The Trilogy of Bipolar Management Part 3: S'cuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

By Kris Rock

Book 3 is a light-hearted conclusion to my trilogy, and its purpose is to suggest that being bipolar doesn't have to be the end of the world. In fact, a bipolar person can live a rich, happy, and productive life, once certain contingencies are met, namely, trusted friends and professionals nearby and low dosages of appropriate medications taken

• Language: English
• Publisher: LitFire Publishing
• Release date: Feb 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646741229

Kris Rock

Kristina Rock is a technical writer who has hadmany homes, but presently lives in NewportNews, VA. She wrote and edited documentsfor NASA Langley and contracted for manyaircraft and financial companies. She recentlywrote financial manuals, guides, and softwareinstructions for the US Coast Guard FinancialSystem. She attended many universitiesand earned more than 500 college credits insubjects as varied as mechanical engineering,anthropology, business, nursing, languages,journalism, and others. One day she hopes towrite a dystopian science fiction classic. She is a happy wife, mother ofthree, and grandmother of three. She enjoys reading voraciously andwatching edgy movies. She is highly interested in plant medicines andthe potential they hold for treating mental illnesses. She has two largedogs that she lets in and out all day long.

Book preview

Dedication

Dedicated to Bron, who keeps me honest, and who has helped me organize my life so that it is mostly in order. He is responsible for the subtitle of the book, S’cuse Me While I Kiss the Sky from Jimi Hendrix’s song Purple Haze. Bron remembers me as a flower child, and he won’t let me forget it.

Also, to Zach, who drew the Fibonacci Sequence shown in the section in this book on games.

And to Pauline Higgins, who painted the Butterfly Woman on the cover.

Preface

Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and - most germane to our argument here - sharpened and unusually creative thinking and increased productivity?"

Kay Redfield Jamieson

This book, the third of my trilogy, is a lateral work, a collection of thoughts, stories, games, experiences, poems, essays, pictures, dreams, and even a little bit of sex! My stability structures itself in a round-about, sideways, and playful manner. I really don’t need to be overly managed anymore. I just follow a few simple guidelines:

• Take your meds (even when you don’t feel like it).

• Sleep seven or eight hours a night, minimum.

• Avoid stress and don’t tackle more than you can handle comfortably.

• Don’t isolate. Stay in touch with your medical or holistic professionals, friends, family, and anyone else you rely on.

• Exercise when you can, and eat natural, healthy food.

• Be your authentic self, and don’t worry if others think you are weird.

• Read and write as much as you can.

• Take great care of your feet and teeth. Go minimalist shoes and get the best dentist you can find.

• Sing and dance

• Get involved with something bigger than yourself, whether it is a job, God, a work of art, or a noble purpose.

• When you’re well, give back what you can to others in need.

• Most important -- give yourself a break – forgive yourself for what you did in the past.

I can’t think of anything else. The rest just happens naturally once you are in balance.

Somewhat sheepishly, I present to you a book that is an ADHD person’s dream. I want to show you how fun life can be for a mentally ill person. I think you will enjoy this offering if you just sit back, read a little at a time, and go with its flow! Lateral thinking is all the rage in science and many other fields. I think I have mastered it.

I love this picture, because purely by accident it looks like a beam of light from the heavens is streaming straight into my brain.

It’s divine providence!

I have divided my experiences into three parts that describe the different aspects of my illness: mania, depression, and management/recovery. In Part I, Manic: Flying with Angels, I tell the story of a devilish, energetic, and adventuresome child who begins to experience mania and depression after a concussion sustained in a high school gym accident. The moods, mostly mania, get worse and worse until the age of 33, when I was diagnosed in a psychotic manic state after staying up for a month straight while attending engineering school and carrying on a messy love affair. In Part II, Grounded: Facing the Down Side, I describe my worst depressions and my unhappiness with the treatments available for bipolar disorder, which seemed to steal all my creativity and strong feelings from me. In this, the third book, S’cuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: Living in Balance, I demonstrate how a balanced emotional state and a happy, functional life are possible for a bipolar person. I am lucky that my present meds have a minimum of side effects and few or no obvious dampening effects on my natural moods and feelings. Whether you are suffering from the disease yourself or you have loved ones with the illness, I recommend that you read all three books to see how I managed the ups and downs of a very typical Bipolar I experience.

History of a Bipolar Flower Child

A person smiling for the camera Description automatically generated

Figure 1- Happy in Denver 2018

Who Me?

No one could have been more stubborn and hard-headed than I when I was first diagnosed as bipolar. I didn’t want the stigma of being labeled mentally ill. No one does. I wanted to be a good-looking, successful, professional person, one who my family and friends could admire. It took a long time, but I think I might have finally reached my goal. That’s what this book is all about. Now, if I can just get that science fiction book written and see my children grown up and happy, I will be f ulfilled!

