room for life-circumstances and that the doctors I saw never asked about anything beyond those narrow criteria. Angry that my doctors saw medications as the only treatment options available and refused to consider alternatives. And mostly angry at myself, that I bought into the whole thing in the first place, that I listened to doctors without questioning. That I bought into mainstream media perceptions. That I was a sheep. Baa...

But you can't stay angry forever, and my yoga practice has helped me to accept what happened and to make peace with it. I had to go there to get here, and I like where I am now. That which does not kill us can make us stronger...and perhaps wiser, if we are open to learning from it.

Today, I've lost about forty-five of the sixty pounds Depakote packed onto me, and my feet no longer hurt—I can now do some of the higher impact activities I used to enjoy. I'm starting to write again, and rather than feeling angry, I'm starting to feel like I had a pretty lucky escape.

Hopefully reading my story might help someone else start to think and to question...and maybe give them the inspiration to stage their own lucky escape.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves have so much power over us. They shape our self-concept, mold our identity, because in the ways that count, we are what we believe we are.

So it's important for me to decide which story I want to believe about my "bipolar" adventure. That "manic" episode I had that was so out of control, that drove me to a psychiatrist and into chemical restraints...which story do I tell myself about that? Which one is my truth?

Do I tell myself that it was bipolar disorder? That the mood swings I experienced from ages 19 to 40 were due to that? But there is no family history of bipolar....depression, yes, but not bipolar. And I'm not even having mood swings any more...haven't had any for four years now...even my psychiatrist is calling me an anomaly. So I don't think that's the right story.

Do I tell myself it was just me letting off steam after having been trapped at home with infants for 7 years, and finally tasting freedom? A partying mid-life crisis sort of thing? But that smacks of complete irresponsibility, something I've never been known for. Knowing myself for what I have been for most of my life, I cannot quite buy into this story, either.

Do I tell myself that I had bipolar symptoms due to my ingesting large quantities of aspartame? That seems to make the most sense of any of the stories. But somehow there seems to be something wrong with this one, too...like maybe it's a cop-out, an easy way to absolve myself of responsibility for some of my behavior...

It all seems so clear in retrospect, doesn't it? I should have done this, I should not have done that...

I need to tell myself a new story that will not make me feel like crawling under a rock or beating my head on the ground for being so stupid...problem is that I'm still not sure what the real story is...and upon reflection, I'm not so sure it's about figuring out the story at all...because the past is immutable...what happened--happened. I can't change it now. What I can change is how I look at it. My perspective.

So maybe it's about acceptance rather than story...I need to:
* stop beating myself up...the past cannot be changed, much as I might like to change it.
* accept that I probably had a toxic reaction to chemicals I was putting in my body because I didn't know any better.
* accept that modern medicine--especially psychiatry--does not understand nearly as much about the human psyche as it thinks it does.
* accept that I did the best I could with the information I had.

Whew...that's a lot of acceptance there. But I think that's what I'm needing. Acceptance.

Why is acceptance so hard?

Writing Prompt: It seems that it is much easier to accept things about other people than it is to accept things about ourselves. What things in your life are you still trying to accept? What do you think makes acceptance so difficult sometimes? What can you do to make acceptance easier?

Social Anxiety? Or Just Me?

I quit my quilters' guild. I was supposed to go on Monday night, and I just couldn't deal with sitting in that room with all those women that I don't feel I have anything in common with...except that we all make quilts. Of course, my quilts don't look anything like theirs...mine aren't these pretty, traditional things in country blues and pinks with perfect points and lovely neat blocks. My quilts are abstract-flowing-full-of-rivers-of-color things that look like someone spilled a paintbox and then threw water all over it...

Okay, well I like them!

So anyway, I'm not sure what it is with me...I have a really hard time belonging to groups. Part of it is never feeling like I have anything in common with the people in the group. Part of it is not wanting to commit to anything too far ahead (this comes from the bipolar thing...not knowing if I would be too depressed to get my butt off the couch when push came to shove). Part of it is me being me, which is to say, shy and introverted and just not needing or wanting to have a whole lot of people around me. Crowds irritate me to the extreme. I can't stand that amount of energy around me.

I'm sure my psychiatrist would be happy to diagnose me with Social Anxiety Disorder and put me on Seroquel for life. But what if I'm quite happy with the way I am? What if I've learned to adjust and accommodate for my needs, and know what I need to do to keep myself happy and functional? Is that still a disorder? Or is it just me?

