Apr. 28, 2006 - HiddenTriggers

I had just reached the point of daring to exhale, thinking the radical, illogical mood swings were behind me and that I had achieved a modicum of balance. Prematurus optimistus.

I hadn’t taken tetracycline for decades and was unprepared for my stomach’s adamant revolt. It took some work, but I figured out how to get it down and keep it down with minimal aggravation. I gave little thought to the cortisone cream.

Within the week, I was weepy to the extreme. Every little thing, sometimes no thing at all, triggered a sob fest, which I did my best to hide from my hubby. Then the irritability crept in. Not only was I tearful, I was pissy, to boot. Again, I turned to the world wide web.

The obvious culprit, or so I thought, was the tetracycline, since I was taking it orally. I scoured webpage after webpage, finding only the most oblique references to tetracycline and bipolar disorder. Finally, I found two articles, Adverse Psychiatric Reactions to Prescribed Drugs, and Contributors to “Mood Episodes,” both of which specified tetracycline as a common contributor to depression. Considering my vast experience of weird reactions to all kinds of prescription drugs, I reasoned that the antibiotic accounted for my weepiness, but did not explain my growing edginess. So, I continued searching.

Then I came across a reference of horrifying humor. ’Roid Rage they call it, because it bears a striking resemblance to anabolic steroid abuse and the psychosis that often ensues. Only, the episodes in bipolar disorder can be triggered by exposure as small as steroid inhalers for allergies and asthma, steroid eye-drops for autoimmune disorders, etc. and yes, steroid creams like the cortisone I’d been dutifully daubing on my chin.

Did I stop using the meds and learn to live with the cracking, bleeding rash that made me feel like a metaphorical leper? Nope. This is an instance in which knowledge is power. Understanding that my little mood swings truly resulted from external sources and that I was not losing control again, allowed me to fashion a mental remedy for the pharmaceutical ones.

It took conscious will and focus ~ as those who have tried to connect with me can attest ~ but I made it through! I only have two more antibiotics to swallow, the cortisone is essentially done, and the skin on my chin is clear and soft. I did it by making myself stay as positive as possible and reminding myself of something I already knew.

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Apr. 4, 2006 - Surreality

Here I sit, no doubt on some Owellian watch list, officially "mental" these fifteen years passed. Oh, it doesn't bother me. In fact, my friends and I have a running joke about certificate envy, as they, too, appreciate the cosmic humor of me being certified. So I sit here, amused by the breathtaking irony that I am the one labeled "mental," while the world "out there" far exceeds any cog-slippage that ever occurred in my brain.

Take our president. (Please?) He is either so comfortable with contradicting himself that he does not notice his faux pas, or he completely understands quantum theory and the notion that "Now" is all there is. So he is, in fact, not contradicting himself, because what appear to be "previous acts" only exist as probabilities. Nah. . . the evidence pretty much debunks that notion.

Then, of course, there's our Fourth Estate, fallen bastion of American liberty. No longer the beacon of global journalism, our mainstream media daily devolves into a circus of eerily homogenized talking heads and completely incurious drones. Perish the thought of actual news passing between those perfect teeth. Instead, our worldview is tabloidized and our information reduced to repetitious minutiae. Government intervention or no, the networks collect billions each year using airwaves that belong to the citizens of the United States. One would think that fact would ensure some loyalty to the people, rather than complicity in the undoing of our country.

What's more. . . Our leaders deny evidence of global warming, despite the melting ice caps, dying coral reefs, and ever more disastrous weather patterns. Politicians own stock in voting machine companies. Oil industry execs write our energy policies, pharmaceutical firms structure medicare, and our homegrown Christian Taliban advises the president on Armageddon strategy.

It's like Jerry Seinfield's bizarro world from sea to shining sea. But I'm the one who is nuts.

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Mar. 19, 2006 - Mom's Ghost

Mom’s been around a lot lately. She’s come and gone many times since she died twenty-three years ago, always with the uncanny knack of showing up when I'm feeling a little lost. I suppose she’s mothering me now in ways that she did not know when she was alive.

My mother was an icon of confusion ~ a beautiful, gifted, loving, terrified, ruined woman. Only recently did I realize how truly bipolar she was. Although I recognized her depression when I was fourteen and beginning to grapple with my own, I didn’t equate her exhaustive charity work and compulsive cleanliness with mania. These days, I marvel at her control, and I finally understand how she became complicit in my abuse: She was so used up by her own battles and the rigors of living with my father that she had nothing left with which to shelter me.

Consquently, she paid penance by sewing and knitting and cooking and cleaning to create the illusion of perfection. Culture, too, was part of her restitution. She filled our house with opera, started my piano lessons when I was six, and belonged to half a dozen book clubs. Thank God, she provided escape routes for me when I could not escape in Nature. I will always picture her standing in the tiny kitchen she hated so, singing something from Rigoletto with her amazing voice, grief streaming down her face.