If I, a tough case, can overcome this illness and take a few low-dose pills to treat it, you can do it as well. I would always advise you to stay in close touch with a doctor, therapist, or holistic healer to monitor your equilibrium state. Everyone is different, and I am not recommending that anyone go off medication suddenly and without help from others. However, there are some wonderful meds out there now with minimal side effects, and it took me 35 years to find them. There are excellent therapists and doctors out there, too. Be patient, and be vigilant, that’s all I’m saying. New and unusual treatments for this disease are popping up every day. Particularly in the area of psilocybin research, many new ideas are bursting through the old ways of treating mental illnesses.

Diagnosis

I was diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder in 1983 after a manic episode I never want to see repeated. I was told vociferously by professionals that recovery was not possible with this illness. The latest scientific evidence shows that bipolar disorder is a lifelong, chronic disease most probably caused by faulty genes on several different chromosomes of about 3% of the population. I have been assured by every medical professional I’ve ever seen that my illness will never go away, and I’d better just learn to accept the diagnosis and its cons equences.

A medical diagnosis of bipolar disorder is a death sentence for many people. As many as 20% of all bipolar people commit suicide. I have also heard that that 50% of all untreated bipolar people do the same. To avoid suffering this dreadful fate, I have trusted my doctors, sometimes unwisely, and I have done everything in my power to follow their directions and be as compliant as possible, for the most part (!). Since I discovered the right medications, I’ve gone ten years without the slightest wisp of a mood swing that has gotten me in trouble. If I continue what I’m doing, I think I can claim success in learning to overcome what has been an impossible obstacle in the lives of millions of people.

Because I have learned tricks and techniques in managing this disease, I want to share with others what I have done to get to this point. I think that bipolar disorder can partially or even totally be handled through behavioral therapy and by changing your own brain chemistry using methods that can be learned by anyone who is willing to persevere and who practices them ferociously. Medication will be a part of everyone’s early and possibly life-long therapy, in my experience. The medication is especially necessary while you’re putting the behavioral therapies in place and living them day in and day out, probably for years. Some bipolar people are always going to need medications, and if this is the case in your situation, then I say take the pills! Please note that I would never advise any bipolar person to go off their medications abruptly or even at all if extensive behavioral therapies haven’t been put in place first. I have also heard that some people use ECT as a method of controlling their illness; if that is the case for you, as it was for Carrie Fisher, my only comment is that everyone is different, and you must go with what works for you.

However, I was on large dosages of medications with a dizzying array of side effects for many years, and only in the last ten have I felt confident enough to decrease or discontinue any of them. I now take three psychotropic medications, less than a lot of bipolar people take, and this combination works for me brilliantly: Abilify, Cymbalta, and Adderall, admittedly a strange combination. Most psychiatrists won’t prescribe Adderall to a bipolar person, but without it I fall asleep during the day and can’t get anything done.

Abilify is an anti-psychotic drug that helps me to maintain a normal sleep schedule on a dosage of 5 mg, about an average dose. It seems to adjust my circadian rhythm. Without it I wake up every two hours at night and find it hard to get back to sleep.

The Adderall (in a generic form), or a version of it, helps me focus, concentrate, and stay awake during the day. I take a very minimal dosage of 30 mg extended release/day. Otherwise, I find I am not very productive, and I tend to go in circles with my thoughts or just fall asleep. But that’s an ADHD problem and not necessarily a bipolar one, because sometimes, strangely, the two go together. Many doctors would throw up their hands at giving a bipolar person a stimulant, but for me it works beautifully. I really do sleep seven hours or more a night, almost every night, and I have naturally average-to-low blood pressure. At present, I’m thinking of switching to a drug called Provigil, also known as modafinil. It’s not a Schedule 1 drug, and from what I can see, it has fewer side effects than Adderall.

Finally, I take Cymbalta, mostly for its pain-relieving effects on my arthritis and, at one time, what seemed like fibromyalgia. I take an average dose of it at 60 mg daily, and I don’t feel any side effects. Its only bad side effect is that it is hell to discontinue.

And that’s it. I suppose I’m lucky. Three years ago, I dropped my mood stabilizer, Lamictal, and I have noticed no changes in the status of my moods. I get up at 5 a.m. every day and feel like I’m raring to go. This is something new for me. I was always a night owl who hated the mornings, but now I’m an early morning person, which makes it much easier for me to hold down a good job.