And why should someone else decide that I'm not the way I should be, that I should be more like everyone else, and that I should therefore be medicated?

Writing Prompt: In what ways are you different from the rest of the world? Do you see these differences as strengths, or do you wish you were like everyone else?

Identity Theft

One of the most insidious effects of my bipolar diagnosis was the way it robbed me of my identity...

I was not suicidal, nor was I psychotic, or even a whole lot out of control. I initially went to my GP because I couldn't sleep. I hadn't slept more than a few hours for nearly a week, and wasn't feeling tired, and I figured that wasn't normal, I ought to be exhausted...so maybe I better get this checked out. I was also under an enormous amount of stress, and my anxiety levels were sky-high due to some extremely stressful Family Bullsh*t that was going on at the time. Did anyone ask about that? No. Instead, I was asked if I'd ever been depressed. And since I said yes (although I'd never been diagnosed or medicated for it), I was sent home with Zyprexa and Ambien, and told I should call a psychiatrist.

This led to an ever-descending spiral of self-doubt. In my reading, I learned that my writing highs--those times when I could just let go and write for hours on end--were actually "hypomania". And those times when I felt like I just loved life and really enjoyed everything I was doing--that was "hypomania", too...so the last two or three years of my life, which had been wonderful, happy years in which I felt productive, and excited about my future, suddenly took on the sinister aspect of an "illness". Which must be "managed." I learned that if I ever felt that way again--exuberant and loving life--that I should talk to my psychiatrist immediately, because I urgently required a "medication adjustment." And that if I didn't have my medications adjusted, the hypomania could steamroll on into full blown "mania" in which I would be completely out of control and need to be hospitalized (even though I had never been close to being "out of control"). I also learned that if I felt just a little bit sad, I needed to consider that a "warning sign" and to talk to my doctor because I might be getting "depressed". Which would require that another medication or three be added to my "cocktail" in order to prevent me from becoming so ill that I might kill myself (even though I'd never really considered that seriously before). Overnight, my perception of myself went from creative, confident and happy to "very sick and in need of medication for the rest of my life."

For the next two years, I would be haunted by the question, "How much of my personality is me and how much is it?" The answer, according to my psychiatrist, was that a lot of my drive, my energy, my productivity, and my creative whirlwinds could be attributed to it. So I figured whatever was left over once the medications were working, that was probably the real me. And since I lost my ability to think, laugh, create, write and enjoy life once I was medicated, I began to think that the real me wasn't worth very much, was she? She was actually a hopeless, dull-witted, exhausted lump who couldn't even speak without stumbling over her words, and didn't want to do anything but sit on the couch.

Life was pretty dismal for those two years. I no longer had the capacity to enjoy life, and the medications I was taking actually made me more sick. My moods began to cycle, and within a year I'd had three "episodes" each requiring that my medications be adjusted (read "increased") and that new medications be added. My doctor pointed this out to me as proof of just how sick I was.

I am so glad that I retained enough clarity and sense of self to say Enough. Unfortunately, it took a near-tragedy to shake me back to my senses (my husband's heart attack and my inability to respond to it in any sort of normal way). But however it happened, I did finally see the light and realize that my misplaced trust in psychiatry was only making me sicker, and that there had probably been nothing wrong with me in the first place that a little therapy or education in stress management wouldn't have taken care of.

I stopped taking medications over a very short period, probably too short, but then I didn't have much in the way of medical support--my psychiatrist's view of stopping medications was that it would be "stupid" and that I would "ruin my life". He didn't say It would be a bad idea, but if you're hell bent on doing it, here's how to do it safely, no, he just said Don't.

When I came off of meds, I was a mess. I had no idea who I really was anymore. After being told that all the things I had loved about myself were due to my illness, my self-confidence had taken a serious hit. I was terribly overweight and out of shape and dreadfully ashamed of myself for having let myself get into that condition. It took a long time for the anger to fade, for me to accept what I'd allowed to be done to me. And in some ways, I think I am still working on that acceptance, because the anger is still smouldering away in there.

After I was off most of the drugs, my sense of self, my sense of humor, and my ability to enjoy life slowly returned over a period of a few months. It took a longer time for my creativity and my confidence in myself as an artist to return--after all, I'd been told that all of my artistic achievements were actually manifestations of my "illness". For a long time I wondered if my drive to create--to write and to "make stuff"--would ever come back, or if the medications had damaged my brain in some subtle way and I'd never be able to create again--or worse, even want to.

Thank goodness I took my life back into my own hands. I dread to think where I would be now if I hadn't. I certainly wouldn't be myself.

