Although my first manic episode happened over 20 years ago, I believe it's as relevant today as it was then. My first episode started during the summer when I was a 19 year old junior in college. I was taking a series of summer school courses for my forestry major in Plumas county, California. I'd only drank alcohol a few times previously, but I quickly started to drink a lot during this time. It escalated to the point where I was drinking at lunch and after dinner. I started a pyramid of my beer cans in my room. Several times I got so sick that I threw up. Most of the time I was a very introverted person. When I drank, I became very manic.

One time just about everyone went to the lake and left me behind. Nobody wanted me along to ruin their trip. I walked 18 miles to the lake (didn't find anyone), drank a six pack and headed back to the forestry camp. On my way back I picked up a child's toy shovel, scooped up a dead squirrel with it, and walked into the camp singing with my shorts down.

During the forestry camp we were required to wear hard hats whenever we went on class assignments outside of the camp. Everyone else took their hard hat off as soon as they could. In contrast, I glued a beer can to the top of my hard hat, taped my self proclaimed nickname of "Spunky" on it, and wore it every chance I could.

I drew cartoons of myself in the rest rooms. Several people added their own comments to mine. Needless to say I was very obnoxious and juvenile. It reached the point where the other students would scatter when ever I approached.

I was drinking so much that I would stay up late and then nod off during class. The instructor took me aside one time to ask me if I needed some kind of counseling. I told him that I was okay. It still surprises me that they didn't call the white coats to whisk me away to the nearest looney bin. This was just a prelude to what was to follow in the fall when I returned to campus.

 

Thank you so much for sharing with us.... I am curious, in what ways do you believe that your first episode continues to affect your life? Also, I feel as though you ended your post rather abruptly - was there something else that you wanted to share?

In the fall of 1981, my brother, mother, and father went to New Zealand for my father's sabbatical. My younger sister was going to school at UC Davis. I was a junior at UC Berkeley.

I lived in the Norton hall dorms. With the exception of living with my grandparents, working for graduate students during the summer in high school, and summer forestry camp, this was my first time living away from home.

I continued where I left off in forestry camp. Every day I would get beer from a different country to start with and then drink cheap beer after I got a buzz from the first couple of beers. I stayed up late every night drinking and playing hearts. It quickly reached the point where I was missing classes and exams.

The catalyst for my full blown mania was an incident in the dorms (didn't happen to me personally) which bothered me quite a bit. The residence hall assistants (RAs) asked several people if they'd be willing to change rooms to help out the situation since we were on a floor directly across from an RA. Without consulting my roommates, I committed us to making the room exchange. Needless to say, my roommates were not happy. At that point I really didn't care.

I felt a very strong urge to make things right (as much as possible) for everyone in the dorm. It was at this point that I started to spend all of my money making things better. The Oakland A's were in the playoffs that year and I started collecting requests from people who wanted to go. I paid for the tickets with my own money.

I decided the dorm needed a library where people could go and check out course text books. I went to the university bookstore, got a large cart and proceeded to get one of every text book they had. I explained to the bookstore employees that our dorm was creating a text book library. I asked them to put a hold on the books until I could get some help from other students in the dorm to carry the books back to the dorm. I went to other stores near the bookstore and purchased anything that I thought might be useful for the dorm (i.e. pretty much anything).

Things came to a head on the day when the A's were scheduled to play their first game of the playoffs. I had been up several nights in a row. My dorm room and my thinking were becoming increasingly chaotic. My sister was supposed to come and go to the A's game with me and the other people from the dorms. It was getting closer to game time and the people I'd gotten tickets for were getting antsy. I had a difficult time trying to find the tickets because I couldn't remember where I'd put them. Eventually I found them.

In the meantime, one of the students in the dorm had called the campus police because they thought I was trying to rip people off. The cops hauled me away to the student health center. I was seen by a psychiatrist and put in a padded cell for awhile. After that they let me out and I proceeded to escape. I returned to my dorm room. Once again the cops were called by the RA and they took me to the student health center again. This was the first step of my descent into madness. I never did get to see the game nor was I reimbursed for the tickets.
 

I could post more about my experience in the hospital too if people want. I think I'll spend the rest of this post answering Amata's question: In what ways do you believe that your first episode continues to affect your life?

I was very disoriented after the manic episode as well as  having a lot of shame due to my manic behavior at the university. My shame was so deep that I decided not to return to the same school. I became very guarded about having other people know about my diagnosis at the same time I wanted to enter into a relationship with someone where I'd feel comfortable enough to disclose it.

My social skills weren't very well developed either as I experienced a lot of depression in high school/college before the episode so I never dated. My delayed social development added to my own sense of shame too.

 I felt almost like a secret agent all of the time. I had a few friends that knew about my diagnosis, but I went to great lengths to make sure other people didn't. One of these coping/defensive mechanisms was to behave very coldly around other people so that they would not try to get close to me or ask too many questions. At other times, I did just the opposite and spilled my guts too quickly before the person had an opportunity to really get to know me.

 When I started attending bipolar support groups, I was able to talk about these issues and become more comfortable with them. I learned how to express myself more freely and disclose my bipolar diagnosis with friends when I felt the time was appropriate rather than never or too soon.

 In addition, my manic episode was very frightening for my family too. A lot of tension developed between us as they hovered over me and often interpreted my ordinary behavior as a symptom that I was starting to have an episode again. I reacted by resenting this behavior leading to isolating myself from them. As I developed better scoping skills and found what treatments worked for me, I was able to calm down more and put their behavior into perspective. Living on my own rather than being at home also allowed me more autonomy and let me know that my parents were trying to help and couldn't really control me at all.

During my first manic episode, I had some pretty harsh treatments as well as some very strong side effects from the medication I was being prescribed. Fortunately those harsh treatments aren't used in the U.S. anymore and there are many more medication options to choose from. In any case I didn't have much confidence in the doctors. It also seemed that when ever I had another manic episode, it didn't seem to matter whether I was on medications or not. I would strongly caution against generalizing my response to the medications I tried to anybody else. Some medications did seem to help reduce the severity of my symptoms even though they didn't prevent episodes in my opinion. I had a very bad experience with Prozac, before the psychiatrists were aware that it could induce mania, which led to my worst suicide attempt. This only led to less confidence in the medical professionals being able to effectively treat me. I didn't doubt they could help other people as I'd met many of these people, but they didn't seem to have come up with the right combination for me.

 I continued to try different medications mostly with minimal results. At times I felt I was taking the medications only to placate the doctors, my family, or workplace. At the time I was very bitter about this, but now I've come to realize that I wouldn't have known whether or  not the medications would have worked or not if I hadn't been willing to try them. I often contemplated if I was in denial about the medications working or not. By paying more attention to my symptoms and having the people I lived with do the same, I came to the conclusion that I was being honest and accurate about what the medications were or weren't doing for me.

Nevertheless, I continued to struggle through school and work with periods where I couldn't really read more than a couple of pages at a time and manic episodes in the fall followed by a depression in the winter which required hospitalization. Each hospitalization meant I ended up being shuffled off to a new job. In addition, the jobs I had involved a lot of multi-tasking which I was horrible at. In addition, when there were any sort of performance failures at work, I'd start to worry which would feed into the mania. If I survived the fall without mania, I knew I'd be okay until the next fall. Holding a job was very vital to me as I needed both the income and health care coverage to maintain my independence. This additional stress made it more difficult to maintain my mood stability.

 Unfortunately, there reached a point where the  problems with work were so bad that I entered a very deep depression and was catatonic. They ended up doing ECT to get me out of it which led to very severe memory problems so that I ended up on disability retirement. This was in 1999.

Slowly my brain has been healing itself from the side effects of the ECT. Without the demands of school or work, I was able to live without being in crisis mode all of the time. I started to reflect upon how black and white my thinking had been. How out of control and angry I'd been with my family and my classmates. I had allowed seeking perfection to become more important than learning how to accept and get along with people.

About 5 years ago I had an unexplained weight loss, was falling asleep in the afternoons, had cold feet all of the time, and was ravenously hungry 24/7. The doctors ran all sorts of tests and didn't find anything wrong. I wasn't on any medications either so it wasn't due to  side effects from them either. My friend suggested that maybe I was hypoglycemic and should try a low carb diet. I did and all of the symptoms went away within a  month or two and haven't returned  since. Even as a child I was notorious for eating all of the ice cream and having a loaf of bread for lunch. People placed bets at the buffet about how many plates of food I'd eat. I don't experience this kind of hunger any more at all. My mood has since been much more stable than it has ever been. My friends and family agree on this. It's too bad the doctors couldn't have picked up on this, but I'm glad I've finally found something that has given me some stability.

It has been a long process trying to become more social again after spending so much time at home after the ECT. A couple of years ago I moved to Colorado and didn't know anyone. I knew I had to get out and meet people if I was ever going to have a chance to lead a fulfilling life. I was also very concerned about how to explain myself. One of the first questions people ask is, "What do you do?" I didn't feel like saying I'm on disability retirement due to bipolar disorder. My solution was to find a group of people with a common interest we could talk about which would eliminate the need for small talk about  subjects I'd be uncomfortable with. I didn't want to limit my interaction  to just people with bipolar disorder as I had in the past. I wanted to expand my comfort zone. I decide to attend poetry open mics and recite my poetry. Most of my poems don't deal with bipolar topics. In any case, the poetry kept my mind active, got me out of the house, and has allowed me to form friendships with people on the basis of something besides sharing a mental health diagnosis. The fact that some people liked my poems was also a confidence booster.

I tried to organize a poetry group in my county, but it didn't meet with too much success as there simply didn't seem to be enough poets around. Later on I joined a writer's group and have become an assistant coordinator. The group members have appreciated my writings and have thanked me for my suggestions about how to improve their writing. I was really quite surprised and pleased by their reaction.

Once again I'm at another crossroads, I feel that I need to try to transition back to work. I've initiated paperwork with our local department of rehabilitation with the goal of finding employment or training leading to employment that will be sustainable and fulfilling. I'll admit it's a scary prospect for me, but I can't have a clean conscience or feel  good about myself at this point if I didn't enter into the program.

 I hope other people will be able to find aspects of my experiences to use in their own search for happiness.

Wow, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate your honesty and ability to tell your story, and hopefully in the process help others. The shame and stigma associated with bipolar disorder as well as so many others prevent so many extremely talented and brilliant people from sharing their own stories and in the process remove the shame and stigma. It is a great accomplishment to be able to be a part of this very important process. Yes, your first episode does continue to affect your life - - but without it, who would you be today? Would you be the strong indiviidual who is here today able to stand and share with us? Everything we do and everything that happens to us helps us to learn and grow. What have you learned about yourself throughout this process and do you have any advice for others who are currently struggling or have struggled?

I think the most important thing we can do is to develop a support network of people we can trust including health professionals, friends and/or family. We need to learn about our disorder and be willing to ask questions. We can't afford to sit back and let other people take care of us. Sometimes we don't have the ability to do much of anything so it's important to learn what we can when we're able to. One of the most difficult aspects of a mental health diagnosis is that many people don't understand what it means. They can often have their own bias whether it's their education, personal philosophy, or religion which makes it difficult  for them to accept and understand what you're going through and how treatments can help you. Some of these people are willing to learn more about the disorder and will be open to changing their mind about it. Reading about it, talking with your medical professionals, and going to support group meetings are some of the ways they can learn about the disorder.

 Unfortunately there may very well be some people who are close to you who can't or won't be able to accept the diagnosis or what you need to do to take care of yourself. This is one of the most painful aspects of being diagnosed and trying to take care of yourself. Each of us will have to decide how to deal with these people in our lives. Some of them may simply drop us like a hot potato. Ultimately we can't allow them to prevent us from making positive changes in our lives so we can improve our health and happiness.

 I would urge all of us to learn how to avoid black and white thinking where everything in the world is all good or all bad. This perception of the world doesn't leave us with many options or may lead us to overlook or deny problems in our life. I'd avoid blaming others for our problems. We can't control what other people do, we  can only make choices about how we'd like to live our own lives. I'd strongly recommend learning how to forgive people too. This doesn't mean we have to forget or accept what they did, but we do need to free ourselves from this burden.

 We might need to re-evaluate our goals in life. This might involve re-thinking how we go about accomplishing them rather than changing what we'd  like to do. Be willing to listen and consider the advice of health professionals, friends, and family. Hostility and judgment are not advice. At the end of the day it is our life to live so we get to decide how we want to live it.

At times it can be very tough to imagine what it's like to feel better. We need to recognize as best we can that eventually our moods will shift so we can start enjoying life again. Taking active steps to change our moods will help bring  about desired change much sooner although frequently not as soon as we'd like.

I'd avoid isolating at all costs. Sometimes we might need to reduce our social interaction because it's too overwhelming. This doesn't mean we stop going outside even for a few minutes a day or don't talk to anybody.

 As we continue to learn about our disorder, we  should train our support network about what works for us and what doesn't. Let them know what sorts of help you'd like and when it's appropriate to step in and help you. I would find ways that you can help to improve the lives of your support people too so that it's not just a one-way street. A significant aspect of having a support network is talking with them on a regular basis so they know what's happening with you. You can let them know where you're at and they can share their observations, thoughts, and ideas about it too. A support network is more than just an emergency crisis intervention team.

 As in most of medicine, prevention is the best policy. Learn about your disorder, learn about yourself, follow through on your treatment plan, make adjustments to your treatment plan if it's not working out well enough. Please learn how to accept help even if it means having to go to the hospital to be in a safe environment (not always the most pleasant place to be sure) while you stabilize.