Hey Norm -- Sue Me (I could use the press)

So Sen. Norm Coleman has sued Democratic opponent Al Franken for calling him a crook.

Well, Norm, I think you know it's a very poorly kept secret here in Minnesota Nice that you're not only a crook -- you're an adulterous, womanizing crook.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Unless, of course, you're just another self-righteous prick.

My Daily Affirmation

I really shouldn't find this reassuring, but I do. I've been reading Francis Mondimore's Bipolar Disorder: A Guide for Patients & Families, & came across this nugget toward the end:

"Stress doesn't make people manic or send them into a major depression unless they have bipolar disorder. Neither does drinking too much or sleep deprivation or the loss of a job or the end of a love affair or the hundred other things that you can convince yourself explain your symptoms better than a diagnosis of bipolar disorder."

My bouts of denial usually show up in a weird-ass kind of way. I don't worry so much that non-crazy people will think I'm repulsive because I'm nuts -- I worry they'll think I'm being melodramatic by declaring myself nuts. I've had the same anxiety over declaring myself a drunk: I hear the war stories of other recovering alcoholics & fear mine will sound lame (though when I tell mine in detail, I usually get a few gasps & "you're-still-alive?" looks that ease that concern a touch).

What often gets me (especially, for some reason, right before psychiatrist appointments) is the thought that maybe I'm not really bipolar. Maybe I just had a few bad depressions & drank myself into situations my shrink sees as manic. Maybe I talked myself into a bipolar diagnosis just because it seems sexier than straight depression (does that make me a pervert?).

Which is why Mondimore made me feel better. Apparently sane booze hounds don't typically drink themselves into situations that end with 4 a.m. paddy-wagon rides to a hospital suicide-watch room.

Who knew?

My Moody Circles & Me

Why start another bipolar blog? Especially a bipolar blog that no one in his right mind would ever willingly read? Well, I’m not in my right mind, so I can do whatever the hell I want.

I’m a Minnesotan, a lawyer & ex-newspaperman, a fruitcake, a recovering soak, a diabetic, & still alive, & on most days I’m at least a little proud of all those things. I’m an unabashed liberal who was raised in the congressional district currently represented by Michele Bachmann, protégé of Joe McCarthy (though hopefully that will change after November 4). My hometown has a population of 17,000, & it’s surrounded by miles of right-wing farm country. I prefer big cities, Danish cigarettes & socialized medicine. So I’ve got something of an inferiority complex about my origins.

The crazies started their invasion at least as far back as high school, but they didn’t make their presence fully known until I was a year into law school in 2003. If I can offer just one piece of advice to anyone bored enough to read this: Go nuts before, or after, but never while studying for a professional degree – especially if you’ve ignored common sense & passed up scholarships in favor of the most expensive school you can find. I’m ass-deep in debt, with poor long-term job prospects, three law schools on my transcript, & grades that scream “nervous breakdown!”

So anyway, here’s a basic outline of how I became acquainted with insanity:

Bipolar disorder runs in most of the recent branches of my family tree, though I didn't know it until a few years ago. I grew up with a vague but constant sense that I didn’t see the world like most other people: In high school, the lumps of life-related shittiness that other people put behind them seemed to stick to me, to gnaw at me long after I should’ve forgotten them.

I bucked family tradition & went to college out of state, where I figured I’d have better luck. It seemed like I did for a while, but eventually I started taking everything – every rejection, every failure – too personally. I had a habit of building up fierce ambitions, then dropping them for no good reason. I also started drinking, & by the time I graduated I’d developed a nice cozy relationship with the sauce.

About a year after graduation, I had an episode that was probably part suicide attempt, probably part manic episode, & definitely part alcoholic blackout. I can’t remember most of it, but I almost died, which scared the living Jesus out of me, & I quit drinking, for a while. The emergency room doctors assured me my problem was purely liquid, so I had no reason to suspect I might have been driven to booze by genuine clinical madness.

I survived the next few years working as a newspaper reporter. That was fun, at least until anxiety attacks & a long run of insomnia convinced me I should try something else, maybe law school. So I took the LSAT (talk about the benefits of hypomania: I managed to pull off a high score despite getting not a minute of sleep the night before the test) & went back to school.