Writing Prompt: Has there ever been a time in your life when your identity, your sense of self, was threatened by a label, an event, or a person/group? How did you deal with it and in what ways did this experience change you? If you've never experienced a threat to your sense of self, what sort of event do you think it would take to do this? Where are your vulnerabilities?

Deep Journal Work: A Quandary

I'm still working my way (slowly) through Ira Progoff's "At a Journal Workshop", which is all about working with the different periods of your life and building a life history from them. There's more to it than that, but I'm only about a quarter of the way through the book, working through the exercises as I go.

The problem I'm running into is that the first time period I chose to work with surrounds my bipolar diagnosis. This was a particularly tumultuous period for me, and some of it is difficult to write about, even at a distance of five years. A lot of it is stuff I don't want anyone else to read. And so even though I've never worried about anyone reading my stuff before, I've gone to the computer to do this work.

But...I don't feel the same connection with the work when I type it out on a keyboard as I do when I'm writing it out longhand. I'm not sure what the difference is, but there is definitely a difference. So I'm not sure how I should approach this work. I feel like I will write more deeply and honestly if I write in a notebook. But on the other hand, I only feel free to write that deeply and honestly if I'm writing in a password protected file.

One of my books on journaling says that when you have concerns about privacy, you need to ask yourself, What's the worst that could happen if someone read this? And that usually, when you put it in perspective, the worst isn't that bad. But it doesn't really have any sage advice to offer if your answer is Well, duh, empires would fall!

Writing Prompt: Under what circumstances are you most comfortable doing deep journal work? Do you worry about privacy? If so, what safeguards do you have in place? What is the worst that would happen if someone read your deepest thoughts?

Thoughts on Wanting Wellness

Susan, the Bipolar Wellness Writer had an interesting post up yesterday about wanting wellness. Her key question to people who are on medication for bipolar disorder or depression but who are not moving in the direction of wellness is "What are you doing besides taking medication?"

It's a good question because so many things feed into our health and well-being, and taking medication is only one of them. I have a friend who has been battling depression on and off for most of his adult life. He takes medication when the depressions come on but other than that has done nothing to change his lifestyle, which is incredibly stressful both in terms of his emotional well-being and his physical health. It is frustrating to watch him lose hope and lose heart when there is so much else that he could be doing for himself. But he is not willing to make any of the changes that might help him.

Or is it that he is not able to make those changes?

I am reminded of the place I was in three or four years ago. Bipolar medications made me so ill that I was unable to do the things I knew I should be doing. I had no energy, no motivation, no clarity of thought. The things that would have been good for my body--like eating more healthfully and exercising--were beyond me, as I literally had not the energy to do them. Planning healthy meals was an exercise that was beyond my mental capabilities...and cooking healthy meals was beyond me physically--because of the 60 lbs I had put on (due to the medications) I was suffering from painful tendonitis in my feet, and was unable to stand for more than ten minutes at a time. The things that would have been good for my spirit were also beyond me--I was too mentally dulled to do much of anything. Writing would have helped me a lot, as that is the way I process things and gain insight...but Depakote took that ability away from me.

I wanted wellness badly at that point. I wanted to have the energy and clarity to care for my family, I wanted to be able to do the creative things I'd always done. But I was not able to do any of the things that would have moved me in that direction. Because I trusted my doctor, I believed that the choice was medication or illness and chaos. There was no middle ground, and I was not encouraged to do things that might minimize the amount of medication he thought I needed. I was not able to make healthy decisions for myself until I decided to trust myself and stop the medications that were making me so sick.

I think that our doctors need to take more responsibility for making sure that we have the ability to pursue wellness. Drugging us into oblivion may make them feel safer, but it is not conducive to wellness.

Writing Prompt: The pursuit of wellness often requires us to make sacrifices. Sometimes it's something as simple as sacrificing some of your hard-earned free time to exercise when you'd really rather be doing something else, or perhaps sacrificing your favorite foods because you know they are not good for you. Sometimes these sacrifices have a far deeper impact, both on yourself and the people around you--like cutting toxic relationships out of your life or making a decision to pursue an alternative treatment for an illness that those around you may not approve of. What have you sacrificed in your pursuit of wellness?

A Victory of Sorts

I went to see my psychiatrist, Dr. L., yesterday. We are on a 3-month check-in schedule right now, with me now off all meds except trazodone, and having been stable for the past four years.

