Med change...again

Well, the favorite of bipolar folks everywhere.  Time to make a change in medication.  This has been happening far too often this year.  Anyway, I'm coming off of Abilify, an expensive atypical antipsychotic, and either cutting it out completely or switching to a cheaper drug from the same family.  I don't seem to be experiencing much difficulty except maybe a little change in the racing thoughts department.  It is hard to tell though as I am traveling and going to family holiday parties.  Traveling and holiday parties can cause racing thoughts for me all by themselves. 

One problem with living with medication is that they can lose effectiveness over time.  Something that worked great in the beginning, can stop working after a while.  Or side effects can become problematic. 

Racing thoughts are not my friend.  They rarely race in a positive direction.  Usually they go something like this.  "I'm not good enough, I'll never succeed, I'll always feel THIS way, nothing will ever change."  Of course, I am good enough, I frequently succeed, feeling come and go, and things are always changing. 

How do I counteract these negative, racing thoughts?  Prayer, meetings, meditation, and serving others.  Getting active doing something positive.  I prayed a lot last night.  I was staying with some relatives.  My wife was asleep in our bedroom.  My sister-in-law was asleep in the living room.  And I had insomnia.  Nowhere to hang out and nothing to do.  So, I lay in the dark praying and trying to sleep.  Tonight is slightly better.  I'm having insomnia in the hotel lobby while everybody sleeps. 

We have a long drive tomorrow going home.  It'll be good to be home.  Now I just need to get some sleep so I can help with the driving.

Writing

It is so hard to write when I'm not having regular manic episodes.  The "loss" of creativity is often cited by bipolar folks as a good reason to stop taking their medications.  Bipolar folks are frequently very creative.  You know the mad artist or musician.  Van Gogh, Edgar Allen Poe, Mozart.  A good read on this is Kay Jamison's "Touched with Fire".  It's kind of grandiose to think that I'm anything like these guys, but still, sometimes I feel like being bipolar has fueled my creativity.  Not only has it been hard to write, I haven't been playing guitar either. 

I'm doing great on the current medication regimen.  Lithium in particular seems to be helping a great deal.  The two months preceding my alcohol relapse were hell.  One manic episode after another.  No one in the house knew what the heck I would feel like, who I might be, from day to day.  I finally got off the Paxil, which was incredibly difficult, and onto a higher dose of lithium.  The Paxil may have been solving several problems, but it also may have been precipitating manic episodes. 

The other problem that the Paxil had was that I couldn't seem to cry.  Or at least not very often.  I know crying doesn't seem like much of a plus, but when you haven't done it in ages, it is such a relief when it happens.  Anyway, now I cry frequently.  At first it was uncomfortable and weird.  I'd be in church listening to the sermon and just start crying for no particular reason.  Just now I was reading a book, "Carry On Warrior" by Glennen Doyle Melton, and just couldn't finish the chapter I was crying so hard.  It felt good to cry at a sad book.  It just feels good to be more emotionally alive.

So, why if I'm feeling more emotionally alive in some ways, do I feel as if my creativity is decreased?  Just a hunch.  Lithium has a reputation for this.  Maybe I just need to force myself to pick up the pen or the guitar.

And that's my resolution for the day.  To do some writing and play some guitar.

Relapse and Recovery

I relapsed.  On alcohol.  With all its catastrophic consequences.  I almost lost my family and next time, if there is a next time, I will.  I suppose there are a million excuses I might give for why I relapsed, but the honest truth is that I just like to get high.  Problem is, I don't like the consequences.  Among other problems, there is the fact that once I start it is almost impossible for me to stop. 

I made several obvious mistakes leading up to the relapse.  I stopped going to meetings, I isolated myself from friends, I isolated myself from my wife and family, I stopped praying.

Luckily I only drank for four days or so.  On the last day, I sat in the cheapest motel in town, glass in hand, and prayed.  In addition to praying, I had also talked to my psychiatrist and my wife.  I had reached out for help.  I dumped out the booze.

In short order, after I had stopped, there was a whirlwind of Positive activity.  I went to a meeting and admitted that I had relapsed.  I got out of the motel and into a basement apartment in the home of some members of my church.  I went to a meeting with my wife, my psychiatrist, and a couples counselor.  I jumped back into recovery with renewed vigor.  I jumped into my relationship with my wife with renewed vigor.  And I ramped up the therapy with my psychiatrist.

Interestingly, this whole mess has produced a renewed closeness with my wife.  We are planning to renew our wedding vows.  With a twist.  One of those vows will be that if I drink again, it will mean the end of our marriage.  Our new vows will be a definition of what each of us will be bringing to the table, and of what each of us expects the other to bring to the table.

I am filled with gratitude.  Not for having drank.  But for the unexpected shakeup in my life and marriage.  I am feeling a deep sense of joy and gratitude because I am still alive and that I get another chance to stay that way.

Rejoice

In the words of the Psalmist, "This is the day the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."  Psalms 118: v. 24

While not an overly religious blog, this seemed to fit today.  Attitude is everything, and Lord knows I have a lousy attitude much of the time. 

Each new day in recovery and healthy living is a blessing to me.  I'm lucky to be alive and sane at all with all the crazy stuff I've pulled. 

