After my release from my first stay at the German hospital, my work contract had run its course without me, so I was without a job. It was apparent to everyone that I was in no shape for working. My depression had only just begun to relent itself enough that I could finally come up for air from time to time. The hypomanias occurred more frequently; short episodes of energy and bliss, always immediately followed by a depression twice as long as the hypomania had been short. I don’t know how the meds were affecting me, to what extent they were keeping a rein on my instability, but they must have been working enough for me to hatch a new plan. Since I was out of work and my wife earned enough as a teacher to support the family, we decided on something quite different for me: I decided to enroll at a music school for Jazz in Munich. I had been an amateur musician for decades and had always wanted to study music formally but never had the time nor the resources to follow through on this wish. Now seemed like the right time, so I bought myself electric and upright basses, passed the necessary auditions, and prepared to ensconce myself in the world of music education.
I enrolled in a two-year program for Jazz, rock and pop music, including ensemble and choir direction. I suppose I have the meds to thank for my stability, if I can call it that, for I completed the first year relatively unscathed. Did the depressions and hypomanias go away? Of course not, but the frequency, length and intensity of the episodes proved to be manageable, manageable enough that I could function at a high level in an often times stressful academic environment. My fellow music students, all children compared to my ripe old age of forty, perhaps noticed changes in my mood, but suspected nothing so drastic as bipolar. I of course knew. The depression would send me into waves of irritability, which I unfortunately vented on my fellow students in times of stress. I was not the easiest person to get along with, this much I know. I am just fortunate that the work load did not break me during that first year, for the many classes and exams required by the program left us students with little time for play. Even practicing our respective instruments proved to be a difficult exercise in time management.
When the depressions came, my productivity plummeted, my mood soured, and my patience shrank to next to nothing. When the hypomanias came, my productivity soared, my mood brightened out of proportion, but my patience remained meek since I felt I didn’t have time to waste. And I didn’t really, each new hypomania started the clock on a limited amount of time I had for creative production and practice. And since my hypomanias were always so short, anywhere from three days to a week, I learned to squeeze them for every last drop of nervous energy. I was able to write original arrangements for our entire class, something I could not have done before the music program, and I was able to establish myself as the school’s top bassist in a short amount of time, and this included playing the difficult contrabass. I had even found a small group of fellow musicians at the school for gigs around Munich. Despite and because of bipolar II, I was finding success in the world of music.
It is important to reiterate that in no way did my bipolar disappear during this time. I did not “recover” from bipolar, nor did I “relapse” into bipolar when it seemed to take me over again. Back in the United States, I seemed to have gone through a period of around ten mentally stable years after my two years of hospitalization, and I still have no explanation for this stability since I was neither on meds at the time nor under a doctor’s supervision. Things were different in Germany, however. Once I cracked and sent myself to the hospital, and once I received my diagnosis of bipolar, bipolar planted its flag in my psyche. Bipolar claimed me as its own territory, and it had no intentions of giving up its newly discovered country. In times of stress, bipolar is at its worst, but even in times of ease, bipolar is still there. It is an unconditional illness, as I’ve stated in this blog before. It does not requires certain conditions to exist, it merely exists. The question is whether it exists below or above the surface of lived behaviour and thought patterns. I will write another post just about this subject, but sufficed for now to state that bipolar does not go away and cannot be “cured.” Anyone who expects this is the architect of their own disappointment and frustration.
After a year of bass solos, shaky choir direction exams, and horrible piano recitals, I was nonetheless optimistic about my future, and I had every right to be. At home I was a father and husband again, able to help rear children, go grocery shopping and keep the apartment clean. The depressions made all this work slower, more belaboured, but did not prevent me from doing it all the same. And the kids loved it when my hypomanias put me into a playful mood. I had somehow found a way to live with bipolar and function in the world, a skill that I had to teach myself. The hypomanias did their wonders. During the second year of the program, I experienced my longest hypomania to date: weeks, possibly even over a month – quite abnormal for me. This was a long and powerful hypomania that I rode like a wave. But hypomanias always have a high price, and the only currency to pay with is depression.
One day during the second year of the program, it happened. Those old feelings came back, those feelings of dread and dreaminess. The derealizations, once tamed by the meds, had begun to grow stronger and leave me physically weak in the knees, literally. Depression was back again, and this time stronger than ever before. The suicidal ideation was no mere fantasy this time; I was not playing around with the idea of dying. I genuinely wanted to die. When thoughts like this hijack you overnight, the experience is confusing and alarming. I couldn’t believe I was thinking such thoughts, I seemed to have no control over them. One day I got off the train in Munich ready for another day at the music school, but I stopped walking in the station and knew that I could not walk any further. The depression overtook me then, made my head ache and spin, made me sick to my stomach. These were the feelings I had had before I was admitted to the hospital in America, before I was admitted to the hospital in Germany. I turned around and boarded the next train home.
