Egocentric

On my post the other day about my psychotic experiences and belief that things that had happened to me in my life harboured a divine message, kodeureum left the following comment:

please remember that you are just one infinitessimally minute fragment of that entity called humankind.

At first it stung. Like: "get real BPG, you're just an inconsequential piece of shit in the wider scheme of things". Ouch!

But actually K had a very good point. The classic symptoms of psychosis:

• feeling that people on television or radio are talking about, or talking directly to them
• believing that headlines or stories in newspapers are written especially for them
• having the experience that people (often strangers) drop hints or say things about them behind their back
• believing that events (even world events) have been deliberately contrived for them, or have special personal significance
• seeing objects or events as being deliberately set up to convey a special or particular meaning

quoted from Wikipedia

In other words psychotics think that the world revolves around them - LITERALLY. And maybe that's why 'Tart (a friend who has also suffered genuine grade psychosis) recently said:

I actually walked out of 'The Truman Show' because I could not stand the psychoticness of it. It bothered me so much.

Funny thing is that I've watched the Truman show 5 times (one of my best). And, just like Tart, the reason that movie sticks out with me, is that it comes the closest to showing what psychosis really feels like (but unlike Tart I taunt myself with these memories in a kind of masochist way) In the Movie, the central character Truman eventually works out that:

• feeling that people on television or radio are talking about, or talking directly to them
• believing that headlines or stories in newspapers are written especially for them
• having the experience that people (often strangers) drop hints or say things about them behind their back
• believing that events (even world events) have been deliberately contrived for them, or have special personal significance
• seeing objects or events as being deliberately set up to convey a special or particular meaning

What makes the movie so brilliant is that, in fact, the world IS revolving around him. Which just makes it even the more psychotic-like.

But if, unlike Truman, you are not starring in a One Man Reality TV Show, then it's nearly a certainty that you're going through psychosis. The other certainty (by implication):

You are, at that point in time, the most EGOCENTRIC person on earth.

In fact at its very extreme psychosis can translate into SOLIPSISM - the belief that you are the only person in the universe and everybody/thing else is just a figment of your mind.

The very interesting thing about SOLIPSISM is that it is has always been a fairly central concept in philosophy. More than that, it is one of the most difficult to disprove. Because at the end of the day the only certainty you can have was arrived at by the French philsopher, Descartes:

I think therefore I am

What Descartes failed to recognise is that what he was actually saying was:

I think I think, therefore I think I am ( - BPG)

And now a little coincidence to end: The first time I watched "The Truman Show", i felt so unnerved and psychoticish afterwards that as soon as I got home I had to reassure myself that reality was just plain ol' reality. So I switched on the TV set. What did I see:

A Y shaped twig flying by itself through the blue sky. DINfuckingKIM!! People in South Africa may remember the advert for household insurer Santam, where a guy threw a branch in the sky for his dog to fetch. And it was round about the time I had started writing my first book "A Branch of Wisdom", a book centred around a Y shaped twig that was on the psychiatrist's table during my first psychotic hospitalisation. Yeah, get your head around that one...

(or was it just egocentricism 123% ???)

Mental masturbation

Warning: A Looong post ahead, with some SERIOUS navel-gazing.

In response to my recent post about how I still thought that some of my so-called "psychotic" experiences contained a genuine element of supernatural phenomena Raine posted the following telling questions:

I wonder just how much of a difference it would really make in your life if you decide there are links rather than it being psychosis or if you decide its all psychosis. What will actually change? Will you live your life differently? Make decisions differently?

These questions are actually a HUGE part of my life right now (as if they haven't always been...). This past week or 2 I've been in a state of fairly deep confusion and flux. I find myself in a quagmire of diverging philosophies, beliefs and decisions. Maybe it is the upcoming "Should I emigrate" or "Shouldn't I" decision that has thrown everything into such sharp relief and forced me to re-examine my life. So Raine's questions are at the crux; deeply involved with my entire belief system and personal identity in the world. Something I don't always see (thanks, Raine)

The problem is that once you've been through an industrial strength psychosis, you can never really put it behind you. I don't think there can be any other experience which is so intense, frightening and life changing (think a bad acid trip x 1 000 000). For sure there have been years in my life where I've put the memories on the back-burner. But even in those years I never shelved them because I had finally realised they had been 100% psychosis and that the supernatural part was mental masturbation. No, I repressed them because I felt that dwelling on them was not useful at that stage in my life (usually stages where financial goals were high).

