Drinking while driving

You would think I'm manic by how much I'm posting tonight, but I'm not. I actually feel pretty normal, I'm just bored with myself and thinking a lot.

I used to drink and drive. Well, of course, you say, you're an alcoholic. But what I really mean is, I used to drink while driving. I did it a lot. Not just putting beer into a cup and drinking it, though I did that, but learning how to take a swig off a champagne bottle without the person driving behind you seeing. Trust me, it's not that complicated. You just hold your head in a certain way.

My friend Amanda and I drove around the neighboring town one time on the way to a birthday party and finished off a bottle. I can't believe I was just driving around neighborhoods. Usually, I did it on the highway where no one is likely to see you. Wow! Just thinking about that makes me want to smack myself on the side of the head.

I learned it all from Diane. When I was 16 I was going up to her house in New England to stay for the summer and babysit her kid while she went back to school. With a 6 year old and a labrador in the back seat, we drove the 8 hours up there and finished 3 joints and two six packs of beer. Cheap beer, too. I think it was Coors, or something. She drove the whole way, cause I didn't have a license yet, but I thought it was so cool that we could get away with that. I looked up to her. Now, I realize she was only 28 and just as stupid as I was at 28. Though she's still stupid now.

I wish she would wise up to her addiction problems. She's got drug and alcohol problems, as well as being borderline personality. There's that dual-diagnosis again. One day, hopefully, she'll see the light. She's got another kid, now, a three year old, and she's still just as bad as when she was younger. All I can do is be there in his life like I was for his brother, and hope he turns out ok.

Addiction doesn't cause mental illness

"'The substance is not really causing the mental health problem, but it can be a precipitating factor that causes the condition to manifest,' Manevitz tells WebMD.

'In this respect, the mental health condition is already actively present when the substance abuse begins, but the patient just doesn't know it -- the problem is driving the addiction, it just hasn't yet been recognized or diagnosed,' Manevitz tells WebMD."

There we go, a better description than I found last week about the correlation between mental illness and addiction. It's not the addiction that brings on the mental illness, it just makes it present. You had it all along.

There are so many of us who started out using drugs only to realize they were mentally ill, and had been "self-medicating." I know some people hate that word, but it's really what you're doing. You're trying to make your symptoms go away by adding a substance that will bring you in one direction or another.

On the other hand, there are those of us who knew we were ill before we started to do drugs. I started doing drugs to piss off my parents, though I didn't know it at the time, and tried to hide my use from them. I don't think they ever would have figured it out if I hadn't overdosed. They are kind of oblivious to my bad behavior, me thinks. At least, they never pointed any of it out. I guess my mom knew I had an alcohol problem, but it's probably because I called her at 3am all the time. Apparently my cousin used to do that all the time when she was younger, and my mom told her to stop or she would kill her. I love it.

My cousin and my mom went to see an off broadway show last night and called me after. My cousin Diane was wasted, and it made me think about how I'm going to relate to her when I get back. We always drank together and told stories. She was my bad girl partner in crime. But I don't need to worry about it just yet. I need to find boundaries with her, besides just not calling her, and set them into place. I'm going to be fine, I know it.

Interview with the vampires (HR)

I have another interview in the morning, and I'm getting nervous. It's not a big deal - just the HR reps again, and the benefits coordinator. I don't know why I'm meeting with them, but there has to be some reason, so I'm going with it. Who knows.

I usually don't get nervous before interviews, but this means a lot. It's a great company, and they could offer me the change I need. They could give me the opportunity to move home, which is what I want.

So keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm letting go of it and just hoping it will turn out the way I would like it to.

I'm not a mind reader

So Adam read my earlier ramble where I said he was hesitant about reacting to the possibility of me moving home. And he got mad. "I'm not a book. You can't read me. If you want to know what I'm thinking, ask me."

Oops. I think it's just natural for people to try to read their surroundings, but it is unfair of me to think I could know what he's thinking. You can't tell what other people really feel unless you ask them. I have to be more aware of when I'm doing that, and really listen when I ask someone how they're doing.

Just for the record, he's excited.

Poor rats

They do such insane testing on animals now-a-days. I mean, injecting them with cocaine and fucking up their amgydalas? Jesus. I am grateful everyday to rats who have made the medication I take available. Anyway....

“Early emotional trauma, paired with a certain genetic background, may alter the early development of neural networks intrinsic to the amygdala, resulting in a cascade of brain effects and functional changes that present in adulthood as a dual-diagnosis disorder.”

