Fools Gold

So I read today on CNN.com a story, and I will call it a story and not an essay, by a british psychiatrist in which she claims she conquered being bipolar by using Mood Mapping.  I paused and thought about all the times my mother had told me to "pull myself up by my bootstraps" and to "let go and let God" or to just "buck up" and I thought if I could get my hands on that dumb brit quack I would strangle her.

At 23, as I let the warm bath water close over me, I thought to myself if I had been more positive, if only I had chosen to look for the bright side, I wouldn't be high on pilfered drugs and trying to drown myself.  It was a fallacy of course.  There is no bright side to being bipolar; sure, the mania can foster great creativity and true, some artists can become addicted to the manic highs but they crash eventually.  I never would have found a bright side to any facet of life without Wellbutrin, Zoloft and Abilify.

It is irresponsible, reckless and even murderous to suggest to someone who is bipolar that they can overcome their disease without the aid of drugs.  It is ridiculous, misleading and blatantly false to suggest to them that they can even overcome the disease, period.  You don't "beat" being bipolar; you manage your disease, much like a diabetic.

Heavily pregnant with my second child, I should have been beatific.  Instead, without my armory of drugs, I was suicidal, again.  I remember sitting on my kitchen floor, painting a baby gift for my friend Susan, and weeping, the tears trickling into the oil paints, leaving a watery trail.  My mother cooked frantically at the stove, trying to feed my family as I rocked myself back and forth, wondering how on earth I would care for my 2 year old son much less my unborn child.

As Dylan Thomas wrote, "Do not go gentle" but arm yourself.  Mood Mapping might assist you but it will never cure you.  Drugs will allow you to function but they won't inoculate you.  You are a winged creature battering yourself against the cage just as a normal human being... we are asked to perform miracles every day; forgive, forget, assist, devote, donate, shelter.  Bipolar, you are blindfolded and deaf locked in a cage of thorns.  Therapy, drugs, perhaps Mood Mapping, these weapons should be used together; no one is powerful alone.

Also on the CNN website this morning was the story of the german soccer player who had killed himself by jumping in front of a train.

Depression is a sly curse; it is a hunter undeterred by the strength or beauty or stature of its prey.  It is manageable but as with any management, you must first know your tools.  Maybe Mood Mapping has a place in assisting the bipolar but a cure, a singular savior, it is not.