Love/Hate Relationship

I am currently in a love/hate relationship with my meds. On one hand, they are my friend and on the other hand, they are my enemy.

But first let me introduce you to them…

These are my morning meds...

and these are my night meds...

Let me begin by saying that sometimes I do miss my mania and I can understand why many people with bipolar want to go off their meds. The meds seem to make life dull. When I am manic, I am a ball of boundless energy. I come up with ideas every two seconds because my brain is working at the speed of light. Quantum physics? No problem. Marathon running? No problem. In fact when I was manic, I lost 60 pounds in just 5 months and went from running 11 minute miles to running 6 minute miles in a few weeks. Who wouldn't want that? When I am manic, I feel like I can be all, do all, and conquer the world. And in many ways, it’s not just a belief. I actually do amazing things when I’m manic.

The meds do a reality check for me. My meds tend to make me very drowsy and slow me down a lot. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a fog and I’m just so dang tired.

But the good side of my meds is that they take away the psychosis.  And that means more to me than words can say. My psychotic episodes were more than enough to tell me that I need to stay on my meds. It’s almost like God wanted to scare the daylights out of me in order to keep me on my meds. As I posted yesterday, I often have flashbacks of my psychotic episodes. My psychosis is absolutely terrifying.

My memory is foggy as well on the meds. When I am off my meds, my memory is out of this world. I can memorize anything I see. Vivid memories from my childhood, both good and bad, come at all times. The more I was off the meds, the more I could recall details from many years earlier, including the details of lectures from five or six years ago. I could remember even vivid details of my preschool classroom.  I often say that I have photographic memory when I am off my meds and there may be truth in that. Photographic, or eidetic, memory is known to happen in people with mental illness, like schizophrenia. It kind of feels like a superpower and now that I'm on the meds, it's been taken away. A lot of the time I wish I could be manic without the paranoia and psychosis, but I can't. I can either function or not function... 

And for my sanity, I have to choose to function. To get on with my life, I need to choose to function. And that means taking my meds.

When I first started blogging about my journey with mental illness, some people said to hush about it or to use a pseudonym. Many couldn't understand why I wanted to be so vocal about my mental illness, why I wanted to be so visible, why I didn't want to hide the deep things that I deal with on a daily basis. But I don’t understand this because I see my illness as the same as other serious physical illnesses. It's not something I chose. It's something that I was born with. It’s something I have to deal with and sometimes it is out of control. 

I personally don’t understand why there are so many stigmas associated with mental illness. I know that people with mental illness can be hard to deal with sometimes, but who of us isn't hard to deal with sometimes? It's not like I choose to be depressed. Sometimes it just happens due to the chemicals in my brain. I don’t understand why I have to be quiet about what I’m dealing with.

I am here to say that I am not ashamed to have mental illness. I have gotten to where I am despite the mental illnesses I deal with day in and day out. And I believe that’s something to be happy about, not ashamed. Why should I be quiet about overcoming such difficult things? I want to educate others about what it is like to have mental illness. I wish more people knew that living with mental illness is not something to be ashamed of, but rather people with mental illness deserve to be embraced, not thrown away in mental institutions. It is a chronic illness and it is something that I will deal with for the rest of my life. I probably will always be on meds.

I know that my meds are my ticket to a good life and that if I go off of them, I may end up in a state mental institution. Due to my frequent hospitalizations this year, I was almost placed in one actually. I feel like I was almost thrown away from society, soon to be forgotten, just another casualty of mental illness. I don't deserve to be thrown away. I have dedicated my life to making a difference in the world and nothing can stop me from doing that, even mental illness. This past semester was the hardest semester in my academic career, but I stayed strong and persevered, finished up my semester strong and I am set to get my Masters by December.

No matter how good the “high” of bipolar feels, it is not enough to make me go off my meds. My functioning means more to me than the mania.