It’s worth noting that I have had hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours of therapy from psychiatrists, psychologists of all kinds, hypnotists, acupuncturists, ministers, friends, parents, siblings, children, and sometimes even strangers on the street. It seems to have taken me this whole 36-year period for the wisdom and knowledge of all these people to sink into my brain. All I know is that suddenly I feel and act like a normal, sane, well-adjusted person. I don’t see a therapist anymore, and I consult my psychiatrist for 15 minutes every three months to get prescriptions. No one I meet suspects that I am a mentally ill person, at least so I am told. I get hired for most jobs I want and function normally at work (so I think!).

I have made major adjustments in my life to set up a stable lifestyle, and I have made difficult choices in order to keep chaos at bay. I have given up the high highs that used to drive me. I have developed prudence in my behavior. This is all completely new to me and not characteristic of my earlier life. I honestly think that my new healthier ways of living have affected my brain chemistry in a permanent way. I have formed new neural pathways and brain chemistry that allow me to be a normal, un-mentally ill person. I really believe that, and I will have many nay-sayers, but I think my experience can help many people who feel stifled by too many meds and not enough emotional authenticity.

Of course, I will always be labeled bipolar. There is a marked stigma attached to mentally ill people. That means others want me to think of myself as mentally ill and disabled. Some people avoid me because of the label or don’t trust me with normal life situations. For example, my closest male friend will not marry me because he has experienced me in my worst states and thinks I inevitably will return to them. I’ve been with him so long now, though, that we will be common-law partners in another year.

I’d like to protest my label. If I continue the way I’m going, I consider myself as recovered as possible from this illness, if not completely cured. Managed is a more accurate term for what my state is, I suppose. Your genes are your genes, and I don’t think I can change mine, even with my great mental powers! I consider myself, and so do the others around me, to be a completely normal, well-adjusted person. However, I plan to stay on the medications I’ve been prescribed and continue to seek out therapists or the equivalent if I experience mood problems.

It’s more than just that I am under control, or I am well monitored. I’m really balanced, and I think it would take a real disaster to disturb me more than what is considered normal. It’s possible I will be able to go off some or all the last three drugs I take at some future time. If I do try to discontinue them, I will be very cognizant of the effects, and I will keep close to people who will be honest with me if they notice any mood changes. I understand that others can often notice changes in moods or behavior before the person who is experiencing them.

If I can’t reduce the pills to nothing, I don’t really mind taking a few low-dose medications that have no side effects I can sense. I have medical insurance, and I can afford to pay for the meds. I am of sound body and mind, and I can remember to take them every day without fail and without anyone else having to administer them to me.

My liver will surely thank me for taking minimal medications, and I think the effects on my emotional authenticity will be enormous. Would I have cried at my father’s funeral if I had not been on so much medication? I don’t really know, but I want all my emotions available to me when I need them. I honestly feel like my life is starting over at the age of 70. I look forward to whatever life has to offer me from now on. I used to either dread every day or fly through it without really noticing what was going on.

I consider myself introspective and somewhat self-aware. I try to make myself available to others in my family who are in trouble or who need a shoulder to cry on. Yet this weekend my sister’s 20-year-old stepson hanged himself over a fight with a cheating girlfriend. I wasn’t close to the young man, but he was friends with my son, and he had visited our family several summers in a row the last few years. I was stunned. Why couldn’t he have called one of us to talk, or come for a visit, or reached out in some way? He did have a history of emotional disturbance but apparently had been in good spirits of late except for problems with the girlfriend. Why is it that some people can make it through difficulties like these and some can’t?

I almost did not make it through a difficulty like this once, and it was only through help from a perfect stranger that I am still here.

I never expected to become a person who many people would cross the street to avoid. When that happens, and it has happened to me in the past, both physically and metaphorically, I always think, Am I really that bad? Am I really that horrid girl my father used to sing to me about? What happened to my saving graces?

I don’t want anyone to feel they have to avoid me ever again.

Good, bad, or shades of gray, here I am, survivor of a lifetime of bipolar mood swings. I think bipolar disorder is the meanest of the mental illnesses. Even psychopaths don’t have the high energy of long-term mania to carry them along in their madness, nor do they ever kill themselves on purpose, being completely narcissistic. There’s no substance in the world that can make you feel as high as a bipolar mania. And there’s no situation that can make you feel like killing yourself to stop the pain the way a bipolar low can. So here I am, happy and well-balanced. I am willing to help anyone who can’t muddle through.

Catching Up

Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers ... Restlessness and discontent are vital things ... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.

Kay Redfield Jamison

I’ll try to pick up where I left off in my last book and fill you in on a few details I might have missed. As I mentioned in a previous book in my trilogy, after World War II