Normal Bipolar Reaction

I have been on medication for my bipolar disorder for about six months.  The medication has worked, I no longer am on the roller coaster of energy and emotion.  Now that this is established I am feeling a very typical reaction.  That is that my life is just way less interesting than it used to be.  There is simply so much more to life when you have bipolar disorder, and mine was not of the most extreme sort.  Each day is fine, anything I have to deal with is simply whatever problem there is in the environment, and when you have dealt with vast, unpredictable mood swings and the problems of the desperately poor and mentally ill, these environmental problems really don't seem that big of a deal.

I imagine for most people that sounds great.  A life without really experiencing problems, so you can just do what you want to be happy.  Who could ask for anything more?  The reason why that doesn't work quite so well for me is that having had bipolar disorder I have had a vastly greater range of feelings than most people. 

My bipolar disorder had two components, an emotional component and an energy component.  Last year (my hardest mental health year in two decades), about once a month I would have four to five days in which I felt exhausted.  To give you an idea of what that was like, before I was diagnosed I used to think I caught the flu all the time.  The feeling was just like the exhaustion of the flu; a need to sleep fourteen or more hours a day, so little energy that climbing a flight of stairs was an act of will.  However, about once every six weeks I would have about a day of unceasing energy, up at six am, exercise for several hours and still be walking at midnight to try and burn off the excess energy.  This is a very unusual form of bipolar disorder, only diagnosed in the last decade or so.  To be precise I have ultra-rapid cycling bipolar II.

With the emotional component last year I spent about a third of my time emotionally down.  Most of those days I would work very hard to be positive, to have hope, to look for joy in the world.  It was difficult to do so, and every day I would wonder to myself whether I should keep living.  I didn't really come close to suicide, but I thought about a very large amount of the time.  On the other hand, perhaps a month I would have an experience of the most sublime beauty.  Now that I am well I realize how hard it is to try to explain the power of this feeling.  It was like falling in love, watching the most beautiful sunset, riding a roller coaster, swimming through tropical waters, and feeling the applause of a crowd, all at the same time, and for hours at a time.

These different components would cycle at different rates, and at different intensities.  Sometimes I would be exhausted and things would be beautiful.  Sometimes I would have unlimited energy and be in the depths of despair (the worst times).  Sometimes I would have enormous energy and feel beautiful.  This last experience is so powerful that I felt such joy that it was almost a physical pain, a joy that seemed more than my body could contain.  I have talked to my sister about this experience and she described it beautifully, she said that you felt so sad for other people that they would never understand how beautiful the world is.  Even more than this, by May of last year the cycling was happening at such a rate that I would never have the same mood at the end of a week that I had at the beginning.

Whatever you can say about such an experience, and there's a reason I went to see a psychiatrist to get help, it is not dull or mundane.  In contrast my present life is dull and mundane. It's the bit of a night at the movies where you are driving home from seeing an epic blockbuster in your grey sedan.  There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but you aren't laughing and crying and jumping out of your seat anymore.

So, what is the normal bipolar reaction?  It's the temptation to stop taking the medication.  It's thinking that those sublime moments might be worth the rest of the pain.  It's thinking that you have survived all of those years without the medication.  It's asking yourself whether a richer but more painful life is better than a more pleasant, but poorer, life.  Until last spring I always told myself it was, but then last spring was rich and painful to the point of howling.

Don't worry, I have no plans whatsoever to give into the temptation.  But I am a little sad that my life will never again have the same poetry, richness, or moments more beautiful than most people will ever experience.