Stopping my medication led to a painful spiral, but the path back showed me the strength of support, structure, and everyday gratitude.
Fed up with weight gain as a side effect, I decided to stop taking a key medication that treated my bipolar disorder back in 2013.
I notified my psychiatrist, and she tried to find me a replacement. But nothing worked.
Soon, I was having nightmares and insomnia. I was strung out and stressed, showing up late to work and turning in articles past their deadlines. After being written up, I quit my job as a staff writer for a daily newspaper, convinced my boss was preparing to fire me.
My psychiatrist and parents urged me to get back on the medication. But I fought it. I was unable to perceive my need for the medication.
As time went by, I began to become manic and to develop strange ideas. These notions accelerated over time.
What It Was Like to Experience Bipolar Psychosis
By fall 2015, I was convinced I was being recruited by the CIA and was supposed to go to Ohio to a CIA safe house. Once I reached that CIA safe house, I would be transported to a CIA training facility. I was sure I had received a message on my phone directing me to take off and start driving. I didn’t know where I was going, but I would make it. So I did.
My mother called me around the Michigan/Ohio border.
“Meggie, where are you?”
I told her.
“Why are you going to Ohio?” she asked gently.
I started to cry. “Mom, I think I’m having a break with reality.”
“I think you are, too,” my mother responded. “Please come home.” She talked me through that night.
The next day, she got me to the hospital. Gradually, medications restored me to myself. Finally, I got back on the medication that I had gone off of in 2013. I returned to myself.
RELATED: Bipolar Disorder Psychosis: Sneaky Hallucinations
In that winter following my hospitalization, I was on my feet, fighting. I was holding down a freelance reporting position, contributing four articles per week to a Detroit-area newspaper.
But I was also anxious and depressed, going to bed early and sleeping late. I feared everyone on my beat knew.
One day, I found myself unable to cover a City Council meeting. Instead, I wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head.
“Meggie, you can do this,” my mother told me. Then she grabbed my camera bag and set it down in front of me. “You will feel better about yourself.”
My mother drove me to the council meeting that night. She sat in a nearby library while I covered the meeting. The next day, my story was successfully published.
Looking back, I see how the support around me — and later, a growing sense of gratitude for it — became part of my healing.
Finding Stability After Bipolar Psychosis
What can we do to build lives of stability, health, and wholeness for ourselves, especially after experiencing a psychotic break or mood episodes?
I have been on a journey, and I want to share a few of the things I’ve learned that have helped me:
- Surround yourself with a good support system. My parents have always been there for me, and it is this family support that has allowed me to rise up from the depths of my psychosis.
- Help others — it’ll make you feel better. In the spring of 2016, I began volunteering for a nonprofit, writing and designing the monthly print newsletter. Nine months later, after designing the 2016 annual report, the board voted to hire me as its communications coordinator, and I became a valued team member. In the summer of 2017, I also began serving as a support group leader for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). I launched a blog, too, to tell my story. I’ve found that advocating for other people with mental health conditions helps me to be more comfortable in my own skin. With self-acceptance has come some critical self-forgiveness.
- Have a routine and follow a schedule. This definitely helps with bipolar stability. Keeping a regular schedule, through work or volunteering, is grounding and helps to prevent mood episodes. Setting an alarm — even on the weekends — is stabilizing, too.
- Find and have a sense of purpose. The mission of my nonprofit gives me a sense of purpose; we all need to connect to a community and a purpose larger than ourselves.
Learning to Accept My Medication, For Better or Worse
I finally know, and accept, that this is the right medication for me. I exercise moderately to help with weight gain, and I’ve learned the hard way how crucial it is to stay on my treatment plan. My very safety and sanity depend on taking everything exactly as prescribed. For those of us living with mental health conditions, steady medication adherence is essential.
RELATED: Bipolar Disorder and the Quest for Mood Stability
And I try to always return to gratitude. I have screwed up so many times, hurt so many people, and hurt myself. But God has overlooked that. I have found grace. I choose to treat my loved ones with respect and kindness because without them, I would be lost. We can show appreciation every day for the loving people in our lives.
I am not yet where I want to be. But every day, I am making gains. God gave me a mind adapted to writing. With my mind restored, I will use the gift of writing to advocate and educate.
The future is bright for you, as well as for me. Wherever you are in your journey, don’t give up hope.
UPDATED: Originally posted January 22, 2018
