Where have I been?

Riding a nice high, that's where.  I've been on the upswing of this bipolar roller coaster and honestly, I have enjoyed every minute of it.  For those intimately familiar with bipolar mania, no, not that high.  I have been skirting along somewhere toward the upper end of hypo-mania.  For those not so intimately familiar with bipolar mania (or hypomania), let me attempt to explain.

Mania is a condition of extreme euphoria.  As I understand it, and I am no doctor, everything is in excess and often puts yourself at risk physically, financially, legally, etc.  Sometimes it presents with psychosis, where reality and fiction get blurred (ie. you may think you can fly or you are super strong and can stop a moving vehicle).  Frequently a manic episode ends with inpatient hospitalization for someone "acting crazy" according to some layperson in the victim's life.  I say victim because the patient is a victim to their own chemistry.  Some more familiar cases of mania include sober, naked people running down the street, people attacking random strangers, and someone jumping in front of a subway train in New York.  I have never experienced a true mania...that I know of.  I quantify that because mania is also accompanied with memory loss occasionally and well, if you know me, I already have a shitty memory.

Hypomania is a lesser form of mania.  Hypo = less than.  Connect the dots.  You still have an overwhelming sense of happiness and euphoria and do things in excess, but typically the risks you take are much more mild.  Usually your life is not threatened and there is definitely no psychosis and you are fully aware of your actions.  For example, you don't sleep for days on end, you spend hundreds of dollars on a drop of a hat though you know you shouldn't, you go through multiple sexual partners in a week or even a night.  All these things carry risks, but not as immediately threatening as mania.  The bad part is hypomania can very easily turn to mania and the victim/patient has no idea.

My last four weeks or so have been full of sleepless, drunken nights, spending sprees, irrational thinking, etc.  The only good part is I recognized it a week or two in and I limited the possible damage by handing over my debit and credit cards and cash to my husband.  I essentially have an allowance until I level out.  Then it all came to a screeching halt four days ago with this damn, God-awful flu.  UGH!  Knocked me on my ass enough to get me to go see the shrink.  No more anti-depressant for me!  Duh.  Bye bye Zoloft.  But now that the flu is subsiding and I am recovering (praise the Lord!), it remains to be seen if the hypomania has passed, or if we are going to have some more fun!  ;)  It's been 10 years since I had a good upswing.  In a way, I figure if I am smart about it and I keep myself limited in the damage I can cause (and my hubby has the shrink's number), then why can't I live for a little bit like the college kid I never got to be?  I like bars...and I like dancing on them....



.

Battle With the Sandman. Ouch. I Lost....Again.

So the last couple of weeks I have been fighting insomnia.  I am told it is something that often accompanies bipolar disorder.  It is a fact of my life.  It comes and goes.  Right now, it has returned for a visit and is showing no signs of returning from whence it came.  At first, it was just a matter of pride as I lay there thinking "I refuse to get up because I am not asleep yet.  I don't care if I have been laying here for three hours.  I. Will. Not. Get. Up."  And so I would lay there in bed, staring at the wall or the back of my eyelids, trying to make my mind go blank so I can bore myself to sleep until finally, somewhere around 5 or 6 am, I dose off, only to be woken a couple hours later by my husband's alarm clock saying it's 8am. 

"That's ok," I think.  "I can sleep in a little."  After all, I don't work so I don't have anything to do, right?  Yea.  Right.  Just when I start to dose off again (8:45-ish), my husband comes in and kisses me goodbye because he knows I freak out if I don't know when he is leaving.  I am now awake again and have to start this process all over.  At some point I dose off...again...and I sleep 'til around 10 when I wake up because the dog scratched herself and made her tags jingle.  I feel a little guilty because it already starts to feel like I am sleeping too late, but I talk myself into trying to go back to sleep because, again, I don't work so I don't have anything to do, right? 

Usually by this point I am exhausted so I fall asleep again almost immediately.  I wake up again around 11:30 or 11:45, and now I panic.  Holy crap.  I can't believe I let myself sleep half the day away!  What was I thinking?!  I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!!!  And this is the point where I attempt to "spring" out of bed but it really ends up being this awkward stumbling in an attempt to get my legs functioning while not stepping on the dog and everything is a little fuzzy and hazy because I only got maybe 3 hours of truly restful, rejuvenating sleep. I then spend the rest of the day vaguely attempting to complete the tasks that seem so numerous, yet I usually only manage to get one, maaaaaaaybe two done.

Rinse, repeat.

Before you say anything about going to the doctor for help, yes, I have a prescription sleep aid that actually works really, really well.  The problem is that at some point this process went from pride to stubbornness.  As you may or may not know, my husband and I are trying to get pregnant.  We have been trying for quite some time actually.  In this process, I have either cut back or cut out any medication I can possible live without, without causing too much discomfort, ok, pain, in my life.  This includes the sleep aid.  So when I went from pride to stubbornness, my mind thinks, "Screw you insomnia!  I will not have you screw up my future child just because you don't feel like letting me sleep.  SCREW. YOU!"  But you see, insomnia doesn't have feeeeeelings.  It doesn't care when you yell at it.  It is relentless.  It is this mindless, feelingless thing that doesn't care what you say or do.  If conditions are not just right, forget it.  You aren't sleeping. 

Well finally the sleepless nights built on each other for so long that I finally broke down and took the damn sleep aid.  OH. MY. GOD.  I slept so well that I felt like I had died and gone to heaven.  The next day, that "spring" out of bed, really was a spring and I had the most productive day in a couple weeks.  But then the night came again.  I decided one more night of sleep aid can't be too horrible, so I popped another and once again, slept like a baby. 

Now it has been 3 nights of sleep aid and the figurative voice in my head is starting to get to me.  I know tonight is going to be another sleepless night.  I can feel it.  I should probably take another pill since these bouts usually last 2 or 3 weeks for me.  Yet, the voice keeps chastising me.  How could you put your possibly future child at risk like this?  Then the other side argues back how a mother who is not healthy or rested is no good to her child anyway.  Then the voice again - but what about side effects it could have on the child?  Then the other side - you have been told this sleep aid doesn't have huge risks like others.  Yes, there are risks, but not like really, really, bad and highly likely ones. 

And so the argument continues, but I know what side will ultimately win.  I will go to bed in hopes that the sandman will be kind to me tonight but knowing he will not.  I will lay in bed awake while my husband sleeps peacefully next to me.  Finally, 2 or 3 will roll around and I will give in and take a pill because I have appointments I have to actually be functional for.  But tomorrow night, I will deny myself the help simply because I will not have any appointments  and after all, I don't work so I don't have anything to do, right? 

Yea. 

Right.

.