But right now the Big Question is right at the fore in my thoughts. Truth be told, I have NEVER (not even for one second) in the past 20 years totally accepted that my experiences were ALL psychosis. (not something I'd ever admit to a P-Doc)

Why is this so? Why do I cling to the notion?
I have come up with several possible explanations:

• As I said, this whole Big Question is integral to my belief system. I have basically equated the "All-Psychosis" route with a world with ZERO understandable meaning and ZERO answer to WHY. It goes like this: If all the coincidences and links I saw were totally random, then the whole universe is also just one big random coincidence. That, for me, is not an easy thing to accept. It renders life MEANINGLESS (other than He-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins). As a deeply philosophic type ( I was born with my fist under my chin like Rodin's famous sculpture "The thinker". see left) this would be an extremely depressing situation. Existential Angst to the absolute MAX. (It is not for nothing that it was said that no philosopher should be taken seriously except for the philosopher whose philosophy has driven him to the brink of suicide) (Or that Marx said that "Religion is the Opium of the Masses")
  
  
• Possible explanation 2: Besides leading to the greatest depression, my dismissal of "Meaningful Messages" has another implication: that I, BiPolarGuy, am/have been a SERIOUSLY mentally deranged person. Not just a BiPolar type 2 or even Type 1, (which I've pretty much accepted in the past 3 years) , but a person who the military psychiatric ward called "the worst case they'd ever seen".
  
  That is not an easy thing to accept. Prior to my institutionalisation I had everything going for me. Not least of all a sense of total confidence in myself and total confidence with the future. And yes, pride too. So right from the first day I was released, it might be said that I invented this more acceptable (maybe even admirable) reason for what happened to me. My way of rationalising the whole ordeal and keeping any notion of self-respect intact.
  
  
• Possible Explanation 3: Or maybe all of the confidence and pride were false? Maybe deep down I was a very unhappy and disturbed teenager? Ask anyone from my High School days and they'd endorse this for sure (but not necessarily after I left High School). Maybe the whole reason the psychosis even started was because I needed an "Escape" from my world. In BiPolar literature so much has been said about a manic bout leading to bad depression, and less ius said about it working the other way too - unbearable depression leads to flights of mania (mental masturbation).
  
  Maybe in that light it's not even a bad thing, maybe it's the minds survival mechanism for avoiding suicide.
  



• Possible Explanation 4: Or maybe masturbation (simulated sex) is a more profound analogy than realised. Maybe the very fact that simulated mental sex exists implies that somewhere out there exists REAL mental sex. The blissful union with an Other Worldly Mind. And at the pinnacle of the bliss a whole new realm is created. And those of us that participate in mental masturbation are the only ones that know that the Reality exists somewhere out there. And we pine after it...

***
The truth is that I WILL NEVER know.

And so I've rambled on and on here and have just seen that I have not fully answered Raine's questions yet: Will you live your life differently? Make decisions differently?

But best I leave that for a Part 2 sometime lest I reveal too much of the Master Secret (this one especially for WBF ;)

Psychosis & your loved ones PART 3

This post is about my third psychotic episode and the effect it had on those around me. For the 1st episode go here, and the second here.

One of the reasons this post has been delayed is that it very directly concerns Miss L, and I couldn't get myself to write it while she was here on holiday.

Psychosis 1 was triggered by weed, 2 by stress, and this one by a combination of medication deviance & stress.

I was living in London at the time, and met a girl when I came back to South Africa for a holiday. It was lust-at-first-sight and a whirlwind romance infatuation ensued. Yeah, I was ****struck. The upshoot of it all was that said lover (J from hereon outwards) came back to London with me 2 weeks later and moved right in.

Problem 1: Since my last psychosis I had been put on the anti-psychotic pill, Fluanxol, on a kinda life-long basis. J, was vehemently opposed to any psychiatric medication and convinced me to come off them.

Problem 2: Back in London I had started my own import biz, importing fruit juice from South Africa. I had to do this business as it was a work-around to get British citizenship. I had every intention of staying in the UK, and had been living there illegally for over a year already. On my trip to South Africa I had set up the bizplan, and roped in a wealthy Johannesburg financier to fund it over the next year. Long-story short - the biz never made it. First, the "relationship" with J was becoming fireier and fireier. We fought and fought, the nextdoor neighbor even asking us to tone-down at one point. Not a good atmosphere for a business launch. The crunch came though when my financier, getting (unreasonably) impatient for a quick profit, decided to renage on his loan.

Technically I was bankrupt. We booked a ticket back to SA, and absconded, leaving a trial of debt. = BIG STRESS (sans meds).

