How Deep is Your Well?

A day best slept through than lived. You can only understand that if you've ever been truly depressed. Made myself shower. It had been a week since I'd washed my hair. Made myself refill my pill boxes and take my morning meds. It'd been three days.

I confessed to my therapist that I hadn't been med compliant. And she asked me why, which is a reasonable question, and I surprised myself by saying, "It's not really intentional. Last week, I was so high I didn't think I needed them. And then when I crashed, I couldn't be bothered to care."

There's a lot of that last lately. Can't be bothered to eat. Can't be bothered to care about food, groceries, money, bills, pills. As if they will all, somehow, magically take care of themselves. Don't care about my hygiene, how the apartment looks, if I'm able to get anything done.

I've started having the gas mask fantasy again.

They're Back

Psych took me from 600 Lithium to 300 because I was showing side effects. And while Lithium at 600 seemed to stabilize my mood, it stabilized it at a moderate depression. The 300 Lithium, however, doesn't stabilize me. I've had one 3-4 day period of hypo/mania, and I crashed afterward into a moderate depression. This is hell on my relationship with Jb. It's hard to feel close--for him, as well, I imagine. I don't know how to get closer to him when I feel like this. I feel so self-centered and day-to-day. The financial situation doesn't help. We argue over spending $5. That's how bad things have become. And the IBS just gets worse and worse.

Restless 12pm

Can't sleep. Spent an hour tossing and turning. It's not going to happen. Couldn't sleep last night either. Up until 2am. I haven't been eating much. Lost a few pounds, despite the Lithium, which I hear tends to pack on the pounds. Just not interested in food, shopping, making meals. You'd think this was the beginning of an upward spiral, but I'm still walking--stumbling really--around at about a 3, though to be fair, I have my moments of okayness with Jb.

Obligated

I feel somehow obligated to put up a post, to talk about what's going on with me. But I don't have anything to say. I can't get up quickly, or slowly, and I can't bend over or else I lose my balance. I smacked my head into the closet door yesterday and nearly went down on the Ikea rug. The shakes are worse and are making it hard to type or use the mouse. I can't tell if the lymphedema is worsening because of the lithium or the deteriorating stockings because I can't afford new ones. And I forgot to eat dinner last night. It sat there right next to me, but I kept forgetting it was there. Jb tried to make me eat it. I just put it in the fridge. I am ... nowhere. I see the psych and therapist on Wednesday. Until then, I remain tired (I'm not sleeping well), unmotivated, and I feel like an old lady at 33. It's wearing on me. On a scale of 1-10 today, 10 being the best I've ever felt, which is more like a 12 when I'm hypo, I'd say I'm walking around at about a 3.

Overwhelmed

I can't help feeling overwhelmed lately. I've gone to 300MG of Lithium twice a day, and whether it's that or something else, I've started getting the shakes, the spins, mild headaches, constipation (which is funny, considering the IBS alternative), and dry mouth. All this on top of an IUD period. (An IUD period means you will bleed like a stuck pig, for days and days. You will go through three boxes of tampons, having to use one every two hours at your worst, and the cramps make you feel like shit.) So. Good times right now.

Perhaps it's all the physical symptoms that are making me feel touchy. I'm reactive to every bit of criticism, every bit of rejection. When Jb's goofing around, doing a little smack talk, I get upset. I feel disrespected. I can't find it funny anymore. I'm touchy about everything. I want to be coddled, loved, take care of, and I don't feel that at all. And then Jb yells at me for not being involved in our relationship. And I'm absolutely fluxommed.

And Jb and I are fighting again. I'm supposed to clean up, do the dishes, make dinner, do the finances, plan meals, go grocery shopping. This is supposed to be me carrying my weight. But I have no interest in it. I've no interest in writing this blog. I've no real interest in anything. Thank god the book I'm reading has only 2-3 page chapters because that's about all I can manage at once. And there's SSI to think about. I should start that. I haven't the faintest where to begin. I'm just ... I'm tired.

I hate smoking out on the front stairs now because there's something about looking down the cobbled walkway that sets me shaking, that makes me want to say, "Good dammit!" And then the knives start to glimmer when I wash them. They look appealing. And I start to wonder if you can overdose on Klonopin, and if it'd just be like drifting to sleep. Because I'm a coward when it comes to suicide. But it doesn't mean that I don't want to sometimes.

