The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

My leading entry.

It struck me as I was reading through journals, skimming through static items and checking out the highlighted titles: there sure is a lot of bipolar disorder out there. If it weren’t so strange, so unpredictable, one might want to view it as a fascinating affliction of the glamorous or the highly talented. Forget about Britney, this disorder was essential to old world pedigree with such prolific individuals as Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Vonnegut, Graham Greene, Honors de Balzac, Jane Kenyon, Randall Jarrell, Jimi Hendrix, Axl Rose, Sting, Rosemary Clooney, Tom Waits, Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, Beethoven, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill…and it goes on.

So what is this curious condition, anyway?

def.-From high to low. From mania to depression. From recklessness to listlessness. These are the extremes associated with bipolar disorder, a mental illness characterized by mood instability that can be serious and disabling. Bipolar disorder is also known as manic-depression or manic-depressive illness — manic behavior is one extreme of this disorder, and depression is the other.
~MayoClinic.com

Okay, then.

I’ve been wondering about it, you see, because it’s suddenly as common as a cold, with people lining up at the local pharmacy, scripts in their hands, anxiously looking up at the beleaguered pharmacist who has been giving instruction after instruction to some very normal looking, if not slightly agitated, people. I’m curious about them all, wondering how they’re feeling, if they’re euphoric or on the verge of jumping off a balcony, because no one is showing their cards, keeping them very close to the chest.

I’ve got my own issues, like everyone else apparently does. It is somewhat embarrassing, sure, to know you have a label on under the clothes, beneath the skin, something which is considered more humiliating than a bad kidney or a tumour on the pituitary gland. I had been a seemingly normal person and then one day I found I wasn’t. That had an effect on me, and it wasn’t positive.

Then, I got a clue.

I didn’t have bipolar disorder, though. I was officially considered to be suffering from (insert air quotes here) panic attack syndrome/disorder. Oh, and I had anxiety. Which apparently bred depression. Whatever. The thing was, I was studying psychology in my part-time university courses and I was familiar with panic disorder before it happened to me. While it was happening, I recall thinking ‘Oh, so this is a panic attack, then.’ What I didn’t count on was that I wouldn’t let it go, that I would continue to let it grow inside. I knew I could make it go away, but I lacked the confidence to actually do it. I’m still working on that.

So, while this is not the same ‘disorder’, I feel as though I have some wiggle room in terms of questioning the validity of bipolar disorder/manic depression. Not outright, mind you, because I do believe it is a problem and that it does exist. What I take issue with is the massive misdiagnosis problem going on in the world, particularly in North America. It’s like anyone having a bad day is suddenly bipolar.

Susanna: [reading from a book] "Borderline Personality Disorder. An instability of self-image, relationships and mood... uncertain about goals, impulsive in activities that are self-damaging, such as casual sex."
Lisa: I like that.
Susanna: "Social contrariness and a generally pessimistic attitude are often observed."
[pauses]
Susanna: Well that's me.
Lisa: That's everybody.
~Girl, Interrupted, by Susannah Kaysen

Is there a kernel of truth in this? Is it possible we’ve become a nation so enamoured with diagnosing and medicating that we’re losing our grip on reality as a whole? Granted, Borderline Personality Disorder isn’t the same as Bipolar Disorder, which isn’t the same as Panic Disorder which isn’t the same as Major Depression…and did you know that psychiatrists are now asserting that MPD (multiple personality disorder) may not be a valid condition? My friend C., a psychiatric nurse told me this last week. Sybil would be extremely annoyed. Her alters would feel kind of stupid too.

Oh, I know, I know, everyone knows someone who has it or they might even have it themselves but did you ever stop to consider that you might be treating something that isn’t there? Isn’t it just possible that the doctor slipped up and put you into a tidy box with a ribbon and a vial of pills so that you’d shut up and move on so the next one could come in? Could they have been influenced by the companies who sell the pills and fan the fires?

‘A new study by Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University researchers reports that fewer than half the patients previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder based on a comprehensive, psychiatric diagnostic interview-’-the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID).

Turns out that a great many people who experience high levels of anxiety, agitation, irritability and restlessness often get diagnosed with BPD, when actually they’re simply going through a phase that most people can relate to. Everyone is anxious on occasion, and everyone has bouts of depression. It’s a human commonality. The problem we have is that many of us think feeling bad is abnormal. We expect happiness to be consistent and impenetrable. If it’s not, we freak out, ask for a pill and develop potentially worse conditions which are brought by repeated exposure to certain mood stabilizers, not the least of which is dependency. What puzzles me is that when a person with BPD commits suicide, it is often attributed to the stress they were under with the affliction, or from the stigma of having it. What if it was instead brought on by a reaction to the drug they were taking to stabilize the problem or from alcohol abuse and/or recreational drug use (which so many people with anxiety and depression use as a bandaid)?

Here’s a big thing: recreational drugs can bring on this problem and even more severe mental illness, including schizophrenia. I personally know one individual who used drugs for a short time in college and now he’s unable to live on his own, sometimes attempts to jump off building believing he can fly. Would it have happened if he hadn’t tried the drugs? His many psychiatrists seem to think he would have had a normal life if he’d stayed away from it. I also know of a mother who tried Ecstasy with her daughter one night, in a vain effort to be ‘cool’, who is now a vegetable thanks to an unexpected mental short circuit which was brought on by the chemical reaction. So, isn’t it possible that if drugs can do this to them, than maybe it’s damaging the heads of most people who do them? You do get that they’re not natural, right? Someone made them in a lab. For profit. With the intention of hooking you. Sometimes it is in a pharmaceutical company, and sometimes it’s in the basement apartment of the shady guy down the block. It’s a business and that’s the bottom line.

So, I’m thinking that if you have been told or believe that you have BPD, there’s a good chance that a second diagnosis is in your best interest. I just don’t believe it’s possible that this catch-all disease is always valid. I don’t advocate taking vitamins to cure it or exercising until your legs give out (thank you, Mr. Cruise), but I do believe that the real conspiracy lies in the drug companies who are scaring everyone into thinking they need them. There’s a good chance that you don’t need to be medicated (but don’t stop taking your meds unless your physician advises you to do so. Obviously, people with legitimate BPD should be faithful to their meds). However, you are an idiot if you take recreational drugs, and you’re not entirely bright if you drink to ease the pain.

I think the reason why so many writers, poets, actors, artists, etc. were supposedly sufferers of this condition was because they were in the business of ‘feeling’, and it got to be too much, just like it would for anyone. For the politicians, it might have had to do with insurmountable pressure they were under. We’d all crack from that. Maybe it’s okay that you feel like garbage some days, want to burst into tears without much reason.
Perhaps this is just part of the human condition.

They don’t know enough about it, yet, for everyone to accept it. I suspect there are some who hide behind it, attention whores who use it to excuse their inappropriate behaviour or perpetual laziness. I believe that some people get so bogged down with the stress of life that they need to have a definition to reason out their inability to cope. I also think that maybe some are too eager to wrap that sash around them, the one which says ‘I’m Bipolar!’ in bright red letters so that they can identify with something, or someone else.

Maybe the cure is in questioning why you feel a need to define yourself.