if they might be interested in coming to a fabulous party I was planning. At night, I would lie down in bed as a formality, then spring back up ten minutes later when sleeping didn't work out. Eventually, the mental chatter in my mind intensified so much that it felt like there were “four of me” whose constant arguments and repartees were alternatingly sinister and hilarious.
It really hurt, but I winced and kept going. If I ignored it, it would probably fix itself. Time passed. I limped along. Even though whatever was wrong with me was more pronounced than a physical limp and should have been more obvious, there was no coach to ride past on a bicycle and shout, “Stop running!”
So I didn't.
I felt like a ceiling light whose switch was stuck in the on position. Whatever I did, I couldn't turn myself off. Confused and tormented by my condition, I nevertheless strode through the days, handing in essays, going on dates, and calling my parents long distance for normal, how's-the-weather conversations. Even though I was falling apart inside my head, I wasn't doing anything that had enough obvious craziness to attract anyone's attention. Not running down the street in my underwear. Not trying to convince the bank teller I was Jesus. Just wandering around having thoughts that went off like sparklers and a body that had forgotten how to fall asleep.
When I finally went to see a doctor at the walk-in clinic down the street, it wasn't because I wanted to help myself or because I thought I might have a medical disorder. It was out of shame. I had started crying and rambling in front of my roommates one night because I couldn't sleep, and I felt so embarrassed for crying in front of them that I was determined to get sleeping pills so it wouldn't happen again. I waited in the exam room, feeling guilty for taking up the doctor's time when there were three-year-olds with runny noses waiting to be seen, and when the doctor came in, I started crying all over again. When she asked what was wrong, I blurted, “I can't do this anymore!”
That's when someone finally said, “Stop running.”
Over the next few weeks, I went through the usual mental-illness maze of being misdiagnosed with unipolar depression, becoming hypomanic (again) from antidepressants, being rediagnosed with bipolar II, and choking down a series of different antipsychotics and mood stabilizers until I hit on a combination that didn't make me want to bury myself in a hole. I spent a lot of time in the waiting room of the UBC hospital, which was neither fun nor cool, because everyone there either had an STD or a mental illness and there was no freaking whirlpool.
Total days of pain: lots and lots.
Social approval of bipolar: not obvious.
Overall experience with bipolar diagnosis: kinda really bad.
My dad flew out from Ontario to see how I was doing and make sure I wasn't completely crazy. We blasted through the Chapters bookstore in downtown Vancouver, and he bought me every bipolar-related book on the shelf. We made a stop at the Starbucks. As we were power walking down the street, my dad hailed a taxi midsentence, hopped in, and rushed off to catch his flight back to Ontario. I stood on the sidewalk with a bag of bipolar books in one hand and a half-finished Green Tea Frappucino in the other.
The party was just getting started.
In the days that followed, I returned most of the bipolar books and used the money to buy poetry books—not because I wasn't interested in the former, but because they made me feel tainted and messed up. They were too adult, too clinical, too alarmist, clearly written for family and caretakers at their wits' end, and designed to look authoritative and medical. They didn't answer any of the questions I had about bipolar, and I felt like a huge tool for even having them in my room, their ALL CAPS titles blaring out at the world. I thought there should be a book that was a little more honest, a little more badass, and a little more sympathetic to the average teen or twenty-something's first experience of the mental-health system.
So here's that book.
This book is mainly about how to live with bipolar, but it's also about how to think about bipolar. Sure, you can think of bipolar as a chemical imbalance in your brain, but you can also imagine it as a video game, a shamanic journey, a crash course in existentialism, or a plain old pain in the ass.
If you're reading this book and you've just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder: welcome to the jungle. Hope you brought bug spray, 'cause the spiders in here are as big as your face. Taken your meds? Good.
Now let's get started.
1
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
LIFE BEYOND THE DIAGNOSIS
How did it happen?
Maybe you were doing a research project on the Beatles, and by the end of the term you thought you were one of the Beatles. Maybe you were trying to find a girlfriend, and at the end of a futile year of looking you were trying to die. Maybe you were having a perfectly happy summer that turned into an ecstatic summer or a winter sadness that never lifted when spring came. The sun was shining, cars were honking, the radio was playing something catchy. You were toasting a bagel, playing Xbox, talking to your best friend about the afterlife, or tuning your guitar.
Then the mothership landed.
You were diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This big whale of a diagnosis slid over the sun, and your world was suddenly held hostage. A hatch slid open and out came doctors, psychiatrists, pills, hospitals, and self-help books. They strapped you to a gurney and scrawled “bipolar” on your chest in permanent marker. “I'm not bipolar!” you shouted, struggling in your restraints. “She's bipolar! He's bipolar! Anyone but me!” They gave you two Depakote and a glass of water. “Misdiagnosed!” you snarled, gulping it down.
Eventually, the mothership flew away, but left its cargo behind. Medication, doctors, and bipolar were seemingly here to stay. You picked your way out of the rubble, the last one standing after an earth-shattering encounter. Your ray gun is strapped to your side; your freshly acquired jar of anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers is on your other hip. You step out of the doctor's office.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
Dealing with a bipolar diagnosis can be just as hard as the unfettered depressive or manic episodes that led up to it. It's like you've been hit by a truck, only to be told at the scene of the accident that you're going to be hit by several more trucks of steadily increasing size over the course of your life (have fun with that). For a while, it's hard to think about anything else but the fact that you're screwy enough to be considered mentally ill, and especially hard to accept a diagnosis of mental illness if you've always considered yourself a happy, healthy person. The diagnosis looms over your life, and you just want to rewind to a time before it happened. Can anything be the same again? How did they even decide I have bipolar?
Being told you have a serious mental illness is a colossal mind fuck. In fact, some doctors and psychiatrists are now questioning whether it's even a good idea to tell people they have a “serious lifelong mental illness” when they experience something that looks like mania or depression. Why? Because having an authority figure like a doctor inform you that you are “mentally ill” gives you certain expectations (“I'm going to be unstable and need meds my whole life!”) that can actually make it harder for you to recover. The label of bipolar disorder can lead you to reinterpret your life in a certain way, giving special importance to mood while downplaying things like relationships, family dynamics, your ability to find meaning in life (or lack thereof) and various kinds of trauma which can play an equally large role in your ability to cope with life. What does “bipolar” even mean? And what does it really say about who you are? This chapter is about understanding what the people in white coats were thinking when they made the diagnosis. Even if you hate everything to do with jargon and psychiatry and labels like “bipolar,” you should know this stuff so you understand what (and who) you're dealing with.
WHAT IS BIPOLAR, ANYWAY?
Asking “What is bipolar?” is a little bit like asking “What