The relationship with J just got worse and worse, and finally one weekend I reached my conclusive decision that we must part ways. But first, there was one outstanding bit of business to attend to - J's period hadn't arrived on time, so we had to pop into town for a pregancy test. She'd previously told me the doc had said she was very infertile and unlikely to fall pregnant, so that morning heading off into town, I was not worried at all.

Picture the scene. An hour later. I'm double parked in the car, and J returns from the building. She climbs in and tosses me a slip of folded paper. I open it: "POSITIVE".

That did it for me. Within hours I thought that the extreme nazi-style right wingers of South African politics were stalking me. The pivotal referendum was due in about a week. Every white voter had to say YES or NO, to the question: "Should SA hold fully democratic elections". Times were tense. A few bombs even went off. I didn't sleep for nights rather keeping watch over the shadows of the garden and being sure to crawl on the carpet so that my silhoutte wasn't visible to any prowling snipers .

Within a day, I had concoted an elaborate stock market bid to knock my debt out. I would sell a whole lot of offshore shares short, anticipating never to shell out the cash for them, but to just cancel out the position in 7 days time, and collect the killing. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that I couldn't lose. I started phoning the stock broker every few hours and increasing the bid. I lost count of how many tens of thousands I had bid, but my Dad, having caught wind of my plan, eventually phoned the stockbroker instructing him not to carry out any further sales or purchases from me, as I was no longer of sound mind.

But by that stage I had moved on from mere financial fiddlings. I had rediscovered my prophetic status, and my true self had re-arrisen on the morning of Easter Sunday. By Monday I was in the local psychiatric ward. No shock treatment this time, but the PDOC gave me a concoction that first night with such a kick that I couldn't walk straight for 3 days.

J (who I can see genuinely had great reason to be stressed with baby in tummy and father in psycho-ward) came to visit me all the time. To fight. To fight so bad that at one time she threw a vase at me, and the sisters nearly barred her from visiting me.

In a week or two the psychosis gradually subsided and 8 months later Miss L was born. J and I eventually ended our relationship (we'd stayed together for sake of baby but never married)

When L was 7, J (her mother) died of a sudden stroke. StepDad and BPG head to court over custody of L.

That was 7 years ago. The court case was never ever a clean cut affair, and Step-Dad's expensive legal team basically got the upper hand because of an illegitimate father with an "unstable and dangerous" mental history. That little legal fight still goes on, and was what caused the traumatic events at the beginning of this year.

I could go on and on with this post, but it's getting pretty long now. I'm thinking that I should write a book about these experiences.

The moral of the story - no, J did not stand by me in my psychosis. Everything but. Which has spawned a nightmare that continues to haunt me to this day.

***
In all honesty, my psychotic episodes did not end at 3, there was a semi-version 2 years ago, whilst I was with Mrs M - which I'll call "Epsiode 3 and a half" and write about some time soon, depending on the strength of the encore :)

But first I will be addressing Lee's telling question the other day: Why do you feel guilt.

Psychosis & your loved ones PART 2

This post is about my second psychotic episode and the effect it had on those around me. For the 1st episode go here

If my first psychosis was triggered by weed (operative word "triggered" not "caused"), then my second one was triggered by stress. It happened 3 years after my first one. In those 3 years my life had got back to total normality, I went to University to study Philosophy, but dropped out to start my own clothing biz. From there I went into business broking, and was doing a roaring trade. I was piling all my money into the stock market, which was also roaring.

Then suddenly in a matter of 5 days some fairly stressful things coincided. I was doing my commerce exams through correspondence and had left everything till the very last minute. My biggest exam was on a Monday. But that Monday when I awoke, world stock markets developed a major crack, and started falling... and falling. Eventually that Monday would become known as "Black Monday", even now, an infamous day in world economic history. Stockbrokers in New York were jumping out of windows, and world leaders were tense. I got totally caught up in all the panic and tension. With a major exam (for which I was totally underprepared) about 5 hours away. And my next door neighbour doing the loudest clanging and banging building restorations since 5am that morning.

On the way to the exam, I cracked. I turned the car around and drove home. And next thing I knew, all the demons and angels from my first psychosis were right back with me. It was like I'd lost my way and been asleep, and forgotten about my profound calling in life.

I grabbed my bicycle and started cycling all over the city. I had discovered an exhilerating new form of cycling, finding the steepest hills, and cycling down them as fast as I could with my arms stretched out wide like a flying bird. I suddenly discovered such, balance, such control, it was like I could really fly. I could even weave in and out of the morning traffic, oblivious of the incredulous expressions of the drivers' faces. I spent a whole day like this, up and down the steepest, and busiest hills in Durban. Energy was boundless.

