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Help gaining Control of your Life

Posted by Mr Cushing on December 29, 2002, at 14:51:36


Hi, I've been posting tidbits here and there on PB for a few months now. Four months ago I was dx'd as being Bi-Polar with Mixed Episodes along with having an adjunt panic disorder. For the first four months after learning about this and coming to understand it, I was very good to myself. I was taking my medication all on schedule (500mg of Depakote per day, 20mg of Celexa per day, and 1mg of Clonazepam every night). I was watching what I ate and exercising regularly. I was basically abstaining from alcohol and drugs (except for marijuana which I only used a little of per week) and I had got to the point where I was finally starting to feel "normal" again.

Now here's the problem... I don't know how to live a "normal" life. Over the past month, I guess "maybe" the Holidays were a little to blame for this, I started smoking marijuana again basically every day. I've started drinking again, I've been slightly drunk (about 5-6 drinks) about 4 times during the past week. Last night I went through an 8Ball of cocaine with about 3 of my buddies. I've thrown aside the whole "sleep-wake" cycle thingie and just sleep whenever I want to. Some nights I'll sleep from like 11PM till maybe 8am, other nights I'll be up till about 4am and sleep till Noon. This isn't a problem for me since my family is fairly well off and it's become basically a joint decision that I not enter the Labour Market untill I manage to get control of my situation. I was DX'd shortly after graduating from College. Actually, the last Term at College I was pretty much dangerously manic.

The above behaviour for me is basically what I considered "normal" for my 24 years on this planet. I know that I'm causing harm to myself and it doesn't really even feel good to be doing half of the things I've been finding myself doing over the past month, but at the same time, I'm not sure I know how to control it. It's not any sort of "narcotics addiction" or anything like that. I've just never been able to follow by the "rules" that somebody else has/would set for me. Now that I understand the nature of my huge mood swings and understand that there are various limits on what I can and can't do in my life, I'm finding myself trying to break all those limits just for the Hell of it. It's not like I have anything to prove to myself or anybody else, but more like I have a beast inside of me that just says F the Rules and does whatever it wants to do. That's pretty much another reason why I've never truly been able to function in the "legal" side of today's society.

I'm trying to put my thoughts together enough to come up with a plan or something to hold on to in order to fight this part of me off. I'm pretty much stuck with trying to pull myself through this too since my family/friends are essentially the same as me. And I'm not willing to just close them all off and out of my life because I can no longer behave in the fashion that I have behaved for my entire life so far on this planet.

I some day soon want to be able to move back into Society and start off brand new. I want to be able to drop off all my bad habits and learn to make those small adjustments that are necessary in order to function properly while living with my condition.

Has anybody else gone through this, and if so, how or what made you able to make those necessary changes? I know I should probably be talking to my PDoc about this but I don't find that it helps hearing somebody's advice unless that person has experienced first hand what I'm going through. It's so easy to give advice from the outside looking in, but unless you've actually lived through a portion of your life like this, how can you really understand or give the proper advice required to help somebody get through this?


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poster:Mr Cushing thread:34150
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20021226/msgs/34150.html