But the insomnia & anxiety didn’t stay behind, & I keeled off the deep end during the summer after my first year, in 2003. I’d been depressed before, but not like this. This was the kind of depression where the color fades out of buildings, where you stop seeing anything more than 10 feet away (you know it’s there, but your eyes are too tired to focus), where every approaching subway train starts to look like a decent way out. I repeatedly stuck my head out of my ninth-floor apartment window, estimating how badly I’d scar my neighbors if I jumped. I wrote a suicide note on my laptop, deleted it, then wrote it again.

So I ended up in the psych ward of a New York emergency room, if only for one night. They diagnosed me with major depressive disorder, & I started taking pills & seeing a shrink. Later on someone added a side dish of generalized anxiety disorder to my psychiatric menu, along with a prescription for Klonopin. I knew benzodiazepines were addictive, but I figured they weren’t alcohol, so who cared? I didn’t know that Klonopin is esentially hooch in pill form.

I eventually moved back to Minnesota & finished law school, but it took an extra two years, & I spent a good part of that time back inside 110-proof bottles of bourbon (along with scotch, vodka, 151 rum, & the occasional splash of 160-proof almond extract). I finally quit the juice again a little more than two years ago, went through outpatient rehab, (re)joined a 12-step group, & remain as sober as a judge – a judge who doesn’t drink, anyway.

In February 2008, my diagnostic status was upgraded to bipolar disorder type 2 vs. other. The “vs. other,” as I understand it, indicates that my current shrink suspects I really have type 1. She told me during my last appointment that she thinks my personality tends in that direction. I took it as a compliment.

I presently see the shrink & a behavioral psychotherapist. I’m not terribly hot about either. The doctor is good at her job, but she only does medication management, & she keeps appointments disappointingly short (medication management my ass: I try to squeeze in talk therapy wherever I can get it, as more than a few relatives, friends & telemarketers can attest). My therapist is also pretty good at what he does (cognitive behavioral therapy). I just don’t take to it very well. At the moment I’m aiming to move to more traditional psychotherapy, with a psychiatrist who actually talks to patients, but that shit’s expensive, with or without insurance. And what with being manic-depressive, prudent financial planning isn’t exactly my strong suit.

I still take pills, obviously, but I draw a very serious line in the sand on this issue: I refuse, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, to refer to my medications as “my meds” (well, OK, besides in this sentence). I can’t really explain it – there’s just something about it that pisses me off. It’s too hip, too apologetic, too obnoxious. It sounds like the aging ponytail hippie who won’t shut up about “toking reefer.”

That said, I started Lamictal earlier this year. Before that I was on a relatively short roster of other drugs: Celexa (worked for a while), Lexapro (sucked ass), Remeron & Wellbutrin (couldn’t really tell), & Prozac (can’t really tell, but I still take it). My psychiatrist put me on the Lamictal – an anticonvulsant mood stabilizer – after several weeks of bizarre sleeping patterns last winter: I was switching back & forth, every two weeks or so, between sleeping at night and sleeping during the day. She told me that can happen with bipolar disorder; I haven’t seen anything in print yet that confirms this, but a few books come close.

I’ve been extremely lucky with side effects since the very first pill: some GI issues & a touch of dry mouth, but that’s about it. Given what I’ve read from other manic-depressives, I’ve gotten off easy on this front, but I like to believe I’d stay compliant even with side effects. I’m a staunch believer in aggressive treatment of mental illness – with the caveat that the treatment should never cause problems as serious as the disease.

Lately my moods have been pretty consistent. But it’s hard for me to judge. My episodes of severe depression (I’ve had at least two more since 2003) stand out – clearly something was fucked up. I can’t pinpoint much mania, though. There are certainly stretches that look like hypomania in hindsight, & my shrink says she suspects my blackout/suicide attempt involved full-blown mania. But I have a hard time tracing distinct mood cycles. I hope that’s partly because of the medication, but I also suspect I have some less-than-classic symptoms – maybe some mixed states, maybe some mania that involves more irritability than expansiveness (I have, on a few inappropriate occasions, become more than a little snippy).

Anyway, that’s me & my crazy. Make of it what you will. I may run out of things to say too quickly to keep this joke of a blog going very long. But I obviously like the sound of my own typing, so maybe not. I shall remain semi-anonymous, at least for now – if only so this blog's abject failure won't trace directly back to me.