How I Took Control Of My Mood Disorder

By CJ

It is estimated that 9.7 percent of all Americans suffer from some type of mood disorder. And this estimate does not include people who have yet been diagnosed. This book is about my life experience growing up in a family where my grandmother was bipolar, my brother became schizophrenic due to a drug overdose, my mother became bipolar due to a mental breakdown, and how I became bipolar due to a mental breakdown at age twenty-three while working in corporate America and being faced with a lot of responsibility.

The book tells how my ungrateful experience working for corporate America drove me to move to Hawaii in pursuit of becoming an astronaut, and how after attending college in Hawaii and becoming grounded, my goal of becoming an astronaut changed.

It talks how I was interviewed by Department of Defense contractors and a headhunter for Jet Propulsion Lab and made the CIA on-call list and FBI special agent recruiting list after graduating college, all while being bipolar. It also talks about my journey as a martial artist and how I tried to open up a school while receiving social security disability for my mental illness. And it also talks of the many times I almost became homeless and the time I was arrested and tortured for being mistaken as homeless as a result of being bipolar.

Like most people who suffer from bipolar mental illness, my book has the ups and downs of my life and includes the good and the bad. But most importantly, my book shed light on how I was able to take control of my mental illness through medicine and management techniques that can benefit people who have a mental illness, treat people with mental illness, or know someone with a mental illness. This book is a guide for people who want to take control of their mood disorder and is based on my true story of me having a mental illness and finding ways to manage my condition, which I now share with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889826682

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Warning

Chapter 1: My Childhood Years

Does Knowing Your Path Make You Perfect?

When My Brother Started Doing Drugs and Alcohol

Out of the Wild and Placed into Captivity

When My Parents Discovered My Brother's Drinking, Smoking, and Drug Use

Conclusion

Chapter 2: Up Until My Twenties

Does What You Do at Age Twelve Make You?

Investor and businessman

A dance performer

As a football player

Conclusion

The Day My Brother Was Diagnosed as Schizophrenic

Living with My Schizophrenic Brother

My Mom Suffers a Mental Breakdown

My Mom Now Has a Lifelong Mood Disorder

Where Did My Family's Mood Disorders Come From?

Like Football, Like Corporate America

My Brother Dies and Comes Back to Life

Conclusion

Chapter 3: The Origin of My Mood Disorder

Where It Started

My First Wife

The First and Second Times I Was Admitted to a Mental Hospital

The Third Time I Was Admitted to a Mental Hospital

Conclusion

Chapter 4: Left Corporate America to Become an Astronaut

Astronaut Training

Fourth Time Hospitalized

My Maternal Grandmother and Grandfather

Attending the University of Hawaii at Mānao

Fifth and Sixth Time Hospitalized

Helpful Tips from Therapists

The Day I Became Grounded

Conclusion

Chapter 5: After Graduation

Interview with Marconi

Programming Test Missiles

Finding Ng's Gung Fu

Living on Kauai

Interview with the CIA

Making the FBI Special Agent Recruiting List

Position at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Getting Kicked Out of Teaching in Public Schools

Discovering I'm Better Trained in Combat Martial Arts Than the CIA

Conclusion

Chapter 6: Moving to Florida

Getting Kicked to the Curve

Training at Fight School

Meeting a Lady Who Made Six Figures

Arrested and Put into Jail

Helping a Homeless Person

Establishing Trust in the Police

Getting Help for My Mental Illness

The Day I Stopped Seeing My Rich Girlfriend

Getting Back Surgery to Walk Again

The Sum of Multiple Downfalls

Conclusion

Chapter 7: A Time of Reckoning

Getting Kicked Out of a Shaolin School

My Martial Arts Students

Finding the Right Medicine

My Second Wife

Date with Psychologist

Finding My Significant Other

Knowing Thyself Is to Be Thyself

The Art of Hata Do Chuan

Meditation and Teachings from the East

Conclusion

Chapter 8: 12+ Things That Can Help Control Mood Disorders

Contact Information

Final Conclusion

About the Author

cover.jpg

How I Took Control Of My Mood Disorder

CJ

Copyright © 2024 CJ

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2024

ISBN 979-8-88982-667-5 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-668-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to the memories of my loving, supportive parents who had my back all those hard years when I suffered from my mood disorder. My father, who put up with my mom's, my brother's, and my mood disorder, was the rock of our family and helped set me straight. And for my mom, who cared for me so much that she spent six of her last years suffering, until she knew my wife and I would be financially okay before passing on. I will always miss them and appreciate their sacrifice for me, my brother, and my sister. And now, without their latter years of pain and suffering, may they both rest in everlasting peace.