It was actually a good visit. I was afraid I might be feeling rather hostile and bad-attitudinal, especially with all the feelings that my art-journaling experiment the other day stirred up. But I was in such a good mood yesterday when I woke up that I was quite well behaved (give that woman a cookie!).

He asked me what I was currently taking, and I told him I had cut my trazodone down from 200 mg to 50 mg since my last visit, and he was fine with that.

I asked about the aspartame connection and whether or not we ever get to talk about undiagnosing me, or misdiagnosis. He said not really, because regardless of the cause, I did have all the symptoms of a manic episode, and I have had several depressions. Neither of which I would deny, because, well, they did happen. However, he did concede that given my sensitivity to medications it is certainly a possibility that aspartame contributed to my mood issues. And he added that given what we are learning about different food additives and some of the effects they can have on people, it would not surprise him if aspartame was at least partially responsible.

So I felt like that was a victory of sorts: he listened to me, he heard me, and he admitted that I could be right.

And he didn't once mention Abilify!

D is for Depakote

I've been visiting some of the websites that I have listed on the sidebar under "Resources", and I've been thinking about trying art journaling...pictures and words. I've collected a lot of art supplies and scrapbooking supplies over the years, so it's not like I would have to make a substantial investment to get started. I just need to get myself past the critic in my brain that says, in glaring neon letters, Yes, but you're not the least bit artistic. It'll be a Disaster. With bells on. You'll do it completely arse-backwards and They will all laugh and tell stories about it to Their grandchildren.

Well, last night, I said to the critic, "Yes, well, you're just a disembodied brain with bright red duck feet and horn-rimmed glasses. What do you know about Disaster? Especially Disaster with bells on?" And with that I took up my coloured pencils and began to colour my world. Or at least my thoughts.

So I thought then that I would try to draw my impressions of my whole bipolar nightmare. And I had all these clever, arty ideas about the whole manic/depressive dichotomy, black vs. light, light and dark, day and night, all very cliche, you understand.

So she puts pencils to paper and begins...

And what comes out is this brightly coloured amorphous creature of light and colour and movement trapped behind criss-crossing barbed wire, and everywhere that two pieces of wire meet there is that grey pill with the stylized "D" on it.

D for Depakote. D for Doped up. D for the Dreams and the Days lost. D for the Darkness in my soul. D for the Doctors and Drug companies that do this to thousands of people like me every day.

Wow. Um. Yeah. That was unexpected. So obviously I am still angry and still bitter and still not at peace with that whole chemical restraint and over-medication and doctors who think they know best thing.

And here I thought art journaling was just pretty pictures.

Writing Prompt: Creativity is one of the most powerful tools we have. It can aid us in healing and recovery, and it can brighten our lives and even become our life's focus. To what unexpected places has your creativity led you?

Thoughts on Growing Up Bipolar

There have been many responses to Newsweek's recent article, Growing Up Bipolar in many of the blogs I read over the last couple of weeks. I wasn't going to comment on this, as much of what I have to say on the subject has already been said extremely eloquently by thememoryartist.

However, I do have a few thoughts on the subject...and I'm not looking for a fight here, I'm just wondering out loud...as it were...

The subject of the article, a ten-year-old boy named Max, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the tender age of two, and has since been on 38 different meds. The thing that struck me the most about this article was the part where Max said, "I don't have any control."

How many children who are growing up on psych meds grow up with the idea that they are not able to control their emotions...and how damaging is that belief? It strikes me that it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I wonder how many of these children manage to achieve any sort of emotional development whatsoever, when the very emotions they need to learn to deal with are dulled and blunted by the medications. Part of growing up is learning how to deal with one's emotions in a reasonable, intelligent manner. But if you've never been allowed to have an authentic human emotional experience, how can you be expected to have any level of emotional maturity at all?

What happens when these children, some of whom have surely been wrongly diagnosed reach the age of majority and say, "Screw you and your pills, I'm done."

Once you stop the meds, your emotional life comes back full blast. I know I had a rough time coming off my bipolar meds, and I did it at the age of 40, and had been on them for less than two years. My ability to handle emotions was already developed and in place.

I wonder how damaged these poor kids are going to be when they finally see the world without psychotropic blinders...and how much therapy they are going to need in order to live comfortably with their newfound humanity. Certainly their lives are going to become far more complex once those layers of emotional experience are added back in. And the skills needed to deal with those emotions won't be there because they've never been needed--the medication has done all the controlling.

And don't even get me started on the brain damage aspect. These medications can cause detrimental changes in a fully developed adult brain...how much damage can they do to a young, developing brain?

