Been there-done that-felt that way-had the same questions-had no answers either. I don't understand this illness any better than anyone else. So far be it for me to offer advice on Bi-polar illness. Mr. Gregory has had the tiger by the tail for a few months now and feels lost. I have come to respect him and to find humor upon occasion in his writings. I offer a view of the illness I view as log-rolling. Forever on the precipice of falling off into the mire of mental illness, we roll with the log to not fall. Maybe a better view would be as a giant wheel that spins for each of us a mental fortune. The wheel spins but is it luck, chance, or pre-ordained destiny that determines where on the wheel you end? It can be a perfect day with no worries, no stressors, good nights sleep and yet...for those of us on the wheel...it could land on depression, mania, hypomania, or better yet a mixture of these to change that sunny day of level emotions to something ominous and forbidding. Is there really a certain set of steps we should take or cocktail of happy pills to guarantee the wheels spin on happy days indefinitely? That question gets asked often and repeatedly with this illness. Every time we fall or the wheel spins we ask it again. What did I do wrong or not do that would have stopped this? Life is a journey for each of us on the wheel that has a method of madness in various degrees of understanding for each of us. As different as snowflakes, fingerprints and ourselves as individuals so are our journeys on the wheel. There is no magical way to "fix" or assure us that we will be even keeled. There is no magical cocktail of happy pills to remove forever the stigmatic symptoms of the illness completely and forever. There is only us and our ability to adjust, learn, cope, and adapt with the part of us that changes sometimes frequently and maybe even harshly into a personna we ourselves do not even know. Yes, we can use the teachings of our doctors and peers to recognize and sometimes offset our "Mr. Hyde". Yes, we can use medicines to alter the extent and depth when the wheel is not friendly. In the end, in the grand scheme of things, we still are who we are. No, there is no "fix". There is, however, the undaunted human spirit of will that continues to turn within each of us. The will that uses all his resources and changes what may be destiny into what he wants. That same will, strong and true, that holds on in the battle between hide and "hyde" learns, adapts and copes. The choice it seems becomes between the wheel or the will. Which one do you depend on?...
