Living Bipolar (13 page)

Around the age of 16 substance-abuse entered into the picture. During this time I was still taking Prozac, and the first time I drank I blacked out, and I blamed the Prozac for the black out. Eventually I stopped taking Prozac altogether and I used substances to regulate my moods. I smoked marijuana every day and I had conducted research on the Internet which said marijuana would help regulate the Bipolar illness. As a result, I self medicated and later on I found out that this is somewhat common.

My first girlfriend was gothic in high school and she was a big influence with me. I patterned myself after her. But I never fully committed to becoming Gothic. I never wore makeup, I never wore all the jewelry, and I was just somewhat Gothic. A big part of the story after this is self mutilation. My girlfriend was a cutter and the first time I began to cut was the age of 17. However, before this when I was 15 I burned myself a couple of times. I did it because I could, and I thought I had a high pain tolerance, and I would do it to show off. I used to heat up Bic lighters and hold them against my skin, and I thought this was cool because I can do it -- I could take the pain and I would enjoy it. One time I remember heating a pair of scissors with a lighter, and I just pressed against it my skin for a long, long time. Still to this day I have a big scar from it on my arm.

One night outside of a movie theatre I remember dragging my knuckles against the concrete. I dragged them until they were all bloody. After this I would hit things as well if I didn't want more scars. 99% of the time I would cut myself over a relationship, and I would do this as a way to say, you hurt me, and now I'm going to hurt myself to hurt you. I would cut myself in visible places to make sure my girlfriend would see it. I would cut myself on my arm, or my forearm, and I wouldn’t try to hide it whatsoever.

I was never good at lashing back out of my girlfriends, so I hurt myself because I knew it would hurt them. I would say “Look at what you did to me. Look how bad you hurt me.” Cutting myself became a copping mechanism. Still to this day, I’ll want to cut when something goes wrong. Although, I crave cutting myself some times in my life now, I haven’t cut myself in over two and a half years, but I still get almost a physical craving for doing it. I can feel a spot on my arm where I want to cut, and the cravings for cutting are very strong.

When I was in college at the age of 19 I was in a car accident with my girlfriend, and I took the blame for my girlfriend crashing the car. A woman who was a motorcyclist got seriously hurt. I ended up being charged with four felonies, including vehicular assault and drug charges. It was a complete mess, and I faced going to prison for 13 years.

After I got bailed out of jail I went back to college. Following the car accident I became clinical depressed. I barely ever left my dorm room, and I did nothing but play video games. I found my escape in videogames and I would play them eighteen to nineteen hours a day. I would eat the bare amount I had to live and it wasn’t always one meal a day. I wasn't showering, I didn’t brush my teeth. I basically stopped living. A couple months before college I had one or 2 pre-cavities, but after this depression when I stopped brushing my teeth, I had 14 cavities four months later.

There is a period of two weeks when my depression was so bad that I could not get out of my bed at all, and I did nothing but play video games. Eventually I did get out of my bed to use substances. Once I started abusing substances taking medication was something I did very little -- if I did it all. I was convinced I didn't need any medication.

I had a lot of different sleeping pills which I'd been taking for years, and one night I took three different types of sleeping pills. My rationale was I wanted to go to sleep for several days and I wanted to be knocked out for a long time. I knew very well that taking all the sleeping pills could kill me but I didn't care if it did. My attitude was if I die great, and if I wake up a week from now perfect. At this time I just didn't want to be present in my life.

This was my first suicide attempt and actually it was a cry for help. I cut myself on my forearm and there was blood all over my room. My roommate found me and he took me to the emergency room. When I went to the emergency room, they pumped my stomach with charcoal. Because I'd broken my nose several times the bone structure in my face was not shaped right and they had trouble getting the tubes in my nose to my stomach. When I woke up in the hospital my mom was crying and she said I looked like a ghost. I think my dad was crying but I'm not sure. To this day I don't want to ask him if he was crying because he is a person who shows very little emotion.