Nobody knows.

But I imagine we're going to find out as the current generation of "bipolar" children reaches the age where medical decisions such as whether or not to continue taking these medications become theirs and theirs alone.

Angry

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I've written over the last few days concerning the possible connection between my bipolar symptoms and my use of the artificial sweetener aspartame.

If that's actually what happened--and I understand that only time is going to tell, if I remain episode free, and I also understand that even if I do remain episode free, I may never know for sure--am I supposed to angry at someone?

Like maybe the FDA, for allowing this dangerous chemical to proliferate through our food supply?

Or maybe the maker of Nutrasweet, for their advertising hype that would have us believe that eating aspartame was no different from eating milk and bananas?

Or myself, for putting that crap in my body for so long?

Or my psychiatrist, for having absolutely no interest in my dietary habits other than whether or not I was putting too much food in my mouth?

Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel. I'm relieved that maybe I have an answer that makes sense. But I also feel angry at all of the corporations that put dangerous chemicals in food in order to make a buck. And angry that the FDA isn't doing it's job. I'm angry at myself, and I'm angry at a mental health system that sees a checklist of symptoms, hands out life sentences and meds, and doesn't inquire any further as to other possible causes.

Hmmm. I suspect the focus of my Writing to Heal project is about to make a rather dramatic shift.

A Shift In Perspective

I feel a bit like the rug's been pulled out from under me.

Let me explain. I've been reading and commenting on a lot of blogs during the past few months, following interesting links, and doing some research of my own, and one of the things I've learned is that in some people, symptoms of bipolar disorder can be caused by ingesting aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in that Diet Coke I used to drink by the gallon from the ages of about 19 to 40 (with a break in there when I was pregnant and nursing).

Considering the lack of family history of bipolar itself (not denying the suicides, or the depression that runs rampant on my mother's side, or the one cousin who could possibly be cyclothymic), and considering that I have been stable for the three years since I stopped most of my psych meds and the aspartame, I've got to consider that perhaps my experience of bipolar disorder was chemically induced, and perhaps now that I'm not using aspartame any longer, I may not have any more symptoms.

This little piece of information doesn't change the story in any way. I still had the depressions, I still had the Big Mania, I was still diagnosed with bipolar, and at the time, that diagnosis was correct...No, the essential story is intact.

What has changed is my perspective, my perception of the story. There is another lens through which to view those events, and that changes everything.

It's interesting how a shift in perspective can completely change how you interpret and how you feel about the story in question. With this new way of interpreting my feelings and my behavior over those twenty years, I now find myself feeling a lot more hope for the future. I don't feel, in the back of my mind, that I'm somehow broken, that I'm living on borrowed time, or that I'm an episode waiting to happen. I feel more optimistic that the healing I have done in the last three years might actually be permanent, and not just a nice lull in the bipolar storm.

Amazing what a difference that makes.

Hope

Hope is something there is precious little of in the mental health system. Once you are labeled with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, you are told that you are going to need to take medication for the rest of your life. That you have a lifelong condition, and that although you may have periods of stability between episodes, it is not something that ever goes away. You are told that you will ruin your life if you don't take your medication. And you are told that the side effects from the medications just aren't that important in light of the alternative--losing your sanity. Oh, there are things you can do to help--you can chart your moods diligently and look for patterns...you can make sure you get enough sleep...you can eat right and exercise...you can get therapy...but even if you do all of those things, there's still basically no hope. You will be saddled with this illness for the rest of your life.

Unfortunately, once you get into the mental health system and start believing these things about yourself, what they've told you becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And rather than look for different answers when the medications they give you makes you worse, they nod knowingly and tell you that this is the natural course of the illness, and isn't it a good thing you started taking medication when you did. Think how much worse it would be if you hadn't!

But there is hope out there. There are people out there looking for alternative answers and treatments--and finding them. And there are many of us who were misdiagnosed or overdiagnosed. I've been reading a lot about hope lately, and in my readings, I think I've found some of my own.

When I was in college--about the same time I started showing mild symptoms of bipolar disorder--I went on a diet. Here's the thing. I needed to study. I needed to work. I needed caffeine to stay awake. But I hated coffee. For the first year of college, Mountain Dew was my drug of choice. But it didn't take long to notice that I was packing on the pounds (C'mon, Jazz, six cans a day, what did you expect?) Hence the diet. Which led to the Diet Coke. Which led to me consuming vast quantities of aspartame--six or more cans a day, for years on end. Which continued until--wait for it--the day I went off the bipolar meds, and decided I was going to start taking proper care of myself. Aspartame, I have learned, can cause all of the symptoms I experienced, and more.

