I’ve had various medications for my bipolar disorder over the years. In my twenties, prior to diagnosis, I took anti-depressants alone, because I would only end up in front of the GP when I was depressed. Later, in my thirties, when I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder, I was also prescribed mood stabilisers. Right from the off, I’ve had difficulty with taking the mood stabilisers, and for a number of reasons. Perhaps, on reflection, not least because I was already very much using one.
When the bipolar diagnosis came I was in a mixed mania state. I’d just successfully completed my studies, begun lecturing in software engineering, and working freelance on a number of pretty big projects. I was working successfully, hellishly, feverishly, and… I was not in a good place at all. I was aggressively single-minded about work, working very long hours, every day. The thing is, I often combined this working with drinking, far into the night. And there was never a day off, a minute off – even a moment. I created unbelievable pressure on myself, and was simultaneously convinced that I was going to be the richest man on earth just-you-wait-and-see, and that demons were going to slowly take everything from me and I would die while 42 years old. However ridiculous these thoughts might seem to you, they return to me over and over, and are at times very, very real.
So, told back then that I had a pretty major mental health problem seemed both completely ridiculous and absolutely terrifying. I thought the demons had already started in on me. I also thought that there was nothing wrong with me at all, that it was everyone else that was getting in my damn way. It took a long time for the reason of my diagnosis to sink in, and for me to even contemplate medication. Some weeks later, I remember when I first realised that I should probably take some medication, sat talking to the nurse, and her words actually making sense to me. I remember not feeling shocked exactly, but still blinking at this little epiphany. And that was only breakthrough number one – there were more to go through. One of which was that I was very, very drunk.
It has to be said that I’ve flirted with the dark side of alcohol for a great deal of my adult life. When I was the drummer in the band, it was actually pretty much expected of me. Whilst I swung from the stage in a wedding dress and proclaimed myself to be the King of Scotland, the spirits were riding high in my skinny body while I stared madly out of glassy eyes, grin writ broad across my face, and people’s reaction was, basically, that I was just being a drummer. Then when I sat for hours, days on my own, not talking to anyone, only emerging to beat the hell out of my kit before retreating in to sullen loneliness, with my whisky bottle in hand, people again though that I was just being a drummer. And I was. The trouble is, though it was quite an unwell drummer, it fits the profile.
On reflection I can plainly see my levels of drinking have lurched in response to my state of mind – simply put, when I’m deeply depressed, or on a high, I drink more. This pattern of alcohol abuse seems oddly labelled “self-medication” by the medical profession, but I can tell you first hand that it really does feel to work as a medicine, though for years I wasn’t “cognitively” conscious of that.
When I’m unwell, I can describe it as a constant, enormous rushing pressure in my mind, like a train going through an unexploded bomb over a geyser, with a volcano and an earthquake thrown in for good measure, all making a hellish din that crowds out light, sense, thought, reason, and replaces it with fear, anxiety, anger, isolation and calamity. In many ways, I see my manias and depressions very much as two sides of this exact same coin, and the trick of it is, whichever way I’ve gone, when I drink, I can somehow cope with it better.
It’s not that being drunk makes the noise go away, although in some senses it does isolate it a little from what I’m feeling, if only because I’m drunk, and being drunk makes everything disconnect from everything else in the mind. But in other ways, that are very hard to analyse, it allows me to adapt to and blend with the noise in order to reduce its threat, and allow me to live with it, if only while I’m drunk. Think of a child that is horrified at the very prospect of broccoli, that absolutely will not eat it, that is utterly distraught and tearful at the very prospect. But then, at last, a technique is found that enables the parent to feed the child the broccoli, just once. Then again, and then again, and on and on until finally the child eats broccoli without encouragement. Well, what the alcohol achieves is to allow me the temporary acceptance of the noise, and it even promises that one day it will make this noise be truly acceptable, just like the child who learns to love (or at least not resist!) broccoli. The trouble is, the alcohol promise is a very cleverly disguised lie: it will never teach me to live with the noise.
The incidence of so-called dual diagnosis bipolar sufferers with alcoholism is very high, and that’s really not surprising at all. Smoking also has a very high incidence among bipolar sufferers, and though I somehow gave up that habit a couple of years ago, again, it’s not surprising. Alcohol and tobacco are drugs, make no mistake, and they have very powerful effects on the mind. Weirdly, they don’t need a prescription, but they can give someone who is struggling with their mental health demons just a little, temporary relief. It’s a trap, of course, but then, so is the choo-choo train trick with the broccoli on the fork.
Funny, when baby eats broccoli, everyone claps and applauds, and baby learns to eat greens. When I got drunk back then, damn, I was in front of crowds of people, and they were all applauding… But I don’t suppose anyone’s lining up to paint my bedroom pastel blue, chuch my cheeks, and change my romper are they? No? Ok fine, now I guess I’ll have to sort that out myself as well, then…
I am definitely *NOT* changing your romper.
You’re saying you like this one? Ok I’ll keep this one. Also, thank you for the cheek chuch, and here’s a paintbrush…