Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Reflectiveness.

Ok, so a quick recap..

When I was 4 months pregnant, T lost his mind. I do not know how else to put it. He went bonkers. He started spending recklessly, not eating, not sleeping, and starting on projects big and small, yet never finishing ANY of them. He had a HUGELY inflated sense of self (again, NOT like him) and felt like he was untouchable.
It was so far removed from the T that I knew. An old Doc of ours had warned T, he said he thought T was borderline bipolar.

A short time later, T was actually diagnosed with bipolar, and put on a cocktail of meds. At the end of it all, he had to choke down over 17 pills, twice (and sometimes 3x) a day. I could not keep up with all that he was on. He was on his pain meds, meds for his migraines, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, anxiety meds and meds for the bipolar. It was insane. I have read many times over of people DYING after taking a combo of these very same drugs (like oxycontin, xanax,and percocet)just a few times and here was T taking them 2 and 3 times a day.

When the pain and the anxiety and the racing thoughts did not stop, he started snorting his oxys because it allowed him NOT to think. He always complained that he could never 'shut off his thoughts.'

It was clearly a BAD and devastating choice, but at that time he was not really capable of making good decisions.

He saw a new doc the other day. A behavioral and mood specialist. He is young and smart and on top of things, and he asked T about a million questions. How did T feel during that time. Did he do this? Did he feel that? Did he think this? T answered all of his questions and was very in-depth about it all.

This doc does not believe he is bipolar either. Not in the typical sense. He thinks it was pharmacologically induced hypomania. Meaning, he went bonkers due to all of the medicines he was on.

This is from Wikipedia:
People experiencing hypomania may also manifest a loss of inhibition, resulting in behavior such as reckless driving, gambling, spending sprees and sexual adventures. They may also report having a host of new ideas, but not following them through. People who are described as hypomanic are often very jolly to be with but may quickly become very impatient or unpleasant if they cannot get what they want.
.............

Holy crap. I read that and got the chills. That was T (minus the sexual part). That is a lot of the reason that I ended up in total denial about what was REALLY going on.

He was SO much fun to be around most of the time. We would have so much fun. When the episode would pass, he would start passing out from snorting, and he was horribly irritable and we would barely speak. That would go on for a day or two and then he was back to being fun again. The loss of inhibition brought on the drug use, which he was GREAT at hiding. I did not think in those moments of fun that he had snorted. I know now that he had indeed done just that. But because of being in this hypomanic state, he 'seemed' normal. It was the same thing when he started smoking crack. He was doing it for about a week or two before I caught on. He would go in the bathroom, get high, and come outside and throw darts with me. I had NO CLUE.

Wikipedia also had this:
However, many hypomanic patients also experience:
* obsessive behavior, whether mild or severe (check)
* poor judgment (double-check)
* uncontrolled, or only partially controllable, impulsivity (CHECK!)
* excessive sexual activity or sexual risk taking (NO. thank GOD. But this is where the drugs come in... for some it is sex, others drugs, others gambling...)

Some think I am making excuses for T. I am not. I have been TRYING to understand. I was aware and I totally believed that he was simply NOT able to make the right decisions at one time. Now I can see clearly WHY.

He owns up to what he has done. He wants to right the wrongs, and he is trying. And that is all that I can really ask for.

I will say this. He feels SO much better having a Doc that will TALK with him, and not tell him to just take the meds and hope for the best, which is what his other Doc had done.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

omg. I am hypomaniac.

Linda said...

Jen, I think hypomania is related to bipolar disorder, meaning if you are bipolar, you can have hypomania or mania.

http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/hypomania-mania-symptoms

Jen said...

Yes. It is related in most cases. This doc seems to think though that it was induced by the barrage of medicines that he was on, since it has not happened again since that time. There have been NO other bipolar symptoms. He has the depression and the anxiety, but nothing else that would point to a bipolar diagnosis. Which is GOOD.

That article points out the following:

* Excessive happiness, hopefulness, and excitement
* Sudden changes from being joyful to being irritable, angry, and hostile
* Restlessness, increased energy, and less need for sleep
* Rapid talk, talkativeness
* Distractibility
* Racing thoughts
* High sex drive
* Tendency to make grand and unattainable plans
* Tendency to show poor judgment, such as deciding to quit a job
* Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity -- unrealistic beliefs in one's ability, intelligence, and powers; may be delusional
* Increased reckless behaviors (such as lavish spending sprees, impulsive sexual indiscretions, abuse of alcohol or drugs, or ill-advised business decisions)

Some people with bipolar disorder become psychotic, hearing things that aren't there. They may hold onto false beliefs, and cannot be swayed from them. In some instances, they see themselves as having superhuman skills and powers -- even consider themselves to be god-like.
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He had the angry, irritable and hostile phase first. Then he had some of the other symptoms. He did not have the increased sex drive, and he never had the excessive happiness, hopefulness, and excitement. He was happy, and fun to be around, but it was not anything out of the norm. He also did not make grand and unattainable plans. He did get an inflated ego a bit in the way of work, and I attributed that to the fact that he worked with several complete dolts (which can be verified, by the way! LOL)...

For T, it was the racing thoughts, reckless driving, careless spending (although that was short-lived as we were already broke. He just threw us over passed the point of no return), lack of food and sleep, the inability to close the loop on anything and a general sense of feeling like he was being shot out of a cannon, repeatedly. And the drugs, of course.

So in missing all of that other stuff, that is why this doc doesn't think he is true bipolar, that it was a side effect of being on SO many medications.

Thankfully he never considered himself God-like. LOL And at times he was delusional, like with the drugs. He believed he could just do it a few times, even though he had been down that road before and he KNEW that that was NOT a possibility.