It’s now November of 2000. I’m back at the University of Michigan after having crashed a Hindu woman’s 50th birthday party. By this point, I’ve alienated myself from most of my friends, I’m not attending class, and I’ve been kicked out of my apartment. The wrecking ball that is mania is in full effect. My last remaining friends, Andrew and Heather, get in touch with my parents. My Mom and Dad show up in Ann Arbor. They don’t know what’s going on with me. They have no experience with this. They’re very worried. They somehow convince me to come back to New Jersey with them.
I meet with a psychiatrist. I get a diagnosis of Manic-Depression a.k.a. Bipolar Disorder. At the time of my diagnosis both terms for the mood disorder were being used. These days Bipolar Disorder has won out as the more popular nomenclature, but, as I’ve previously written, I tremendously prefer the term Manic-Depression. It just sounds so much cooler and less clinical. It sounds like it’s describing an artistic temperament, compared to a chronic mental illness. Plus, Jimi Hendrix wrote a really cool song called ‘Manic-Depression.’ There’s no song called ‘Bipolar Disorder.’ That song would suck!
Anyway, I completely reject my diagnosis and refuse to take the medication that has been prescribed to me. When I’m manic, I don’t think I’m sick. I think I’m living life at a higher level of consciousness and other people are trying to label me as being mentally ill, so they can compartmentalize me and dismiss me, so they don’t have to change the way they’re living their lives. I’m enlightened. I’m evolved. I’m the savior. I certainly don’t need meds.
Hell, for years, even when I wasn’t manic, I rejected medication. The first one I was prescribed was Lamotrigine. I couldn’t possibly take that. I was too busy embarking upon my hard-headed journey of looking for any other possible explanation for what had happened to me besides it being chronic mental illness due to chemical imbalances in my brain. Wow. Those words. “Chronic mental illness due to chemical imbalances in my brain.” Those words used to haunt me and bring me to tears. But yeah, I was now on a mission to find an alternative to my diagnosis; a second opinion that was anything but Bipolar Disorder.
Good thing I found an out of print book entitled, “Manic-Depression: Illness or Awakening.” In it, the author discusses how people who experience mania in other cultures are revered as shamans. That sounds pretty good to me. The author writes, “Mania is the genesis of awareness to the dawning of the soul.” YEAH, LET’S GO WITH THAT!!! I like that a lot better. Lol. It did really resonate with me at the time, and, in a sense, it still does. When I’ve been manic, I’ve felt the most alive and closest to God. It’s a sad state of affairs to have to reduce all of that down to chemical imbalances. It’s certainly more glorifying to, instead, equate those experiences to an awakening. It’s actually something that is still hard for me to reconcile. But one thing I know for sure, whether it be an illness or an awakening, unchecked mania is dangerous, terrifying, insane, relentless, destructive and, ultimately, heartbreaking.
Something wonderful, though, that “Manic-Depression: Illness or Awakening” introduced me to was the work of Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytic psychology. You Psychos wanna learn about CARL GUSTAV JUNG?! YOU KNOW THAT YOU DO! He discovered a number of brilliant psychological concepts, including synchronicity, the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and individuation. For now, let’s focus on individuation because, when searching for alternative explanations of what happened to me, the process of individuation is what I concluded I had gone through. Remember how I wrote that I felt like the contents of my unconscious mind flooded into my consciousness? Well, individuation is defined as being a process of transformation where the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious are brought into consciousness for the purpose of assimilating into the whole personality. SOUNDS CLOSE ENOUGH TO ME! Lol. Jung saw individuation as the process of finding oneself and becoming who one really is. It fascinates me to this day. He also wrote that it doesn’t actually work when somebody is PSYCHOTIC! But I must have missed reading that part the first time around…
This edition’s audio clip at the top is a stand up bit about one of the weirdest medications I was ever on called Saphris. Enjoy!
Love,
JFOD
My First Manic Episode (Part Four)