Coincidence? Maybe. Irrelevant? Possibly. But I'd prefer to think of it as extremely relevant, considering the fact that I have been more stable in the three years since I stopped taking medication and stopped consuming aspartame than I have ever been.

It gives me hope.

Labels: A Cautionary Tale

Labels damage us. They steal our truth.

Until my diagnosis, I was unique. I was different, and I was proud of that. I forged my own path, discovered my passion, abandoned some of the dearly held beliefs of my upbringing, and set the world on fire. Well...maybe not the whole world, but my little corner was burning pretty darn brightly, thanks.

I considered myself a student of my own mind. I knew myself better than a lot of people twice my age know themselves, and felt that I had achieved a level of comfort with myself and awareness of myself that many people never achieve. I knew that I had highly energetic, productive periods when my sex-drive was through the roof and I needed very little sleep. I knew that I also had darker, more contemplative periods when my energy ebbed, leaving me feeling empty and leaden. I never really thought of this as a problem. It was just the way I was, the way I knew myself to be. The way I was comfortable being. Obviously, my writing drove my moods. If I had a project I was excited about, my mood was expansive. And if I had passion for nothing, then I lost interest in life and depression set in. Curing it involved the search for the thing that would spark my interest and get me writing again. Perfectly normal stuff for me. Writers, after all, are supposed to be a bit screwy, no?

That all changed when I was diagnosed.

When I was labeled "bipolar" I became "bipolar". I did not, at that time, really understand what that meant. My doctor insisted that it meant that my episodes, which had always been fairly far apart--a few years, at least--would become closer and closer together as I grew older, and much more severe. He told me that in order to protect myself and my family from these terrible, uncontrollable moods that I would experience, I would need to be on medication for the rest of my life.

He told me to educate myself. So I read all the books I could get my hands on, and I learned that there was no hope for me. I would, as my doctor had said, have to be on medication for the rest of my life, and even if I took my medication faithfully, I would still suffer from these episodes, although they would hopefully be farther apart and less severe. In addition, it might take years before the correct combination of medications was found. And during those years, I would have to put up with medications that didn't work well, or that had intolerable side effects.

Of course, I cooperated; I was too scared not to. Becoming "stable" became my new goal in life. I became a student of my moods, diligently charting every change, pathologizing every fluctuation, and frequently calling my doctor for medication adjustments.

The promised "stability" didn't happen. The medications didn't help, and in fact they made things worse. I had more episodes in the two years I was on medication than in the six years before my diagnosis. The side effects were intolerable. I was unable to write, hand tremors stopped me from most of my artistic pursuits, my short-term memory was shot...

In those two years, I completely lost myself. I resigned myself to spending the rest of my life overweight, mentally compromised, and in chronic pain...but deep down, I never really accepted it, and part of me was still in there, kicking and screaming and rattling the bars of my chemical cage. I should have listened to myself. I knew my own truth, once...

I talked to my doctor about stopping the medications, or at least lowering the doses to help relieve the side effects. He prophesied Doom and Gloom: "You are an intelligent woman," he said. "You know you will ruin your life if you cut back on your medications."

It took my husband nearly dying for me to realize how out of touch I was with myself. When he had his heart attack, I found myself unable to respond to this life-threatening, life-changing event with anything other than apathy. It was time for a change. It was time to take a break from medication and figure out how much of a problem being "bipolar" really was.

Turns out that it wasn't. (And when they cart me away, raving and delusional, you may all nod sagely and say I told you so.)

It has taken a couple of years, but my writing is slowly coming back, working its way into the corners of my life, and becoming part of what defines me once more. "Bipolar" doesn't define me at all...even if I start experiencing those high energy/low energy periods again, "bipolar" doesn't fit. Maybe it never did.

Labels should be used with extreme caution.

All a label does is take away your own truth and replace it with someone else's.

What To Do About This Pesky Diagnosis

In the nearly three years since I stopped taking most of my psych meds I've been trying to come to terms with the bipolar diagnosis I've been handed and figure out what it is I really need to do about it. The way I see it, there are a number of options...

1. Embrace the current paradigm of mental illness and take the damn meds. Been there, done that, and discovered that psychiatry has little to offer me besides a chemical cage, which I'm not particularly enamored with, thanks ever so. Mood stabilizers did not seem to stop my mood swings, and antidepressants reduced the time between episodes to months rather than years.