Lady Lithium

I call her lady because only a female can come up on you so sly. Four days in, and I'm noticing the effects: the constant diarrhea and abdominal pain (it makes my IBS look like a kitten), the severe dry mouth. The dry mouth I can handle. The gastro-intestinal stuff ... Gah, wasn't IBS enough? I've been up and down all night in the bathroom. I haven't slept well. I'm dreading when I go to lithium twice a day. The bathroom and I will become very intimate, I'm guessing. Least the lithium doesn't act totally like IBS. I don't get the sweats, the shakes, then throw up.

And on another front, I'm still having the spins.

I was also a bad girl yesterday. The day before yesterday, I cancelled my therapist appointment. I was so down that I simply couldn't handle having to go out, much less drive Jb to work and back, then out to my therapist and back, the back to pick up Jb, etc. I just couldn't deal. A moderate depression as these things go. Not suicial like the week before, but depressed enough to be absolutely immobilized. My therapist is a doll and has volunteered to help me fill out SSI because ... I just can't get started on it myself. It's far too overwhelming. She's even volunteered to make a home visit to help. So I hope I didn't piss her off by canceling. I haven't heard from her yet.

I guess my big thing to do today will be to call SSI and get them to send me a Starter Kit. Their webpage says, "Don't worry if you don't have all the information. We'll help you get it." I wonder which information they mean, and if it's true. I've heard that you have to give them everything they want and be as detailed as possible. I kept horrible records until some time after the hospital. I thought I was merely depressed, that there was no help for people like me. I didn't know I had options, safe harbors, like the hospital, SSI.

Ghosts

Jb and I had the fight, the one that inevitably ends with, "I'm the one who supports your ass." The one that makes you feel small and guilty for what you are. Because you are capricious and mercurial, you are always wrong. Pile guilt upon guilt until you feel useless and dumb. And still you don't know who you are, or what you've become.

But you do know this: you are dependent on the kindness and beneficence of those around you. You are captive to good intentions, "love," the kind that brings resentment and distance, and finances. You are well and truly stuck, both feet in concrete, and you are sinking fast. You vaguely think of alternatives. Can you ever go home? Halfway houses. These are your choices, at 33, after you've had a marriage, a house, a job, luxuries. How much further can you fall? Not much. And maybe that's why suicide becomes such an option. There is so little to fear when you're so far down you don't know how or when you'll ever get back up. You fear being dependent and controlled--because you have no control of your own. You can't be someone's baby girl, their sweet, submissive "wife," even if you're only their girlfriend. People expect and they take, even when you're hollow. You can get blood from a stone, and they prove it.

I'm more and more aware of the ghosts from my past marriage. Aware that, though he neglected me, he never once yelled at me, never once said anything out of anger. The neglect was there. I felt small, unwanted, but I never felt judged. Though he seemed to have no use for me, he always wanted nothing but my happiness, and let me pursue it as well as I could. I had carved out a niche for myself: writing classes, friends, co-workers who were like family, the coffeehouse circuit and music. I did things. I was ... something. Here, I don't know who I am. I have no friends, no family, no co-workers who ever were as fine as those at my last library job. No surrogate mother who had me over, made me drinks, let me sit on her porch, and talked to me about life and love and shooting stars and words.

In my relationships, I have always tried to be what my partner wanted, as if, in doing so, they might love me more. It never works. You would think I'd know better by now. And I've tried being this for Jb, taking on his likes, his wants, not following my own. Unaware, anymore, of what my own likes and dislikes are. And so I stand in this maelstrom of someone else's life, twisting in the wind, pieces of myself drawn away in tatters. So when the accusations spark, the betrayal is all the more painful, deep. I've subverted so much of myself in an attempt to keep someone that I don't know what I feel, what I want. I am stumbling.

Time to Come Clean

Therapist appointment today. Nervous about discussing last week. The depression seems to have lifted. I'm feeling anxious and revved up today, despite having the wonky balance issues and having given blood this morning. (I actually fell into my car, which is better than falling out of it, I guess.) It's the nervousness of coming clean to the therapist. I know it. And all I want to ask is, "Does it ever get better?" Because, god, I don't know if I can relapse like that again. It will be the hospital next time. It was too difficult dealing with it on my own. And all the time, I wonder when Jb will break. Because I see the strain. I can't bear to put him through this. It's hard enough for me. I can't imagine what it's like for him.

