Home > Opinion > But bipolar drugs might change who I am
Seaneen Molloy
Seaneen is the three-quarter sized Irish writer behind blog. In her spare time she enjoys tea, hurling insults at the television and tutting at those who tut at others on public transport. She lives in London with two cats and eight million other people.
But bipolar drugs might change who I am
14th July 2009
It's been almost three years since I was rather rudely sectioned in a mental hospital. The room service was appalling, the towels were distinctly unfluffy, and, like many of my mentally interesting brethren whose fashion statement this season is the tinfoil hat, I didn't believe that I belonged there.
On the fourth day, my world caved in when I was unceremoniously diagnosed with bipolar disorder type I by a psychiatrist who looked like the breed of kindly yet secretly dangerous headmaster you'd see in a John Hughes film like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That was frightening enough ... but more frightening was the fact that I was prescribed medication to control it. Medication that I would probably be taking for the rest of my life. At the age of twenty, that's not (aha) easy to swallow.
Okay, so it was my tempestuous moods, my furious seasons and my bouts of psychosis that landed me in hospital in the first place. But that wasn't the point. It may have been a solution but I wasn't happy.
The episode that got me hospitalised wasn't my first - that was some eight years earlier. I'd been living with this stuff for quite some while. There was no 'before shot' of me cowering in the splendid revelatory halo of the beaming after. As devastating and painful as my illness was, it was already part of me, it was all I had ever known, and being told that part of me had to change, and may cease to exist altogether, was galling.
Having never been really "well" meant that wellness to me was rather like a badly developed photograph of someone I didn't quite recognise. And so began the war.
Okay, so it was my tempestuous moods, my furious seasons and my bouts of psychosis that landed me in hospital in the first place. But that wasn't the point. It may have been a solution but I wasn't happy.
The episode that got me hospitalised wasn't my first - that was some eight years earlier. I'd been living with this stuff for quite some while. There was no 'before shot' of me cowering in the splendid revelatory halo of the beaming after. As devastating and painful as my illness was, it was already part of me, it was all I had ever known, and being told that part of me had to change, and may cease to exist altogether, was galling.
Having never been really "well" meant that wellness to me was rather like a badly developed photograph of someone I didn't quite recognise. And so began the war.
Being a writer, some would say that suffering from bipolar disorder -the so-called "artists' disease" - would be the proverbial angel on my shoulder. It wasn't.
Like many people who suffer from mental illness, one of my first fears was for my creativity. I had always expected to work in the creative field. Most of my manias were as black as my depressions - terrible, lonely insanities - but it was this frantic energy that gave me the desire to write, and I would write almost constantly, on my hands, on my legs, on anything I could find.
Would medication turn me into a zombie, unable to hold a coherent thought, let alone a pen? Would I become numb, and would it not only stabilise my moods, but anaesthetise my emotions? I was terrified that drugs would make me lose the spark that made me, me.
Over the course of the next three years, I took such a vast array of pills that I resembled a walking, talking gumball machine. On first name terms with my chirpy pharmacist, I barely bothered to scan the list of possible side effects on the patient information sheet.
I went through many different classes of meds looking for some calm. Lithium, for example, was not the miracle cure we were hoping for. Weight gain, hair loss, drooling, tremors, vomiting, plus months of spending fourteen hours asleep and the associated frustrations. Amidst all the drugs and their side effects, I kept asking myself ... which bit of all this is the true me and why am I experimenting by burning away bits of my personality. How was this going to end and how much of me would be left?
Like many people who suffer from mental illness, one of my first fears was for my creativity. I had always expected to work in the creative field. Most of my manias were as black as my depressions - terrible, lonely insanities - but it was this frantic energy that gave me the desire to write, and I would write almost constantly, on my hands, on my legs, on anything I could find.
Would medication turn me into a zombie, unable to hold a coherent thought, let alone a pen? Would I become numb, and would it not only stabilise my moods, but anaesthetise my emotions? I was terrified that drugs would make me lose the spark that made me, me.
Over the course of the next three years, I took such a vast array of pills that I resembled a walking, talking gumball machine. On first name terms with my chirpy pharmacist, I barely bothered to scan the list of possible side effects on the patient information sheet.
I went through many different classes of meds looking for some calm. Lithium, for example, was not the miracle cure we were hoping for. Weight gain, hair loss, drooling, tremors, vomiting, plus months of spending fourteen hours asleep and the associated frustrations. Amidst all the drugs and their side effects, I kept asking myself ... which bit of all this is the true me and why am I experimenting by burning away bits of my personality. How was this going to end and how much of me would be left?
The only medication that worked for me in any way was an antipsychotic. It took some time, as most psychiatric medications do, but I began to feel calmer. My moods were still unstable, but the violent extremities were lessening.
I found myself reading a novel. And another. My concentration, badly affected by passive depression and distractable manias, had pushed that particular love of mine far back into my equally damaged memory but I was once again engaging with books, and enjoying them. My family and friends were able to follow my speech again. People were less afraid of me. I slept. I began to feel more in control of my behaviour and emotions. And I discovered, to my surprise, that my mercurial nature, impulsiveness, restlessness, shyness and creativity, were due to my underlying personality. It was - as dull and unfascinating as it is - just like that. The drugs weren't destroying the essential me.
