Mental Health Awareness Month, 2023
With it being Mental Health Awareness Month, I decided to write about living with bipolar disorder. Bipolar is also known as manic-depressive illness, a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings, shifts in energy levels, and changes in activity and concentration. Those like myself living with bipolar disorder experience periods of intense and elevated moods known as mania or hypomania, as well as periods of depression.
The symptoms I have experienced living with bipolar disorder have varied widely throughout my life- everything from states of euphoria, severe irritability, uncontrollable racing thoughts, increased energy, decreased need for sleep, grandiose ideas, impulsivity, and reckless behavior during manic episodes. This has affected my life in many ways.
I have been a risk-taker since I was very young. Always pushing the limits. I would say adrenaline was my first drug of choice, and I became very addicted to it. I wanted it all the time and I would take chances and push the limits as often as I could, finding myself in trouble as far back as I could remember. Soon, drug addiction would be a huge part of my life, because I needed something to recreate those same feelings. My behavior would become completely irrational and inappropriate. I have destroyed many relationships because of this.
I have had periods where I could not control my emotions and I would have outbursts without being antagonized at all. My spouse has been my rock and has been the glue that has kept our relationship and our lives together and has endured some of the worst of my mental illness. She has accepted me for who I am and has supported me through some of the worst times in our lives. During depressive episodes, I feel sad, hopeless, and unmotivated. I can’t eat and/or sleep and have difficulty concentrating. I feel like there’s a constant struggle with my own subconscious, battling with feelings of self-hatred, self-doubt and acting on those feelings with self-sabotage, even when things are going well in my life. Bipolar disorder has affected my relationships, my work performance, and my daily functioning. It also contributed to the development of my substance use disorder.
I have had difficulty maintaining relationships for most of my life- relationships with family with friends, and my intimate relationships. I have been very difficult to get along with at times because of my anger issues, outbursts and my inability to control my grandiose opinions and ideas about things that l share when it’s inappropriate to do so. However, I have been blessed with a woman who has accepted me for who I am and where I’m at, and, unfortunately, has put up with a lot of things that she really should not have to. But she did so because she loves me, and for that I’m truly grateful. She was a huge part of me getting well and continues to help me every day maintaining my recovery and my treatment for my mental health. If it was not for Hannah I would not be where I am today.
Substance use disorder is a common co-occurring condition in people with bipolar disorder like myself. Research suggests that up to 60% of people with bipolar disorder experience a substance use disorder at some point in their lifetime. I have been using drugs on and off since I was 14 years of age. The main reason that I used drugs was to cope with symptoms that I was having before I even knew that I had Bipolar disorder. For example, I would use alcohol or drugs to self-medicate and enhance my mood during depressive episodes or to level out during manic episodes.
Substance use has exacerbated my symptoms of bipolar disorder. Alcohol and drugs have interfered with the medications that I have been prescribed and their effectiveness and for many years have put me in a position where I just wouldn’t take my medications because I thought the drugs were taking care of me. This would trigger manic or depressive episodes, and increase my suicidal ideations and harmful and risk taking behaviors.
When I finally decided to get well, it was really a multi-faceted approach. I couldn’t just go to a rehab facility and focus on my drug use and think I was going to get better. I had tried that seven times before and failed miserably each and every time. I couldn’t just go to another psych hospital for a few days, weeks or even a few months again, just focusing on the mental health conditions and thinking that it was all going to get better- because that too never worked before.
I was approved to go to a 90 day program called RRTP at the Veterans Administration (Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program.) I got to focus on everything. I went through a full detoxification program. At that time I was addicted to IV methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and smoking crack cocaine. I was doing anything and everything I could to feel different. I hated who I was and what was going inside of me and I would do anything to just not feel inside.But I got to the point when enough was enough. I knew that I was going to die. Something inside of me deep down didn’t want to die. That’s all I knew, was that I wanted to live. I didn’t think I could change but I knew I wanted to live. So I asked for help. I went to the ER and turned myself in.
I went through that program and I really opened up. I decided to leave my EGO at the door. Ok that’s a lie, I was a really big jerk the first couple of weeks, so let’s say I threw my ego out the window and then I started to make some progress. But it was the whole person approach that was so successful. They treated everything at once. I got off some of the medications that I had been taking for years and I realized they weren’t helping and it gave me the opportunity to start again with a fresh perspective and start something new. I found new medication that worked while I got off all the drugs I was addicted to for so long.
Then, I did something that I never tried before. When I completed the program, they offered me transitional housing. In the past, I always said “No, I got this!” when I really didn’t, I just wanted to go home. There were times when I didn’t have the intention of getting high again, but I was just tired of being institutionalized. So I always went home and the cycle eventually continued.But this time I had nowhere to go. I had been homeless for a while, either living out of my car or living out of hotels. I had burned every bridge twice by this point. So I accepted what they offered me and this was what changed my life.
I started my life again from the ground up. I got a job at the VA as a janitor during the beginning of COVID and I was assigned to the emergency department. It was my responsibility to HAZMAT clean all the rooms each time they were used. But that’s not what I liked about the job. There were a lot of veterans just like me that would come in just to get off the streets and out of the cold. The doctors and nurses would hardly go near them, but I would go into their rooms and talk with them and bring them food and warm blankets. This is when I learned what I wanted to do with my life. This is when I decided I wanted to help people that were like me, and with Hannah’s encouragement, I decided to become a certified peer recovery specialist.
So with mental health awareness month upon us, be mindful that there are those among us who are suffering in silence. You never know what someone is living with inside. So try and live your life with compassion and empathy, because someone might be smiling each and every day but dying on the inside. Try and listen when someone needs to talk. You might make the biggest difference in someone’s life and not even realize it.
I would like finish with something that my manager Doug said recently that really resonated with me.
“I hate the quote that we’re all in the same boat. We’re not. We may be in the same storm, but we’re definitely in different boats. Everyone’s struggle is their own.” - Doug Pfeffer