In Passing

So, it's passing. I think. I hope. That was probably the worst I've been since the hospital. Jb and I have a rule: no killing myself. Wednesday, it was a hard rule to keep. Thursday and Friday, I just wanted for him to come home. Smoked a lot. Rocked myself on the porch stairs trying not to think about it while I've got Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" playing through my head like that last strip of film that keeps slapping against the reel--over, and over, and over.

I should have gone to the hospital Wednesday. I should have gone Thursday. I was that bad. But I couldn't stand the idea of another stay, starting back at square one. It had taken me 5-6 months to pull myself out of the last one, and since the first hospital stay, I swear it's as if I get worse and worse, and never better. Or there's the hope of better, and then the crash hits. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. But mostly, I couldn't put Jb through the strain of another hospital stay.

This weekend I have Jb as a babysitter. I've an appointment Monday with my therapist. Another Wednesday with my psych. It'll give me things to do, keep me in line.

Out of the blue, a woman I'd struck up a friendship in the ward called me. Last time I'd talked to her, she'd been convinced she was going off her meds and talking about suicide. I couldn't call her after that; I didn't want to know. I couldn't deal if she had. It was so good to hear her voicemail, to know she wasn't a fallen comrade, that I cried. When I called her back, I was suicidal, and she was completely manic. I couldn't keep up with her, as slow and dumb as my brain had gotten. But then again, how do you keep up with someone on a manic kick?

When's This Get Fun?

I can't stand the ups and downs. Last week, I'm hypomanic in my therapist and psychiatrist's appointments, and now I'm flat on the floor. I can't be bothered to do anything. The dishes have been in the sink for two weeks now, and it makes me hate myself. How can I not even get the dishes done? Sometimes I really wish I knew why we go through this existence. I wonder if too much education is a bad thing: it teaches you to question everything, and it doesn't allow you the blind acceptance of societal norms, religion, even psychological propaganda. I had a psychologist tell me once to get up and try to think of 10 things I was happy for. It's a tool, I know, but it's also a distraction. My mind doesn't work that way. It's a trick. Like politics. And it makes me feel less to give into such things. I want to talk and think about real things--not band-aids.

The Crash

Everything had been so normal, productive. More so than anything I'd experienced since the hospital. It reminds me of my childhood, the abuse. You could go days full of normal, and then out of nowhere, you'd get slapped down. Literally. Even now I have to use "you," second person singular, to distance myself from the memories. Depression feels like that. You find normal, if only for a few days, but there's always that trepidation that you'll have to pay for it -- with a slap out of nowhere, a hand that slaps you down, and there's a sort of a detached surprise when it happens, and then, like someone abused for a long time, resignation.

Mondays are the hardest for me. They're the first day I have to deal without having Jb around. That's strike one against me. But the previous day, we'd been driving in the car, and some country song had come on about weddings, fathers and daughters, the love and hope of a wedding. And it was disturbing how quickly it sent me back to my own wedding. Over ten years ago now, and I still remember it. How perfectly planned. How I never thought I'd end up separated, divorced. How maybe I shouldn't have married him. About how I'd felt myself shout "no!" inside when he'd given me the ring. How I should have listened to myself. It reminded me of how little I do. And it reminded me of failure, of a lifetime ago. And I felt such grief for that person that I was. For the tender moment with my dad. For the grief of leaving home.

Jb saw it, or part of it. There are things I can't tell him. There are things he simply can't know, having never gone through a wedding, a marriage. But he saw the part about my father. Knew I was thinking of him, and brought up a picture from my wedding I'd entirely forgot. It's the best picture taken from that wedding. My dad, in the library, holding an open book in his hand, dressed in the only suit or tux I've ever seen him in, with a silver glint of earring in one ear, and a mischievous grin for the camera. The big joke being that my dad's functionally illiterate, and he'd never in his life pick up a book or look like a man of leisure in a library and tux. He's always been blue-collar, down home, Southern through and through. And I love that about him.

It all was enough to trigger me, I think. I slept most of the rest of the evening, getting up for a couple cheese cookies I'd made for my birthday the day before and a drink. Then I crawled back into bed and slept the rest of the night. I'd get up for the bathroom, but I literally slept from 5 the following day until 4 o'clock on Monday when I knew Jb would be home. I had to be up when Jb got home, so I forced myself to take a shower. But the depression of those two days was so dark and deep that I couldn't fathom leaving my bed. And all last night, Lucy Kaplansky lyrics from "The Tide" kept running through my head, over and over and over and over.