Ah, but that was only one side of her. The other side was haunted by the awful truths she knew and manifested as worthlessness. Nothing measured up, nor did anyone. Ever. The house was never clean enough. I was never clean enough. All the A’s in the world could not draw mention in the face of one A minus. She found my award-winning poetry maudlin, and my choice of hair-do once inspired such rage that I wore scarves for days to hide her handprints on my neck. Many a day I went to school with welts on my cheek, or bruises where she grabbed my arms and shook me. Granny-hood softened her greatly, for she spared my children her usual strict policy of "no compliment without an offsetting criticism."

I am not complaining, mind you. Nor do I blame her for my challenges. On the contrary, I am sorry that part of her grieved every day of her life, that her own childhood wounds were inconsolable, and that she died of regret, believing that she failed my brother and me. She did the very best she knew, under circumstances that would undo most of us.

Besides, just before her life released her, my mother gave me some of the best advice I have ever received. "Kitty," she whispered. "No one gives a damn that you vacuum every day."

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Mar. 5, 2006 - This Is Nuts!

We, as Americans, have taken eternal pride in our "world leader" role. But this particular #1 position should shame us all.

Study: U.S. Leads In Mental Illness, Lags in Treatment

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 7, 2005; Page A03

"One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a "serious" disorder that significantly disrupted their ability to function day to day, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation’s mental health, published yesterday.

Although parallel studies in 27 other countries are not yet complete, the new numbers suggest that the United States is poised to rank No. 1 globally for mental illness, researchers said."

It gets worse. According to a National Institute of Mental Health Report:

~ There are approximately 130,000 seriously mentally ill individuals who are homeless.

~ There are approximately 120,000 seriously mentally ill individuals in the nation’s jails and prisons.

~ At least one-third of seriously mentally ill women, especially those who are sometimes homeless, have been raped.

And worse: Jamie Fellner, Director, U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch said, "Prisons have become the nation’s primary mental health facilities. But for those with serious illnesses, prison can be the worst place to be."

How can this happen? Nearly every family in this country is, has been, or will be affected by mental illness, yet our government has slashed funding for community mental health programs in order to divert the money for war. Hence, many of our most vulnerable citizens ~ including veterans recently returned from Iraq ~ face either no support whatsoever or incarceration due to mental illness.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Some of the criteria used to deem them (us) "mental" are positively shocking. For example, look at the textbook or manual called The Diagnostic Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders. Translated into economic and political terms, mental disorder means undesired mental states and behavior. The criteria for mental disorder in include any unusual perceptual experience, magical thinking, clairvoyance, telepathy, sixth sense, sense of a person not actually present. You’re allowed to sense the presence of a dead relative for three weeks after their death. After that it becomes a criterion of mental disorder to have those feelings.

When one also considers the disturbing trend toward a national registry of all those who are "mental," legislation like Florida’s Baker Act, and the Bush Administration’s New Freedom Iniative, it’s not hard to be downright paranoid.

Let all bear in mind that a society is judged not so much by the standards attained by its more affluent and privileged members as by the quality of life which it is able to assure for its weakest members. ~ H.E. Javier Perez de Cuellar

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Feb. 19, 2006 - The Long & Winding Road

I do not to dwell in the past. There's little there that I care to project into the future. Nonetheless, a review can sometimes clarify the present, which is one of the most difficult, yet fascinating times of my life. Over half a year has turned since my bloody dark night of the soul. Although I've moved beyond self-recrimination, I still feel a twinge over such a (seeming) major setback in my life. I hold only myself accountable, of course, as each decision that led to my deterioration and near-demise was ultimately mine.

I ended up at the Behavioral Medicine Spa precisely because I ignored my higher mind and succumbed, instead, to the gnawing, guttural voice of Fear. I argued with myself from the beginning, when I could have most easily avoided the drama by making more empowered choices. But at that point, empowerment meant loss, and I took what seemed to be the least painful path right into the abyss.

The journey back has been more shamanic than recuperative, as there are distinct parallels between my physical healing and my spiritual recovery. I've had to work on both levels to achieve every bit of mending that's occurred. The lessons are monumental, and deciphering them is akin to learning HTML using only the right hemisphere of one's brain. It can be done, but not by the fainthearted.

For example, blood loss was an odd thing to contemplate and heal. Stream-of-consciousness meditations revealed disparate glimpses that ranged from the high priestess who sanctified the earth with her own blood, to the obvious connection between physically bleeding to death and allowing my passion and soul to leak away until there was nothing left of me in my own life.

The ultimate irony in all of it is that I espouse the belief that, although, we are each individual expressions of God, there is no separation between any of us, or between us and our Creator, or between us and anything. Yet, I consistently manage to omit myself from the cosmic benevolence that I believe envelops everyone else.

And that is where I find myself seven months after the fact. My left hand is still possessed by something akin to half-worn novocaine, the feeling creeping back ever so slowly. The scaring ~ inside and out ~ shames me some, and most likely will until all of the lessons are learned. Finally, I find myself starting at ground level to re-establish my stability, which is ultimately an act of faith. . .which is missing in action, of late. The journey continues. . .

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