My suicide attempt is something that really upsets me to this day
. It upsets me because
no mother and no father should be subjected to their children committing suicide
. When my mom lost her brother to suicide, I know for a fact it tore her family apart. Her family was never the same after her brother committed suicide. My mom witnessed her brother killing himself when she was a child, and I tried to kill myself. Sometimes I start crying when I talk about this, because it upsets me so much.

After the suicide attempt I had my first experience in a psych ward and I hated it. There I was diagnosed as being Bipolar. I don't remember caring very much with being diagnosed as Bipolar, and I thought, oh well, whatever. The doctors changed my medicine regime, and he told me I was Bipolar II. The bouts of mania I experienced were much shorter and more of my life has been on the depressed end. Sometimes I experienced extreme ups and I felt like I was on top of the world. One summer I remember having a couple of weeks of being manic, and I remember feeling like I was the man, and life couldn't get any better. I was on top of the world, and I had an extreme purpose for what I was going to do with my life.

When I was diagnosed as Bipolar I was put on new medicine which made my life somewhat better, but I still had many ups and downs. At this time because of the legal situations, I suffered major anxieties, and the doctor prescribed me valium, which I used heavily as well. The doctors gave me lamictal and seroquel which seemed to help. My life during this time period was crazy, but I do think the lamictal helped stabilize me.

Several months later I was working at a job and I was miserable. I was living in my parent's basemen, I quit taking my medication, and I started using drugs again convinced that I did not need medication. I was drinking one night and I got into a fight with my girlfriend. I went home and I slit my wrists in the bathroom. I believe this was another cry for help. I didn’t care if I died, but I don’t think I really thought I was going to die from doing it because I cut across my wrists across, instead of up-and-down, and I didn't cut my wrists the way which would guarantee I would die. But I didn’t care anymore. I was benevolent about death.

My mom found me in the bathtub, and it was completely red from the deep cut into my wrists. My mom drove me to the hospital and once again I got committed for another three or four days. I was going crazy in the psych ward and I hated it. I actually told my parents if they didn't convince the doctors to let me out I was going to kill myself, which is ironic, because I was in a psych ward. This shows how bad I really was.

Robins and colleagues (1959b) found that 73 percent of the manic depressive patients in their sample of 134 suicides had received medical care in the year before the suicide, and 53 percent had received it within 1 month. Likewise, within a year before their deaths, 15 percent had been hospitalized in a psychiatric facility, and 11 percent had been hospitalized in a medical facility with symptoms of a psychiatric illness. Among Barraclough’s sample (1970) of depressed patients who committed suicide, 70 percent had been in touch with a physician with 30 days of their death, and nearly 50 percent had seen their doctors during the preceding week. Of the 49 suicides in Murphy’s study (1975a, b), 71 percent had been seen by a physician within 6 months of death. To our knowledge, only one study examined these issues specifically among Bipolar patients. James and Chapman (1975) found that 50 percent of the Bipolar patients and their first-degree affectively ill relatives who committed suicide had been seen by a psychiatrist in the 3 months before their death.

Goodwin and Jamison 1990: 237

The doctors took me off the current medications I was taking, and the cat was out of the bag about my drinking and using which my parents made me stop doing as well. They changed my medication to Depakote, which I understand is more for mania. Over the summer while I was on this medication I wanted to kill myself daily. My dog was sick that summer and he was prescribed some medication. I looked up the medication my dog was taking and discovered this drug is one of the easiest drugs to kill yourself with. If I took only a handful of my dog’s medication I would fall asleep and die. I remember someone wrote a book on suicide and this medication was in there as one of the top ways to kill yourself in the book.

