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

Becoming a Ranger

In 1999 I quit banking after nearly 30 years.  Enough already.  I took a year off to see what would happen and within a month writing happened.  Essentially I acknowledged what I really wanted to do and tried it, as I’ve done again now in retirement.  I wrote regularly for a year.  I wrote short stories mostly and posted them on Zoetrope.  I think they’re good but they’re not good enough.  I sent some off, I got good reactions, but not great but as a writer I learned a lot that year.  At the end of the year I went looking for work and in 2001 I had the good fortune of getting a job as an on call counselor at San Francisco Juvenile Hall. 

On call counselor is a part time position , no benefits, where I could work no more than 1096 hours or six months in any twelve month period.  As I’ve learned it is the normal first step to becoming fully employed in the public sector.  At Juvy the pattern for people who became full time counselors was to work the hours as six months straight and then be taken on as a provisional counselor, benefits but not full civil service protection.  The transition was accomplished by staying under the radar and becoming provisional because you worked more than 1096 hours and personnel didn’t stop it. 

I made the mistake of pointing out to a supervisor that I was close to my 1096 hours.  That week I was laid off along three other counselors.  I collected unemployment and the thought occurred to me I should at least look for other employment even though I was assured I would be rehired at Juvy either full time or brought back as an on call the next year.  So one morning while surfing the internet, I asked myself what I wanted to be when I grew up?

Park Ranger!  I went online and quickly found California State Parks.  They listed Park Ranger as an open position for which they were taking applications.  I could apply online.  So I did.  Two or three weeks a notification of the test came.  It was in February.  In November I was rehired by Juvenile Hall as a full time counselor along with three others who had been laid off.  Within a couple of months I was enrolled in the POST course for Juvenile Corrections Officers.  In the jargon of law enforcement, counselors are badged peace officers, but not sworn, that is they don’t carry weapons and they don’t have full powers of arrest.     

I was actually still in training when I went to take the State Parks Ranger test in February at Half Moon Bay.  A Ranger from the local State Park was there.  To my surprise he was wearing a large sidearm.   I had no idea State Park Rangers were armed and that’s when I learned Rangers are full fledged police officers with police academy training and the same powers as a Highway Patrolman or any municipal police officer. 

I struggled with the idea of being a cop with a gun but from my experience at Juvy working with police officers and asking myself how I really felt about it, I realized I really wanted to be a police officer.  I had wanted to be a police officer since I was five years old.  In daily practice I’m mostly a pacifist.  But I knew from juvenile hall that I could subdue kids when I needed to.  As a twenty year old facing the draft I had asked myself if I was a conscientious objector.  I really searched my conscience and the answer was no.  I believed armed force was sometimes necessary, in wars of defense or protecting the innocent, and the same held for police officers.  I knew then and I know now, that under the right circumstances I am willing to take a human life to save lives. 

I daydreamed of being a Park Ranger and a police officer and it became very attractive to me.  I couldn’t believe State Parks had no age limit for Rangers.  They thought that even though I was 56 years, that was just fine. 

In State Parks all superintendents are peace officers and one career path in State Parks is to work one's way up through maintenance to Maintenance Chief and then go through the Academy, become a peace officer and a superintendent.  So Parks had experience with people going through the Academy when they were well into middle age.  Many senior superintendents in park management had followed just that career path. 

Even though I really wanted to be a police officer and a Ranger I told myself I would just stay with it through the agility test as a challenge.  After all I really was 57 years old.  The agility test required normal good physical condition which most of my adult life I had maintained into my 50s with running and cycling.  In training I injured my left shoulder and worried about trying to carrying weights while running in one of the tests.  In June, 2003 my shoulder had healed enough that I did barely pass that test.  As I was doing the step test I realized in my training I had trained wrong and I ended up struggling through that test.  The rest of the test was relatively easy.  At the end we had to dive in a pool fully clothed, retrieve something from the bottom, and swim to the far side.  After passing everything else the dip in the pool was refreshing.  Lots of people didn’t pass the test and I felt 10 feet tall among all those 20 and 30 somethings.  I passed!

In December I went ahead and met with a retired Ranger who did the background check and in February of 2004 I took the pysch test.  As San Francisco had done the State asked about my experience in the service but instead of a short conversation and passing me as the psychologist for the City  had done, the State wanted my service medical records.  I was devastated.  I thought that was their bureaucratic way of getting rid of me.  No, a personnel clerk told me, I could send off and have my service records sent to the State.  So I did, but I wrote off becoming a Ranger.  I settled into Juvenile Hall and adjusted my thinking that I would stay there until retirement.  I even became a union steward. 

In August, two years after I had first applied, State Parks asked me to meet with a psychologist who by coincidence also contracted with San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  He was very interested in my experience on unit B4 with the 17 year olds, and then he passed me.  I didn’t hear anything from the State but in December I got a panicky phone call that said my background check was expired and could I quickly meet with an investigator and if I passed it again, could I attend a class starting January 2^nd in three weeks time?  

I couldn’t believe I was crazy enough to consider going to a Police Academy at the age of 58.  Then I happened to pick up Lance Armstrong’s biography and the message I got was, Go For It!  So I did.  I got notification that I passed the background two days before Christmas.  I spent the next week trying to get together the uniforms I needed and January 1^st, 2005 I l drove to Pacific Grove near Monterey and the California State Parks Ranger Academy.