Okay so here’s the deal, sorry kinda long story: I have been dxd bipolar since age 17. I argued the dx for years but one after another shrink said I wasn’t just bipolar but obviously bipolar. Anyway I had been doing okay just with therapy until my husband left (got another woman with child) without so much as leaving me a note or a phone call goodbye and I basically lost my ever loving mind. I spent years in and out of the hospital bipolar with major depression. I was trying repeatedly to kill my self with pills (which if you wanna do this I suggest you look long and hard at what will do it as at one point I took about 900 pills of various psych meds and it only left me paralyzed for a day and that was the end of that!). But yeah I swallowed two whole bottles of ibuprofen thinking that would do the trick both 300 count and nope! Don’t get me wrong I am grateful very very grateful I didn’t die and I am not sure why I didn’t die. Anyhoo I spent welllll over a decade in a major depression (well over a dozen hospitalizations for either suicidal ideation or psychosis) with some swings of hypomania (for those uneducated as to what this is you feel like Superman/woman and can get ALOT done in just a few days and you don’t sleep at all during those few days...to distinguish this from full blown mania well that is when you are delusional you literally think you are god or the devil or an alien or that the government is out to get you ie any number of things that are wholly irrational whereas in hypomania you get the no sleep tons of energy thing minus the delusions).
Okay forward many years later I am now fairly healthy going through very few depressions and almost zero hypomania and truly zero mania. And I feel good about myself. After years not being able to look in the mirror cuz I thought I was so horrible I actually look in the mirror and think I’m actually pretty cute. And now dating after well over a decade without a single date cuz I didn’t just have depression I also had lupus and couldn’t walk without a walker. Now how did they both clear up at about the same time I don’t know!!!! I know that all the sudden I needed to care for my mom and all the sudden I was moving from CA to GA. And as it so happens at that time I became ALOT healthier both physically and mentally.
Okay but here I am now my mom died as moms tend to do at about age 80. And a weird thing happened with my pain doc she lost her license and I wasn’t able to get my normal pain meds. Now it’s been a year off pain meds and I have tried PT and steroids and anti-inflamnatories and acupuncture and done some electro-shock thing and muscle relaxants and lyrica and these meds make me depressed now and I have tried cbd and THC and I have found nothing helps enough with my back pain to get me mobile. And so I started drinking and yes I know alcohol is a depressant but the only time I feel half way alive IS when I am drinking and it took a solid year of trying other things before I got here so it’s not like I have been lax in trying other treatments!!
Soooo now I am spending days in bed and not showering for days at a time and not caring about much at all. What is the solution? Before it was a practice of gratitude and kindness to myself but I DO have still this idea that what I see around me and in my life as beautiful and I DO treat myself as my best friend yet still I am depressed!
