It is not lost on me that next week is the holidays. Whether you’re religious, or, like me, just like a finely-dressed tree, there tends to be a lot going on.
So here is a bipolar holiday guide on maintaining bipolar stability over the holidays, which, as we all know, can be tough.
(Prereading: What is EMPowerplus by Truehope and Why am I Taking EMPowerplus?)
I’ve ordered EMPowerplus by Truehope now, and so, as a buyer, I know a few things that you can’t find out on their public site.
The experience of buying EMPowerplus is exactly what you would think it would be – you go online and you buy it. There is one difference though, and that difference is that someone calls you to follow-up.
The morning after I ordered the product, the Truehope follow-up person called and started asking me personal questions and confirming information I had already given them. Then she asked my diagnosis. I hesitated as I don’t really think it’s any of her business, but then said, “bipolar.” Then she asked me what medications I was on. I told her I was on several and I didn’t want to enumerate them. She said something along the lines of, “our support staff can’t help you if they don’t have a full picture.” I asked her what her qualifications were to be asking such questions and she said that she simply, “set up the file.” Then I asked her what qualifications those support staff have. She said, “they’re educated on the product.”
In other words, the follow-up person has zero qualifications and the support people who will be counselling you have zero qualifications also. (This is true, by the way, it’s just a call center.) And she wants me to hand over my personal, medical information to these people. I don’t think so.
There are many reasons I don’t typically talk about my own, personal, current mood and treatments. I’ve written about why I don’t write about my bipolar treatments here. Similarly, I don’t talk about my current bipolar mood state because my writings are less about me, in particular, and more about the experience of bipolar, in general. I believe that’s one of the reasons my writing is so popular. I take my personal experience of bipolar disorder and use it as a springboard to speak to what it’s like to experience bipolar for so many.
But one of the other reasons I don’t talk about my personal, current mood state is because I’m a private person. I know this seems weird considering how much I share online. But I’m careful with what I share, and what I don’t.
And finally, I know that I’m a role model for some people and I don’t talk about my own current mood episode because I don’t want other people to lose hope. In spite of recent accusations, I do actually bring hope to thousands of people with bipolar and people who love those with bipolar disorder and I don’t want to do anything to injure that hope.
(Preread: What is EMPowerplus by Truehope?)
I’m not doing well. I haven’t been doing well for a long time. It’s quite simple really, every day I fight the bipolar and at the moment, the bipolar is winning.
And when this happens I know what I have to do. I know I have to find an effective treatment. In my 15 years of being treated for bipolar disorder, I can tell you what pulls me out of a depression: medication. Nothing else ever has. Ever. I’ve done everything (believe me) and nothing works except finding the right bipolar medication. I know people don’t want to believe this, but it’s true.
But unfortunately for me, we’re out of bipolar meds. My doctor is out of ideas. I have no good ideas either. If I wanted a drug, my doctor would give it to me, but there’s simply nothing to want because there’s nothing with any evidence behind it that I haven’t tried. And there’s no combination (or combination of combinations) that I haven’t been on. Really.
And the other night I was in my apartment, suicidal as you please, and I desperately decided to try this EMPowerplus stuff. Because, according to some anecdotal evidence and case studies, it appears to have worked for a few people.
I have been wanting to write about the Truehope people (makers of EMPowerplus) for years but I haven’t because, well, I didn’t have anything nice to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I knew that any critique I made of these people would be met with a slew of hate mail and, really, I get enough of that already.
But now I’m ready to go and at the bottom I’ll tell you why.
As I said last week, bipolar disorder can be a lethal disease. My point was that suicide can be a symptom of bipolar disorder and this is the cause of death for many people.
However, there are other ways to die from bipolar disorder as well. In fact, suicide is not even the most common cause.
As people who read this bipolar blog know, I’m on medication, lots of it, actually. Nevertheless, many people (philosophically, even me) wish to be medication-free. I’m the first one to say this usually isn’t possible; however, today I’m talking with CEO and Medical Director Dr. Kim Dennis from Timberline Knolls (a sponsor) about bipolar disorder without medication.
In short: yes, you can die from bipolar disorder.
Now, I know, many people would disagree with me on this, after all, bipolar disorder doesn’t produce a tumour in your body that will eventually kill you, it doesn’t create plaque in your arteries to eventually kill you and it doesn’t spread a virus through your cells to eventually kill you. I know, bipolar is not like that.
But, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), suicide takes over 35,000 lives a year in the United States and many of these are our brothers and sisters with bipolar disorder. You think that suicide isn’t the same thing as death by bipolar disorder? Think again.
The Bipolar Burble blog welcomes guest author somePlaywrights, a collaboration of two writers based in Annapolis and Brooklyn, who face, seemingly weekly, a struggle to succeed as a creative, bipolar collaboration.
On its own, the practice of creating art is bizarre: fusing this abstract feeling with that concrete image, trying to convince others of something only you can see, and all the while endeavoring to balance concept with content. With the addition of bipolar disorder, a condition that is just as, if not more, slippery, firm, and fleeting, the artistic process often teeters between genius and delusion, between coherence and disunion. It is in this realm, where mania meets medium and depression intersects with artistic production, that we, as bipolar artists, must carve and claim our collective space…
People contact me and ask me to advise on many subjects and one of them is whether they should go public about their bipolar disorder online. People often want to know this because they want to start a blog or in some other way express the challenges of bipolar disorder. Usually, it is with the best of intentions that people ask. Usually, people want to go public with their bipolar disorder online in an effort to help others.
However, I tend to be the bearer of bad news: I do not generally think people should go public about their bipolar disorder online.
The Bipolar Burble blog welcomes Karen Tyrrell back. Karen is an Australian author and teacher and she has written a new book Baily Beats the Blah. This is a picture book that aims to help kids develop more awareness around mental health and build up mental health coping skills.
Leave a comment below to be entered to win a free, signed copy of the book.
I was sitting in my living room today starting at the wall. I spend a surprisingly large amount of time staring at the wall. It’s not that my walls are even vaguely interesting, it’s just that I spend a lot of time depressed and when depressed, even considering watching TV seems overwhelming.
And I was sitting there, depressed, staring at the wall, and the thought occurred to me: I just want to be like everyone else. I just want to go back to a time when walls were just the things you painted and not sources of non-entertainment. I just want to go back to a time when I couldn’t define bipolar disorder and psych medications were something I would never even have considered. I just want to go back to a time when I was just like everyone else.
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