Still Crazy After All These Years

I've struggled with mania and depression all my life. One time I was hospitalized, locked up and treated until I came down. Since that experience I've spent my life trying to explain how it was brought on by unique circumstances and I've been very vigilant to make sure it never happens again. (See “Insanity” in my blog)

A few years ago I heard an interview and I realized there was nothing unique about my experience at all.  It is just your garden variety mental illness and the name of that illness is bipolar. I am bipolar and I have learned to live with it. I've done OK,. Twenty-four years ago and 20 years after my hospitalization I went too far again. That time I wasn't caught. I've had a lifetime of doing the best I can.

Bipolar and alcoholism are closely related and for awhile it seemed like everyone in AA was bipolar. It took me awhile to realize “bipolar” was plain old manic-depression. I didn't think I was bipolar then, maybe a little bit manic-depressive but not bipolar.

My mental crash and burn, locked up in an Air Force psychiatric ward, occurred in 1970. I've always regarded it as a unique and scary event in my life. For years afterwards I guarded against a recurrence. In the Air Force I fought against a label and got my experience labeled a drug reaction, at least that's what they told me. I never answered yes to any question about mental illness. For a short time I did serve on the board of the Los Angeles Mental Health Association and was a volunteer in their programs. I felt a kinship with the crazies we served. They were like my friends and myself on the Psych Ward at Lackenheath.

When I got sober in 1983 I was afraid of life without alcohol I would not be able to treat my episodes of euphoria, short circuit the mania I always feared. Alcohol calmed the agitation that made mania so uncomfortable. I had some sense it stopped the mania. The insanity of alcoholism was another problem and one that I was not as aware of until I had been sober for awhile. When I stayed sober I felt less fear of insanity. It seemed I had found a way to deal with myself and find equanimity.

AA is not proof against insanity. In 1992 I was 10 years sober and working my program when I had a long manic episode that I wasn't aware of at the time. It deeply affected me personally and professionally. There were incidents of being out of control that I looked back on with embarrassment and I don't think at the time I was fully aware until much later how much mania affected my life.

Even with that my insanity never came up until over 30 years after the incident in the Air Force. I took a psych test to be a peace officer. Somehow the test showed an anomaly that I had to explain. I was honest on the test and I was honest, and positive in my interview with the psychologist. I was passed and became a juvenile hall counselor, a peace officer.

It came up again when I took the psych test to become a sworn peace officer, a cop. I got a letter asking me to send my medical records from the Air Force to Sacramento. Who knew they still existed but they did and I sent them on to Sacramento. A long six months passed and I was scheduled for an interview with a psychiatrist. The contracted psychiatrist also consulted with San Francisco Juvenile Hall. We talked about Unit B-4 where I worked. Apparently for him anyone who could work well on unit B-4 was good enough to be a police officer and he passed me.

As a police officer I was very aware that in a way I had slipped through the cracks. There were highly stressful situations that occurred and long nights without sleep, but I was careful to control my stress and never let the lack of sleep go on very long. The Angel Island Fire was one of those incidents and there was a lot of euphoria in the event itself, being part of a force that in the end won, but afterwards, I enjoyed the calm and slowed down, finding a balance within a few days.

In 2011 I retired as a California State Park Ranger. It has been 46 years since 1970 and my stay at Lackenheath hospital. After 1970 there was never again a mention of any insanity or mental illness in any of my personnel files and no lock downs in any special wards.

In the interview on NPR I heard someone tell about their struggle with bipolar illness throughout their life. They had struggled with it and overcome it, though it was always there and they had gone on to a successful life.

The person's story resonated with me. Yes, I am bipolar. Bipolar is a mental illness. I have struggled with it, fought it, and lived a good life without being overcome. But I have a mental illness. I am just another person with mental illness, a mild case maybe, but who's to say.

I've been known as a risk taker, an unpredictable and volatile personality. How much of that is personality, how much is insanity? I suppose it's a spectrum. Most of the time I'm within the norm.

A few days ago I was working on my blog and it was going very well, I became euphoric at the way the words were coming together and worked late into the morning one night. There it was the euphoria that becomes insomnia that gets worse and becomes mania. So I did what I've tried to do all my life since 1970, I got careful about my sleep. I made myself go to bed on time. No more staying up late. This morning I got up at 5:30 am. I'll continue to monitor my sleep, make sure I get enough, go to bed when I don't feel like it, stay in bed when I feel like getting up. I will get enough sleep and the mild euphoria I'm experiencing will pass. No danger of going into mania, only a slight and lingering fear of what could happen.

As I finish this two weeks later I know that was a phase of euphoria that passed. Euphoria puts me on edge. What happens if I can't make myself fall asleep, if the insomnia and mania continues? But one more time it didn't.


Thanks to Paul Simon 1975 for the title