Readers of this blog will know that I was diagnosed with Bipolar I in 2006. It’s a condition I am very open about and that is a challenge (and an opportunity) that I live with. Medication, therapy, and a loving and very understanding family help me make through each day.

Bipolar Lives will present research, ramblings, personal experiences, and other things of interest to people with Bipolar.

Come over if you want to learn a little about how we see the normal people.

I left town, essentially. Mentally. I had to go down a new path, find a new cause, lose that cause, explore more. Step away from the places I had known for so long.

I went into Typography. Architecture (Mid-Century Modern). Design. Photography.

And I come back refreshed. I come back being at least 6 months behind in M&A news, new products being flogged by Guy, in opinions expressed by Fred and Brad.

I can recommend it for anyone. I know that the people out there have become addicted to it all. But walking away from the constant need to be informed, to be in the game, on your game, it’s exhausting.

And when you mix in my bipolar (follow the category, young man), things can get really intense.

I will now be participating with fresh enthusiasm.

Staring into the spiraling madness of Silicon Valley and laughing, so glad I can watch from afar. Visit occasionally, but juts sit in the audience and let the lions fight it out.

So, what do I need to know?

Oh. If you want to follow me on twitter, I can guarantee sleep.

This morning, the Canadian flag is flying outside Giant Birch Manor. The one day a year I risk offending my neighbours in a demonstration of my national pride.

In some ways, Canada Day serves as the start of my new year, just as much as the start of the school year in August/September does. It divides the year in half, and provides a celebratory marker when the weather is likely good enough to have a good party.

I had a look back to see what I posted on July 1 last year, and found that the only post was one related to GrabPERF, announcing the termination of the PubSub measurements, as that company was in the midst of its death throes.

Over the last year, I have seen significant personal upheavals and changes, most notably the diagnosis of my mental condition as Bipolar 1. After talking with some people I know who also suffer from this disorder, I realize that I have a very mild form of it, but even in its mildest forms, it can be crippling. I can say that having access to better medication (I AM PAXIL FREE!), and the world’s best therapist, I have come a long way in understanding what in this life I can and cannot change.

Watching the red and white flag fluttering in the morning breeze, I realize that there are days that I really miss Canada, and all of its foibles and unique cultural issues. But for now, I live where I am, and I have come to accept that, even with all of its uncertainty (still no closer to my Dream Green Card).

So, I wish you all a Happy Canada Day, wherever you raise your maple leaf.

Tags: Canada Day, paxil, bipolar, year in review, green card, Canada, new year

There’s no need to ask directions
If you ever lose your mind
We’re behind you
We’re behind you
And let us please remind you
We can send a car to find you
If you ever lose your way

Cake — Comfort Eagle

So, last week, I did it. I dropped Paxil/paroxetine/seroxat completely from my medicines. Seems that other medical issues I am having are aggravated by the stuff, so after 7.5 years, it’s gone.

The withdrawal shouldn’t be as bad for me as it is for most people, as I am on pretty high doses of the mood-stabilizer Trileptal. Still, it should be an interesting couple of weeks.

Tags: bipolar, paxil, paroxetine, seroxat, cake, Comfort Eagle

I went back to my mother
I said, "I’m crazy ma, help me."
She said, "I know how it feels son,
‘Cos it runs in the family."

The Real Me, Quadrophenia

Tags: Quadrophenia, the who, Pete Towshend, bipolar

Yup, right on schedule.

Tags: bipolar, biorhythm

It turns out that Bupropion inhibits the effectiveness of Paroxetine and magnifies the effectiveness of Trileptal. Of course the drug interaction studies are buried right next to Hoffa, and only a few of us lunatics actually blend this mindful cocktail to produce enhanced states of sanity.

So, off I go, down the path of medication adjustment once again.

Maybe if I fly off to Switzerland and check into one of those very private clinics I can get all of my bodily fluids flushed. Have my body completely dried out…look like Reagan on a bad day…then have them added back in the proper order, and the proper amounts. Then maybe the madness will end.

What most people don’t understand is that living with manic bipolar is living with Hunter inside your head every day. Raging. Screaming. Shooting at the peacocks while the sun rises. Spraying my optic nerve with a rogue fire extinguisher. Delivering calla lilies to soothe me when he has stepped over the line, laughing at me, with me, simultaneously.

That screaming vitality that HST lived every single day is bottled inside me, caged, rattling the bars, threatening to call a 450-pound Maori solicitor to beat some logic into my skull, from the inside out. The highly-attuned vision. Echoing sounds of madness. Inability to pay attention to the droning emptiness of my work life.

Some would call this a nightmare. Some days I do. Most days, I rock back on my heels, scratch my chin, grin, and smile. I know that the world around me is always in his sights, ranting, providing a constant commentary, arms waving manically, Chivas spilling on my synapses, another typewriter brutally blasted in the snow.

Hunter is the model of what rages inside me. The echo of a life restrained, held in check. Cursing the days lost.

Kathy Sierra, someone who has been quoted and analyzed multiple times in this blog, has hit another double to the wall. She talks about the value of serendipity, randomness, in exposing us to new ideas and concepts, ones that we would not have run across in our siloed, standardized lives.

Yesterday was a great example of this for me. Something I read a post on Notebookism that spoke of outsider art or Art Brut. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and spiralled into a 90-minute voyage of discovery into this genre of expression, fueled not by training and ideology, but by a raw, unchecked need to express the world in an artistic way.

I would have never gone down this path unless I had read the Notebookism post, and would have been hard-pressed to find structured explanations (whatever you may think of them) of the topics without Wikipedia.

As I explore myself, and examine the foundations that support my cracked mental structure, I find that I appreciate the random explorations far more than a formal education process. I don’t learn the way that we have been taught.

I prefer to discover.

And when you get right down to the basics of Kathy’s post, that’s what she is saying. People are far more enthusiastic, receptive, and amazed when they discover something for themselves.

It may be an old idea to you. I may not interest you. But when a person gets that gleam in their eye, that rush in their mind, when they get the “WOW!“, then they are committed.

Personally, I am finding that I am having a lot more WOW! moments lately. The combination of therapy, and my medications, has forced me to look at the world that I live in, and the world that I have created, substantially different than I have for the last 15 years.

I am re-discovering the joy and awe of discovery. There is so much out there that gets left behind when your mind is absorbed, consumed, by a single devouring purpose. I am awakening from that period, and finding that my mental indigestion requires the soothing relief of the new and unexpected.

I love my medications.