World bipolar day

Today (30/3/2024) is world bipolar day and I wanted to write about having bipolar.

If you are not aware then I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type. This essentially means that I have both schizophrenia and bipolar.

Today I will write about the bipolar part. In particular I will write about the manic part of bipolar. I feel like people know about depression more, but people often think mania is just being happy and yay!

Looking back my bipolar symptoms started in my mid to late teens. They came along with schizophrenic symptoms as well. In terms of the bipolar part, I would get extremes of moods. I would go manic and decide I was going to join the army as a musician. I regularly had poor sleep where I would awake all night and not be tired. I had delusions where I believed I was being interviewed by famous people on the television and that it was being broadcast from my mind to the world. I would get extremely irritable, behave in risky ways (for me) and had a racing mind and felt full of energy in a bad way.

I also had severe depressive episodes. Where I would be severely depressed, self harmed a lot, was suicidal and attempted suicide several times. I was also irritable, and very withdrawn.

As I grew up and moved away from home for university my bipolar part of the schizoaffective got worse and worse. I spent many nights in a row not sleeping. And when I did sleep I slept under the desk terrified that I was being monitored through my window as I slept.

Of course as someone with schizoaffective bipolar type, rather than bipolar alone I was also dealing with a lot of schizophrenia symptoms as well.

I would lock myself in my room at university accommodation. I was convinced the others in your flat area were out to get me, so I locked myself away and then would creep out at night to the kitchen for food. I started to roam the streets at night. Looking back I was severely unwell ,and I honestly don’t understand how it took until December 2010 for me to be sectioned.

My manic episodes became more and more frequent. And looking back to that first time I was sectioned, I remember one day on the ward I was suddenly convinced I had to find narnia. I paced the ward corridor all day, literally for hours and hours. I then became convinced the staff were hiding it from me. At first I thought their office, but then I thought it might be outside. This was December and it was snowing, which only cemented my delusion. I walked around in shorts and a t shirt. I then lay down in the snow convinced I had found narnia. The psychiatrist the next day decided this was attention seeking behaviour and he diagnosed me with EUPD (AKA BPD) after talking to me for 10 minutes, and said that me trying to find narnia was attention seeking behaviour and that I knew exactly what I was doing in terms of trying to manipulate staff.

As the years went by, I was sectioned multiple times. With professionals still insisting I had EUPD, and generally making me out to be someone who had manic episodes to trick professionals .

By this time I was taking part in risky behaviour by not sleeping for nights at a time and then going on hikes in the Peak District on my own. In all weathers. I was so exhausted that I was not very aware where I was going when in the middle of where. I spent nights after nights walking down roads believing I was invincible. I nearly jumped off a cliff because I completely believed I could fly. Honestly not sure how I survived my manic episodes.

Then in 2018 I was sectioned and sent to a private hospital (as an NHS patient) about a four hour drive from me. The psychiatrist asked my opinion in regards to medication. I told him that I wanted to try lithium. He listened and he agreed. So for 6 years now I have been on lithium. It has helped a lot. I still struggle with the bipolar part a lot, but my severe manic episodes are much, much less and they tend to be shorter in length, and with less severity.

Image description for the above image: the background is speckled type with bigger and smaller parts. The left side is predominantly black with some orange showing, and the right side is more orange with some black showing. There are three words in red writing. The words from top left down to bottoms right are: depressed. Mixed. Manic. End image description.

I think the main thing I would like people to know about bipolar is that mania is not some wooo I am happy episode. There is elements of that and hypomania which is less severe than mania can be episodes that I enjoy and can be useful. However, mania has nearly killed me. It isn’t some jolly walk in the park.