Living with Bi-Polar, a review of Stephen Fry’s documentary, and personal experiences Part 4

Part 4 Self-Medication.
                Self-medication has been around longer than today’s regulated medication industries; after all, self-medication is where all medication began. However, for this line of discussion, I’d like to start with a definition from Wikipedia:

“Self-Medication is a human behavior in which an individual uses a substance or any exogenous influence to self-administer treatment for often unmanaged, undiagnosed physical or psychological ailments."

               Now I will only be discussing my personal experiences with this, as I don’t feel too comfortable on stating second and third hand accounts. For myself, alcohol was the medicine of choice in my teens and twenties. Why? To quote Homer Simpson, “To Alcohol…the cause…and solution to…all of life’s  problems.” Well, when you’re walking around like a time-bomb, you tend to only focus on the latter half of that wisdom.  For a manic-depressive, alcohol seems like a great choice. On one hand, if you’re depressed, just drink up and you’ll feel better. All those happy people in beer commercials can’t be lying, right? On the other hand, when you’re manic, you either want to:
A) Stop the ride and get off. Your exhausted, and your mind won’t shut off. So how do you get it to stop? Use a beer hammer of course! Drink and drink until you knock yourself unconscious.
-or
B) Keep the party going! Woooooo Hoooo! THIS IS AWESOME!!! Give me another beer and a shot!
Yes, those are indeed complete opposite outcomes from using the same substance. How does this make sense? It doesn’t. When you’re bi-polar, you also tend to re-make things as you need them to be. When you’re in a manic state, what is rational to most completely eludes you. Why? Well who has time for facts and logic when I’VE JUST THOUGHT OF THE MOST AMAZING THING OMG NEED TO GO GET A…yeah…that happens a lot. Mania can make you feel god-like. The universe is your and all in it is within your understanding. Consequences really don’t factor into a manic high.

                So for depression, you also drink. Why? “I’ll take country and western song cliché’s for a $1000.00 Alex” So many people have written why people drink when depressed I’m not going to cover it. The why really isn’t relevant, as much as the ‘what happens when?’ part. See, when you’re depressed, all you can think about is wishing you were not. Many times I think subconsciously I was craving a manic episode. Not knowing that’s what my times of frenzy were, I related to the next thing. Getting hammered. Being drunk parallels mania in a lot of ways. Loss of inhibition, slight feeling of euphoria, relaxation, confidence, etc. all mimic parts of a manic episode. The biggest difference is when you’re drunk, you might have slightly impaired judgment. When someone is manic they may not be that closely tied to reality. When a person is in a state of mania and gets drunk, its game fucking on hold on to your hats time folks!!!  Yeah, take that rulebook and set it on fire for all the good it will do you. I’m glad I never got into hard-core drugs, as it would have gotten me killed. If a drag racer holds the Nitrous button down too long he can blow the motor. If you try to take a race car like brain and add rocket fuel to it, you’re going to burn it out quick. Alcohol was “safe” because I couldn’t drink enough to kill myself, right? (Again, loss of logic).

                The problem is what constant drinking does to a person. For a normal person it is bad enough; when you are bi-polar it gets worse. Think you were rapid cycling between mania and depression before? Well step right up, we have a treat for you! It’s called exhaustion! Can’t sleep? Get blackout drunk! Wake up hung over and groggy! Go to work and deal with people all while trying to get your head on straight. Shift is over, time to go relax with a drink! Or TEN!!! Hey, that bottle of rum isn’t going to drink itself!

                See, what I didn’t know was that getting blackout drunk and passing out was possibly WORSE than not sleeping. When you’re half-crazy with sleep deprivation, you don’t think clearly. All you want is results, sleep. Should have I talked to a doctor? Yes. Did I talk to a doctor? Hell no. (See part 1). So, instead of getting the rest I thought I was getting, I really was just trashing my ability to remember stuff, flooding my body with toxins, and adding obscene amounts of calories directly from the beer and the poor eating that went along with it. I think Taco Bell has stayed in business solely on the amount of money drunks spend there between 12am-4am on the weekends. 

                This cycling of mania-blackout/depression-blackout had quite a toll on my heath. I was gaining weight, having memory problems, and my mood swings were getting worse and worse. Since alcohol is so easily available to teens, it was my starting off point. If I had access to potentially stronger drugs I probably would have done as many as possible and died from any number of possible fates. But I didn’t die. I credit that fact to a group of people that was a large part of my life at that time. I will go on more about how they kept me from being my own worst enemy in future posts.

                I hope that this helps those who have never self-medicated relate to those that have. It is not a practice I encourage in the form that I’ve shared. If anyone reading this feels I am not giving enough explanation to any given topic, please let me know in the comments. I’m new to writing in this style, and want to balance assuming people know the general dangers of alcohol with giving examples of how they can be so very attractive to bi-polar individuals.