The Myth

I’m a twenty two year old manic depressive woman. I live in the nightlife capital of Britain, I worship dead rock stars, I’m covered in self-harm scars, (a “trend” that has been popularised over and over again), and at one point, I could drink for England.

I have just dribbled lukewarm tea down my chin. My mouth is numb from anaesthetic. I’ve had a filling. I am immensely proud of myself. Because madness is not capable. I have not visited the dentist for a filling in twelve years. I have not taken any care of myself. My teeth are rotting out of my head due to years of self-abuse. Bulimia, as well as damaging my throat to the point where I have trouble eating solids has also served as a daily acidic mouthwash eroding my already fragile mouth. When I was younger, eager to keep my self-harming on the sly, I regularly drank bleach. The cup was by my bed, half-water. It looked like water, and I’d sip from it casually while I sat upright in my bed, shaking and scrawling words on the wallpaper.

Being young and idiotic, I didn’t realise that bleach was damaging my teeth and turning them yellow, so I used more bleach, this time on a toothbrush, to scrub away the stains. I really wasn’t the sharpest tool.

So, today I have been wiping my chin and cutting pills in half. It’s not the most glamourous lifestyle, is it?

And yet, it should be, if you believe the myth of manic depression. Manic depression is the disease to be seen with. It’s a myth that doesn’t exist for any other mental illness. Nobody thinks, “Schizophrenia! Dude! We have to party!” You don’t get knickerless slebs falling out of cars declaring that they suffer from Delusional Disorder. Manic depression makes you creative. Manic depression makes you interesting.

The first faltering of The Myth is that a lot of “bipolar” stars probably don’t have manic depression. Drugs and alcohol will fuck you up. Cocaine, for example, is a manic-type of drug and alcohol is a depressant. Indulge in both too much and- well, you can see where I’m going. Of course, you could argue that people abuse this stuff because they’re manic depressive, but I’d argue they indulge because it’s freely available to them. They have money and status, so their behaviour is consequence free, which is not the case for the rest of us who have to deal with empty bank accounts and rent not paid.

The second hole in the myth is that having manic depression makes you super exciting to be around. You’re glittering, unique, charming, tortured, rapt, distraught, a whole clatter of rock and roll clichés that amount to the one big one- it makes you glamourous.

This, I’m afraid, is total bollocks.

My life is quieter now since I seem to be continually suffering from the ravages of depression. I don’t particularly want to socialise, but, if I did, I couldn’t go out drinking with you and couldn’t stay up for the night. My mood is so unstable that it’s dramatically affected by the little things- I can’t even have a few cups of coffee because the caffeine makes me hypomanic, and missing a few days of sleep does the same thing. I have to take medication religiously. Missing, say, four days in a row, and there is trouble. I know this, but, of course, because I still somewhat buy into the myth, all I want to do is ditch the medication and get back to my glamourous, whirlwind, mercurial self. Because of my age, my friends, my interests, I really should be far more exciting than I am.

In these more reflective moments (since my mouth is so numb I can’t talk anyway) I remember life as a very manic manic depressive. A lot of people with manic depression suffer from the depressive side moreso than the manic. That’s not the case with me; most of my severe episodes have been manic or mixed, with psychosis added on occasionally. I am the energetic, heavy drinking, loud, “creative”, erratic type of manic depressive so heavily publicised in the press. I’m the type of manic depressive that gives manic depression its mythology.

It sounds great, but, as I said, it’s bollocks.

Mania and mixed episodes rarely make you a tempest of creative, charming energy. They make you- or, to be specific, make me- a total fucking pain the hole. I wrote about it here, in the Insane Guide to Mania, you really think you’re the shit. When I’ve been manic, I have thought that I am the most talented, amazing person in the world, up until the point where paranoia and psychosis kick in, and I become a raging, angry, suspicious madwoman hell bent on destruction, plowing along in the vain belief that I am famous and appointed by the heavens and that everyone else is wrong, and out to get me. Mania, for me, was good for about fifteen seconds and then hell for the remaining four months. I stopped having euphoric manias years ago. They progressed into black, psychotic, dangerous dysphorias and so they remain.

In my manic episodes, the people around me haven’t held court and hung onto my every genius-dipped world. They did what probably a lot of these famous, glamourous types friends did- either panicked and suggested psychiatric help, ignored me, laughed at me or smiled anxiously. Because I didn’t sleep. And the people I was in relationships with didn’t sleep, either. I’d wake them up, or they’d wake up to find me writing, still, or trying to ring someone I hadn’t spoken to in years to talk to them, or shaking and talking to myself, or all of the above. Skipping past song after song in darkness because I couldn’t concentrate long enough, because each one seemed meaningful. My mother tried for years to get me to sleep during manic episodes, going so far as to slip sleeping pills into food without telling me.

Those fantastic, special ideas I had came out as gibberish. Nobody understood a word that I said. And a lot of what I said was delusional, frightening sermons on meaningless things. I would betray, or seemingly betray, anybody at the drop of a hat. My hypersexuality- though it never lead me to outright cheating- meant that I’d ignore who I was with and hit on whoever else I saw, regardless of who or what they were. I’d be in the street, sober, but looking drunk because I was so confused, at 3am with my clothes hanging off me asking a total stranger to come home with me. I’d talk, and talk at, anybody and everybody. I thought I was gorgeous, fantastic and wonderful, and nobody else did. If the person I was in a relationship with denied me sex, or just wanted to sleep, a massive fight would ensue. I didn’t eat, I didn’t need to. If I was working, I’d become hyper focused yet couldn’t concentrate on anything. I’d try and fail to get things done, overstep marks, laugh loudly at nothing, send inappropriate e-mails to the bosses, be found in the toilets crying or shaking, be pacing up and down corridors and singing to myself. And I’d go home and run down hills with my arm open, or get so paranoid that I’d have a panic attack and just not know how to get home, not even know where home was.