Naturally, then, I decided that the only reason I was feeling much better was because I didn't suffer from a mental illness after all. Never had.
I proceeded to conduct what I like to call the "Mad? Me?" experiment in which I petulantly toss my prescriptions into the bin and pout into a mirror.
The last time I performed this little experiment, the results were disastrous. I took a week's holiday from my medication. I even went to the coast to celebrate. On the sixth day, having reverted back to my natural insomniac state, I was wobbling precariously over the stones of Brighton beach, the chiming laughter of my friends drifting through the air back to me. I had been happy, watching the teaming salt spray dance in the sun, and very suddenly, I wasn't happy at all. It was as though I had been shot.
I began to convince myself that my friends were laughing at me. The glances of passers-by started to burn into my skin. I thought about how to kill myself. I stood under the bluest skies of that summer, watching those friends become small, as I became paralysed by terror and paranoia.
The damage was done. The black mood hastened into a mixed episode (the special hell reserved for the manic depressive, it is literally a mix of mania and depression) that became so severe that I took a massive overdose and ended up in hospital.
I loathed my dependence on medication. Wouldn't talk about it to anyone. It was surely unnatural. I thought I should have been strong enough to cope without it. But why do we worship nature anyway? As well as beauty, nature gives us hell too: cancers, diabetes and cystic fibrosis to name but three - physical conditions which cause suffering and truncate lives. You need medication to survive them, so why do so many of us look down upon medication designed to ease mental suffering - a suffering that also truncates the lives of a lot of people.
According to bipolar.com, bipolar disorder alone will kill, by suicide, of the people who remain untreated.
Do we have to accept pain just to prove our own strength? No. It is BRAVE to ask for help.
I wouldn't be writing this article if it wasn't for my medication. I would have most likely become distracted. I am still sometimes at the mercy of my moods, but the severity is reduced to the point where I can function.
My medication, as much as I resent them, are the stabilisers on which I balance as I learn to live with my illness, making lifestyle changes as I go. It doesn't fix everything. It is not a cure, but it is partly responsible for my continuing existence.
The decision to take psychiatric medication is a highly personal one. In my case, I think I made the right choice.
I found myself reading a novel. And another. My concentration, badly affected by passive depression and distractable manias, had pushed that particular love of mine far back into my equally damaged memory but I was once again engaging with books, and enjoying them. My family and friends were able to follow my speech again. People were less afraid of me. I slept. I began to feel more in control of my behaviour and emotions. And I discovered, to my surprise, that my mercurial nature, impulsiveness, restlessness, shyness and creativity, were due to my underlying personality. It was - as dull and unfascinating as it is - just like that. The drugs weren't destroying the essential me.
Naturally, then, I decided that the only reason I was feeling much better was because I didn't suffer from a mental illness after all. Never had.
I proceeded to conduct what I like to call the "Mad? Me?" experiment in which I petulantly toss my prescriptions into the bin and pout into a mirror.
The last time I performed this little experiment, the results were disastrous. I took a week's holiday from my medication. I even went to the coast to celebrate. On the sixth day, having reverted back to my natural insomniac state, I was wobbling precariously over the stones of Brighton beach, the chiming laughter of my friends drifting through the air back to me. I had been happy, watching the teaming salt spray dance in the sun, and very suddenly, I wasn't happy at all. It was as though I had been shot.
I began to convince myself that my friends were laughing at me. The glances of passers-by started to burn into my skin. I thought about how to kill myself. I stood under the bluest skies of that summer, watching those friends become small, as I became paralysed by terror and paranoia.
The damage was done. The black mood hastened into a mixed episode (the special hell reserved for the manic depressive, it is literally a mix of mania and depression) that became so severe that I took a massive overdose and ended up in hospital.
I loathed my dependence on medication. Wouldn't talk about it to anyone. It was surely unnatural. I thought I should have been strong enough to cope without it. But why do we worship nature anyway? As well as beauty, nature gives us hell too: cancers, diabetes and cystic fibrosis to name but three - physical conditions which cause suffering and truncate lives. You need medication to survive them, so why do so many of us look down upon medication designed to ease mental suffering - a suffering that also truncates the lives of a lot of people.
According to bipolar.com, bipolar disorder alone will kill, by suicide, of the people who remain untreated.
Do we have to accept pain just to prove our own strength? No. It is BRAVE to ask for help.
I wouldn't be writing this article if it wasn't for my medication. I would have most likely become distracted. I am still sometimes at the mercy of my moods, but the severity is reduced to the point where I can function.
My medication, as much as I resent them, are the stabilisers on which I balance as I learn to live with my illness, making lifestyle changes as I go. It doesn't fix everything. It is not a cure, but it is partly responsible for my continuing existence.
The decision to take psychiatric medication is a highly personal one. In my case, I think I made the right choice.
Types of bipolar disorder
Ruby Wax explains the four different types of bipolar on the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s mental wellbeing site, Headroom. Click on her image to see her explain it on video (transcript available).
