Descent Into Psychosis

I originally posted this story in 2010, a few months after it occurred. It's now 2020. Since then I've had many manic periods and psychotic symptoms, as well as dissociative symptoms. I understand it all now so I don't generally find it scary or upsetting. I think the feeling of confusion and a lack of awareness of what was happening to me was what made it so disconcerting and bothersome at the time. So a very good lesson is this - if you deal with these things, become aware of them, and become aware of yourself. It will help you immensely in the long run.

This story is of my first manic period, the months preceding and what led to me being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I guess you could say it all started in the fall of 2009. My stress level was extremely high because of things going on in my life. I was dealing with toddler twins, my left for a deployment, I was going to college and just dealing with all the responsibilities of life. I recall nearly every day was like up/down/up/down. I remember a lot of things that happened, but a lot of that time period is also a blur.

It’s hard to explain how I really felt. Sometimes I’d go for a week or two feeling up or down. Sometimes it would actually fluctuate from day to day in an extreme fashion. That’s when I started to think “Ok, something’s going on, this is different.” I’d never had the mood shifts become so rapid or so intense. Probably around October/November I began to get worse. I started smoking again, I’d go out drinking and partying with my friends a lot. I don’t remember too much at that time except that I stayed up late a lot which exacerbated my symptoms, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I was writing a lot and had a lot of energy and just a lot of creative flow at the time. But then, on the other hand, I’d just say things and do things with people that were out of character for me. I started to have odd thoughts like running away and leaving my kids, changing my identity, becoming someone else and hiding where no one could find me. One day I snapped and I just knew I had to get away, somewhere, anywhere really. I called my friend and asked her if she wanted to go on vacation with me. I figured she’d say no but she said yes and I became even more ecstatic at the thought of it. I was ready to go right then, within the next day. But she had to save up money so alas, I didn’t get to leave. Looking back I was definitely feeling very impulsive at the time. We did wind up going on our trip, but it was a couple months later.

December was a pretty bad month for me. I fluctuated so much I cannot remember the majority of it…just this sense of confusion and being very out of sorts. I know I literally said crazy things to people that I did not even mean, for what reason I cannot be sure. That of course is part of bipolar, saying and doing things that are incredibly embarrassing, ridiculous, and just wacky that half the time you look back on and say “My God! Who was that person?” and the other half not even remembering things you do or say, which is pretty bad, My husband was blindsided with my strange behavior and not sure what to do from far away. I know he wanted to help but didn’t know what to do. On top of it, the bleakness of winter wreaked havoc on my already unstable mental state.

After New Years I thought, ok, I’m starting over, this is a new year, I’m going to get control over myself. Most of my life I thought I did a good job at putting on that "front" to people - that I was fine and didn't have any issues. I had always suffered from depression but never had a severely elevated period. I'd only experienced it in minor ways and it was simply what I then described as being "hyper".

Well things continued on the way they were, getting worse. I occasionally had feelings of depression mixed in with everything, but they were erratic. Mostly I felt more elated feelings and sometimes irritated or agitated feelings. I was up late all the time, in my own weird world. I had this voice that was constantly going in my head…not like hearing a voice but more like an unending stream of words and thoughts and images that would keep me up and prevent me from sleeping and get me all upset or confused. I started becoming more irritable with people and angry, flying off the handle at every little thing. 

Again I was going out partying even more, drinking like a fiend, acting ridiculous. At times it was because I had this insatiable need to be around large masses of people, to talk and move and feel, to absorb all these sensations and to just go. I had these intense sexual feelings which I tried to control because I’m married and did not want to have an infidelity.

I was smashed a lot, sometimes I’d be out all night. I was really irresponsible, leaving my kids with my dad, who never mentioned anything to me. Granted they were sleeping and didn't even realize I was gone, and I think my dad figured I was just blowing off steam because of my stress. I started hanging out with another male friend and his group of buddies who were all enthralled with me, or so I felt…the feelings of being awesome, irresistible, perfect and in short, better than everyone else on the face of the earth. Being around them just fed into those feelings and magnified them. I began to crave the attention and it made me very excited and euphoric.

February was a blur. I worked non-stop on school and again kept up my hectic pace. Sometime in March is when things really exploded. I became more and more erratic and impulsive. My sleep level was still quite low and I was still going out frequently. The constant thoughts were there, my brain being on fire, head burning. It wasn’t 100% of the time, but it was a lot. My mind tends to always be this way but during “up” times it’s just like a barrage that is unstoppable.

Sometime in March I remember my dad leaving to go on a vacation for a week, leaving me by myself to care for the girls (he helped me out a lot while my husband was deployed). I was already in a weird state and that is when things just sort of broke down. I distinctly remember the day it started happening, I had watched a movie the night before and it got my mind racing. It was going, going, going and I thought my head was going to fly off into the sky. I barely got any sleep that night. The next day I awoke with the most intensely edgy, agitated feeling I think I’ve ever had. My eyes would dart around at the slightest sound…I paced frantically back and forth, back and forth, I’d shake my head and pull my hair like that would make the thoughts stop. I remember it was beyond “feelings”…it wasn’t like feeling good or feeling bad. It had become like the thoughts in my head were torturing me, because they became stranger, and what I would describe as “compulsions.”

I started writing this story about everything that was going on with me, all my thoughts uncensored, and it is not a pretty picture. I unleashed everything, good, bad, disgusting, euphoric, intense, angry, unpredictable. All the thoughts that I had kept under wraps burst up to the surface and I purged them in words – everything I thought, both things I acted on and things I just thought but had restrained myself from acting on. I wrote like 60 pages over four days and rarely slept. I was going down, down, down and didn’t even know it at the time. All I knew was that something was different about me, it was more intense than it had ever been in my life and it was to the point that I was out of control on many things and definitely on the verge of crossing over on others. It made me start freaking out and I was actually scaring myself, which is never a good thing!