Tumbled

I'm feeling better. The moods come, but they don't linger. I'm restless and aimless, but it doesn't feel as frenetic. Music and lyrics and books and tv and movies still trigger me, but I can get past those. It's the anxiety I'm finding it hard to battle. When nothing's demanded of me, I'm fine, but a phone call, having to drive somewhere, having to go out of the apartment by myself, these still make my heart and stomach clench up, make me nauseous. When I'm depressed, I'm more apathetic than depressed now. Like everything's tumbled me smooth as a rock.

"Major Life Events"

More than once, I've heard talk about "major life events" having a direct effect on your level of stress. There's a whole worksheet on the subject. According to the worksheet, my score is somewhere around 1000, putting me at "an increased risk of illness." Though it says to look over the past year, I took stock of the last three years, and this is what I came up with:

An illness that sent you to the hospital 74
Change in your responsibilities at work:
fewer responsibilities 21
transfer 32
Troubles at work:
with your boss 29
Loss of job:
fired from work 79
Major change in living conditions 42
Change in residence:
move to a different town, city, or state 47
Change in family get-togethers 25
Major change in health or behavior of family member 55
Spouse beginning or ending work 46
Change in arguments with spouse 50
Separation from spouse:
due to marital problems 76
Divorce 96
Change in personal habits 26
Change in social activities 27
New, close, personal relationship 37
Girlfriend or boyfriend problems 39
Sexual difficulties 44
Major decision about your immediate future 51
Major change in finances:
decreased income 60
investment or credit difficulties 56

Additional:
death of cat
death of grandma

Quite a resume, isn't it? All of this is brought on by an e-mail from my "husband." He's prodding at me to start the divorce process, and while it's been nearly three years, which means it's certainly high time to get this taken care of, I feel lost at sea in terms of how to go about it. There's cost involved, which I can't afford, and a sort of panicky anxiety that kept me awake last night. And I can already feel myself slipping toward a depression.

I wish I could say it's only the paperwork and proceedings that are bothering me, but there's an old grief there, and a fear, that I don't think I've dealt with entirely because I happened so quickly into my relationship with Jb. And while there's nothing I regret in doing that, in being with him -- he's better for me and so important to me -- it's hard to shake off the memories of a ten-year relationship. It's surreal looking back, as if it were a life ago, and I can't remember who that girl was who got married, bought a house, lived this life with friends and family. It was a several states and a lifetime ago.

I definitely need to bring this up with my therapist. And I feel a little desperate about wanting, needing, to see her, but I'll find a way to get through until Tuesday. Until then, I hope Jb can understand if I'm a little more down, a little more distant. He has all my love still. But he knows how difficult it is for me to let go of the past, and today, it feels like the ghost of it is enough to overwhelm. It makes me shake when I go for my Klonopin like a druggie needing a fix.

What's worse? Jb's had almost as many major life events, and who and what is there for him?

Depression: How Do You Know?

Jb's comment from yesterday made me stop and think: how do you know someone's depressed? And it struck me that it's a bit like applying for college. There's a standardized test -- ACT/SAT -- in which you are compared to other students by a set standard, and how well you do on the test is determined by how aptly you're able to mold yourself to this set standard. But as a potential applicant, what does that really tell a college about you? You fit a standard, the way a depressed person may fit the DSM-IV-TR, but it's a very structured, impersonal assessment. Of course, then there's the personal statement. This is where you tell the school a little more about you, but mostly, you tell them what you think they want to hear so that you're accepted. It's not unlike the way those who are depressed try to move through their days, through their doctors' appointments, through therapy, through the workplace. For the doctor's, the psychiatrists, the psychologists, you try to tell them what they want to hear in order to get help. Because how can you voice what and who you truly are in a 30-50m doctors' visit. Around those you love, around strangers, around co-workers, you go one further: you put on a mask, as much as you can. For those few hours, you try harder -- to be what people expect you to be, to be fine. Because, like that college personal statement, only some statements are acceptable, and you're still hoping to live up to a standard that equates to acceptance -- into college, by your co-workers, by your loved ones. And still, no one ever knows how you feel alone in the dark, or during the day shut in by four walls, or curled up in bed for hours at a time, or when you smile that fake smile to pretend you're still there. You listen, you go through the motions, you try to do one or two things to make it seem like you're okay. But there's only so much anyone, other than you, can ever really know about how you feel.