I thought excellent; upstairs in my cabinet is my way out of life if I ever needed it. I was 20 years old then, and eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. This was at the end of the summer and I told my doctor what was going on, however, I minimized the extent to how bad it was.
I was never completely honest with doctors my entire life, and as a consequence, my doctors never knew how bad it was
. I don't think I told my doctor I wanted to kill myself; I simply told him I was miserable. Then my doctor explained the Depakote is just for mania and it doesn't treat depression. I remember being very angry. I thought this doctor is a complete idiot, because he prevented me from becoming manic, and meanwhile I’ve been depressed and I’ve wanted to kill myself for several months.

Shortly after this I went to jail for a month for the charges from the car accident with my girlfriend that I took the blame for, and they kept me medicated in jail. After I got out of jail I was still very depressed. After being out of jail for a month I got drunk one night and in a blackout I was arrested. I was underage, I was intoxicated, and I ran away from the cops. I don't remember any of this. I woke up in the hospital, and I was told I needed to get picked up, or I was going to have to go to detox.

I decided right then and there that I was going to kill myself that night. I thought I'm arrested and I'm going to prison, because it was made clear to me if I violated my probation I was going to be sentenced to the fullest which was six years in jail. I was living in an apartment in downtown Denver, and I knew my dog’s pills were in the cabinet at my parent’s house. My best friend picked me up from the hospital and I had him take me to my parent’s house, instead of my apartment, because I knew that's where the pills were.

Through a series of events I set off the burglar alarm because I didn't remember the code. Of course, the alarm company called my parents. I got on the phone with my parents and I told them what had happened. I tried convincing my best friend Brian that he could leave me, and my parents called him, and said, please will you stay with him all night to make sure he doesn't hurt himself.

My parents took the first flight out and arrived in the morning. Although I told my parents I was going to be fine they insisted my friend stay with me all night. For some reason I passed out in the middle of the floor in my living room, and my friend Brian sat there and watched me all night. I always had some amazing friends in my life and my friends were with me through everything, even visiting me when I was in the psych ward twice. That night my friend Brian literally saved my life.

Following this incident I was sent to rehab in 2005. I got sober at the age of 20, and they put me on lexapro, and some other medications which did not work at all, or I would have bad reactions to the medications. But the lexapro and lamictal combination got me stable. I still take these medications to this day. I've been sober for almost two and a half years now and I am now 23.

There are still ups and downs though in my life though.
Thoughts of suicide still pop in my head a fair amount, but these thoughts no longer scare me because I've been dealing with them as long as I can remember
. To me a suicidal thought today is nothing to be concerned about.
Thoughts of suicide are only a problem when I really focus on them
, however, if it's just a passing thought I shrug it off as no big deal. For the most part since I've been sober and stable on medication, the thoughts of suicide have lessened a great deal.

Among the specific factors involved in the ability to survive suicidal inclinations:

1. Capacity to control behavior -- that is, the ability to stand the pain or impulse

2. Capacity to relate readily and in a meaningful way to someone else; presence of family members and friends who are supportive

3. Motivation for help and willingness to work actively on the problem

4. Variety of resources that facilitate the therapeucatuic process and the transition back to a stable life pattern -- for example, job skills, intelligence, physical health, communication skills, a capacity to trust , close ties to a church, or freedom from severe personality disturbance or addictive problems.

Goodwin and Jamison pgs 771-772

I try not to use the word depressed anymore, because in comparison to where I was before it is nowhere near that level. I get these brief moments of mania of where I feel amazing. Sometimes it's not even for a day but just for a few moments or a few hours. I feel high when I get like this, like I’m high on life to sound cliché. It's the best feeling because I feel like life is perfect and everything is great.

But when I get like this I also have the feeling that it's not good to be manic because I know deep down I will eventually come back down and crash -- which always happens. Generally I'm a pretty happy person now. I've developed awareness today and I feel like I know the difference between when I’m manic and just being happy.

Communication with my doctor today is honest and I tell him how things are in my life accurately. Until I came to Florida to get sober my communication with doctors was to get in and out as fast as possible, and this was from the ages 12 to 20. I was never completely honest with my doctors until recently. But now I take the suggestions my doctor gives me, and I communicate honestly because I'm an honest person today.