I think that is the point where I started becoming psychotic. Some days were better than others, but I never completely came out of that state and it progressed from there. I’d alternate between being very agitated and upset, frantically running around doing strange things to being in a near stupor, what I can only describe as a “daze” or a “fog”. I now realize it as catatonia, though there is no way I would have known that then. I would sit and stare at one spot for a very long time without moving, without thinking at all. I was disconnected from everything around me. I didn’t notice anyone or anything. I guess my kids played by themselves because I really didn’t notice them at all. How I was even able to feed them, I don’t know.

I started smoking again (I’d quit for 3 months). I craved drugs immensely, the thought of it made me salivate, it took all my willpower to hold back from that. I again thought of running away. Every person I passed on the street, in the store, anywhere, I thought about going home with. I found myself at my neighbor’s fence, about to walk up to his house and invite myself in.

Somehow I restrained myself from doing those things but other compulsions I started acting on. It was almost like there wasn’t a filter between any thought that came to my mind and my actions. I sent inappropriate, half dressed pics of myself to people I knew…I’d pick things up off the ground, like leaves and dirt and chew or eat them and I started licking everything, including my garage floor. I just remember an intense curiosity about what the texture would be like on my tongue. I fell asleep one night on the garage floor and desperately wanted to taste the laundry soap and the engine oil out of the oil pan in the corner but simply had no energy to get up. I went out walking one night around 3 am without the slightest thought of where I was going…just walking in the blackness and I stopped and stared at the sky, like I was drifting off into the universe or it was becoming a part of me. I closed my eyes and just felt it.

I wanted to make art so I created eerie photos of myself, which at the time, I thought were beautiful. They were all distorted, one was a cut & paste of features all over my face, another was black and white with all sorts of words pasted all over it. I made a strange collage in the chain link fence behind our house. I put all sorts of things in there, whatever I could find…silverware, pieces of half eaten food, a garden hose, a dolls head that I burned with a cigarette, plastic bags that spelled out words, among other things. At the time I thought it was totally great. Again, nothing about it seemed strange to me at all. When my dad saw it however, it upset him and I could sense him watching me after that.

I started to become paranoid. I thought whenever I went places, people were watching me. When I went for walks in the neighborhood, I felt as if all my neighbors were looking at me from their windows or that maybe someone was following me. I kept looking around expecting someone. I even began to watch my dad like in some way he might be out to get me. I would get upset anytime he was in the same room with me. I felt he was somehow watching me, that he was almost reading my thoughts. I tried to avoid people entirely. I didn’t want to look anyone in the eye. When my husband called I would behave very strangely. I would either laugh at random things or scream at him, telling him to get away from me and stop looking at me (which of course, he wasn’t doing, he was on the phone!) Once I freaked out and ran into the woods to get away from all the “prying eyes.” I hid among the trees thinking “I am like this tree…no one can see me now, I’m safe.” My senses at times seemed heightened, like every snap of a twig would cause me to jerk around and a couple times I wasn’t sure if a voice was talking to me in my head or if I was just so out of sorts that I was actually talking to myself.

My thoughts became extremely jumbled. Everything I was experiencing began to coalesce into one weird blob that at times seemed normal to me and others seemed totally nonsensical. Besides the non-stop compulsions I began to have strange intrusive thoughts of words and numbers. I would talk to myself, I would sometimes think or talk in rhymes, I would make long lists of words and repeat things again and again. I would count numbers, count steps, walk in geometric shapes repeatedly. This I knew was abnormal so whenever it happened it made me even more agitated and filled with anxiety and I would try to control these things whenever anyone was around. But it was difficult.

I started doing other strange things…turning objects upside down and arranging them was the worst. I’d move them, stack them, flip them. I couldn’t stop doing it, and once the thought came to me if I didn’t do it and complete it I would freak out so much I had to run away from where I was. I’d take things out and put them in rows or make things out of them. I made a man out of peanuts and spelled out words and numbers on the ground with rocks or carved them in with a knife.

I remember doing these things, but the feelings attached to them vary. Some I felt at the time were normal. Some I knew were abnormal but still felt compelled to do them. Some were just kinda like I wasn’t really present at all. My mind was off somewhere else. I wrote in my journal that I felt detached from everything.

Most of things things just became worse over the course of about a month until I felt so confused I didn’t know what to make of it. I knew deep down something wasn’t right. About a month prior I had made an appointment to see a counselor. I remember my dad telling me toward the end, “You aren’t going to make it that long” and wanted me to go to the hospital. At first I refused. Part of me didn’t want to be seen as crazy, another part was afraid that my kids would be taken away from me. I actually thought I would be able to get it under control myself, because I didn't really understand what was happening to me and had no real reference point to go off of.

So, after much anguish and several days of my dad’s insistence, I allowed him to take me. I used to work at the hospital and I knew that I would be admitted to the psych ward…anyone who comes in with mental disturbance ALWAYS gets admitted to psych.

I was diagnosed with bipolar then and started on a strange and difficult odyssey with meds, counselors, psychiatrists, the whole shebang. It's now 2020 and I've come a looooong way from where this journey began. I am currently bipolar med free and have been for the past 6 years. I still have periods where I get extremely elevated like this, so no, I'm not "cured", but I'm now AWARE of it and I understand it, and that is the key to managing it for me. It's not the road for everyone. With every bit of knowledge I gain, my wisdom and understanding grows and I've accepted my experiences as a part of my own individual story on this planet. Learn all you can. Notice things. Pay attention to yourself. Become AWARE. You CAN live a worthwhile life, you CAN do it. You do have the strength. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.