I’m obsessed with sleep in all its stages: REM and deep sleep, the sorts of repair work that goes on while you’re sleeping. I wanted to be a sleep researcher when I was in college, but opted out of medical school.

I go to bed anywhere from 11:30 to 3am, but always wake up during the night, ravenous. This feels totally out of my control. I added Celexa to the cocktail hoping that it would flood my synapses with serotonin and kill the hunger, but that hasn’t panned out.

I know sleep and bipolar don’t go so well together, that much is clear. I just want to know how to combat it, like I’ve combatted so many other aspects of the illness.

After showing me my “normal” sleep data, the sleep study nurse practitioner gave me lots of good old sleep hygiene advice, and added a new one: cover all my clocks. This is, I guess, to keep me from thinking about time and focus on how my body is feeling – sleepy? She also told me that if I wake up at 4am – happens a few times per week – I should stay awake for the rest of the day, and no napping! Napping is a depressive’s best friend, I wanted to tell her, but I just nodded. She wants to exhaust me into better sleep, I thought.

Strangely, no lecture about my drinking 5-6 cups of coffee a day.

I’m not covering the clocks – something a little creepy about that one; it seems like an old tradition practiced when someone in the house dies.

How do you know what’s working is working in the highest degree possible? You can’t know absolutely that the medication you’re taking for major depression or bipolar disorder is the best for you, and that drives me nuts. Whenever I’m feeling better — right now, for instance — I tend to get greedy: But I could be feeling so much better than this, I reason. Because getting better always involves a gaining of perspective, it invariably follows that, getting better, you look around yourself, see the devastation that the disease has caused, and think, I have to run from this as fast as possible. That’s when you start questioning your medication choices. Are they doing enough? How happy am I supposed to be? What’s my baseline? Am I getting better quickly enough to gain some ground, to gain some momentum to get me over the next hurdle? Because getting better isn’t good enough. What’s well? Greedy thoughts again. It can only be measured by time, how much time you get to feel better. Quality of life questions come into play — is my life so much better than when I was depressed, or am I just fooling myself into feeling better about things? I tend to forget about stressful questions, like how I’m going to do my taxes now that I’ve set myself up as an LLC, and just begin to float, so thankful that I’ve Gotten Better. It’s like a vacation: don’t bother me with the tricky stuff, I’m feeling better and I’m going to hold onto this sensation for as long as possible. Sensation. That’s what it feels like, like a strange sensation, a rare emotion, this smoothness of mood, and I’m so sensitive to it that it only takes a good morning to make me think — hope — that it’s going to be the way I’m going to feel for the rest of my life, or at least for the rest of the day. And I start to wonder, again, is this the best I can possibly be? I make resolutions, plans, for how to maximize my time feeling this way. I’m going to start this and that good habit, I’m going to be like a better person from now on, I’m going to show myself a better time. Better and better. I suppose this is hypomania expressing itself again, or I’ve drunk just the right amount of coffee this morning, who can tell? I just want more. Now I’m thinking that I should be more self-sufficient. Wait — that’s not the word. I’m just thinking that I shouldn’t be mentally challenged, mentally ill, whatever you want to call it. I’m just tired of it, so I’m not going to be that way today. I’m going to be well today, and get some work done and be happy, or at least normal, average, level, sane.

This morning I woke up with a chorus in my head, but each singer was singing a different song. One was literally a song, an instrumental rock piece that’s a little down and depressing. Another voice castigated me for not writing better, another told me there was no way I was going to write well this morning because I was too tired. Others had something to say about my day job and an email I got from an old friend describing how good his life is right now. This all turned on within seconds of regaining consciousness this morning. Pop. Like that it began, and didn’t let up until I got to the office and had my busy work to occupy me.

I sometimes wonder how other people wake up — do they immediately latch onto the most negative thoughts? Are their minds blissfully empty for a few seconds, attending only to themselves surfacing into wakefulness? Do some people wake without thoughts at all? Wouldn’t that be a gift, to wake up thinking only, “I’m lying in bed and now I’m starting to wake up?”

Or am I committing the sin of thinking other people have it easier than I do. Does everyone wake with concerns and fears haunting them, and am I simply unable to handle them? There’s no yardstick for this kind of emotion, and no discussion — who talks about what they’re thinking just when they wake? I want to know, what do people think?

Brad Sucks has been my go-to music for spells like the one I’ve been experiencing in the past three weeks (thanks to myself for lowering my Abilify!). He seems to get it. Anyway, his tracks are free and you can get them here. I particularly like Fixing My Brain and Borderline.

Enjoy.

I made a music video of Fixing My Brain using footage from Sam Fuller’s “Shock Corridor,” a fine film.

The release of the pressure that had been building up behind the drop in Abilify came this week. Four weeks it took to regulate to taking only 15 milligrams. Took more clonazepam in the evenings to offset the mounting anxiety, the dread that’s been a part of my thoughts for a month. That, and a major strain at work has relaxed, for now. Let the hypomania parades begin. When the pressure’s off, I rebound hard and have to consciously slow myself down, take it down a notch. Walking up to people at work and suddenly engaging them in conversation for the first time in weeks is like standing near a cliff — what if I make the wrong move and fall over the edge? It comes in this flavor, too. I won’t want to go to sleep tonight, so impressed will I be with my mood. Just a few more minutes, Mom, let me stay up just a little longer, pleeeease… This will set off another round of bouncing, ripples in the pond, with a strong chance of a spiral soon. Now I’m talking like my doctor — what goes up must come down. Always a joker, that guy.