My parents and sister were devastated. This time, when I rushed around to their house babbling about the Grand Satanic Plot, they knew exactly what it meant. And I had made such a major recovery since my first psychosis that everyone had presumed that that had just been a "flash in the plan". A once-off wobble that would soon be buried in the deep recesses of memory.
This time I steered well clear of any psychiatrists. No matter what happened, I was not going to land up in a hospital again. I went to the family Doctor, and he gave me some anti-psychotics. Then my Dad took me up to the mountains for about a week. Just him and I in a little cabin. Those few days were very special for me. We went for long, long walks, me babbling my head off about the Apocolypse, my Dad just patiently listening. Slowly the babbling subsided and when I got home I was pretty much back in reality.

I had a live-in girlfriend at the time. Unlike my Dad, she didn't understand it at all. She was in the fashion industry, a major trendoid, and hung with all the coolest chicks in town. And as far as she was concerned she had been going out with a young, up & coming stockmarket tycoon, not a spiritual lunatic from the Edge. Whilst I was in the mountains, she and her friends had taken my car and hit the south coast casino for a night on the town. When I got back, I suppose you could say that she tried to be understanding, but it was obvious from that stage onwards that we were no longer on the same page, not even the same fckn chapter.

My sanity recovered, I sold all my shares, said goodbye to the plastic business world and we headed for Europe where we travelled around for a year. After 9 months I parted ways with the girlfriend, and continued travelling on my own.

Bottom line: In looking back, yeah, my psychosis definitely sent that relationship off track. And all I can say is Thank God!

Psychosis & your loved ones.

Last week I wrote a post on psychosis

WillbeFine left the following comment:

In these manic/psychotic moments how many of your friends stood by you? What efect on your family? What about the strain on your marriage?

Good questions. Here's my attempt at an answer. I've divided the answer into 3 sections, corresponding with the 3 occasions on which I did experience full-blown psychosis. (because each occasion was totally different in terms of loved ones)

PSYCHOSIS 1
I was 19 years old and in the South African Defence Force at the time (which was compulsory at that point) The psychosis hit on a Friday night at my parents home ( I had a weekend pass). I'd gone to a party, smoked a couple joints and just kinda "stayed stoned", but like a "bad trip" stoned. Got home about 1am. Saturday morning I dived into an old Bible and started quoting passages out of it to my Mom & Dad. I went into my sisters room and "cast the demons out".

Parents response at that stage: puzzled. Not surprising - I had everything going for me at that point. I was super confident, super fit and had an endless supply of friends (and girlfriends). I was very, very happy (only now can I see that I was way too happy). Also - I was nowhere near a Christian - drugz, sex & rock 'n roll was my scene. So sudden bible brandishing , and preaching that Satan was nigh was indeed puzzling.

Come Monday morning a friend and I drove into the army camp together and when we got there I said to him, I'm not coming to army today. Again: total puzzlement.

But it was an hour or two later, after I went to see an old drug counsellor that I'd previously seen that I was "committed".

Responses: Parents shattered - "nervous breakdowns" weren't even on the family's radar at that point. It had come like a bolt from the purple. The ensuing 3 months were probably the most stressful months of their lives. What made it so difficult was it was too early then to make a diagnosis. No matter how many anti-psychotics the doctors threw at me, my delusions of grandeur just got worse and worse. There was a very real chance that I might never have snapped out of the psychosis and ended up spending the rest of my days in an asylum. (if it weren't for the shock treatment maybe I would've.)

Even when I emerged from the psychosis and was discharged from further military duty, the doctors told my parents that I'd never be able to hold down a real job and that they better budget on looking after me for a "long, long time".

So to say that it totally and irreversably threw my whole family is, if anything, an understatement.

But I gotta say that some good came of it too. In my teenage years there was a major chasm between my parents and I. Plenty hate all round. My father and I continually came to blows (occasionally physical) and when he used to go away on business trips I used to look him in the eye and tell him I hoped he would never come back. At 17 he kicked me off the property and I went and worked as a barman in another town.

This hospitalisation episode suddenly bought the whole family extremely close. For the first time, I, the rebellious and independent teenager knew that I actually wasn't such a James Dean hero, and that I really needed them. And I think they saw me in a different light for the first time too - not just a stubborn brat, hell-bent on overthrowing any authority in my path, but somebody who was sensitive and vunerable too.