2. Deny the diagnosis--it was all a Big Mistake. But then I have to take full personal responsibility for my actions during the Big Mania, and that would make me a Horrible Person. And since I cringe and shudder in retrospect, I have a feeling I'm not a Horrible Person. Not really.

3. Ignore the diagnosis and go along my merry way. Except that it isn't just me I have to think about. I have a husband and kids, and if I go off the rails again, it's not just me that will suffer. So that seems a bit irresponsible.

4. Accept the diagnosis, but reject the current paradigm of mental illness, and do all I can to preserve stability. This is a lot of work, because it involves a lot of self-monitoring, self-awareness, and Being Honest with Myself. It also involves being able to say, "Okay, this isn't working, maybe I do need meds on a short-term basis." But if it keeps me off medication, then the work is definitely worth it.

And the fifth and only acceptable alternative, which both Gianna (Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and Recovery) and Susan (Bipolar Wellness Writer) pointed out in their comments on yesterday's post, the reading of which helped me to finally be able to articulate:

5. Accept that I did once fit the criteria for a bipolar diagnosis, but that I have healed myself and that the diagnosis no longer fits. Of course, my doctor will not agree with this assessment. He will tell me that I'm a train wreck waiting to happen. He would, after all, like to get me hooked on his pet drug, Abilify.

In the spirit of continuing my healing journey, I am starting a more focused writing program, something that will help me examine specific issues rather than just my usual Daily Bitch session. I'm planning to use Julia Cameron's "Vein of Gold", and Deena Metzger's "Writing for Your Life."

It's cheaper than therapy, at any rate, and in my experience, writing is a very powerful healing tool.

Do I Really Have Bipolar...

...or am I just a horrible person looking for an excuse for my sometimes admittedly rotten behavior?

Self doubt occurs with alarming frequency, these days. If I do have bipolar disorder, then where are all these "episodes" I'm supposed to have, one after the other? Seems the only time I had episodes one after the other was when I was taking medications that were supposed to help. Go figure.

And the thing I call the Big Mania happened during a period of incredible stress and Family Bullshit. I don't know how anyone could survive it intact.

So maybe I don't have bipolar disorder.

But...there is a pattern of depressive episodes and hypomanic "writing on fire" episodes that must then be explained. And I can't explain them. All I can do is look at some of the things I got up to when I was supposedly manic and shake my head and mutter, "WTF was I thinking?"

So, okay, maybe the diagnosis does have some merit.

But...if that's the case, don't I need to be on medication for the rest of my life? Because if I really do have bipolar disorder, isn't it awfully irresponsible of me to be running around unmedicated? I mean, after all, it's not just me, here, I have a husband and kids...

But...I'm doing everything I can to stay stable...and it seems to be working...other than the nasty effects of the trazodone withdrawal, but that's the medication, not me...

But...my doctor shakes my confidence every time I see him, because he says I'm taking a huge risk, and wouldn't I like to try Abilify, because it's got a really benign side effects profile...

This is the crap that keeps me awake at night.

(See Furious Seasons post today about the overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder for the post that inspired this one and got me thinking, again, about whether I am bipolar or just horrible...)

The Path to Wellness, Part Three: Where's the Map?

Getting off the drugs wasn't hard. I just stopped taking them. Gave a bit of thought to the fact that since I'd been on them for nearly two years, I probably shouldn't stop them cold turkey, but I did stop them pretty damn fast. Within two weeks, I was done. The third week was pretty hellish in an emotions-all-over-the-map sort of way, but I was convinced that all the medications had done was make me sicker, and I was determined to get off them as quickly as possible.

I guess I was lucky.

I had no professional advice on stopping the meds, other than my psychiatrist telling I'd be stupid to stop taking them. I didn't have internet access at the time, so I wasn't aware of all the wonderful, supportive people who were out there trying to do the same thing I was. Of course, perhaps if I'd known then what I know now, I might have been too scared to try to stop the meds...who knows?

As my mind began to clear, I realized that I had a hell of a lot of work to do. My body was shot. My blood sugar was borderline high. I was overweight, in constant pain, and was completely out of touch with myself.

I started myself on a program of yoga, healthy eating, music, and writing. The yoga I started by default--it was the only sort of exercise I could do that was bearable for my sore feet--they hurt so much that even walking any distance was out of the question. The healthy eating was much easier to do once I didn't have Depakote giving me carb cravings. I picked up my guitar for the first time in about ten years and started playing again. I tried to write every day, just a little in the journal at first, and then more as my mind cleared. Slowly, things got better. I lost weight. My feet started to feel better. And I started to get a clearer picture of who I was through my writing.

