Let me tell you a little about my BPD/bipolar disorder. I have already posted instalment #1 at this site--so I will post instalment #2 here. The story is long and complex, so I have broken it up into parts or instalments. 
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2. My Experience of Manic-Depression:
Phase One--The First 37 Years 1943 To 1980 2.1 In the first 37 years of my life I had many episodes of various kinds of emotional imbalance or disorientation, themselves of varying lengths and intensities, ranging from a euphoric, impetuous, expansive or high mood to a depressed, gray, low energy or despondent mood. Indeed the range of mood in these 37 years was much more extreme than that indication in this last sentence, but the complete/extreme range was rarely experienced. Sometimes these symptoms affected my day-to-day life severely and negatively and sometimes the affect was non-existent, insignificant, hardly noticeable. After many experiences on the fringe of a normality that was my usual modus operandi or modus vivendi, as it is said in Latin , on the fringe of what I saw as my general everyday experience of life, an experience that is sometimes called the quotidian by writers, poets and novelists, I was diagnosed as a MD in May 1980.
2.2 At the time I was in the process of treatment by a psychiatrist in Launceston Tasmania. I had often been on the fringe of this disorder, as I say above, a borderline zone, a limen as some historians call it, a border territory, a zone between normality and various behavioural extremes and eccentricities from my birth in 1944 to 1980. But in 1980 the symptoms were extreme and required hospitalization. The treatment regime in 1980 was lithium carbonate, an antimanic medication. Lithium was the first really successful mood stabilizer used by doctors to treat MD, for an illness that in the 1990s began to be called BPD.
2.3 My history to that point had been far from smooth and linear as my remarks above indicate. Those thirty-six years had often been bisected, polarised and traumatised. As I indicated above I have written a more detailed account of these years but this outline, this brief sketch here, of particular episodes and the periods between episodes will suffice. My experience of these highly diverse emotional and psychological swings of mood in everyday experience away form the norm, from my norm, is only part of my story. But it is a crucial part. Everyone has their story for everyone experiences all sorts of abnormal eccentricities and health problems in life, some people of course more than others and some more traumatic and intense than others.
My account of those years from 1943 to 1980 follows. I try, in writing about and in summarizing these first 37 years of my life, not to overstate my case, nor to understate it, but give an account of those first 37 years which I refer to here in this general statement as phase one of my bi-polar life.
2.4 In some ways the inclusion of the names of those doctors who treated me over the years in this first phase and in later phases would personalise this account, but names are not that important and to include them here in this narrative causes confidentiality problems and raises privacy issues for some readers and for people in my own past who might not want to be mentioned. This question of confidentiality and privacy is especially true at some internet sites where posts are rejected if names are included in any posting at the site concerned---and so I leave names out. Those whose names I could mention would not be troubled by their inclusion here, not now, not in 2007 after an extensive destigmatization of the disorder in recent years and after so much of my experience and so many of the people concerned are now, what you might call, ancient history.
2.4.1 I certainly appreciate the medical and clinical work of: (a) several of the doctors I went to in my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, (b) the psychiatrists who have treated me since June of 1968, nearly four decades ago and (c) many family members, friends, colleagues and associations, some known well and others hardly at all, who have helped me ride the waves when the disorder raised its head yet again along the way, the road of life.
2.5 Comments on My Ante-Natal, Neo-Natal,
Childhood and Adolescence Life: 1943-1963
2.5.1 As I refer to above, I had some experience of what may well have been BPD in childhood as far back as infancy and at the toddler stage, all of the pre-school years, 0-5, of early childhood development. My mother nearly died in the first month after my birth, the implications of which it is not my intention to go into here, indeed, if there are any significant implications at all in the ante-natal and neo-natal phases of my life I do not examine here. I am inclined to think, though, they may be important in the aetiology of this illness. Before the age of five there is evidence that my behaviour had some of the features of what is now called Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Perhaps in a later edition of this essay I will attempt a more detailed outline of what I recall from these years of early childhood, but my recollections are minimal and it is not my intention to comment further on these early years.
Through middle and late childhood into the puberty cusp of 12/13 in 1956/7 I did exhibit personality features, behaviours or symptoms that had bipolar aspects, at least to a limited degree, or so it could be argued if not proved: (a) a lack of control of my emotions, impetuosity, lack of emotional restraint and (b) a far too intense activity threshold what is now called hyperactivity, mild mania or hypomania. I recall at the age of 12/13 exhibiting inappropriate or precocious sexual behaviour, although the particular manifestations only involved one groping episode and attempt to kiss that same girl who did not want to be kissed.
