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.