• Bipolar one: this involves at least one high or manic episode lasting at least a week, some people with bipolar one will only have manic episodes, although most bouncing depression.
• Bipolar two: this involves at least one episode of depression but only mild manic episodes which are called hypomania.
• Rapid cycling: this is where you have more than four mood swings across a year this effects more than one in ten people who have bipolar disorder it can happen with both types one and two.
• Cyclothymic disorder: this is a milder form of bipolar you may go back and forth between mild depression and a slightly elevated mood. But these mood swings are shorter and less severe. Some people with cyclothymic disorder go on to have a stronger type of bipolar disorder, but this doesn't happen to everyone.
- There's also bipolar disorder not otherwise specified this really means your experiencing bipolar disorder but it doesn't fit easily in the four main types.
• Bipolar one: this involves at least one high or manic episode lasting at least a week, some people with bipolar one will only have manic episodes, although most bouncing depression.
• Bipolar two: this involves at least one episode of depression but only mild manic episodes which are called hypomania.
• Rapid cycling: this is where you have more than four mood swings across a year this effects more than one in ten people who have bipolar disorder it can happen with both types one and two.
• Cyclothymic disorder: this is a milder form of bipolar you may go back and forth between mild depression and a slightly elevated mood. But these mood swings are shorter and less severe. Some people with cyclothymic disorder go on to have a stronger type of bipolar disorder, but this doesn't happen to everyone.
- There's also bipolar disorder not otherwise specified this really means your experiencing bipolar disorder but it doesn't fit easily in the four main types.
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Comments
Hi
You might be interested in reading a book called PROZAC NATION written by a young woman in her 20's. She suffers from bi-polar.
I think physical illness can change and develop personality. Prolonged illness, whether it be physical or mental can change people.This doesn't have to be a negative thing. When we suffer, our suffering shapes us, defines us. Like a potter with the clay. The self is constantly changing and developing. We are not static, we are meant to grow and develop and change as we experience lifes events. Bipolar causes everything to exaggerate. It is the exaggeration of all thoughts, feelings and emotions that is the sickness. The true self is the mood, feeling,emotion halfed, quartered. Writers feel they write better when they are depressed because all emotions are severly exaggerated, everything is exaggerated, It is very intense.If a person is stablelized on medication that is appropriate then that person would still be an excellent writer, just a different writer. Intensity, highs and lows causes the writing to be different, but the inate ability to write is there all the same. When a person is only familiar with exaggerated emotions, highs and lows, then the normal, middle range can seem quite dull! It's a roller coaster. When everything is exaggerated one way or another we cease to lose perspective. It's a very exhausting way to live and very draining.
Fortunately artistic people can channel their fluctuating feeling,s emotions in their work, thereby creating works that people identify with. For healthy people intense emotions are brief, fleeting but for the person who has bipolar it is intense exaggerated pathos and highs, so up and down the person doesn't know where they are with themselves and who they are. It is more prolonged and intense, but the healthy persons who do not suffer from this illness benefit from the insights that people with bipolar experience. Just as many people like to read the Psalms because they can relate to the writers pathos and saddness, so a person with bipolar can show everyone not just the pain and pathos of life but the joy too.
Am I making sense. I hope so
These are my thoughts .... hope insight helps.
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Your article was very interesting. I was also sectioned in July last year and diagnosed as having bi-polar disorder. I have been taking Quetiapine now for 6 mionths and HATE it. I don't feel that I can be trully myself whilst being pumped full of drugs. Admittedly, my own self-medicating habits of drinking too much and smoking dope daily were what had probably contributed to my 'psychotic episode' and being sectioned in the first place and these habits have been severely curtailed and will not be something I return to doing. But the Quetiapine has made me put on 2 stone and waking up in the morning is nearly impossible despite having to get up to get the kids to school. I do manage to deliver them on time but I wish my life could just return to 'normal' without the drowsiness and weight gain.
Like you, I don't feel that I am bipolar and life was always a bit up and down for me but isn't life like that for everyone? I have always wanted to be a writer and have written prolifically since a teenager. Is bi-polar really the 'artists disease'?
I see a psychiatrist every 2 months but feel that rather than help me to manage life without it, he just wants to keep pumping me with medication . I am also taking a low dose of anti-depressants which helped with the intital black gloom after the hopsital stay and these days I really do feel fine. But is that because of the meds? Sometimes I worry that I'm going to spend the rest of my life on these tablets and that thought can make me feel low. My dose was dropped from 600mg per day to 450mg which I have been on since Nov and I have not noticed any difference. About once a week, I forget my dose just to feel normal the next day and again have had no side effects resulting from omitting the tablets.
Could it be that bi-polar disorder is a general term that gets attributed to anyone talkative who also feels depressed at times? At times, I think in my case this has been so and sometimes I feel a trapped in a world in which I don't feel I belong. None of my friends or family think I'm bi-polar and I know people who are and I'm really not like them at all!
Obviously, I shall discuss all this with the psychiatrist but once you're 'in the system', I do think it is very difficult to convince the proffesionals that maybe, just maybe, drugs are not always the answer. Then again, maybe that's the Quetiapine talking!
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