ANOTHER FROM DAVID...
Here's something I had to say about mental illness.
I am a 30-year-old woman (ex-college student, ex-artist . . . sometimes I wonder if . .
ex-human being). Ex-everything. At 29 I pretty much felt as if I'd lived a thousand
lifetimes. Fighting some kind of monster between each and every one of them and just
when I thought I was winning and I was going to live . . . I'd die and have to start all
over again. It's been this way since I was 11.
I have been diagnosed with everything from bipolar disorder to unipolar disorder, to
anxiety disorders. I have seen over seven doctors, professors, specialists . . . I have
searched and searched for a treatment that would cure me, or at least allow me to
function in society . . . raise my son correctly and hold down a job.
After having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder last year (during the last few months
of my most recent attempt at college), I was prescribed lithium which pretty much
didn't help me although the doctor claimed I was responding to it . . . I did sort of feel
like I was getting a little better, but there were complications . . . too many to cover
here and he took me off of the lithium and told me I wasn't bipolar. We discussed a
myriad of other disorders and we have been gradually narrowing it down . . neither
myself or my doctor can figure what is wrong with me.
My head is like the loudest rock concert you could ever imagine . .
Marilyn Manson ( I love the music from this group because . . . I don't know . . .
when I listen to it -- it is like how I feel. It is angst-ridden, dark, smoky, erotic, sometimes painful,
and frightening. All wrapped into one. )
Dead Kennedy's
And maybe the words from a Clive Barker novel being screamed into the most
powerful amp by the likes of Ozzy.
Meanwhile another nerve is screaming "I am hell!" (A White Zombie song)
I do not actually hear these things in my head, mind you, but it is the music and imagery
I identify with the most because it is how I feel. It is the kind of music I sometimes listen
to when I am feeling them.
I cannot make any sense to you unless you have experienced it.
I have a severe affective disorder and it is very aggressive toward me. I have been
fighting it for . . . a long time.
Add to that the thickest cobwebs you could find yourself wrapped in. Turn out the
lights inside your head . . . it's dark, isn't it? That's sort of how I feel. Now imagine
every nerve in your body out of control. Nothing you can do or say will it away. The
pain is intense . . . sometimes you ache, but your mind shrieks . . . thoughts and feelings
mingle together until sometimes you feel as if your head will explode -- crash . . . back
to the other side of black. It's sort of like being imprisoned inside of your own body.
Sometimes you consider destroying the body, because you are desperate for relief.
Anything to take it away. Psychiatry offers hope . . . drugs and therapy. Lithium,
depakote, ECT. Sometimes not even they work. What then?
If you are human, which I think you are . . . your first instinct is to survive, so you fight.
You read and you write . . . you make phone calls. You talk to other people. What, if
anything, worked for them? You try other doctors. You drink or take drugs
(self-medicating) . . . ANYTHING to get well, or to have at least a temporary escape
from the pain.
I have done all of the above.
One doctor sent me to NIMH thinking that maybe I could become involved in one of
their research programs and that would enable me to take the experimental drugs that
haven't yet been approved for use by the rest of the population. Not only would I be
helping a good cause, but maybe I would be able to be well enough to get on with life.
I have an 11-year-old son who needs me. I HAVE to get well, for him.
I have dug through books looking for answers . . . I have looked up and read papers .
. . read, read, read . . . useless information. Not even the doctors who care for us or
the scientists doing the research . . . not even they know how to help us sometimes.
How can me reading about and looking for answers into my own condition help? I am
just a small rat in society. I am on the outside looking in. Sometimes I wonder if me
trying to save my own life is worth it, until I think of my son.
After hours upon hours reading and looking for answers, seeing doctors . . . and
sometimes (even as an atheist) going down to the local church to pray. I still don't have
any answers. I am still very, very ill. It isn't just about feeling bad . . . Maybe a little
blue one day or another. There's much more to it than that. If you read the links, it'll
give you a small glimpse of what I am talking about.
The thing is, I am not the only one who is afflicted with a mental illness. Take a look
around you.
Some people can function all right by managing their illness with medication and some,
like me, have tried a number of them and still nothing works. It is a very complex
problem and one that can't be willed away. You can't just, "Get over it!" If people
could just, "Get over it!" There wouldn't be any need for psychiatric units.
Unfortunately, many people commit suicide every year because they are afflicted with
one mental illness or another. Being suicidal doesn't mean a person is crazy. Someone
who is suicidal is in severe pain and is in distress -- They want to escape the pain.
I have tried to keep a journal on the Internet as a way to see what the general
populations reactions would be to me, a mentally ill person and to see if there were
others out there who were living with it. It was just one of the things I decided to do
while I am waiting to cross the next bridge and to try something new for myself:
Another doctor and different medication -- whatever it takes.
I have to move to another State to get treatment at this point and have had to wait until
we could move in order to do so. If I do not get help, I will die. Many people who
have affective disorders (or any other mental illness), just simply self-destruct. Maybe
they suicide, or maybe they'll have a slower death due to self-medication with drugs or
alcohol. In any case, they will eventually lose their lives. Many of them are very
worthwhile people -- They are intelligent and educated. You do not have to be
un-educated or poor or anything else to be mentally ill. Mental illness does not
discriminate.
There are arguments as to whether mental illness should be considered as serious of a
condition as any other illness that is life threatening. Like say, heart disease. You can
die from heart disease . . . well, the brain is another organ and it can also become sick
like any other organ in the body. Unfortunately, everything we are is in our brain. If you
lose that to disease, then what are you?
There are so many issues to cover under the topic of Mental Illness.
Healthcare is not adequate. Like I said before, there is still some confusion as to
whether some people even consider most of the defined mental disorders as actual
illnesses. I have heard horror stories of people not being able to get their medication
because many insurance companies do not recognize mental illnesses as actual illnesses
and treatable diseases. Even back when my mother first became ill and my father tried
to get help for her, he was turned away. She eventually became so bad that the police
had to come to our home and remove her at one point and it took years of struggle for
her to receive treatment. (They didn't have as many options for treatment then as they
do now. She's schizophrenic.)
What I am saying is that this is a serious problem and one that cannot be shook off or
forgotten about.
I find it interesting that the same people who scoff at people who are depressed
(unipolar), bipolar, or whatever . . . the people who complain the most about people
who are afflicted, are some of the most highly functioning people on the planet. They
have normal lives. They are productive members of society. They are what most of us
want to be: healthy and productive.
It is very much the same reaction I saw when I spent a year homeless. It was like the
people who had productive lives in society wanted the homeless to disappear so that
they didn't have to look at them. Some homeless found space in shelters and wherever
else they could that was off the streets. The rest of us just mulled about and went
where we could. Do you know how hard it is to get a job when you haven't bathed in a
week? Sometimes you had to have a mailbox or telephone to get a job and none of us
had those. We were sort of like human rats though we desired to try and make
something of ourselves, but one thing we could not do is mingle with those better than
us, the productive members of society. We did okay as long as we were not seen.
When we were spotted somewhere we didn't belong, under an awning or doorway,
maybe trying to get out of the rain . . . a police officer or someone else would make us
move along . . . sweep us under the carpet, so to speak. I think if I would have stayed
out there I would have been dead or a criminal, or who knows. I desired more and I
got another chance, but I blew that one too, due to being mentally ill and so the search
for a cure went on. (My father and boyfriends have pulled me off of the street more
than once. I always have to have someone rescue me though I do want to be able to
rescue myself). Maybe I just wasn't smart enough out there . . . I do know of some
who have managed to pick themselves up -- out of that situation. They were much
smarter than myself, I suppose.
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