My experience with Mania: Part One
After years of not taking my lithium it was time to learn why I should have been.
At age 15 I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar 2 disorder. The MMPI and the psychologists both seemed in agreement that if I didn’t stay on Lithium, I could possibly turn out to be the next “Charles Manson” (as the man who gave me my MMPI results actually stated to me).
At 15 this sound more like a challenge than anything else. But for the time, I accepted it and took my medication seriously. I had been brought to the treatment center because I was a chronic runaway. That and I had basically stopped doing anything at all during school other than reading books and drawing pictures, albeit quietly. I had reached a point that my life at home was worse than my life at school so therefore, school was nothing but an escape.
Fast forward two years. No insurance. No meds. It’s been a year and half and to me, there was nothing to worry about. After all, I sure wasn’t about to start a desert cult imagining that the Beatles are sending me coded messages, right?
Umm…. Wrong. At least about coded messages.
All I can remember about the very night that I lost it is that I hadn’t slept in a few days. I couldn’t get my mind to turn off. It got so bad that I finally went to a friend of mine and told him “I think I have a photographic memory and I am remembering every second of my life right NOW!”, openly weeping.
And that’s what it felt like. I remember it as clear as day. 19 years old and believing that at that very moment my mind was now fully out of my control.