2.5.2 It was not until much later in life, though, that I began to see these aberrant childhood behaviours and new aberrations at puberty and during adolescence as possibly having a link with my future mental illness. It was not until I was 19 in 1963 that any characteristics of this illness became quite clearly apparent and, in retrospect, could be called part of a BPD and given that medical diagnosis. At the time no doctor would have given, or at least gave me, that diagnosis. Looking back to the age of 19 in October of 1963, I recall feeling a depression so deep it was like 'a sickness unto death,' never before experienced, like death not warmed over, as one could say colloquially. One can read about this intensity of depression in many fields of literature and of mental health. The desire to die was overwhelming, but little talked about to anyone, except perhaps my mother, although I honestly can not recall. She knew I was depressed but neither she nor I really understood its dynamics or its intensity. I think it was assumed that I would grow out of it. And I did. By December the depression began it to lift and I continued with my first year university studies.
2.5.3 These behaviours, this depression, at the age of 19 or any of my behaviour before that last year of my teenage life(1963-1964), did not result in my receiving any medical attention. The first formal diagnosis of my illness was labelled a schizo-affective disorder(SAD) in 1968. In retrospect, I now see the autumn of 1968 as the first formal mis-diagnosis of my BPD. At the age of 19, though, I was given lots of advice from religious to common-sensical: diet, exercise, prayer, vitamins, interesting leisure distractions/interests like horse-riding, watching TV, music, et cetera. After several months to several years, 1963 to 1968, the emotional aberrations disappeared or could be said to be sub-threshold at least for a time. My episodes over those years and in the years December 1977 to June 1980 seemed to exhibit quite separate and distinct tendencies and patterns.
2.5.4 Hypomania(H) was always characterized by elation and D was always characterized by varying degrees of very low moods. Such an observation seems now to be so obvious as hardly requiring a mention, but at the core of my experience of this problem was either D or H and the impact of their various symptoms. Within those five years 1963 to 1968, though, the permutations and combinations of emotional variation were enough to being tears to the eyes of a brass monkey, as my mother used to say and, as I say, looking back in retrospect. It was a miracle I ever got my degree and my teaching qualifications labouring under such emotional chaos from time to time and often, week after continuous week in a variegated pattern.
2.5.5 Sometimes there was a return of incapacitating symptoms; sometimes I simply exhibited impetuosity or lack of emotional restraint; at other times my moods were expansive, quasi-manic. Perhaps, as some of the BPD literature suggests, I was affected sporadically by the extremes of a psychomotor retardation and agitation which is characteristic of this illness. Combinatory, lateral, uneven, unusually sensitized thinking, particular sensitivity to energy levels and a state of increased awareness were all part of my experience in these five years. It is difficult to describe these five years in retrospect given the bizarre and chaotic nature of the experience within the context of a degree of normality and the inevitable routine and quotidian nature of life that went on inspite of everything, inspite of the emotional problems.
2.5.6 In the years 1969 to December 1977 my BPD was sub-threshold, non-existent or not as extreme. I coped and my behaviour did not require or even suggest medical intervention. In the 1977 to 1980 episode, the next major episode, H and its various symptoms like elation and good feelings, were rare and varying intensities of D were common. The episode lasted from December 1977 to June 1980, some two-and-one-half years. The first episode had lasted off-and-on from October 1963 to December 1968, a little more than five years. This 2nd major episodic-period only lasted half the length of time as the 1st, but this was only due to the lithium treatment that put an end to my symptoms quick-smart. Without the lithium which I began to taker in the first week of May 1980—who knows what the BPD symptoms would have been?
2.5.7 In early December 1968 I had left the mental hospital in Whitby Ontario on a mild sedative. I think it was called valergan; but I'm not sure; I have forgotten its name after nearly 40 years. In the nine years from 1968 to 1977 I tried: exercise, diet, giving up smoking, sex, radiesthetics and hair analysis, jogging and play therapy, among a range of treatments to prevent or alleviate any incipient symptoms reoccurring.
2.5.8 In the episodes from 1977 through 1980 the constellation of: fear, paranoia(P) and the extremes of D were often as low as I had experienced in the sixties, in those chaotic years of that episode from 1963 to 1968. I experienced in those years 1977-1980 a range of emotional swings, but they were largely, at least as I recall looking back a quarter century later, at the D and P end of things. A psychiatrist in Ballarat prescribed stelazine or trifluoperazine, an antipsychotic drug. It was at first administered in early 1978 and it seemed to make things worse. In December 1978 I moved to Launceston with my wife and three children and, after a series of two or three quite severe emotional swings at both the H and the D end from January to May 1979, a psychiatrist at the Launceston General Hospital prescribed lithium. After just two or three days my symptoms were relieved never to return in the same form.
______________section 2.5.9 to come in the next instalment. Write to me at ronprice9@gmail.com--if you want more info quickly.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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2007-1999-Writer: three books on www. br
1949-1999: student, teacher, writer. Baha'i for 49 years.
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