Ryan's Story

EMAIL Ryan HERE
 

Six years ago, I had everything I could ever want—a happy marriage, a good job and we had just purchased our first home.  Amazingly and unfortunately, in less than a year that drastically changed.
 
I was a military public affairs officer in Texas.  My job required long hours and frequent, long trips away from home.  My first Southwest Asia deployment came on the heals of a four-month training stint on the East Coast.  That marked eight months of our second year of marriage spent apart. 


My wife had a very difficult time handling the time  apart.  She was often inconsolable.  Between work and trying to comfort her, I was under a lot of stress. At some point I became depressed.
 

Then while serving in the Saudi Arabia, I began to feel strange.  Everything difficult became easy.  A multitude of sounds, like the wind, fell into a rhythmic pattern.  Colors, light, numbers and language formed exhilaratingly intricate patterns intertwined by connections, or a common thread of meaning.  I was manic for the first time.
 
Despite embarrassing myself with overzealous, rambling emails, my illness managed to go unnoticed until I arrived home in Texas.  My wife noticed the change in me immediately and had me take a self-test for bipolar disorder.  I answered “yes” to almost every question, but yet I denied that there was anything wrong.  Still, I appeased her by going to the doctor.
 
There wasn’t a psychiatrist on the base, so I went to see a general practice physician. This was the worst mistake I made.  He could tell that I had been under a lot of stress and had been down, so he prescribed me Zoloft. The antidepressant sent my mania through the roof.  A couple of days later, at my protestation, I was hospitalized.
 
My first experience in a military hospital was a memorable one.  I was so paranoid that I thought I was part of a military experiment designed to test my loyalty and/or prepare me for advancement.  I thought doctors and the other patients were actors paid to represent abstract inner feelings of mine.
 

I was in psychosis.
 
I was treated with Ativan originally to calm me down, then Zyprexa or Olanzipine was added and Ativan was dropped.  It’s funny to me, I recall  writing a song praising Zyprexa while I was there.  Little did I know what problems it would cause for me.
 
I entered the hospital at 200 pounds.  Six weeks later I was 240.  Depakote was added to the Zyprexa shortly after leaving the hospital.  With the two weight-gaining drugs tag teaming me, I was nearly  300 pounds before the year was over.
 
 Worst of all, during my time in the hospital I was terrible to my wife. Psychosis caused me to believe that my wife and I were not meant to be together. The reality behind that was, I was bitter at her for sending me to the hospital when I had been so supportive of her.  She told me she would stand behind me no matter what.  I told her I wanted a divorce.   We separated.
 

In the months that followed discharge from the military, my thinking cleared enough that I realized I was making the biggest mistake of my life. But I could not convince her that the manic Ryan did not represent  my true feelings. We divorced in late 2000.
 
I went into a deep depression.  I returned home to the Midwest and immediately went back to work, but the depression and combination of Olanzipine  and Depakote dulled my mind and ruined my concentration.  I slept as much as 16 hours a day during that period, often not bothering to shower or shave before going to work.  For hours I would stare at my computer screen and accomplish nothing.
 
A new doctor led me to Lithium for the first time.  He slowly tapered me off both Olanzipine and Depakote, and in a short time I felt like a new man. I lost 80 pounds to begin approaching my old weight and I felt new energy and drive at the office.  Unfortunately, that proved too good to be  true.
 
By December of 2001, I was experiencing full-blown mania again.  The lithium had not been enough to cap my high moods and they bubbled over.  I was hospitalized for a third time.  Risperidone was added to my med regimen.
 
Over the next three years, we tried Quetiapine (Seroquel), Olanzipine again, Depakote again and Buspirone without success.  I continued to experience frequent manias with intermittent depression.  All told, I went through fourjobs in four different states in just a few years.  Finally, I moved home with my mother, and started going to the local VA hospital for treatment.
 
During that time, we have tried Ziprasidone (Geodon) and Topamax, both without success.  Only in the last few months have my moods stabilized for the first time on a combination of Lithium, Aripiprazole and Lamotrigine.
 
It’s been a long hard road.  After six hospitalizations, lost jobs and damaged relationships, it can take quite a toll on a person.  But I’m on a military pension now, and I have the opportunity and time to find something I want to do.  It’s an opportunity to find real meaning again.  I hope to resume my  career writing and  editing.

 

 

You can message Ghost at the Bipolar Invision Board Forum

Dreams

It's like a dream you know. You wake up and it feels surreal and it's gone and you just remember strange hints of it. It's so easy to forget, it's a strange trick that memory plays on us.


And you wake up and you wonder where you were the night before and you roll over and you look around and you realize it's reality and you almost wish you were asleep again. At least when you’re asleep you can stop watching your back for a bit.
It's weird, that you can feel safer under a bridge at 3am with some homies who probably sniff glue and smoke crack, and you know one of them had a bad trip a few years ago and never recovered and another one is a sex worker and she's too young to be doing it and the last guy your not sure about but he seems ok and he looks a bit drunk and he's passed out and you know their not gonna hurt you, ever,... no matter what, coz your here with them now when it matters, ....not another faceless mother----er who walks past without caring or blinking.