Of course, sometimes, there's no metaphor for depression. That's when nothing at all matters.

Frustration Personified

I've been med compliant for at least two weeks now. So no weird ups and downs in meds, and the last few days I've been depressed as hell. Spending too much time in bed, not caring about anything, not even enough to make food. Just sort of let the hunger gnaw at my stomach because I can't be buggered to feed it. I have all these good intentions: straighten up in the front room, maybe sweep, do dishes, keep bathroom picked up, mop in the bathroom and kitchen. Doubt any of it will get down. Jb has the cigarettes at work, and I can taste them in my mouth, it's how I know I'm missing them, and I hate that, hate the way the taste comes in to remind me. I'm in such a mood today that I really think it's best for everywhere if I just keep to myself.

Grog

I can't stand the groggy morning. Up by ten, and it's 12:15, I've showered, and I still can't say I'm awake. The lids are heavy, the body leaden. I'm still third person twice removed from the world. I couldn't care less about anything, except maybe something to eat. But the idea of going out is a heroic endeavor. I'd like to crawl my ass back into bed and stay there. But Jb's home this weekend, so there's no hope of me getting away with such a thing. I'm just glad he wants to go out for sandwiches so I'm not required to do dishes, look at the kitchen, or bake the cheesy sausage thing I told him I'd make for breakfast. I really can't deal with making anything. Thank god, he likes tuna melts. It was an easy dinner last night. I just ... I'm not pulling my share this week. And I feel guilty about it, but I ... can't. I really can't. Everything is such an effort. The depression is back again. Some of the bad thoughts are back again, as well. At bay for the moment, but there at the edges.

Got My Mad On

So, there's nothing like getting a mad on to shoot you up out of depression. Over the last few days, a couple who've, for some reason, decided that I and Jb are evil, though we choose to have as little to do with them as possible, have made it their goal to flame both of us, ad nauseum, on a forum that we both frequent. It's been drama up the ass with these two. They both got kicked from the forums and their inflammatory threads removed, but I'm still furious. Who's so immature as to begin a character debate and slander campaign against another adult online? I know we're in an election year, but dear god. I have to tell you, though, I went from weepy, crying depression, to livid, absolute fury in the course of two forum posts. Anger as a cure for depression. Not a suitable thesis topic for the average psych student, I'd imagine.

Hard Day's Night

This is a hard day. I wake so depressed that I immediately go make brownies to make myself feel better, which it doesn't. (I always tell myself that eating the almost burnt edges doesn't count.) It makes me feel as if I just gave Jb more ammunition to criticize me for. Then I'm chatting online to another person who is probably as fucked up in the head as I am sometimes, though he's far more passive-aggressive about it than I am. It's one of the few social things I get to do all day, and there's something in knowing he's as fucked up in his own way as I am. We're both in foul moods this morning, though, so the conversation is short, and that's fine with me, except that it isn't. I spend the morning listening to Pandora.

I am doing nothing. I am achieving nothing. I have anxiety about what Jb'll say when he comes home, about the mood he'll be in, about how much he'll hate me for the nothing that I do or feel. I cannot focus on any one thing, and the only emotional hit is music. "Ten Year Night" by Lucy Kaplansky comes on, and I'm triggered back to Michigan, flying down the highway along the railroad tracks far up toward the peninsula from a little town called Cheyenne where I braved a bar to get a cheeseburger that tasted better than anything I'd had. And the shifting of gears was so necessary to my running, the control of the down shift, the letting go as you up shift, the jump of the gas as your foot grows heavier, and all around you country you couldn't know. There's a certain face, too, that comes to mind with those times and that song, and it's as hard to out run that history and burnt bridge as it is to shift through the old melody line.

The tears are in my eyes before I ever realize I'm crying.

I remember what it's like to fly.