I’d socialise manically, but, inevitably, it would turn bad, and bleak and by the end of the night, worn down with intense paranoia, convinced that everybody hated me, and wanted to hurt me, absolutely unable to control the thoughts that would blister through my mind, a tide of rapid, horrible voices and images, you’d find me somewhere with blood running down my face or arms or legs or stomach or whereever. In the next instance, I would either be screaming at people in the street, crying in panic thinking that someone was following me, listening to me, trying to poison me or sounding like the world’s biggest liar as I rambled delusionally at whoever would listen to me. I drank too much, put myself in all sorts of danger, and I did get into danger, into serious danger, twice. (In one case in Belfast, I propositioned a total stranger in the street. We went behind a wall in Castle Street, and he pulled his trousers down. I was so high that I burst out laughing, and couldn’t stop laughing, and I started rambling, and couldn’t remember what was happening and he threatened me, and I laughed in his face and told him I’d bite it off, then I just ran off. Around the same time, I met a man on a train and- well, you can guess the rest. I was circling in the sky somewhere at that time, completely adrift. That kind of behaviour is totally out of character for me, and yet…)

In mania too is selfishness. Not caring what you’re doing to those around you who can’t keep up and worry you might die, maybe not knowing, but probably just not caring. The myth is that it must be exciting to be around. This myth is one I fell too, and one lost on me. Everybody who loves me, without exception, almost hated me when I was manic. They hated, to a degree, that part of me. Felt that I was draining and scary, not exciting and daring. And I was arrogant. And callous.

The other myth is live fast, die young. Manic depressives are all tortured geniuses who die too young therefore stake their place in those 50p books in Woolworths. If they’d lived until they were old, they probably wouldn’t be there. They might just have become ordinary, such is the strength of the myth.

The point is with live fast and die young is that there is a moment in time when you were a genius, or so the myth goes. And madness creates genius. Again, I think that this is bollocks, certainly when mania is concerned. I don’t think anybody in a manic episode would be able to sustain a creative endeavour. It’s the wilderness of zero concentration and distractib-oh, look at that. Hypomania, maybe, but not mania.

Madness doesn’t create geniuses- genius does. Madness won’t create a literary masterpiece from the hands of an accountant who doesn’t read.

And you might live fast, but hell, you still die young. You still die. I think that I should get rid of my medication and just live out my life in a trail of mania and psychosis (and I have spent ten years doing so- and maybe, I think, life is best experienced as keenly and sharply as possible, without the fogs of medication) but I’d succumb to other fogs- lack of insight, drinking heavily- that have stolen my memories. I don’t want to forget the next ten years of my life as I’ve forgotten the previous ten years of my life.

I wonder- what would my dad and Brendan be doing right now if their mental illnesses hadn’t taken hold of them? My dad would be fifty this month, Brendan would be thirty three by now. What might they have achieved by now, and what would they have achieved? Would they have quit drinking for good, would Brendan write another book, what would my dad have said when I told him I had manic depression, would he have laughed when I was in hospital, would he have sent a birthday card for my 21st?

The wasted potential of “live fast, die young” kills the myth. It’s so often trotted out for these “geniuses” whose madness had more to do with their death than their geniuses that we apply the myth to the ordinary people that we love, and will lose.

I’ve never denied the positive aspects of manic depression- I constantly weigh up the pros and cons of my illness, knowing, on the whole, it has been destroying my life, but also knowing that it’s part of me, and I can’t imagine living without it. Mania and psychosis have been valuable experiences for me- I’ve seen and been places that others haven’t and I know I am different most other people. I see the world differently, I experience life in a different way because of it. But my little head voice reminds me that I’ve been brought to my knees by this illness, that it’s almost killed me, has wrecked most of my relationships and it’s the reason I’m right here, right now.

The myths- alas- are lies. It’s a fun trainwreck to watch happen to someone else. It’s not a fun trainwreck to go through yourself. It doesn’t make you a more interesting or creative person. More often than not, it’s a stranglehold on the person that you actually want to be.

And still- I haven’t taken Lamictal for three days. I’m looking at the half doses. The allure of feeling, of feeling anything after these months of emptiness, is powerful. It’s so tempting to ditch it all. Even knowing how hideous it can get, sometimes the deadness of medications can get too much. I have the knowledge and insight into my manic episodes long after the fact, but hardly during, and sometimes, that abandonment is enticing. And I know the recent depression might just get worse. I am gambling with myself, and have no one to blame but myself if I fall, or fly. I am still a mania addict with selective memory because anything has to be better than this. So I’ll admit it to Rob, who will make me take the medication. If you’re an addict, the first thing you should ever do is confess it to someone. And Rob knows better than anyone what a nightmare I am without medication.

One of the strangest things about being a mental health blogger is how objective and sensible you can when writing about mental illness, but you’re still going through that mental illness yourself, and all its effects. Writing about it for an audience means that I can be rather academic about it all. I’m not sure it’s a good thing.

I’m not immune to the myths, sadly.