And then your at an office in the middle of the day and your manager is yelling at you to hurry up and finish that dead line and the politics of the day lead someone to view you as a target so you have to defend yourself,  and the work is due and you're a little bit behind schedule - but your working on it, and you know you'll get it done if they'll just get out of your face for a bit,  and leave you alone ..... but at the same time you wanna socialize and be a part of the human relationships in the office and theres not really that much to it ... and at least when your on the streets at 3am your manager isn't screaming at you again coz you ---- up again.


And then your dreaming coz you've fallen asleep and it's late, and you don't know what your dreaming, but your not twitching, and your not muttering and your not crying and maybe your happier dreaming than awake and you don't really want to wake up, you wanna stay in the dream coz at least you can imagine when your awake that maybe you were happier there ... but you know you get nightmares as often as you get good dreams so it probably works out about as even as everything else - and it's just how it is.  You never asked to be born - it just kinda happened and now it's a little bit ---- up but your trying to fix it, and you've gotta stop dreaming and keep in reality if you wanna do that ...  so you think about how to fix it all and you try and as you try, ... you sit in the office, and the guy across the hall who seems to have some kind of personality disorder just can't stop trying to tear you down in order to raise himself, and he brown noses the boss ... and you sit there and you just think to yourself if this is life this ---- sucks and you think you'd rather be at home.

Then when your sitting with the g's at 3am your thinking to yourself man this aint the life even as their saying to themselves this is the life,  coz they've got nothing better to look forward to ever, and they know you can go home and get into your comfy bed and forget it all and when you're at the office you look around at your co workers and they say this is the life, coz they don't know any better and they don't really understand, but to them it's all they know and they value it and they think it's a better life style choice but really hanging with the g's is so much less stressful....but you don't want that either, all you want to do is dream and you don't want to wake up coz when you wake up you cry and it hurts and life sucks and that’s not your fault - its just the way it happened.  You can try and fight it but it won't make any difference so you get up and you put your shoes on and you put your pants on and you iron your shirts and you wash your clothing and you go to the office and you work for a while typing away like it's the life and it's the best ever but it's not really the best ever and they can't really explain why not...... but you've seen outside of that and you know there’s more to life. You just don't know what it is,  and you just want to keep dreaming. It's starting to hurt a little bit, but you never asked for it to hurt, and you just want to go back to sleep and not wake up coz you feel safer with the homies who'd stab another mother----er for glancing at them the wrong way. At least they're honest and they don't twist and stab in the back like the mother----ers at the office, at least if you understand their terms, they'll treat you as one of them.... even though they know you go home to clean sheets and a nice bed and they know you dream ... but they dream too when they sleep, and they dream when they sniff glue and they dream when they smoke crack and they dream when they lie to you and tell you they owe the dude $50 and can you lend them some money ... and you lend them fifteen bucks and they go off and spend it on cask wine. Just don't wake me up next time ok.

Hope

There’s always a little bit of hope mixed in with the pain and it really does get better sometimes, you shouldn't always be down hon, be happy ... you know I guess I’m talking to no one but at the same time I’m talking to all of you who actually bother to read this....this isn't brilliant or anything this is just the truth is all. Yeah life does get hard at times, but if it was easy maybe it wouldn't be worthwhile. We're alive for a reason and I don't know what that is,  but when I figure it out I promise I’ll tell you all, just please hold on till then ok?


You know I guess they thought it was cool when they said "hey check out this shit" and you know you kinda explored it a bit ...  and I guess maybe it hurt after a bit ... perhaps if it hurts you weren't meant to be doing it, so I’d give you a big hug if I could, but I know you're too far away and you'll never come that close.   I guess that's a part of what makes it so complicated, but if you were still around here I’d give you a big hug and tell you not to coz it's really not worth it, there's still beauty in the world that you haven't experienced. You're young still hon and you haven't had so many important and wonderful experiences in life.... those are still to come and you know it will get better, I promise, ok?
 

And if it doesn't you can come hassle me as much as you want and I promise I’ll give you a hug...it's not worth it anyways, stop it while you can otherwise it becomes a part of you and maybe it doesn't go away and that's a sucky option.  I guess you know who you are ... you're all of you who will ever read this who have thought about that, and please don't... coz it's really not a good option and I mean,  yeah I understand that it hurts, and you know how much it hurts, but well its worse when everyone else wonders why and they all think it's their fault and maybe if they'd said or done something differently....


Well you know I dun really know what to say, but if you need a hug anyways message me sometime and I’ll hook you up with *hugs* and I know it isn't as good as the real thing and I know you need something better but what can I do apart from empathize with the pain and want to make it stop - and the truth is I don't really know how to make my own stop,  but there are good bits in the time between, there are the sweet moments like when your sitting in the park and the wind is blowing and your laughing with your friends and you know it just feels perfect, try and remember those times when you feel like that, and try to find what makes you happy with life, and even if society seems to say that its not the way, listen to your heart and say ---- you to society


Well maybe that's the wrong advice I don’t know, but you know I care about all of you as much as I humanly can, when your down find the ones that'll give you a hug and try to cheer you up, and when your up, have fun with nice people and do things that make you feel nice

 

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