Bipolar and Being Born This Way

Content Notice: This story contains references to substance abuse.

I was forty-five when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Looking back on the way I had always described myself, I now realize I was describing someone living this disorder. It is painfully obvious today; however, hindsight is 20/20. I had always described myself as incredibly happy or incredibly sad. People commented on how I talked so fast for a Southerner from Atlanta whose mother’s name was Dixie. Life was then, and is now, a run-on sentence for me.

I have since learned that people diagnosed with bipolar can be described as having characteristics such as being fast talkers, having delusions of grandeur, and spending too much money. Substance use is also common. Looking back on my history with crack cocaine and my tendency to shop, it all makes sense to me now.

I believed that I was creative—a theatrical eccentric à la Tallulah Bankhead! I also believed that I possessed the writing talent and exuberant love of life like Zelda Fitzgerald and had the sexual energy of the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe. Carrie Fisher and I were kindred birthday spirits (we were both born on October twenty-first), but I also believed we were kindred spirits living with bipolar disorder. Looking back on these wonderful ladies that I identified with, I wasn’t surprised when I was diagnosed. After all, we were all members of the same club—whether we wanted to be or not.

My family history of mental illness was another indicator. Thinking about my mother, Dixie, and her mother, Margaret, it was painfully obvious that they both lived with bipolar. The doctors knew that there was something off about my grandmother. However, it was the 1970s, so they diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s.

The year I turned forty-five, my not-so-fabulous husband of seventeen years handed me something and said, “[h]ere, smoke this.” I am a child of the 1970s, so I assumed that it was marijuana and smoked it. Little did I know that my husband, who I had known since the age of 4 and been married to for the last seventeen years, had handed me crack cocaine without telling me. At the time, I didn’t ask any questions because I trusted him. This was a huge turning point in my life. There should have been a loud sound to warn me, like the police sound in the play, The Diary of Anne Frank. That piercing sound has lived in my soul and to this day, I hear it as my inner voice, telling me to stop and think about what I am doing. Instead of heeding this voice, I bulldozed ahead with my usual “ready, fire, aim” personality!

My husband had been using drugs for a long time (which I didn’t know at the time) but I wanted to reconnect with him because our marriage had been on a downswing. I didn’t usually smoke marijuana because it made me paranoid. I didn’t want to feel paranoid, I wanted to feel happy and energized! When the cocaine hit my system, it made me see the world in bright colors instead of the pastel shades I had been living with recently in my marriage. Bright colors represent happiness to me and pastel colors represent dullness and sadness. I definitely chose happiness over dullness and sadness—no surprise there! I much prefer being manic to being a depressed shell of myself.

For the next 9 months, I was instantly hooked on crack cocaine and the feeling it gave me. At first, life became one big party. I stayed awake for days at a time, smoking, watching movies, listening to music, and seeing the world for the first time, or so the cocaine deluded me into believing. Everything was vivid with bright colors. Then the drug rained on my parade. This is the dirty little secret when doing drugs. First, you are happy, marching in your colorful parade, laughing and singing happily. Then, with no notice, your parade is being rained on, all of the colors begin to run together, and you are soaking wet, cold, and unhappy. I went from an overly confident life-of-the-party to a recluse who walked with her shoulders bent with no will to live anymore. My weight shifted from 160 pounds to 88 pounds.

The first night, my husband and the other couple who we partied with were with me on this colorful parade. Even though my own personal, peppy parade didn’t last nearly long enough to satisfy my tendencies, I still became another sad statistic for drug addiction and began a downward, depressive spiral that allowed the other side of my personality to become dominant. Depressed, sad, and feeling like I had ruined my life, I wallowed in my self-pity for a couple of weeks.

That being said, I seem to process feelings quickly. I talk fast, think fast, act fast, and get over situations fast. I believe these qualities are related to the manic bipolar part of my personality. Everything is bright, fun, and festive and then suddenly, it is dark, dull, and sad. I will be happily singing songs to my cat, making up hilarious lyrics to popular songs, or making faces to myself in the mirror while I quote my favorite movie line by Bette Middler in Beaches when she says, “[o]kay, enough about me—tell me, what do you think about me?” Then without even thinking about it, my mood changes, and I am sitting on the sofa, snacking on barbecue potato chips, and watching four hours of The Gilmore Girls without moving. Or I’m crying at the animal rescue commercials and thinking about all the animals that need to be rescued. I’m exhausted and become a bonafide depressed couch potato.

I realized later what my drug use had done to me. I had always been the rare one in my group of friends who didn’t do drugs. With the encouragement of my husband, I joined the party and learned how much fun it was to get high. I am not proud of this discovery. In fact, I’m quite ashamed of how easily I became addicted to crack cocaine. At the time, I had not been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It is only now that I realized that crack cocaine is highly addictive and people diagnosed with bipolar disorder tend to be highly susceptible to addiction, which is exactly what happened to me. What was surprising is that I had not become addicted earlier. Even though my husband and I had been married for a long time, I had never felt the need to do drugs or drink alcohol. My vices were Diet Dr. Pepper and shopping online with delightful glee as I reached a first name basis with my UPS delivery man!

I think the most important lesson that I learned from my foray into drugs was that, as Shakespeare said, “[t]o thine own self be true.” Well, I wasn’t true to myself, I was trying to heal my crumbling marriage, so I smoked what my husband offered me. I wanted to fit in with him and his world. Another important lesson I learned was that I needed psychiatric help. I sought out a therapist and learned that I was living with bipolar. I took a quiz, did lots of research, and figured out that I was 88% likely to be diagnosed with bipolar. Suddenly, so much of my life and my “crazy” personality quirks made sense.

I eventually made the decision to leave my husband. This decision came to me in a calm realization, not a frantic, manic mood. I listened to my own soul in a quiet way. That’s how I knew it was the right decision, made in my right frame of mind. My therapist let me know that I was making progress and I was on a good road. I realized that this would be a lifelong struggle with my two intense, yet uniquely quirky personalities. That’s why years ago, people were described as manic-depressive. Now, the politically correct term is a person with bipolar disorder. This emphasizes the person, not the disorder. We have bipolar disorder, we are not bipolar. This concept lets me feel more in control and less labeled. And this, my friends, is a good thing. Because I am being true to myself just like William Shakespeare taught me.