These researchers did tests on rats whos amygdalas (the part of your brain that regulates fear and anxiety) were genetically messed up, and rats whose brains they messed with. It appears the brains that were genetically messed up (like those of us with mental illness) were more likely to become addicted to substances than even the rats who had trauma later in life.

So we do, in fact, have a pre-disposition to addiction. Of course, mentally ill people often search out fearful situations, or have trouble feeling fear anyway. I know I don't get scared often, and I like that rush from an adrenaline inducing experience. And drugs give you that great adrenaline, too.

But then they said something else: "dual diagnosis patients do less well on psychiatric medication." Really? I haven't been able to find anything to confirm this, but it doesn't really surprise me. People with addiction tend to a) abuse their prescription drugs (I never took mine when I was going to do other drugs) b) don't take them on time (it helps if you take them the same time every day) and c) drugs and alcohol react with meds. They all process through the liver, and that poor organ can only do so much.

I love reading articles on mental illness and addiction. It's good to know as much as you can about your illnesses. When you understand yourself, you don't have to go back. You can "think through that drink" or "play the tape all the way through" as they say in the program. You can be more aware of where you are, and what you're doing to yourself. Knowledge is power.

What the hell is bipolar?

"Bipolar disorder is a serious illness that causes a person to experience unusual thoughts and mood swings."

So you wonder, what is she talking about? What the hell is bipolar disorder? Bipolar is a mental illness which causes mood swings, like it says there. You can go from really, really "happy" to so depressed you can't move out of your bed. Some people swing like this (rapid-cycling) in days or even during one day. Some folks, it takes a little while to go back and forth.

Lots of people have "normal" periods between these swings. You can be perfectly fine - feeling happy and sad, but in regular ways, mostly due to situations in your life, but not so high or low that it's a mood swing.

Mania. Oh, mania can be fun, until it's not. Mania is the part when you're really high. You feel like you're on top of the world, and often have feelings that the world revolves around you. You're the most important person, and you have thoughts that others just don't understand, because you're so much smarter! But mania can also turn bad. You can have hallucinations, thoughts that you can fly (or other really grandiose thoughts), and often get so high that you can't even stand yourself anymore. It's a common thought that only depression leads to suicide, but often so does mania.

Depression is not fun, unless you like to wallow in self-pity all the time. Depression can make you feel like you're the shit on someone else's shoe. You're so low, you're not even an amoeba. You're unimportant, and this can become a paralyzing thought. All you want to do is lie in bed and hide from the world. But this isn't usually when suicide happens. You just don't have to energy to think up a plan.

But hypomania, that's when you have to look out. Often, when depressed people start to feel a little better, that's when they have the energy to make that kind of bad decision. Hypomania is that state of inbetween, when you're not quite normal, and you're not quite depressed or manic. You can still have thoughts that you're shit, or the shit. It just depends. Most people kill themselves while they're hypomanic.

Wow! This is so depressing, you think. It's not. It's a controllable illness (mostly) with modern medication and close observance by a therapist. You can limit the high and the low with medication. You may still get up, and still get down, but often it's not that bad. Medication can keep you semi-stable. It's not all bad news.

So I'm advocating for meds, here. All you bipolars who think, "But it changes my personality! It makes me fat! I get dumb!" Boo hoo. Get over it. The dumbness fades as you take it regularly (REGULARLY and on time. Don't skip doses or it doesn't work). And you can moderate the fat, well, ok, so sometimes you get fat, but it's better than wanting to kill yourself or jumping off buildings cause you think you can fly.

And be kind to yourself. You're not shit because you have this disease. It's just a disease, like diabetes. You have it, you treat it, you feel better.

This is not the Magic Kingdom

This morning the speaker was recounting what her partner said this morning. "You people are on a Disney ride! You go into this program and all of a sudden you have jobs, and lives, and things beyond your wildest dreams." And the speaker said, I quote, "Girl, this ain't the Magic Kingdom."

It's not all a fun ride. The whole quitting drinking thing takes a lot of self-control and patience, as well as a reliance on something other than you to help you along. That's a mighty tall order. "What an order! I can't go through with it." But it is the easier way. Easier than drinking yourself out of life. Easier than dying slowly, or quickly, in a gutter, friendless and lonely.

So yeah, like a roller coaster, there are ups and downs. We may function better now without alcohol in our systems, but we are still human and have our down times, too. We're not perfect. No one is. But we hang in there, and instead of gripping to the bars, we let go and take the ride as it comes.