Koo-koo Time

I think people who do not themselves experience mental illness and mood disorders caused by chemical imbalances in the brain really understand what it is like to have them. I think they do not understand that sometimes something changes and takes over inside and it does not ask me if I want to go along for the ride. It simply holds me hostage. I have often likened it to a feeling of something dark--like cold water--rising inside me, and I am helpless to stop it. When I have a fairly good presence of mind and feel it coming, like a cold, I can take measures to care for myself, to cut myself some slack and give myself some breaks. Sometimes I try my best to not fight it and rise to the top of it and float along on it. If I fight it my anxiety tends to rise and that creates a whole other segment to the hostage drama. Kind of like, the hostage taker was doing just fine holding the hostage and screaming his crazy demands, but now he hears the rescue helicopters outside and sees the SWAT team sniper on the roof, and uh oh, watch out, hoo boy, he might just let loose and do something really crazy.

(Not to mention the role hormones can play in this insane little dance. Call them the loose cannon of the hostage taking team.)

I know what it feels like to have my emotions run me, instead of the other way around. For so many years, that was a way of life. Being healthy-ish has been a cumulative process extending over roughly 30 years. It has been a process of following a mindful path of healing and reaching a plateau, and then coasting along for a few years thinking I am finally okay (I would say it was my revised self), and then hitting some crazy awful challenge that causes the bottom to drop out of my resilience. Over the years, my journey of healing has visited and resided for many years in all these places: Yoga, meditation, therapy, exercise, spiritual disciplines and paths. Growing medicinal plants and using them. Nurturing and caring for others. Creating art. Running with wolves. Writing. Using alcohol or marijuana, often to excess (drug and alcohol abuse! what the professionals in the business call, "self-medicating behaviors", a definite red flag on their 'why this person may need our help' list!). Singing. Relaxing hot baths scented with lavender essential oil. Finding someone to love. Hard core pharmaceutical medication and psych hospital programs. I am old enough, and experienced enough, to now know I can never say Oh yes, I am all better now. Faith in a loving Father God who protects me and nurtures me in a way no man on this earth ever has has also created in me a very stable sense of peace and serenity. That said, I still know there are times when my brain goes numb and shuts down or I get really nasty or lethargic or apathetic, can't concentrate, or am just so sad. Or am just so tired. When I feel like I am trapped behind glass.

I have had at least 3 breakdowns in my life. The last one was the largest and the scariest. I could not function. Period. I would sit and stare for extended periods of time quite nicely though. I was afraid to leave my house. I decided the world did not have enough cake in it and began baking a cake a week and eating it. I gained weight, I painted my toenails the same colors as the meds I was taking. The supermarket was too confusing, too scary. I lost my job. I lay in bed, like a bleached out half drowned creature washed up in the surf. I was lost, empty, my brain was a maze of static. I could not take my daughter school shopping because the noise and buzz of the mall coalesced into a hazy fog that filled my vision and left me standing mute, like a zombie, confused and disoriented. It was not a matter of snapping out of it or getting over myself. My brain was koo-koo and I was held hostage, gagged and bound and muzzy headed. I was out of control. I did not pay my bills. I went nuts with a credit card. I fell headlong into debt. I dropped out of my church life. I wandered from job to job trying to get something of myself back. That was in 2002. I am only now able to say, I think I am over that one.

I think being abused from such a young age ongoing through my entire childhood and adolescence has much to do with this lifelong struggle with haywire brain chemistry and warped coping mechanisms, with heredity playing a smaller supporting role. I read once of a study of concentration camp survivors' brains--their brain chemistry differed from those who had not undergone such hell on earth. In the same way, my brain chemistry is not balanced. I have gone through times where the waters rose so high as to drown me and I have depended on the stabilizing effects of the hard core pharmaceuticals--trazadone, wellbutrin, celexa, prozac, lexapro. There was even an anti-psychotic called zyprexa thrown in there when I was in full blown breakdown koo-koo time, because I was coming to learn that when there was too much external stimuli, my brain often simply can not process it all and goes into fight or flight mode. And so, I would (do) think people were (are) sneaking up on me when they weren't (aren't) and I hear my name called when it wasnt (isn't).

Another thing that affected the health of my brain was the serious binge drinking I did throughout my adolescence--often drinking to black out stage. That went on into my 20s. The brain is still a growing, developing organ on into our 20s! Then there was many years of heavy marijuana use that, while it opened my mind to new levels of perception and let me create awesome poetry and experience music in a whole new dimensional framework, it also left me having psychotic moments when I was sure there were actual scary monsters down at the end of the hall and no one could convince me other wise. (I heard some guy say this once: Sure, pot opens up a door in your mind. But it is always the same door.)

I have tended to stay away from the hard core pharmaceutical psych meds when I can manage it because they are very toxic to the system in general, and really burden the liver. I have found that a program of herbs and vitamins specifically intended to enhance and nourish the brain has worked best for me. I still get depressed. No doubt about it. I don't think any pill can ever make it go away forever, not the chronic--rather than situational--kind of depression and PTSD I have. I also do not lead a life most people would consider normal. I do not leave this village for months at a time! I walk up and down this hill and that is about it. I limit my contact with people--they exhaust me. I do not go out into hyper stimulating scenes, malls, bars, cities. I call myself the village idiot. I do not lead a life that others would seek to emulate, in fact, I know people think me odd and that is okay because they are right. The village idiot life works for me--it helps me stay healthy.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai