A long winded tale from a new member

[Guest guest]

Hi Folks!

 

I know this is preaching to the converted, but I want to tell my story. I hope

it can help others. I'm taking a long way around on it, so please bear with

me.I’m going to tell you more about me than you might want to know, but I want

you to know where I’m coming from. Who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve done,

and why. This little essay is a cut/paste of what I've posted on other forums

that focus on mental disorders. Because those readers are not as " enlightened "

as the readers of this forum, you will see how I'm trying to spoon-feed these

" radical " concepts.

 

Call me Dan.

 

I've been on lots of drugs for depression and bipolar. First treated for

depression in 1965. Hospitalized several times, lots of talk therapy, etc. I'm

almost 53 now.

Various meds seemed to work for a while...2-3-4 months...then become less

effective. I don't know if it was because of my normal cycling, or because of

some direct effect of the drugs...but then my meds would be changed, and I'd

white knuckle it until things improved or didn't...but always, either they

didn't work over the long haul, or the side effects were too much...worse than

the illness. When you take something for depression, and it makes you fat, dull

and impotent...it's not a scenario that " cheers you up " !

I self-medicated: I drank a lot. I “discovered” alcohol at a teen...it helped me

overcome my shyness, blocked out some of the depression, smoothed out the mania

some. But that became a problem in itself, so I quit drinking about 20 years

ago. The depression didn’t go away, and by the time I was 40 I was mostly

depressed, with occasional mania that was of the anxious and confused variety,

instead of the energetic, gregarious, creative “flight of ideas” kind. I’d been

through it enough to know that whatever I might come up with as a great new

project or invention or business would not be finished, because somewhere soon

I’d be depressed again. So my life was dotted with good intentions and grand

schemes that went unfulfilled.

Finally, the continued prescribed anti-depressants drove the mania to new

levels, I crashed and burned and was dx’d bipolar. Lots of us have found we are

bp by this “method”.

So I went on depakote and paxil, for 8 months. Got fat, dull, angry and lost all

libido. I felt the medical community had failed me, big time. I’d been in their

care for 35 years, and I was still sick. I was tired of trying this drug and

that drug. Tired of getting my hopes up when something seemed to help, thinking

I’d finally “found it”.

 

When it’s all said and done, mental disorders have 2 basic causes.

1. Physical defect

2. Bad thinking.

Physical defect might be genetic, injury, fever, drugs, malnutrition. A sick

brain doesn’t think right, just like a sick stomach doesn’t digest right. A sick

stomach might throw up, showing that it’s sick. A sick brain “throws up” by

producing anxiety, anger, depression, poor decision making, impulsiveness, etc.

Bad thinking is where a person gets some bad information, and forms a world view

based on that. Childhood trauma can give a person a fearful, paranoid view of

the world. Childhood sexual abuse can upset a persons ability to trust and form

good relationships. This is the kind of mental disorder that responds best to

talk therapy.

Often, the mental disorder will be a combination of both. Looking at bipolar

disorder specifically, it’s pretty apparent that it’s caused by some yet unknown

physical defect in the brain. We know it runs in families, and studies with

twins separated at birth and raised by different families show it follows the

person and has little to do with environment. Bipolars can have happy or

unhappy childhoods, stable or unstable families. We often do have unhappy

childhoods...but what comes first? We are treated differently because of our

mood swings, our excesses, our hypersexuality, our depression, our bursts of

anger, creativity, hyperactive behavior. As we grow, we leave a trail of broken

relationships, lost job and education opportunities, hospitalizations, loss of

reputation and credibility, etc. which brings on shame, fear, anxiety, etc. But

it starts with some kind of physical defect. I’ve never heard of anyone being

“talked into” being bipolar. We get bipolar as a “birthday present”.

 

I read a lot. I read pretty fast, and have since I first learned how. So I’ve

read thousands of self-help, diet, medical textbooks, mental health books of all

kinds, lots of psychology, spiritual (east and west) you name it. I don’t read

romance novels, or westerns....but most anything else is fair game. Over the

years, trying to figure out what to do about it all, I’d gathered a lot of bits

of information. Little things, that by themselves, were not much use...like

where serotonin comes from, and what lithium does in the brain, why exercise

helps, etc. Of all the stuff I read about mental and physical health, three main

authors stuck with me, as making lots of good sense. Dr. Linus Pauling, Dr. Joan

Mathews-Larson, and Dr. Andrew Stoll.

What they were saying is basically this: Malnutrition can cause mental disorders

(Right here is where people who dismiss alternate treatments get upset, or

dismiss it. Our brains have a hard time seeing anything as “new”. It

automatically puts things into a category of past experiences, and moves on. For

example: When the young brain works it’s first door-knob, it stores the

experience so that the next time it encounters a door-knob, it doesn’t have to

figure it out again. We do that with information that we think we have already

considered, too. Most of us have some experience with various nutrition, herbal,

vitamins, etc, so we take a “been there, done that” attitude. Try not to

dismiss this idea...humor me for a little longer, ok?)

Here is an example of malnutrition causing a mental disorder. In the early

1900’s, a strange illness was filling mental hospitals across the country,

especially in the south. The illness, called Pellagra, had several physical

symptoms, plus psychosis, characterized by memory impairment, disorientation,

confusion, and confabulation (excitement, depression, mania, and delirium in

some patients; in others, the reaction was paranoia). In 1914, more than 100,000

people were in asylums for this illness. It was found to be a niacin deficiency,

due to the poor diet they were eating.

Now...some people will argue that Pellagra is not a mental disorder, because

it’s not listed as such in the diagnostic manual. Before they knew what caused

it, it was considered a mental disorder, which is why the victims were in

asylums, not regular hospitals. It seems that once a physical cause of a mental

disorder is found, it’s no longer considered a mental disorder. Untreated

syphylis, for example, will result in severe psychosis, and if the early

physical signs are missed, the mental disorder may be all that is seen. If we

had not found the physical cause of this condition, would it be considered a

mental disorder? Are “true” mental disorders only those for which no known (as

yet) physical cause has been found? Are “true” mental disorders only those

without some outward physical symptom? The medical community seems to talk out

both sides of their mouths on this...if the disorder is one of “bad thinking”,

why treat with a drug that changes the way the brain physically works? The

“bad thinking” in bipolar is a symptom of the physical defect, not the illness

itself. Throwing up is a symptom of a sick stomach...it’s not the illness

itself. Yet the medical community picks through the vomit (bad thinking) looking

for clues. The sick stomach throws up whatever is in it. The sick brain does the

same. Exactly “what” it throws up isn’t that important!

I’ll stop here for now. Thanks for reading this far. More later, ok?

My best to you all,

Dan

 

 

 

 

 

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