When I approach each new day with the attitude that it is a gift and that I can greet it with a joyful countenance, I have a much better time of it.  Certainly, there is plenty to be anxious about.  Everybody has problems, but approaching those problems remembering that each day is indeed a gift.  And more, that each day be enjoyed regardless of what problems it brings.  Today we talked about some of the difficulties we face on the farm.  But underlying that conversation was the knowledge that we will be guided through those difficulties.  The certainty that a loving and caring creator will see us through.  The knowledge that we will feel through our dilemmas and make the right decisions. 

When I dwell in the negative, I run the risk of a relapse in addiction or mental health.  I can get so spun out that using drugs and alcohol seems like a good alternative.  Courting death and destruction for the notion that chemical peace of mind seems like a viable option.  Luckily, sanity is a prayer, a meeting, or a phone call away.   Just having someone on the other end of the line say, "so you're going to risk all that is good and right in your life so that you can get high?"  is enough to get me centered again.  Because the pill and the bottle are empty only provide empty promises.

The opposite of fear is faith.  The antidote to that deadly despair is to rejoice.  Seizing life is the opposite of chasing death.  There are alternatives to active addiction and that is good news indeed.

How can I help?

I read an amazing article called, "No one brings dinner when your daughter is an addict." by Larry M. Lake.  It's a tear jerker but definitely worth the read.  The general idea is that when someone gets sick with cancer, friends, family, and church communities show up to support the family.  The symbol of this is the dozens of church casseroles that show up in addition to all the cards and calls.  Unfortunately, usually no one shows up when a family member goes to a mental institution or gets locked up involuntarily in a alcohol rehabilitation facility.

I know, at least in my experience, that there was very little outside support for my wife and kids when I had troubles of this sort, although to be fair the pastor showed up at my hospital bed once when I was drunk and suicidal. 

I'm not trying to say that anybody's being mean or anything.  It's mostly that people haven't the faintest idea what to do or say.  We are not prepared, by our experience or education, to deal with mental illness in our immediate families or communities.  We are taught that addiction and mental illness are a family's "dirty laundry".  We are taught that we ought not talk about it in public.

OK, so assuming we are at a place where we can acknowledge that we don't have a clue, what can we say or do?

We can offer assistance to the family who has a loved one ill or hospitalized.  Card, calls, prayers, and, of course, casseroles.

We can ask the family if they care to talk about it.  One could say, "I understand that Russ is ill, but I don't understand mental illness.  Would you like to share with me what is going on?

We can confront our own fear and confusion about mental illness and addiction.  Get it out there.  In the light of day.  Out of the closet.

Brokenness

I've been contemplating the idea that we are all broken and that somehow, someday maybe we become whole.  Or maybe we never do.  This is certainly not a new idea.  It definitely fits in with my neo-Catholic world view. 

Maybe the first step in coming to accept that we are broken is to see that we are.  Some people limp along their whole lives thinking that they are OK and that this is as good as it gets.  There is no doubt that with my addiction I had to first see that I was addicted.  The same was true with mental illness.  For a lot of years I just didn't see the elephant in the living room.  I couldn't see that I was ill...seriously ill.  Then for a while longer I thought maybe I had a bad case of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  That seemed somehow better than coming to accept that I actually had bipolar disorder, which is really a nice way of saying MANIC DEPRESSION.  Even after I was diagnosed with bipolar, I really didn't accept what that meant.  Among other things it would mean that I would have to change my entire life around.  It meant that recovering from addiction and mental illness would become the two most important things in my life.

So how do we become whole?  First, we realize that we are broken.  Then, through a series of seemingly unrelated actions, we begin to heal.  It started with not taking that first drink or that first drug.  Then I started hanging out with some scruffy drug addicts in church basements who said they had an answer.  Then I started examining my life.  Then I came to believe that I had something I could offer others.  I could help others stay clean.  Somehow, this led me back to a connection to a God of my understanding.  Whether I prayed in church or on the trout stream I began to feel some kind of connection to something greater than myself.

The same is true of my journey through mental illness.  First I came to accept that I was A MANIC DEPRESSIVE.  When I accepted that, I was able to turn outward for help.  First to a doctor.  Then to medication.  Then to lifestyle changes.  Then to a God.  And somehow I came to believe that I could be of service to others again.  I could carry a message of hope, not just about recovery from addiction, but also about recovery from mental illness. 

Somehow  this combination of returning to a life of faith and hope, coupled with the sense that I can be of service, is leading me on a path towards wholeness. 

New Goals

In the past, I've always had pretty grand goals in life.  Hiking and fly-fishing above the arctic circle, owning a farm, being a fantastic teacher, and many more.  As grandiose as these may seem I've, over time, accomplished them and many more like them.

Therefore, I was taken aback when I recently went to examine what my life goals were at present and couldn't think of any.  How could it be that I had come to have no goals in life?  It all seemed really, really depressing.  I had goals like, find my lost pocket knife, have my stomach feel better, make it through the day as at least a mediocre husband and father.

I brought this dilemma to the attention of some friends and my wife and they kind of got me back on the right track.  It's not that I no longer had goals, it's that the nature of my goals had changed.  I was no longer fixated on the sort of goals I used to have which mostly revolved around satisfying myself, I had a different sort of goal now.

Goals like, staying clean for the long haul, being a fantastic husband, being a fantastic parent, raising these kids up right.  I guess I'd still like to sea kayak in Greece, but that somehow seems less important than it once did. 

I did a brainstorming in my journal last night about it.  I still have lots of big important goals, and many fun and exciting ones too.  I just think my goals must be maturing...finally.