Follow the Bouncing Blogger

Introduction

I'll make this brief - for the past weeks, I've been cycling back and forth like a yo-yo - not so much "up'n'down" in the classis understanding of bipolar disorder, but more along the lines of "somewhat stable - then completely unstable." I'm not off-med. I'm actually on lithium (1200 mg daily) and lexapro (10mg daily) and this dosage generally works perfectly well.

I'm hoping to use this space to talk about WHY this generally works well, WHY it's not working well now, and to just generally use this space as a place to talk about meds, doctors, insurance issues, and how often I call up friends to talk about issues like: benzodiazapemes, colonopin, mood stabilizers, tranquilizers, and anti-psychotics. I think I've needed a place like this for a long long time, but other than my notebooks (and yes, I have piles of them) I haven't been able to put this out there. Now I will.

Here are a few of the things I'm hoping for:

1) I hope I don't write in here all the time.
This was inspired by a post about my episodic condition in my regular blog a couple of days ago, when I was convinced (paranoid and afraid) that friends were worried about me on the other side of the country and the world. (turned out not to be the case, but I felt like I needed to reassure them.) In addition to being bipolar, I also have a real live life where I do lots of other things - when I'm not episodic, I have a fairly full life, though it doesn't always stay that way.

2) I hope that I have guests - either writers or sources or talkers on podcasts.
Bipolar is getting to be a fairly common diagnosis, I hear - and I have a fairly wide circle of friends and acquaintances who know exactly what a modd stabilizer is and what they think of theirs. In fact, a story in The New York Times from a couple of weeks ago suggests that all us nut-cases are just as likely to find out about new meds from friends

3) I hope that I can say something that will bring clarity about my condition - at least to me and maybe to others as well.
It's been eleven years since I first walked into a psychiatrist's office and said, "I have unbelievable episodes of rage over practically nothing, followed by three or four days of the deepest possible depression. Could I have PTSD or repressed memories from childhood sexual abuse?" Those were just two possibilities of the dozens I've examined in the past decade. I've tried all kinds of meds, lived on the streets, spent time in hospitals and half-way houses, and seen up-close and personal why we need mental health courts.

Maybe I can give the rest of you some clarity to that as well.

posted by by gregoryp(tm) aka Gregory Pleshaw @ 8:40 PM