As to my friends at the time - they greeted the news of my hospitalisation with total disbelief. At first they all thought that I was putting the whole thing on in order to get discharged from army. A lot of guys used to do that in those days. They were anti-apartheid and wanted to have nothing to do with the regime's military machine, trapped in this situation only by the fact that if they didn't do the compulsory 2 years, they'd have to do 4 years in some weird kind of "correctional" facility. The fact that I was one of these Anti-apartheid dudes made it even more likely that my "breakdown"was a sham. To this day there are some of my old friends that think I pulled it off.

Whether my friends "stood by me" is not something I can give a straight answer too. After one week in hospital I was transferred to a psychiatric ward in Pretoria. And after I returned home I refused to see or speak to any of my old friends for months. I felt like a total failure, and the fact that I had sunk into a major depression by that stage didn't help. Besides which, most of my friends pre-hospitalisation were heavily into weed and other substances, something I didn't partake again in for many years. So there was a natural "parting of ways". The closer friendships stuck though, and some of them are still going (even if only by email).

***

By now you'll probably see that there's no way I can fit all 3 of my psychotic episodes in one post, so you'll just have to stay tooned for scenes form our next episode...

Mania vs Psychosis

Stop!
Originally uploaded by versionz.

psychosis (sike-oh-sis) - a severe mental disorder in which the sufferer's contact with reality becomes highly distorted.
- Collin's English Dictionary

As promised, here is my response to JungleTart's (a fellow BiPolar Type 1) observation the other day.

"...you are the first and only to discuss psychosis as compared to other bipolars only talking about mania. There's a huge difference..."

Yip, BiPolar communities often talk about mania and psychosis like they're interchangable. They're not.

(please note that what follows is based on my personal opinion and experience, and no greater authority)

To some degree they lie on the same spectrum, starting with hypomania on the mild end, with mania in the middle, and psychosis at the extreme end of mania. But even though it is a spectrum there is a definite "cross over point" between mania and full-blown psychosis, which this post will attempt to define.

BiPolar Type 2's will unlikely have experienced psychosis - if they had, they would've been diagnosed as BiPolar Type 1 s. In fact, I reckon that the percentage of all BiPolars that have been psychotic is probably in single figures.

It's not that easy pinpointing where the difference between severe mania and psychosis lies. Both conditions could, I suppose, be described as irrational. Where I think they differ is in the nature of the irrationality. Mania, to my mind, is more of a rash, impulsive, over-confident irrationality. Psychosis on the other hand, involves the whole belief system. Which would explain why so many psychotic episodes are experienced (erroneously?) as spiritual or religious. (Me - I thought I was God the first psychotic episode, A mantic the second, and a Seer the third)

If you know anything about drugz, I suppose that Mania is to Psychosis, as a Cocaine buzz is to an LSD trip (but how would I know these things?)

The best way I could describe my own psychotic experience is for you to put yourself into Truman's (of the "Truman Show" movie - one of BPG's all time favs) shoes. At the point that you (Truman) start realising that all is not as it seems, that strange occurances and coincidences keep happening, and that somehow you, yourself, are at the centre of it all - THAT's how psychosis feels.

Here are some other manai/psychosis differences (according to Garp BPG):

• Psychosis often involves Paranoias. Like convincing beliefs that evil agents are plotting against you, and you're been spied upon. I've gone through this, and it's terrifying. A gazillion times worse than any horror movie. I know for a fact that I will NEVER, EVER shit myself as much as I did my first episode (something I tell myself when real-world scary situations arise)
• Before being diagnosed as BiPolar, your first psychotic episode often earns you the label of "Schizophrenia" - Paranoid Schizo in my case. Only a year or so later, when you are living a "normal" life again (something which Schizos can apparently never get fully back to) can the dear doctors deduce that, no, you're actually BiPolar Type 1, not Schizo.
• It's harder to get a psychotic "back to earth" than a manic. One of the scarier things about psychosis is that there is no guarantee that it will end - sometimes when you slip gravity you never get completely back to earth. (in which case the dear docs will deduce that, no, they were wrong, you were actually Schizophrenic all along). Seriously though, mania has relative comfort in that you know it will blow over (probably into full-blown depression, but that's another topic). With psychosis there's no knowing, which is pretty terrifying, especially to your loved ones. The only way i came back was through ECT.
  
• The primary way of diagnosing psychosis (in my experience anyways) is by a method called "reality testing". This is a particularly interesting topic for the philosophically minded, but i won't even go there. Basically it's a conversation with a PDoc and if they ask you (as in my case), whether you really are the third Messiah, and you answer yes without a shadow of doubt on your excited face, well then you're psychotic.
  

