1st Post - Cheers!

photo (c) collective evolution

2018 Update:  I do not advocate taking medications.   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Pandora 'blessed' with bipolar child onset, here's to hope for staying well. This post is a first ever for this sick puppy. The intention behind this blog is to offer any type of 'hope' for anyone struggling with bipolar, in any way possible. Just a few surfs in this webring was all it took for me - blew my mind and made me feel like I could join the human race in some way, at last. I will proceed with respect for the possiblility that someone may read this. I do not intend...to offend.

future post wish list:

@an item called 'Medications' where I will list and edit all the medications I've tried and how they effected. Medications work differently for everyone but maybe similarities can be drawn.
@an ongoing list of for managing symptoms.
@another ongoing post: chronological onset info - breech birth to 11 year old psychotic symptom manifestation onset to teen diagnosis...to middle age
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I want to utilise this blog to help manage this illness. And to remember things. Writing has always helped and ultimately, if I can help myself and such a thing is possible - be on the road to
fulfill a dream of helping other people with this painful disorder. Connecting with people in any way would be a good thing - I'm an isolator, a loner which is a double-edged sword.

Last night I went to sleep with an annoying song from a tv commercial in my head - something about money (surprise) - thinking *stop* (a new technique is to envision a stop sign to halt obsessive negative thinking - it's helping thank you therapist). This Valentine's snow day to two feet blizzard morning I wake up with this song in my head - specifically these lyrics on waking:

Follow the lines and wonder why
There's no connection.

I had no special fondness for or knowledge of this song although I like it, but haven't understood what the lyric words were, or who the artists were, only that the song had become familiar as of late. It is one of those songs like a memory, this one from the eighties.

Googled the lyrics and it's The Shins, 'Phantom Limb'.

These lyrics explain exactly what I have been feeling lately, having come down off a perennial manic episode, which in recent years I have identified as usually triggered in September and occuring through January.

Last winter I was spared a manic episode - a new job, new relationship, new martial art in spite of a bad foot and renewed hope. This winter an increasingly stressful job leading to chest pains (mild 'panic attack' symptoms), then a falling back into drinking. This year I'm convinced that alcohol is the main ingredient to trigger an eventual episode. 93 days sober, I hope for ever.

I've got to get stronger - wiser to stop the manic times. It always happens when I'm overly challenged at work (or school), because I need to think for that. I resist taking weekends out of my life to lobotomize on antipsychotics as the end of a mania historically brings on what seems like inevitable resulting depression. I get addicted to writing prolifically and needing less sleep - actually having some energy. I've learned to identify 'hallucinations' better, be more intrigued and less afraid. But sacrifices have to be made to stay 'well'.

The 'remedy' to mania, antipsychotics take days to recover from living in that sudden dead fog of brain inactivity, loss of creativity and total lack of energy ...I have a new antipsychotic
- Risperidal, which substituted three other meds, older antipsychotics like abilify and seroquel, xanax for anxiety or panic attacks and all three strengths of sleeping pills, chlorazepate, sonata and ambien. (that is over the years of managing different levels of symptoms - I mostly took as needed and resisted that as much as possible) I dread taking any new drug that first time - one never knows how it may affect and (one should have people around to help) if an immediate reaction should occur. On the list of posts in the right column here I will maintain a posting called 'Medications' where I will list all the medications I've tried and if they were effective or not. Medications work differently for everyone but maybe similarities can be drawn.

Think I'd like to learn more about this song I woke up with. The mind blower is waking up with that song while I turned on the radio at 5am it was on, synchronicity always piques my imagination ;)
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THE SHINS
"Phantom Limb"
Frozen into coats,
White girls of the North,
Fire past one, fire the one,
The are the fabled lambs,
A Sunday ham,
The ancient snow.

And they can float above the grass,
In circles if they tried,
A latent power I know they hide,
To keep some hope alive,
That a girl like I could ever try,
Could ever try
So we just skirt the hallway signs,
A phantom and a fly,
Follow the lines and wonder why
There's no connection.

And weakened falling eyes,
In cheap shots from the tribe,

And we're often in Marcus' porch again,
Another afternoon with the gold head tunes,
And pilfered booze.

We wandered through your mama's house,
And the milk from the window lights,
Family portrait circa ninety-five,
This is that foreign land,
With the sprayed on tans,
And it all feels fine,
Beat it circa slime,
So, when they tap our mundane heads,
To zombie-walk in our stead,
This town seems hardly worth our time,
And we'll no longer memorize or rhyme,
To fall along in our crime,
Stepping over what now towers to the sky,
With no connection.
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