Bipolar Babes

Bipolar can make it difficult to maintain and continue to have friendships in the world. The manic episodes can send you off the deep-end saying things and acting in ways you can never imagine yourself behaving like when you're no longer sick. What happens to our friendships? Oftentimes they fall by the wayside. It can be hard to both manage the disorder, make amends everytime you have a manic episode, and still have friends.  1) Let your friends know This is sort of risky, letting your friends know you have bipolar might make them more or less sympathetic to you position in the world. Either they have family with bipolar whom they love and understand, or they have family with bipolar whom they despise, or they've only ever heard about bipolar from the their smartphones and TV. How are they going to react when they know you have bipolar? If you have good friends, they won't give a shit. And beyond that you can explain to them what a manic episode in you looks like and they ...

Often with bipolar disorder I start to think and feel that it's completely insurmountable. I can't be the only bipolar babe in the universe who sat alone and thought, this is unbeatable. It's a massive Goliath in my world and I don't have the strength to fight it. It's important to remember that bipolar is a part of us. And once it's already there, it's not insurmountable to fix.  1) There's medications now  There are now many medications on the market that treat bipolar disorder. Like my good friend Lithium, which makes me pee like a racehorse. Things were much worse in the past. There were very few approved medicinal treatments and people with the disorder often were lobotomized. We have serious options medicinally today. And once it's at bay medicinally there are many things that we can do. Read and study philosophies, become nurses or doctors, learn about psychiatry, psychology or computer science. Once we're no longer manic, our minds can re...

Bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder symptoms. We hear these words a lot as we manage our disorder. The disorder can mirror schizophrenia at times for me, in the midst of mania. But there's something more common and connective in this disorder that people don't often talk about which is the depression. Many people suffer from depression and there are many ways to curb it.  1) Fish Oil  Taking a certain amount of fishoil per day in accordance with your individual biology has been shown to help with depression. Now I take fishoil and I eat raw fish in sushi's. I am constantly inundated with fish and fish products. I don't know if it helps depression as much as people say. I do still have chronic underlying depression with any disease I end up diagnosed with. But the fish oil does seem to help at least on a placebic level. Placebic level isn't a phrase but it can be a phrase if we so wish it and will it babes.  2) Daily Walks  If you can wake up before the sun sets, whic...

More thoughts on the management of bipolar disorder (which I barely manage). We all know a feature of bipolar disorder symptoms is mania. I want to write about curbing the embarrassment of mania, but if I'm honest, fuck if I know. I've never known how to properly deal with the embarrassment of a public manic episode. I've said and done things while manic that still haunt my amygdala like little pieces of a long-forgotten yet recent pasts, floating through my brain. 1) Act like it didn't happen?  I don't know if this works or not to be honest. I don't even know how many weeks are in a year, let alone how to solve bigger questions like this. Mania explores the topics of the deepest darkest void of the intellectual or internet world and then comes out completely fuck-all nuts. My response is to walk around and act as though nothing in particular happened. Does this work with dealing with embarrassment? I have no idea. There aren't enough drugs on this planet to...

Again, I sit languidly in the provincial care of my parents and write to a slew of potential bipolar babes swimming out in the ether of life. All of us asking the same question, why can't I sleep? I'm offering my Top 5 natural management techniques for sleep. In my last post, I mentioned sleep is a primordial beast which I need slews of pharmaceuticals to manage. But there are plenty of natural management techniques for sleep, that might be of interest to you, dear reader.  1) Melatonin  A little bit of the natural supplement , which permeates our brains, especially during depression, melatonin. Melatonin at bedtime has helped me manage my own sleep for awhile and if not at bedtime, there are times during the day before bed, that this natural supplement which is available over the counter at most Walgreens (which all look like they're designed by Stanley Kubrick to me) can help you sleep. If you happen to have suffered with sleep paralysis, which I have occasionally, melato...

I sit at home. From my desk that my parents set-up, after yet another manic episode and yet another hospitalization. Feeling the Sisyphean duty of managing my disorder and prioritizing it and it's many small details. At the age of 29, I feel like I'm 98 years old. What is it about bipolar that makes it feel so much like dementia?! I don't want to be young and enshrined in my 'shine on you crazy diamond' clothes. Nobody wants to be the town freak, or the bipolar babe ostracized. And it's not like I'm even ostracized. It's just that --- well that I can't stop rambling. I can't stop thinking. And I certainly can't stop thinking about this disorder and how to manage it. How could I think differently when I'm at home again for several months? It's like something in between provincial living in a Jane Austen novel, 29 and nothing to offer the family, and living on the edges of poverty for your entire life. And of course, the dramatization o...