There are probably loadsa other differences I haven't touched on. But I'll finish up with Hunter S. Thompson's wonderful quote (which seems pretty relevant right about now):

“The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

Managing the BiPolar Disorder highs

Last year I entered an essay competition with the Black Dog Institute in Australia on the set title: Managing the BiPolar Disorder highs and the getting of wisdom. Put quite a bit of effort in, only to be told later that overseas entries were not eligible (even though, as they admitted, this fact was not displayed ANYWHERE on their website). So I thought I may as well put the essay to good use:

LEARNING TO FLY (AND LAND)
Managing the BiPolar Disorder highs and the getting of wisdom

There is something about astronauts returning to earth after an outer space trip that compels respect. You want to talk to them, listen to them, find out what it was like.

Undoubtedly, some of the respect is for their courage in undertaking the trip into the unknown. But there is also a deeper awareness that these fine men and women have been privy to a God’s-eye-view of the world, a perspective inaccessible to the rest of us. We cannot help but acknowledge that their experience has given them a breadth of wisdom that is beyond us “earthlings”.

How different is full-blown mania? I’m talking about industrial strength mania here, the type that I lived in 24/7 for 3 months, which only ended after 6 sessions of ECT. Okay, so I wasn’t in a spacecraft, and I didn’t have half the world watching me as I blasted away from earth, defying every shackle of convention and gravity. But deep within I know that the Other Worldly things that I saw and experienced were just as profound, terrifying and exhilarating as any other trip could be.

“But it was all just delusion,” you say. Ah…but it was real to me. And thus in a strange way, I too have been blessed. I’ve also witnessed another universe, a whole new way of looking at things, a world where magic is real and every event laden with powerful, mythological meaning. Sure the fear and terror was horrendous, but other moments were ecstatic beyond description.

My travel club is also special. Not everyone can pass through the door that us mentally disordered hold the key to. Cocaine and LSD trippers try to get there. And sometimes, I suppose, they get close. But it’s never the real McCoy, the one that a few mystics manage to reach. The Buddha surely caught a glimpse of the “Other World” – altering the course of religion for all time.

Were I to live my life over, I’m not sure that I would cancel that 3 month trip into the Other World. Or the 3 week trip that followed a few years later. Or the month long trip that I embarked on last June. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle the pain, struggle and stigma that goes with this bipolar condition. As somebody who spends 80% of his life in a state of numbed depression, I know only too well how debilitating this thing can be. But when we attempt to throw the filthy bath water out, just remember that there may be a baby somewhere in there.

Make no mistake, these psychotic expeditions are fraught with danger. When your spacecraft is hovering at the very edge of the gravitational field, one step too far, and you will leave the earth’s atmosphere – possibly never to return. Being able to navigate these territories, to steer your way back, and to ensure a safe landing, require incredible skill. Like it or not, us Bipolars are astronauts by birth. So best we start learning these skills as a matter of life or death.

The first skill (Space Trips 101 if you like) is knowing that you’ve actually blasted off in the first place. Unlike our real world space shuttling cousins we do not have a televised count down. Ours is a much more subtle process, and being able to say to yourself : “I have blasted off. I could be heading for space. Vigilance is called for. This is a serious situation” is crucial. Indeed, once you’ve mastered this step, your flight is already half under control. I mean: what is psychosis if not the fact that psychosis-sufferer is unaware that they are in a state of psychosis?

So how do you know that a journey has begun? The best way: Experience. And that is where us “already-diagnosed ones” are fortunate. We’ve made the trip before. In fact, to qualify for Bipolar Type One membership (a club I belong to), a previous space trip is a diagnostic pre-requisite. I’ve got three space trips under my belt now and I can tell you that the precursors are always the same: Worsening ongoing insomnia. Incredible newfound resources of energy. A zillion of the most brilliant ideas popping into your mind at the same time. A final self-recognition of your own unlimited award-winning potential.

Even these do not necessarily result in psychosis. For me personally the final blow has always been the profound coincidences that start taking over my world, and the fear that follows. Once that fear has manifested into paranoia there is no option but to wait for the rescue teams.

The main reason that I never ended up in a psychiatric ward last year, was being able to fend off the fear. On all previous occasions the fear got the better of me and the only exit route included hospitalisation.

But lest I accept my fighter pilot wings too eagerly, I must stress that I didn’t beat the fear alone. I recognised at an early point that I was back on the rocket, and that it was time to do some seatbelt fastening. My psychiatrist, no doubt, would have said “Return straight to earth. Do not Pass Begin. Do not collect $200”. Which is probably why I didn’t contact my psychiatrist at that point. It was too damn exciting. After five years of depression the chance to blast out of the ruts into the wild blue heavens was an expedition I could not abort.