From Up to Down in 10m Flat

Jb and I go out driving, one of the things we do almost every weekend since we've so little money. Usually, it's just what I need: time out of the house, good tunes, time with Jb away from the tv and the computer. Today, it's fine for an hour and a half. Then we end up at a lighthouse surrounded by a barbed wire fence that makes the shabby attraction look like a prison yard with the Chesapeake just beyond the fence, a concrete divide between the haves and have nots: those who can afford to be out boating on the lake and those who stand, locked away from the private beach. It's hot, depressing, and we're an hour and a half from home. I'm restless to get gone, and snappish by the time we're back in the car. The second half of the drive is full of crap music, silence, and then a song comes on and starts triggering me. I'm suddenly desperate for home, missing my family, my childhood, thoughts full of the last ten years, the knowledge that I'm already 32, almost 33, knowing the likelihood that I'll be anything come 40 enough to make me tear up, and there I am, crying behind my sunglasses, trying not to let Jb see, even when he's asking what's wrong. And what is there to say? I'm sick of always saying: I don't know. I just went from fine to depressed in 10 minutes, and I'm so pissed at myself that the disgust is thick. I'm tired of this. Jb must be tired of this. I can't ride these crests and dips. I know, there, in the car, that I need someone to talk to. I need to find myself a therapist. And soon. Because I am not dealing. I am not dealing with this up and down, this here and there, and the guilt of my mood always affecting the people around me that I love is strong. I'm so frightened that they'll suddenly see, suddenly see me, and throw their hands up in frustration, wash their hands of me. I can hardly blame them when I feel like doing the same myself sometimes. I'm even convinced, sometimes, that it'd be better for everyone involved if I lived my own life, away from everyone else's.

Self-Medication

In researching bi-polar, you read some interesting things. Lithium for mood swings, though it leaves your speech slurred, your hands shaky, and causes possible rash. Lamictal, rash. Drug-resistant bi-polar. People who've been on the merry-go-round of drug after drug after drug with little to no real relief. And that's when you start reading about marijuana use and bipolar.

A study out of New Zealand swears marijuana use puts users at a 200% greater risk of developing bipolar. But what does it do for those who already suffer from it? Most message boards are filled with long-term pot users who claim marijuana is one of the few things that keep them straight. The other half of the forums are filled with people calling the marijuana users potheads. I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

A co-worked gave Jb some pot she had in her car yesterday. It was probably under a gram. Not very much at all. He brought it home, rolled it up in a cigarette paper, and we toked up in the bathroom. Three hits each. It was a little like the scene with Craig Ferguson and Brenda Blethyn in Saving Grace, in which, to quote IMDB, "a small-town English widow, facing financial troubles after her husband's suicide, turns to agriculture of an illegal kind." Fantastic little movie if you've never seen it. But there's a scene where Brenda and Craig are up at the bluffs because Brenda's character insists on smoking a joint if she's going to be growing marijuana. There's that 15-20 minute period of, "Is that it? Honestly, what's all the fuss about? I don't feel anything." Jb said he knew that's when it was going to hit me.

It all started with a bit of lightheadedness, which I get as a side effect from my medication anyway, then the giggles kicked in. It creeps up on you slowly, but once it does, it feels like you've just stepped out of the best massage, sauna and whirlpool treatment you've ever had. You are utterly, completely relaxed. So relaxed that for the first time you realize how stressed and anxious you had been. For anxiety, it's ten times better than Klonopin. I had been in a depressive funk all yesterday, asleep when Jb got home, emotionally inaccessible. But as soon as the marijuana hit, I felt like me again. I could laugh. I could feel. I could interact with Jb. For the first time in a long while, we really connected, had fun together, participated in a relationship that had gone somewhat dry with the extent of my mood swings. Three hits kicked me right out of depression, and I still feel fine today, the day after. There's no mixed mood: no depression, no anger, no racing thoughts, no irritation. There was only the feeling that, for a couple hours, I didn't have to deal with the constant mood swings. I felt relieved, relaxed, revived.

This isn't to say that I necessarily agree with self-medication. Nor that I think becoming a pothead is the way to go. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but I genuinely understand the recreational use of pot. And, having done it, it felt a little like the first time I had sex. People try to scare you, guilt you, warn you off of it, but once you're adult enough to responsibly handle the decision to indulge in your first time, you're left wondering afterwards: "What was all the fuss?" It feels good, it hurts no one, and as long as you're responsible, why not?

I can't tell what sort of long-term effects marijuana use might have on bi-polar patients. I understand enough that it could affect the effectiveness of your medication. But then, most bipolar marijuana users seem to suggest they use it as an alternative to medication. And that I could understand. Because all too often, the side effects are worse than the disease, and they're almost never as effective as your psych would lead you to believe. I've been on a med cocktail since March, nearly four months now, and I'm still in this half-life, neither sick enough for hospital, nor well enough for the real world. But last night, I slept the best sleep I've had all week.