“How Did You Get Cured So Fast?”

Every once in awhile, I have a chuckle over comments from readers who wonder how it is that I ‘got better so fast’. I got better. SO much better that I can confidently say I have not had symptoms of bipolar for the last 16 years. But my recovery did not happen in the first 3 months… In fact, when I look back now, it was the better part of a year.  See, the problem with setting a stopwatch on healing is that we never really know when the race is won. Researchers who have studied the EMPowerplus micronutrient formulation look for a positive response and have found some that register on a clinical scale in only a few days.  But going from suicidal all of the time to suicidal only once this week, which looks great as data, may not register as total relief to the person who is still struggling with many other factors of a complicated diagnosis.

It’s time to get real. Here’s how my race for wellness began… If you want to know how it ends, there are more blogs on Second Stage Healing.

 

• Week One – day 3     I stopped hallucinating, stopped taking three of my five medications. (By the way, I thought it was really ‘much better’ not to be hearing and seeing troublesome faces in my peripheral vision; and when the perceived ‘hole in my chest closed up’, I was thrilled. If you haven’t read “A Promise of Hope” please do, it’ll make all of this make a lot more sense!)
• Week One – day 4     My paranoid, manic feelings subsided enough to be able to shower with all of my clothes off and without assistance from a family member.  I was a lot better… but not well by any stretch.
• Week One – day 5     I was released from my father’s custody and allowed to go home to my husband and son. ( Is that ‘much better’? Does not needing 24-hour adult supervision mean that I was better? At least they weren’t thinking I’d kill myself at the first opportunity.)
• Week One – day 6-7     Terrible withdrawal set in. I felt worse than ever, but it was a new kind of bad.I had dropped several medications all at once and sat up nights crying, howling and thrashing until my ankles bled. There was also some vomit involved. If you are new to the transition phase, pray thanks because now, I’m told, amino acids, and other adjunct products recommended by Truehope, go a long way to quelling these symptoms and transition is not nearly as tough as it used to be. Still, “post-withdrawal” and “discontinuation syndrome” are scientifically proven to haunt those of us who go drug-free. Please read everything you can about these if you plan to discontinue an SSRI or a Benzodiazepine drug. Better yet, read about them before you ever start taking a drug in these classes.
• Week Two and Three      I worked on slow reductions of the last two medications but was still not allowed to care for my child without another adult present because my moods were still very unpredictable and I could not stay awake all day.
• Week Three through Eight      More medication reductions, withdrawals and cravings and an increasing desire to care for myself and for my son. I eventually resumed caring for him full time.
• March 28, 1996      I took my last dose of psychiatric medication and entered the next phase of healing.

So, in all, it took two months to get off the medication and to be stable enough to be trusted to be alone with my own child. I was not ‘all better’ very quickly. I still had a long way to go. But, if you had asked me how I was doing back in April of 1996, I would have told you I was so much better than I had been. (I didn’t know I could ever be as well as I am today!)

However, if I had come in expecting to get better quickly I would have been bitterly disappointed. Without any expectations for success, small  improvements and living without the medications seemed miraculous.

Slowly, like a sunrise, stable moods, concentration and patience distilled on me. I became predictable and happy.

Sometimes I was sad and I begged my husband and my father to let me go back to the hospital because, without medication, remembering and feeling were really painful for me. I’m so glad they understood that I was healing and allowed me to work through painful things. They never gave up on me.

I got better.  Easy? Nope. Fast? Hardly. Worth any effort? You’d better believe it!

Time passes either way, so why not pass it with a goal in mind? Why not find yourself next year, better than you were this year?

 

 

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net