Within a week, I was back at the hospital in Günzburg.
At least this time, I avoided the closed ward upon my arrival, that dark hole of mental disorder and human sickness. I was assigned to a house full of crazies of every sort; the depressives and the schizos, the borderliners and the obsessive compulsives. There was only one other bipolar like myself, yet when I talked to him, his bipolar sounded so drastically different from mine that you’d never guess that we had similar diagnoses. In contrast to my last stay at the German hospital, which had been dominated by depression to the absolute exclusion of hypomania, this new stay was characterized by extreme mood swings every week; up and down, three days hypomania, five days depression, rinse and repeat. Because of the hypomania, I was one of the few patients in house able to actually laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation; grown adults crammed into a ward, bickering over space in the fridge and cookies after lunch, complaining in tears about snoring and itchy bed sheets. At the same time, I’m sure my manic laughter pissed a lot of fellow patients off. Here they were at the low moments in their lives and here I was dancing around whistling a happy tune.
Due to my hypomania, I composed many complex piano and ensemble pieces with my computer, inspired pieces that I look at now with befuddlement; how was I able to write such works while in the hospital? Due to my depression, I hit absolute bottom, going from sixty to zero in the span of two days, barely able to get up and eat. I lost around twelve kilos (26 lbs.) this time around mostly due to lethargy; I simply couldn’t be bothered to eat (also, anyone who has eaten German food can understand why I lost so much weight). The roller coaster of mood swings was exhausting. I just kept waiting for the next depression to end and the next hypomania to begin. The doctors and staff were worried to see me in states of mania. For them, this was as bad as depression, though I will never agree with this assessment. While my lithium remained, I took a plethora of antidepressants and antipsychotics with little success. One particular antidepressant, Venlafaxin, drove my hypomanias to new heights. An unfortunate lesson I learned during this stay was that, even though hypomanias are heavenly, they are always followed by even stronger depressive episodes. If I wanted to be free of depression, I would also have to be free of hypomania, I lesson that I today still do not fully accept.
After three summer months in the hospital I was released, seemingly stable, but once again, I was released too soon. This was not the States, by this I mean I was not trying to play a certain part to secure my release. I did not shave and smile in order to impress the doctors. I let bipolar fully dictate my behaviour. I opted for honesty this time around, and I genuinely wanted help, I genuinely wanted the right medicinal therapy to alleviate my depression, and I believed that it was possible. But the depression was not yet in check, and only several months went by before the depression and suicide thoughts grew strong enough to necessitate yet another trip to Günzburg. So in the winter of 2019, I once again entered the same house on campus and began the process of searching for a manageable med regiment again. But this would prove to be my worst stay in a hospital to date, excluding the electroshock treatment stay in the States of course. This time it wasn’t necessarily my own mental state, but the mental states of others that made this stay in the hospital a particularly nasty one. My schizophrenic roommate, who asked me to leave the hospital because of my snoring, seemed like a respectful, elderly gentleman, educated and articulate, but it turns out that he was just fucking scary. I don’t know if my reactions to him could be considered post traumatic stress disorder, but he definitely gave me some trauma to work through. The cohort of patients made this stay unbearable as my depression raged on, as my hypomanias burned bright.
The doctors finally stumbled upon a medicinal regiment that seemed to bring some stability. The hypomanias dissipated, then they disappeared all together. The depression persisted, but in a mild, tolerable form. After three and a half months I was released back into the wild, once again too soon, for the shock of coming home once again reignited my depression. But after this stay at the hospital, I vowed to never go back, I vowed to fight off depression by any means necessary.
For over a year I have not been back to Günzburg and I don’t intend to go back unless my life is in danger. However, bipolar remains, no amount of medication can make it go away. My hypomanias are very mild, and many of the accompanying symptoms have disappeared entirely, much to my dismay. The depressions are long and exhausting, but aren’t intense enough to send me into suicidal thinking. I wish there were a happy end to this story. I wish I could say that after this long ordeal I have recovered and can now dispense advice on how to conquer bipolar disorder.
No, my dear reader. Bipolar, my friend and foe, is not going anywhere.
Bipolar and the Buddha 