Treatment

I had a friend who was diagnosed as bi-polar. He'd had a bad breakup and couldn't seem to shake the depression that followed, and when he sought help they put him on lithium. I watched him gain weight and dull down until he finally decided he wasn't bi-polar anymore and stopped taking the medication. Fair or not, the lesson I learned from my friend's experience was "don't take lithium".

So... as I realized I was trapped in a cycle of short-lived highs and crashing lows, I thought back to my friend's experience. I read a few books. It wasn't hard to suspect I might be bi-polar. Trapped, as I was at the time, in a soul-crushing depression, I attached myself to the idea of a pharmacological solution. So I went to the doctor and lied.

I described the depression. Yes, I sleep all day. No, I won't go out and see anyone. But I knew which questions to lie to. Ever have trouble sleeping? Uh, no. Fantastical thinking and unwise, spontaneous actions? Not me. I wanted the mood elevator, not the drug that had such a bad effect on my friend. It was easy to fool the doctor.

I took an SSRI for a couple of months. I didn't like the way it made me feel. At the same time I started taking it I started trying to watch for when I was thinking the types of thoughts, the negative judgments, that I'd learned didn't serve me. Even if I was a bad person I could see that the thoughts about being bad were making it harder for me to function, and they didn't make me a better person in the bargain. When I started trying to be aware of these types of thoughts a funny thing happened - they went away.

Not immediately, of course. But surprisingly quickly. Within a matter of days the crash I was experiencing seemed to melt away. I thought I'd found the key to "curing" my illness, that it was as simple as being aware that my self-judgmental thoughts didn't serve me and could be stopped by watching for them as they came up. I was wrong, of course.