Thankfully, I am not the first person on this site to write about having bipolar disorder. I won't link to anything because its nobody's business who is or isn't but several Kossacks have written about living with the disease. I am deeply indebted to those who have been so open and honest about their illness.
If you want to better understand the illness, I highly recommend An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, a tenured professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Reading this book was one of the first steps on the road to recovery after my last manic episode, the first one serious enough that my family finally realized that I was more than just "high-strung".
I would also like to applaud British actor Stephen Fry for his willingness to discuss the illness and its role in his life.
The patron saint of the manic depression, however, is actress Carrie Fisher. She has been so brutally honest and forthright about the living with the disease. Below is a clip of her interview for Mr Fry's documentary The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive.
Many others deal with this disease every day. The famous and the unknown alike wander through the fog of depression and ride the rollercoaster of mania every day. We are everywhere, not just on the streetcorners wearing tinfoil on our heads and yelling at unseen enemies. The disease is real and it can be overcome. Well, not overcome but treated and dealt with.
I find that the language of recovery works best for me. I have to come to grips with my disease every day. The fact that I need to take several medications every morning actually helps with this. They remind me of the person that I was at the height of mania and the pain that it caused my friends and family. I will never be cured but, with hard work and the help of medication, I can lead what appears to others to be a normal life.
I would like to take a minute to address those who either don't believe that the disease exists or believe that the medications used to treat it are the cause of the problem.
Look, I read Brave New World too. I liked it and it made me think. I was impressed with Huxley's prescience in his ability to predict the rise of the Prozac Nation. I vowed to never be one of the soma-ingesting sheep that happily labored for the corporate overlords.
I was also in high school. Since then, i have learned to differentiate between allegory and reality. The truth is that the soma is more than just a little pill. The soma is anything that distracts us from the world around us. And, IMHO, a little distraction from the world is a good thing from time to time. Constant awareness of the cruelty of life on this planet would break one's heart and destroy one's sanity.
I have spent a lot of time on the internet researching my disease. Thankfully there is a plethora of helpful information out there. There is also a lot of crap. I have stumbled across several message boards featuring claims that the illness is made up, that those of us who have it are just incapable of dealing with the fluctuations of everyday life, that we are whiners. Thankfully, most of these boards also have courageous souls who have made every effort to reason with them or, failing that, to shout them down.
I don't have the time or the energy to fight with such people. I might take the time to educate friends and acquaintances about the realities of the disease. I will not spend my valuable time getting into pie fights on random message boards. (I save that for DKos.)
There is one person, however, about whom I would like to share my opinion. his name is Dr. Peter Breggin. I believe that the doctor is well intentioned and I do agree that therapy should be more of a priority in the field of mental health. However, I vehemently disagree with Dr Breggin's focus on an empathic approach to psychotherapy. I think that he greatly underestimates the role that the chemistry of the brain plays in mental illness. I wish that he were right and that a little therapy was all that I needed to treat my disease. I would love to live in that world.
Dr Breggin claims that biological psychiatry "implements these [chemical] interventions on faith". He also came out in full support of Tom Cruise after his appearance on NBC's Today show in which Cruise claimed that all psychiatric drugs do is "mask the problems". Cruise also claimed that there is "no such thing as a chemical imbalance".
in the Doctor's own words:
Well, Tom, you said on TV things I’ve been saying in the media and in my books and scientific articles for three decades—but boy did you generate a lot more attention to the issues. Thanks!
-Dr Peter Breggin
I am not going to defend pharmaceutical companies here. They make a lot of money doing what they do. But I will not claim that they do not use science to create their products. I will also say that the drugs that I am prescribed have, in no uncertain terms, saved my life.
A bit more about Dr Breggin from Time Magazine in 1994:
"Breggin reinforces the myth that mental illness is not real, that you wouldn't be ill if you'd pull yourself up by the bootstraps," says Susan Dime-Meenan, president of the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association. "His views stop people from getting treatment."
on the other hand
Amid extremely dubious assertions like the notion that drugs don't help schizophrenics, Breggin makes some points that many psychiatrists would agree with. Among them: too many doctors prescribe drugs for minor depression or anxiety without talking to patients long enough to understand their problems. Too many patients look for pills to smooth out the inevitable ups and downs of everyday life. And powerful psychoactive drugs can indeed be dangerous if used cavalierly.
I will not call Dr. Breggin a quack. In fact, he has a Harvard degree and has worked with both Johns Hopkins and the National Institute of Mental Health. I will however, call him irresponsible. He may believe what he says but the manner in which he communicates his opinions misleads many people who do not have the benefit of his education.
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Believe what you choose to about mental illness. But I am here to tell you that it is absolutely real. I deal with it every day. My illness is not the result of some childhood trauma. I am not the only person in my family dealing with it. Therapy alone is not enough to treat this disease.
For those of you who have chosen to read this far, you deserve some comic relief. I hereby bequeath thee A Bit of Fry and Laurie:
While I don't feel any sense of shame because of my mental illness, I don't exactly go around shouting it to the rooftops either. This has not been an easy diary to write. I thank you for taking the time to read it.