Today I Met The Only Bipolar Girl I Know

... and she is fantastically beautiful.

I WAS down the Druggieclinic early because I'd gone to bed by midnight and yet somehow managed to awaken at 6am feeling crap.

A single cup of tea was enough to set me off all morning with Anxiety on top of Depression.

My Druggieworker wasn't in and there was no way I was going near the Group Session he always wants me to go to. I've attended the 12 sessions I undertook to do and no way in hell am I going near any groups again, except the legendary Nutter Club ~ the Dual Diagnosis (mental+addicted) support group that my own Consultant Psychiatrist cancelled. I'm writing in to tell him how he has disposed of my one source of support. Throughout Psychotic Break #2 (mid-January) last year Naomi, the group leader, was my single source of any practical help. Without her intervention, I might not even have got diagnosed.

My family, who live 100s of miles away never saw me, only heard me on the phone. Usually in the evenings when my mania was lulling ~ and a lot of online friends who know me via my blog ~ all said a lot of wellmeaning but seriously confusing things. People who knew me and actually saw me were in no doubt that I had completely lost my mind. One friend who hapened to phone me when I was in utter meldtown one morning, drove straight round with his wife, took one look at me leaving the house doing the best sane act I could manage ~ and burst straight into tears! I have absolutely no idea what was so upsetting, because I was feeling fantastic. They wanted to take me back to theirs but I pointed out that I was getting up each morning at 2:30am and wouldn't go back to bed for anyone. The psychiatrist told me after the fact that I should have been in hospital during that period. It's the most seriously ill I have ever been. I just could not help it.

Today I saw the only Drugs Worker who actually seems to care for me. This one comes from Germany. He checked my urine ~ only methadone and "morphine" (heroin) showed up. He kept asking what had gone wrong this weekend because I seemed down in the mouth and I kept saying I was fine. I keep my mouth shut and turn up my lips at the corners, as if half-smiling. I told him how much I'd gone off alcohol. So he added to my notes a breathalyser reading of zero. I told him how pissed off I was to be so anxious. He seemed not to credit how badly a single cup of tea can affect me. So I mentioned how, earlier this year, four cups flipped me out into hypomania, depression and paranoia for half a day. He mooted the idea of counselling but I told him I've had a lifetime's worth of that. I complained how four hours' interviews with the mental health nurse (more than two years ago and before I ever got the "schizoaffective bipolar" label) had left her with the idée fixe that it was some anxiety disorder that was bugging me. Despite my making the repeated point that I'd not had morbid anxiety for over a decade and a half, that I did not feel keyed-up, or a panicky grip round my heart. What I did feel was irritated, angry and overloaded with stress ~ an entirely different syndrome. When I'm anxious I want Valium. When I'm irritated, I don't. She gave me a helpsheet written for the me of twenty years ago! A person who wasted huge amounts of nervous energy turning over the same useless worries all night.

This morning was a tea-induced aberration: I DO NOT HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER. Or a Cluster C Personality Disorder, as she wanted to believe. (I do like that nurse, but she's too clever for her own good.) The personality disorders questionnaires I filled online (always in (hypo)manic states, as I would not ordinarily bother with such crap) said I was schizotypal and borderline! Doesn't mean I have any personality disorder at all. If the symptoms come as episodes, as mine do, it's called an "illness". Personality disorders develop by the late teens, manifesting as constant personal characteristics ~ hence that label: "personality disorder".

Then I mentioned how anxiety pisses me off a hundred times worse than any other symptom ~ extreme depression, "voices", manic meltdown, whatever...How anxiety is taken as a sign of weakness, never ever taken seriously by any doctor and how all sufferers should be shot through the head ~~ purely as an act of kindness. Which is as much as I'm prepared to say on the shameful matter.

Back in the waiting room a beautiful woman appeared. She didn't remember me, but I remembered her. I remember her because we ended up in bed together. (Long story). She is the one person I've ever met outside a clinical setting who has bipolar disorder. I told her what happened to me last year. She went and described my big manic episode for me: completely over-excited and hallucinating/~~ etc. She'd taken a big overdose of her meds at the weekend: 80 risperidone pills. A real recipe for feeling totally shipwrecked if ever there was one...

Then I went out to score heroin. Yes I'm still in thrall to the Killer B. ("B" is what we call Afghan brown.) Now I no longer drink, it's the last of all drugs... And I wish I'd taken Rachel's phone number...


Illustrated: this is the Spanish singer Jeanette Dimech. But she bears more than a passing resemblance to R...

MUSIC:~~~~~~~~

PORQUE TE VAS
Jeanette performs her biggest hit (the title means "Because You're going") at the Eiffel Tower, Paris...



KLF ft. TAMMY WYNETTE: JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT (STAND BY THE JAMS)
I luuurve this track, it's so entertainingly kitch ~ know what I mean..!



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