Introduction

This is about growing up in a family where I had a brother and mom with different mood disorders. It not only tells my family's experiences growing up, but it also details how I, at the age of twenty-three, faced with a lot of responsibility, obtained my mental illness (mood disorder), bipolar disorder, while working as a professional in corporate America.

It tells how I left corporate America and moved to Hawaii to start a new life. It shares my journey living in Hawaii and how my mood disorder affected my life then and after that. It also details how I gained control of my mood disorder at age forty-two and how I did so.

Now at age fifty-three, over eleven years hospital and sick-free, I write this book to show how I took control of my mood disorder so others can do the same.

This book is a guide to gaining control and preventing mood disorders and is meant for all readers.

Warning

For those suffering from a mental illness or who think they have a mental illness, it's essential to be evaluated by a professional. Everyone is different. This book is totally about me in my case and what worked for me. Your case may differ, but the knowledge obtained from this book and my story may be helpful. You have to work with a professional to get the right treatment plan that works for you, just as I am currently working with a professional for medication checks.

Chapter 1

My Childhood Years

Does Knowing Your Path Make You Perfect?

Picture me as a happy baby that, according to my mom, never cried.

A Thai monk once told me after reading my palm that I was perfect. After asking him why, he said, You see this line and how it begins and stays so concise. It tells me that you knew your path since the day you were born, making you perfect. But does knowing your path make you perfect?

As I see it, knowing, having, and pursuing a set path leads you to encounter unyielding obstacles when it comes to the life challenges of living in the real world. Whereas ignorance and freedom from this are bliss. Therefore, already knowing, living, and seeking is to be constantly at war. Conflicts that, if not handled correctly, can break a man, time and time again, until eventually resolved. This brings the question, am I my worst enemy by knowing my path?

Accomplishments, no matter how hard, are usually rewarding if they don't backfire later. And unless pressured or faced with hardship, there should be no worries as a child or adolescent if appropriately raised. But as an adult, freedom from responsibility, occupational stress, and other adulthood growth concerns is not always the case and thus can conflict with your well-being.

My father somehow knew all this and started preparing me for life at the young age of two, along with my older brother, by toughening us up using the game of football as an analogy. He would constantly tell us that the ball, like in life, could bounce either way, forward or backward, but the important thing is to stay in the game no matter what and never let anyone get in your way of achieving your goals. He did this while he taught us how to tackle, block, and run with the ball. A game that toughed us up at a very young age.

According to my grandmother on my father's side of the family, when she first visited me in the mental hospital when I was at age twenty-three, my mom, when my brother and I were toddlers, didn't spend that much time with my brother and me because she suffered a long period of depression after having a miscarriage a year before my older brother was born. The only happy memories of my mom as a child were when she vacuumed the house to the Helen Reddy song, I Am Woman. The rest of the time, if I wasn't playing, I was acting like a clown to make her happy and get her attention. I call it the Tears from a Clown Syndrome. I can relate to why Jim Carry performs the way he does in making people laugh, be happy, and feel normal; I sometimes acted the same way as he did when my bipolar set in later in life. It was as if I saw the depression in everyone, and it was my duty to change that.

So basically, according to my grandmother, my father, when he wasn't spending time with my brother and me as toddlers, put my play crib upside down to keep me from climbing out of it and getting into trouble. So you can imagine how happy I was to get out of my pen to play football with my brother and father. Although in my time in the playpen, I did have a lot of toys to play with. And it was playing with these toys that harnessed my creativity and imagination. When I hit age three, I was out of the playpen, venturing all over the place, and had no need for attention, for I was conditioned to entertain myself. But I still loved acting like a clown to get a laugh out of my mom.

But time in and time out, when my father got a chance, he physically and mentally toughened my brother and me. He would preach this football analogy with us, along with never letting school take your creativity away. And growing up as kids living on a farm, surrounded by woods, raised by nature, free from the man-made world, we began life without boundaries. So when it came time for my brother and me to be old enough to go to town for school, we were like wild wolves being introduced to captivity. And the same was carried out for me in later life as an adult having the mentality of no boundaries or limitations.

I was raised with integrity, ethics, and morals, and I am stubborn and utilitarian in my ways. Accomplishing my goals by any means necessary, as long as they didn't seriously hurt someone, was how I rolled. When I set a goal, I would invest all my energy toward achieving it, even if it meant killing myself in the process. I had a lot of pride and would blame no one else but myself for failure. This made me a warrior from day one and a lone wolf by choice.