What I did do, was up my dose of anti-psychotics. I had discussed this with my psychiatrist previously and, all credit to her, she had granted me the latitude to self-medicate when I felt it necessary. Wherever I go, I make sure I’ve got an emergency supply. Step Two: I told my wife how I was feeling. Actually Step Two, in all honesty, was only do-able thanks to at least two years of preparation. Following my official diagnosis, my wife and I educated ourselves thoroughly on Bipolar Disorder. And that’s why, when I said to her, “I’m worried that I may be getting a bit hyped up and out of touch with reality”, she didn’t phone 911, but stood firmly by my side and helped fight off the demons – Ground Control, as it were. Nothing fuels paranoia more than all of those around you starting to panic.

So preparation is key. Know thyself and know thy Bipolar Condition. It’s not for nothing that astronauts prepare for years for their actual journey.

Make sure you get enough sleep. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it. Whatever it takes. Give me four straight nights of hardcore insomnia and I can guarantee you that there will be a big tail of exploding rocket fuel flaming out behind me.

Get yourself right out of any stressful situations. It doesn’t matter how important or urgent they are, not getting lost floating around in outer space is more important. Don’t hesitate to take sick leave. Just because you haven’t broken out in a smelly green rash, doesn’t mean you’re not going through a serious episode of sickness. Switch your cell phone off. Ignore your Outlook inbox. The world won’t crash to a halt, I promise you.

Last year these few precautions were enough. Gradually the coincidences subsided, gradually the earth-shattering ideas slowed down. After a few weeks my feet were back on mother earth, albeit shakily. Luckily for me, I was prepared, and surrounded by a very strong support system. Otherwise I could not have done it without a psychiatrist. In retrospect it was probably a mistake, so if any of my fellow bipolars are feeling the surge of astro rocket power, I would recommend contacting your psychiatrist.

I would be lying if I said there was not a cost to last year’s episode. Shortly after landing, the inevitable months of depression ensued. Thankfully it was nowhere near as bad as the previous post-mania depressions which had all ended with crash-landings leaving a trail of carnage in their wake. I had somehow, for the first time, mastered the art of landing. And I definitely won’t garner any of the respect that the astronauts do. If anything I’ll have to share my stories under a pseudonym (like here), in case large parts of the population start treating me as a second-class citizen.

But despite the hefty payment, I reckon it was worth it. Like the astronauts, I discovered new planets. Only these planets were simply different versions of planet earth: new ways of looking at our world; new ways the world could be. Definitely not as spectacular as brand new planets, but maybe valuable in their own right. Given the present mess the world finds itself in, alternate ways of understanding it might not be such a bad thing.

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Concerts for nothing, and your trips for free

Came across this good quote the other day:

"A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and Holy Ghost on drums."

- Hunter S. Thompson

Why pay 5 bucks??

If you're BiPolar and having a Manic attack, you can go to the concert for free (and even get to be the holy ghost on drums...)

2 Types of Happiness

I've been alluding to it in the last few posts, so here's a full exposition:

Generally we (I?) tend to think of our BiPolar mood states as some kind of spectrum with total lack of excitement at the one end (depression) and total over excitement at the end (mania). And, as depression is at the "lack" end, I, for one, always equate happiness with excitement. No excitement and things are just plain bland.

The problem with this spectrum is where does contentment fit? Contentment doesn't need excitement, but it is certainly not depression.

One of the reasons why our society tends to concentrate on excitement rather than contentment is that the global economy depends on it. Producers need a populace of never-satisfied consumers, that want more and more and more. Advertising exploits this, pushing the cool of the latest trendiest goods (and the uncool of the older ones). The very last thing the global economy wants is a world of content people that are quite satisfied with their lot in life. Capitalism would grind to a halt. As Time magazine put it in a feature article on the contentment derived from regular meditation: "meditation helps you accumulate contentment, but not real estate."

So straight away, we've got the cards stacked against us with our quest for contentment. Advertising penentrates deeper into our psyches than most of us realise.

But for BiPolars, the contentment quest is even more difficult. Extreme happiness is exciting for sure. Exhilarating. Intoxicating. So when you've tasted mania or hypomania, which, by definition, is a state of over-excitement, we tend to become bored with, what for other people is normality - hence depression.

The German Philosopher Schopenhauer described it eloquently:

"as soon as want and suffering present rest to a man, ennui is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion"

Yeah, I had to look up "ennui" in the dictionary:

"boredom and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of activity or excitement" - Collins Paperback Dictionary.

Spot on! Exactly what I've been trying to say in this post. Us BiPolars need mania to be unbored, but mania cannot be sustained, so boredom results in depression.

