Bipolar From Experience

The Stereotype 

For over 12 years I dealt with treatment for what was considered “Adolescent Bipolar”. I dealt with, what I like to call, “Middle Emotion” as opposed to my previous rages and happy blurs. As far as the debate over the disorder goes I may not even be bipolar I may be “Temper Dysregulation Disorder” which is either a precursor to “Adult Bipolar” or a monster of its own. I have been off the pill, “Lithium”, which also happens to be the treatment for “Adult Bipolar”, for two years and as much as I want to say that I am over it I can’t tell you much about where I was before I started treatment. I can tell you that I still have lasting side effects from both the disorder and the medication itself and weather I believe that it’s dormant or just more easily contained is still a question but I do feel better, at the very least. I have nothing against the people who diagnose this disorder, in fact I owe thanks, but there is no way they can tell anyone, who has never been through it, what it feels like. I have seen them try to show children's parents what they might have to deal with but they always show off more of a stereotype, or fear, than the real thing. As far as I've read, Most of the respected writings on the subject have been written by the psychologists who give the medication rather than the people who have lived through it. I can't tell you how to identify the disorder or how to treat it but I would rather you base behavior on real experience than statistics. Pleas consult an expert before you make any decisions with your self or others (I am not an expert).  

Even though there isn’t much that I can remember about the time I spent before I was on “Lithium”, I can give you a brief explanation. For the most part I was a normal annoying little kid until you told me to do some small chore; that's when I would go into an uncontrollable temper tantrum. The big difference between me and your typical little kid was that my tantrums’ broke expensive items, put holes in doors, lasted for hours and usually ended up with me held down on the ground by my dad (who was trained to deal with children with anger issues). Not to say that there were no extreme emotions on the other spectrums, after all it is Bipolar, but those memories are nonexistent because no one ever tried to stop them. No one wants a kid to stop being happy and no one knew when I was sad because I only cried after the embarrassment of a breakdown or an episode of anger; it was really easy to set me off. There was no resistance to those extreme emotions so whatever time I spent in that state of mind was a blur. That is sad because it’s a good portion of my life that is basically in a state of "self-induced" amnesia. The reality is that even my anger episodes are mostly blurred. I guess the reality is that all I can really do is tell you how I felt back then, in kindergarten, and it wasn’t good. The only real evidence I have to the reality that I was faced with back then was the door with holes in it, that hung on the frame of my old room.

What I felt on the pill, 4 300mg tablets a day, can really only be explained from the perspective I have off of it now, off the pill. The side effects  were annoying but easily manageable; the big ones were dehydration and unnatural loss or gain of thyroid, the gland that controls proteins and distribution of energy located in the throat, atoms apple. These symptoms were easily controlled with doses of thyroid and plans made for me to exit class to go to the bathroom, in school, after drinking a lot. Even though those were noticeable changes they still didn’t compare to the side effect I noticed after I stopped the pill and that was “Middle Emotion” as I mentioned above. It’s not that I didn’t feel anything it’s more like I was in a small state of mind with limited movement, but just enough to provide comfort; if you’ve ever been to a dentist you know how much “comfort” really means. Of cores that’s metaphorically speaking but it just means that even though I could still be happy, sad, or angry I was still always in the same place emotionally. I don’t think I could explain it any better because if I started feeling more it meant the medication was wearing off. I don’t think many people could understand what that really “feels” like without experiencing it themselves. Despite all of these disadvantages I was never willing to join the team of people suffering from bipolar that refused to take their medication. I was always determined to get through that stage of my life and even though it took me three times until I was comfortable enough with “me” to get off the medication.

"I have felt so fucking 

numb to everything 

I have experienced 
in my life, OK?"

Even though I’m now off the medication, and have been for 2-3 years now, I still can’t tell you that it’s a “dormant” disorder or at least that it’s defused enough to put me at the level of “normal”. I still feel like I can go over bored on things and get overly attached to subjects that I can't unstick myself  from. The emotions that still hangs with me is fear and it’s constant and burning (can't unstick myself  from). The fact is that I’m very scared of my own anger and scared of having to deal with other emotions at the same capacity as "everyone else". Ever seance I’ve been off the pill I’ve been happier than ever. Even though I can now feel sad it seems good that I really know how that feels. What makes me scared is having to go back to that “Middle Emotion” state. I was told that drugs could give me a sort of a Bipolar “relapse” but something as simple as another outburst could cause one too. I hate being angry because I’m always scared that It’ll turn into another Bipolar outburst. I haven’t experienced the adrenalin of anger without fear taking it over. I don’t think that will ever change but I'm learning to manage it.

As far as I know the people who are changing the name of the disorder discovered that “Childhood Bipolar” does not always develop into “Adult Bipolar”. In this case I don’t know if I will ever have to make the transition back to the medication or extreme emotion. I don’t know whether I will be able to stay on the medication if I ever have to go back. I’m not sure how something like this will progress and that is worrisome. What I am sure of is that I’m almost always is a better mood than I was two years ago and I hope to keep it that way and improve on it as long as I still can.

Though this information is useless unless I try to make a change in how people reacts. As a middle schooler, I started to understand that parents viewed me as a danger and spread it to their children that I would be unable to control my behavior. To a middle schooler that's short for, "he's easy to egg on". They would egg me on, piss me off, and after just say "well you arrant gonna blow up on me right"? If anyone had an attack in school, parents would call for them to never be let back into the school. There is no sense of empathy for people like me, the only perspective I frequently see is that I was born as a burden. I was born with something that's hard on everyone else. This perspective marks me as someone everyone should avoid. It's a perspective that needs to change. The memories of being angry are almost all I have from my childhood, I don't need to be told that after the fact I'm still a burden to those who even chose to be around me.