Milligrams

I’ve not been one to divulge much about my identity on this blog, fearful that people who know me and may employ me might find it. But this time I’ll give a little hint about what I’ve been going through. I used to live in Los Angeles, unmedicated and untreated. It got into my head, after taking a couple of writing classes at UCLA, that I should be able to make it into Columbia’s MFA program. I applied and got in. I left behind a burgeoning career. I was really on track to make great strides early in life — I was something of a prodigy in a field I don’t feel comfortable divulging right now. Suffice it to say, I was doing well.

But I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was the escape toward a writing life. I didn’t listen to others’ advice, their knitted brows when I described what I was about to do. I didn’t think about the insanity of throwing away my young career for writing school. In fact, it seemed kind of cool — there I was, succeeding, and I wanted more for myself in some other area so there I went, off into the wild blue with nary a plan or an idea of what was going to happen to me. This, to me, is hypomania in its purest form. I simply would not listen to the practical voices in my own head. I took a major chance.

I haven’t found any work writing — haven’t looked for any, in fact. So I’m back to doing what I used to as prodigy at in LA, several years later and several rungs lower on the ladder. I’m no longer that young, and the stuff I’m working on, in a word, sucks. This leaves me little time to write, so it’s the worst of both worlds. Throw in student loans and you’ve got world-class stress building up. Sometimes I wonder whether my diagnosis of Bipolar II has more to do with my situation and less to do with biology. My doctors have always scoffed at the idea that there’s a difference — they’re there to treat both, and consider both reasonable causes for the disorder. Stress-induced madness, I guess you could call it.

Daily, I try to get back into that headspace I had before I left Los Angeles: heady, self-confident beyond all belief, willing to throw caution to the winds. I could use some of that right now. Music and light drug use are the best I seem to be able to do. Oh yeah — and the milligrams.

A serious break with reality going on here. Misinterpreting emails to mean I’ve lost opportunities for new jobs, time ticking by slowly, everyone around me more optimistic and alive. My wife is bringing me back to reality, and so is the clonazepam.

Going down on my Abilify dose was madness, total madness, pardon the pun. If you’re thinking about dropping your dosage, for whatever reason, think twice. This stuff can be the stuff of sanity. It is for me.

Waking up at 5 am hungry, unable to get back to sleep, sleepy all day and in a dreamy fugue state. Walking to work and thinking obsessively about the placement of people on the sidewalk, how quickly they’re walking, their paths, where I’m standing in relation to them, how they’re probably all sane while I’m the only insane one in Grand Central Station. Not taking one step for granted, taking nothing in stride.

Someone with some great graphical and coding skills needs to come up with a good mood chart program. I haven’t come across a good computer application for the Mac where I can track my moods, medications, sleep times, etc., all in one place over a long period. I’ve checked this one out, but it doesn’t seem to have entry places for medications. I’d pay upwards of $100 for a good service. Anyone know of something that might fit the bill?

I’ll be taking my Abilify back up to 20 milligrams from 15. I spent 3 weeks at 15 milligrams and did not enjoy myself. Paranoia, mostly, as you can see from the prior posts. I highly recommend it for anyone noticing these symptoms. I just hope that going down and then back up again doesn’t have any weakening effect on the drug, as I’ve heard it can sometimes do.

That’s the rub — stop the drugs and then start them again and they don’t work as well. I’ve heard this from every quarter. It’s better to just leave well enough alone and only go off the drugs if you’re meaning to stay off them.

When someone gets up and leaves the room, are they thinking about you? Looking forward to talking about you behind your back? When you say something to someone who’s checking their email and they don’t respond right away, does that mean they can’t tolerate your presence? Do you know that a door is closed to keep you out? Are you sure they’re not thinking about firing you? Or is it a case of they can’t find anyone else just yet, so you’re allowed to stay on for just a little while longer? When they ask how you’re doing, is it genuine? When they don’t ask, is that bad news? Is there a way around this kind of thinking?

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.

Categories of thinking that are not allowed.

Self-hatred, self-consciousness, double-thinking, paranoia, loneliness, shame, shyness, awkwardness, magical thinking, nightmares, anxiety, self-absorption. Irritation, impatience, fear, dread, depression. Running, hiding, disappearing. Self-loathing, disgust, disquiet, strain, inadequacy, friendlessness, self-deception, denial, repression.

The speed at which the world works is off today. The speed at which I work is off. Things should be moving faster. I have no patience. I have no patience for cleaning the bathroom or eating or writing. Everything must move faster, nothing should take up any of my time. I don’t want anything getting in the way of … what? What’s out there that’s slowing down the world? My wife wanted to go for a walk, but for me, that’s too slow and boring, so I didn’t go. I stayed at home to work on the computer, where things can go quickly. Manhattan, you lose. See, I can open and close windows at whatever speed I want. The webpages load quickly, and there’s always a new one behind this one. Surfing the web is a perfect bipolar activity because it rewards impatience with variety and the illusion of control. The web is one large illusion, one large escape mechanism in the guise of something else.

There’s an intermediate stage, a step before the first step that gets wiped away by depression. The trying to try. The memory that things can get better and had better be done by a certain point in time. Time flies while you’re depressed. I’m talking about the long-range look at time, the month-by-month passage, not the minute-by-minute, which can be, of course, an eternity. So, an eternity in a day, but months that fly by. You’re expecting the world to stop along with you. Then, when you get better, God willing, you poke your head up and look around and see that time has passed you by and that the world has not stopped but rather it has sped up, as the world always does.

Never stop trying to try, trying to take that first step toward keeping up with time’s arrow as it flies through space unendingly.

I don’t mean to say that I’m a loser. I mean to say that I feel like one most of the time. Losers are those who give up trying, and I haven’t given up trying yet. It’s on those weeks, though, when I don’t do any writing, that I feel worse about myself. I’ve found something out. The weeks when I wasn’t writing neatly coincide with the time when I was doing badly at my work. Almost as though I needed to write in order to have a good life in the other things that I did. I think that’s a truth I can go on. Should I want to have a healthy relationship to my paying work during the week, I should write during the week as well. That’ll give me the space I need between myself and the rest of the fucking world that I kind of fucking hate right now.