Which is why I'm gonna stick with meditation. Hoping to up it soon from 20 minutes a day to 25. Screw the real estate - I'll take the contentment and try keep out of the excitement/non-excitement spectrum for as long as I can.

It's no surprise that I've turned my attention to contentment. Having Miss L living with me, finally, after all these years, has bought a new mindset into my life. A deep calm. Contentment?

***
Having said all of this I'm having a pretty shitty day. I try my hardest to divorce my thoughts from my moods, which is why this post sounds positive. The down is probably due to not getting a proper sleep for the past 4 nights. Bound to catch up with ya.

The Mania Meme

So I got tagged by Joel to continue with the Mania Meme. Well, you asked for it Joel, I'm BiPolar Type ONE remember, so this is the territory I specialise in. And trust me, it's not so far-fetched, what follows has all happened to me at one time or another.

Signs that I'm Manic:

• Leap out of bed every half hour to register the next million-dollar domain name that has popped into your head. Register 150 domain names in all.
• Order 25 philosophical tomes from Amazon (each 700 pages long). Got to know who you're competing with.
• Become an instant rap poet, and convert everything that comes into your head into rap for 5 hours solid.
• Expand your ToDo list from it's average 200 items to 3500 items in 48 hours
• Contact your lawyer. You're going to need patents in 25 countires
• Cancel sleep for a week - who need's that shit anyway? Might as well cancel food too, time is running out
• Close your business for a week. These mere mortals haven't a clue who they're dealing with
• Email every person with whom you ever had email contact with. Phone a couple too - in the early hours of the morning
• Reconnect up with missions from your previous psychotic episodes and finally realise that you were right all along and that it was the Beast's conspiring psychiatrists that derailed your original calling
• Purchase a Greek to English dictionary - there are vital clues in there. Hebrew to English might be needed too
• Download a 20 gig Gematria calculator off the Net, and run 1000 names through it for final confirmation
• Catch a glimpse of the particular angle a fly on the wall is sitting at and know that this is God's direct message that you're finally fulfilling your designated duties
• Crack the source code that is holding the solar system together taking into consideration the random distribution of irrational numbers in chaotic Y-string quanta
• Start planning how to contact influential world leaders so as to share your universe-altering insights with them. Humanity's future depends on it
• Actually contact various religious "high-ups", to seek advice as to how to deal with your discovery that you've actually tapped into a super-sensory dimension
• Placate the dogs, they've been looking at you with a bewildered expression the last few days
• Start formulating what you are going to say when the press arrives
• Lock your doors - these insights in your head are priceless and who knows who might be after them
• Pop a few extra Fluanxol, just to make sure that you don't get irrational or something stupid like that. This time you're not going to overdo it - gotta keep plans on track

Damn I miss these adventures.

In order to continue this meme I have tagged 5 fellow bloggers: Raine, The Queen, Shane, Kodeureum, Jane.

You guys need to put a list of which signs tell you that you're in mania-land, and then tag a further 5 of your BiPolar buds.

Let's send this meme around the planet!!

Top 11 ways to know you're apeshit manic

One of the better ways us BiPolars get by, is having a good laugh at ourselves. I picked up the following 10 from one of the latest Icarus Project discussion forums:

• last night you figured out how the universe REALLY works, this morning you ponder which goes on top, the peanut butter or the jelly?
• you have one song on repeat for 8 hours straight and when someone tells you you're a little weird you call them clueless zombies.
• you take your girlfriend's turquoise coloured nail polish and paint the word TURQUOISE on her bedroom wall and sign it with your initials
• you dance on a table at burger king if they happen to play a catchy tune and are puzzled why no one else is compelled to join you.
• it isn't so much that the tv talks to you. it's just so annoying that it won't stop worshipping you.
• Staying at gas station for 36 hours straight getting free refills. And a date.
• Getting barred from Starbux. In 2 states
• Try to seduce your older neighbor, her daughter, your friends girlfriend, your neighbors girlfriend and the cashier at the quickie mart, only to be swept off your feet by the Blue eyed Arab Girl you just met..
• Suddenly having a lucid moment. Just before bungee jumping attendant gives you a little push....
• Notice one day in class that your professor is on fire. Understand that you mustn't mention this, as it would be bragging. Only special people can see the flames.
• Send an urgent letter to Dan Brown (author of the bestselling Da Vinci Code) explaining that you've made some earthshattering discoveries about the freemasons and include a riddle in the form of a rhyming poem to prove your credentials.

***
I needed the laughs. Very exhausted the last few days. Looks like it's going to be another Notorious November