Never giving up was both my strength and weakness. It was my strength in that I accomplished so much, and it was my weakness in that I fell so hard. Thus, bipolar in life, bipolar in mind, bipolar in illness, and psychotic when it came to never giving up. Here is my story.

Family photo of (from the left) sister, father, brother, and mom holding me.

Photo of me at old house on Hassig Road.

Picture of brother trying to break my hand and arm—where pain and roughhousing were signs of affection between me and my older brother.

Picture of my mother, family, and I at my grandmother's house.

When My Brother Started Doing Drugs and Alcohol

One day, while playing at our friends Eric and Todd's house, my brother and Todd, aged six, and Eric, aged five, dared me, aged four, to sneak into the house and take the bottle of Jack Daniels of Todd and Eric's mother and her purse off the coffee table in front of her, where she lay passed out on the couch. And of course, I did.

We took her stuff behind the shed where no one could see us and found a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and some pills in the purse. We lit a cigarette and passed it around. Todd and Eric took a hit and didn't like it. After I inhaled the cigarette, I didn't like it so much that I never tried smoking again. But my brother smoked the whole cigarette. And from that day, he smoked cigarettes and anything else he could get his hands on. And back then, in the seventies, marijuana and laced marijuana were popular, along with hallucinating drugs. So at a young age, he started trying these things as well, earning him the nickname Paul the Great and Toasty. All and all, without my parent's knowledge.

Then we passed the bottle of Jack Daniels around, and we all took a swig. Again, Todd and Eric didn't like it, and I spit it out when it came to my turn. My brother swigged the rest of the remaining hard liquor down, which was about a quarter of a bottle left. So along with smoking, my brother also started drinking at age six—again, without my parent's knowledge—just to be a show-off.

Then came the pills, which I recognized were birth control pills from the packaging later on in life. My brother took a few and chugged them down while drinking Jack Daniels; Todd, Eric, and I did not take any. Again, my brother had to be the show-off and continued to do so, leading to his addiction that started at a young age. Growing up, his real obsession was keeping his two nicknames, Paul the Great and Toasty, by being the biggest show-off and seeing how far he could go at it by shocking his peers. He did this even if it meant doing unhealthy things to his body and brain, such as smoking, drinking, and taking drugs.

Out of the Wild and Placed into Captivity

So what happens when you take two children brought up in the country, raised to be tough, self-reliant, have no boundaries, not take crap from anyone, and introduce them to structure and captivity?

In elementary school, we had a principal who hated kids, and one of the things he would do was have his lunchroom aids enforce a no-talking rule in the cafeteria at lunch if it got too noisy. And if we broke this no-talking rule, the whole class got punished by standing against the building wall during recess while the aids only let the kids that they like go play.

My brother, Paul the Great, who hated this school principal and his lunch aids, made it his mission to drive this principal crazy, the lunch aids, and anyone else he didn't like. For example, one day with the principal, my brother rode his bike up and down the school halls in front of the principal's office, with his entire fifth - and sixth-grade classmates watching him, trying to get the principal to chase him. Well, it worked.

While in a chase, my brother decided to go to the second floor using the elevator. The principal ran up the stairs and caught the elevator before the doors opened. He said, Now I got you, Paul…give me the bike. And my brother yelled, You want the bike…here…here's the bike! and rammed the principal in the nuts with his front bike tire, then rode off on the second floor on his bike.

After hearing about this, and the other shocking things my brother would do, my brother became like a badass celebrity, bearing his two nicknames, Paul the Great and Toasty.

If he liked the teacher, my brother was the nicest student in the class. But if he didn't like the teacher, he would make their lives a living hell.

My father always protected his kids. And my mother had no clue what to do. So we basically got away with a lot of things growing up.

One of the things the principal did to kids when they got in trouble was yell at them while pressing the nerve where the neck connects to the shoulder to make the students cry. When he did this, my brother would look straight into the principal's eyes and smile, driving the principal crazy.

The principal would constantly call my father to complain about my brother. One time, the principal mentioned the nerve pressing he gave to my brother and that my brother just smiled at him.

When my father heard this, he threatened the principal's life; if he was to touch his son again, he would come personally down there and kick his ass.

I was different than my brother. I behaved and was a good kid. But my thing was that I lacked interest in reading and writing. I would spend most of my time drawing and getting rewards for art and creating things. I did what I liked. And if I didn't like it, I wouldn't put my mind and heart into it.

Like my father told us, Never let the schools take your creativity away. But for not taking an interest in reading and writing, I was almost held back in second grade for having poor reading and writing skills. And was once sent to the principal's office for making a picture by poking holes in my spelling test and then handing it in. Very creative, but my second-grade teacher was not so