Living With the Stigma

And then,… he said it,…. “I think you’re bipolar.”

My initial reaction, as I listened to him tell me exactly what he thought was wrong with me, was to think, “Well, with all due respect, doctor,… fuck you.” I, of course, didn’t say that. For all of my faults, I still have some sense of tact and decorum. My mother did as good a job as she could have done raising me. For that, I will be forever in her debt. But hearing this man say this to me,… a man who had known me for a grand total of forty-three minutes,… floored me. It felt like a personal insult to me. How on earth could anyone hear what I had said for the previous hour and come up with this conclusion? I was paying $200 for this affront to my character and personality?

Bipolar Disorder is for crazy people, isn’t it? It’s not for people like me! I’m just going through a rough patch right now. I have an IQ of 141. I test out at the genius level for christ sake. I’m too smart to be fucking bipolar. I sat there trying to make sense of what he had determined was my diagnosis. I sat for a long time. I think at one point he even wanted to say something just to break the uncomfortable silence. “Did you hear me”? seemed like it would have made sense at that point. But he said nothing. He just waited for me to digest the statement and react to it on my own. Many more seconds passed. It might have been a full minute before I said anything. And then,… finally,… something astounding, provocative and insightful came from my mouth,… seemingly without me even having to think about what it was:… “Really?”

I couldn’t possibly be bipolar, I thought. I experienced no episodes of mania. I didn’t have periods of euphoria. I never indulged in unwise binges of reckless spending of money. I had no delusions of grandeur. I hadn’t thought of myself as superhuman. I was certainly never in need of less sleep. I didn’t feelings of excitement about anything, for crying out loud. Where in the world does the Mania part come in, doc? What the hell are you thinking, exactly here?

But this psychiatrist—I was growing less-and-less confident in his skills (did your degree come from Belize or Haiti, sir? Please tell me you’ve had more than eight weeks of practice in this field, because I’m not overwhelmed by your powers of perception. Can I actually see your degree from an accredited school, because the only things on the walls of this particular room were that shitty artwork I had noticed before you came in. For crying out loud, YOU’RE WEARING BROWN SHOES WITH A BLUE SUIT, YOU JACKWAGON)—stood behind his analysis. He explained to me, in no uncertain terms that the manic periods of can manifest themselves in a variety of ways. Hadn’t I told him that I suffered from bouts of anger that eventually led to fits of rage? Didn’t I explain to him that the anxiety and panic attacks that I experienced lead to abnormal behavior that negatively impacted my ability to control myself? Didn’t I admit to an unexplainably elevated sex drive? Hadn’t I expressed feelings of dramatic swings between these feelings and my episodes of major depression and crying fits that left me immobile? Mania didn’t have to mean excessive happiness, he told me. In my case, he determined, it came out in irritability, anger and hyper-anxiety. These, in conjunction with the debilitating depressive states made me an almost text-book case of manic-depression.

Also this,… he had a solution,… a plan to combat the disorder.

“Well, doctor—if that is your REAL profession—that’s all fine and good,” I thought to myself. “But you’re not the one who has to cinch up his big-girl panties and go out into the world and admit to everyone he comes into contact with that he is, indeed, a fucking nut-job whackadoodle.”

Everyone that would find out that I had been diagnosed as bipolar would consider me to be a pariah,… untouchable in the world that surrounded him. I knew what my conception was of bipolar people, and it could be summed up in one word: “FUCKING CRAZY!” (Okay, that’s two words,… sniff my bag.) Socially, the stigma attached to just the word “bipolar” was going to drive me even further into the deep end. It was like admitting failure,… failure that I had felt time-and-time-again throughout my adult life. Bipolar was the sentence for the crime I had committed: the crime of not being able to deal with the stresses and occurrences of everyday life. I had my very own label,… and I didn’t like it,… not one bit. Go to Google and look up the words stigma and bipolar together, and you’ll come up with more than 3.7 MILLION web pages that contain both terms. Everyone, seemingly, has an opinion on the people who are diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, and most of them just ain’t good. And now,… here I was,… one of them. Of course I resisted it. Obviously I questioned the veracity of the doctor’s analysis. But I couldn’t make myself say anything about it. I just sat there silent,… like the lumpy pillows behind my back. Stunned. In utter disbelief.

“Would you like to hear my suggestions for dealing with this,” he asked me,… almost sincerely.

“No,” I thought, “I’d like to smack that fucking beard right off your face.” However, what I said was, “I imagine so.” I IMAGINE SO??? “You sawed-off, capitulating piece of garbage,” I thought to myself, “you’re going to sit and listen to this guy tell you how to combat the craziness he thinks you suffer from even though you currently detest him for telling you you’re something you don’t even believe you are? Fucking pansy.”

“I’m going to start you on a regimen of medication which begins with a mood-stabilizer. Specifically, Lamictal.” Lamictal actually turned out to be Lamotrigine because that’s the generic for Lamictal, and I, of course, have no health insurance and couldn’t possibly afford the real stuff. “We have to slowly let your body adapt to the intake of this new medication. We can’t start you off at a high dosage of this med, so we’ll have to go slowly and ramp it up every two weeks or so. You’re going to start at 50 milligrams of this, and, in two weeks’ time, we’ll go to 100 for another two weeks. I’d like for you to come back in four weeks so we can determine the efficacy of the drug, and we’ll see where we go from there. I’m also going to give you a prescription for some Ativan, which will help you deal with the anxiety and panic” I had already been prescribed xanax by my personal doctor for the anxiety, so I knew I needed something like that,… but a mood-stabilizer? Really? REALLY?? SERIOUSLY??? “I’ll see you in four weeks. The good news is, every subsequent visit is only going to be $80.”

Wonderful, it will be more cost-effective for me to be told what a loser I am in the future.

I left feeling utterly defeated. I was done. It’s over, Johnny. You ARE crazy. This guy you just sat in front of knows it,… the pharmacist is going to know it,… your wife is going to know it,… and sooner or later, everyone is going to know it.

And you’ll be alone.

Next time,… it gets worse before it gets better.