I like to tell friends I am in double recovery. Recovery from alcoholism, and from bipolar. I found the alcohol was easy. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, spent four days in a hell hole getting that horrible stuff out of my system, joined AA, worked the steps and as I write this , have 13 and a half years under my belt. I am so afraid to pick up again, because I know where my last drink took me, I don’t drink. Ever. Period. That was easy. But the bipolar stuff? That is hard. I still struggle daily, and I still don’t know how to do it.
Others make it look so easy, in my support group and other bloggers. I am jealous of them. I’ve spent more than half my life going to psychiatrists, therapists, taking over fifty different med cocktails and ECT all in an attempt to get depression, suicidal ideation, mania and rapid cycling under control. You name it, blue pills, red pills, round pills, square pills. I’ve been through DBT therapy, CBT therapy, Jungian, Freudian, Reiki, Art therapy, Music therapy, Past life therapy, Hypnotherapy/Hypnosis, Trauma therapy, and two I made up, Pet therapy, and Chocolate therapy. All to make the depression go away. All to feel less suicidal and fit in with people.
I’ve never felt like I have fit in with people, but maybe that is because I am a creative introverted type. I don’t mind, but I want to know what it’s like to be “normal”. What it’s like to be happy and not think too much. To have a brain that functions like everyone else, it’s bit more tangible, less nebulous than the recovery I have done from drinking. But I want this more. So much more I am willing to go though further lengths , jump through more hoops. It seems so futile. I have real bad days, where the depression is so bad, I cannot get out of bed. They might even fade to black sending me to despair and an attempt, followed by a month or six weeks in patient. On the flip side, I have gone months at a time manic, or psychotic. All this makes me appreciate the times where I can have periods of normalcy- my normalcy, where I function at low level depression, or mania, watching my moods via a mood chart, my med cocktail, at one maintance med instead of six or seven; my diet, exercising, making sure I sleep eight or nine hours a day, and attend support group meetings and write my heart out daily. Even when I find it hard to write, and I don’t feel like exercising or eating and I just want to stay in bed, I make myself stay on a routine, or I will slip back into depression. And from depression it’s just a shallow breath away from despair or mania. And either one can destroy me.
Susan Schechter use to work for a international media company, where she was a fact checker, Gal Friday, and General Assignment Reporter. She was a leading TV Reality blogger up until 2003, and was the first American to be interviewed on this subject by the BBC Radio Four. Currently, she spends her days and nights blogging at http://ifyouregoingthoughhellkeepgoing.blogspot.com/, and shares her apartment with her lovely cat, Holly. She also serves on the board for the state of NJ DBSA for the last four years, as well as the last three years on Princeton NJ board and was the President for two, retiring this year to devote more time to her writing.