I just wish there'd been a map of some sort. A book. Some information on how to reclaim my mind and my life...

Hmmm....maybe I should write one...

The Path to Wellness, Part Two: The Ice Princess

Something had to change.

It took a near-disaster to make me see that. The Chief had a heart attack at age forty (three years ago). I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. His father died of heart disease at 62, and his older brother had his first heart attack at 38.

The people who took care of him were amazing--within 40 minutes of my 911 call, they had transported him to the local hospital, determined that he should be sent elsewhere, air-lifted him to another hospital, and got him in surgery, where they placed three stents in his heart. He had two coronary arteries that were completely blocked. The doctor told him one of them was referred to as the "widowmaker" because 40% of the people who go in to the hospital with a blockage in that artery do not come out.

While this was going on, I had to find someone to take care of the kids and then figure out how to get myself to a hospital I'd never been to in the heart of downtown Minneapolis (eeeeeeep!). Thanks to my wonderful neighbor, who didn't think I ought to be driving under those circumstances, I didn't have to drive myself.

Within three days, the Chief was back home with a fistful of pills, a schedule for cardiac rehab, a new diet, and three months off work. I was terrified when they released him so quickly. He'd just had a heart attack, after all! At night I would lie awake, listening to him breathe, afraid to fall asleep in case he stopped.

Through all of this, I did not, could not, cry. I called myself the Ice Princess, because I just couldn't feel anything. I mentioned this to my psychiatrist. He said, "Well, the medications protected you! That's a good thing." Yeah. Right.

Something had to change, all right. I had to get off the damned drugs.

The Path to Wellness, Part One: Beginning

The path to wellness wasn't something that was immediately obvious to me when I stopped taking my bipolar medications nearly three years ago.

I was a mess when I stopped the meds. I was sixty pounds overweight and in constant pain from plantar fasciitis, a painful form of tendonitis that affects the tendon running across the bottom of the foot, and is caused by putting on a large amount of weight.

My once-brilliant mind, (once upon a time I earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering, published in scientific journals, and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at a national laboratory) had gone dim and dark. My writing voice was silenced, my creativity drugged away...and I was not even left with the emotional capacity to mourn its loss.

My ability to multitask, or even stay focused on a single task, was gone (which explains the wet laundry that sat in the washer until my husband wondered what that smell was; I'd forgotten I was doing laundry).

I was on high doses of a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant, and I was cycling in and out of mood episodes faster than ever. I saw no light in my future--I had resigned myself to being bipolar, overweight, brain-dead, and in constant pain for the rest of my life.

Something had to change.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I come from a family with a scientific background. My father was a research chemist for a Fortune 100 company, and my mother was working on a degree in biology when she quit to start a family.

There was never any question about whether I would go to college...I don't recall it even being a choice. And I would, of course, go into the sciences.

So I did the College Thing...and then the Graduate School Thing...mostly to prove to various and sundry parties that I could. And all the while, the urge to write never let up. A craving, a need, an itch that I did not have the time or energy to scratch.

I wanted to change my major to English, but my father--who was footing the bill--wouldn't hear of it. So I spent ten years clawing for a few stolen hours. Feeling like there was all this stuff that needed to come out building up within me to the point that it hurt. All the time.

I became aware that I was split by a serious conflict. I had trained for a career in engineering, a rigid, logical world...but my heart yearned for a life of writing. I felt trapped; I had sacrificed my very soul for a place in Corporate America. Sacrificed it for a life I didn't want.

I could see myself hurtling towards this Career/Mommy kind of life that would deny me the one thing I truly wanted--time to write. And more importantly, energy, for what good is time if you're too tired to take advantage of it? An engineer with the soul of a poet, I joked, but I cried and bled inside.

That was when I knew that I was really a writer. Trapped in a box I had helped build, with the knowledge that I couldn't not write burning me alive from the inside.

When the Chief fell into a job that would earn us enough to manage on one income, I gave up my career aspirations in a heartbeat. Stay home and raise kids...and write? No problem!

So here I am. Happy Ending. Except for the damn Bipolar Disorder. Which led to the damn Medications. Which led to Me Not Being Able to Write.

Now I have the time. I have the energy. But I don't have the desire. Or the drive. Or the ability, anymore, I think.

Damn.