My Life Living with Bipolar Disorder

you don't know my situation you might think oh hey this girl is really fun she's really great when in reality I'm going down more of a destructive path [Music] logic brain is telling me this will end soon you'll get out of this it's just a cycle and then the emotional side of my brain is like nothing's ever gonna be okay again you're gonna be stuck like this forever this is the rest of your life having bipolar is like white-knuckling every day of your existence the highs can be really great and the lows are always very terrifying during a manic episode the longest time I've gone without sleep was either seven or eight days a lot of fast talking and grandiose feelings like you're a superhero when I was in a very deep depressive state I would just spend a lot of time in bed not feeling like myself it is something that is just so oppressive that you literally can do nothing to shake it I feel bad there's nothing I could do helpless as a parent when I was first diagnosed I wanted to do it without medication it turns out it's very very difficult this is a mood stabilizer antipsychotic and an antidepressant that perfect cocktail of medications that helped keep me stable [Music] my name is Andrea and I live with bipolar type 1 my name is Alistair and I live with bipolar type potato usually I'll roll over when the first alarm goes off take the pills roll back over and go back to sleep run away I try to take them at the same time every day even if I miss like one dose I start getting this is effexor that's the only bipolar medication I take during the day except for anxiety medication the first mood that I take at night is as I approach to an anti-psychotic and mood stabilizer and then this is a just a vitamin D because I'm super vitamin D deficient bipolar is a mental illness and it's characterized by mood swings that can last anywhere from a week to a couple of months if you're bipolar type one you have a lot more highs and mania than you do lows and depression and if you're bipolar type two you generally have more depression than mania personally I have a rapid cycle so I can go from one to the next really quickly it can range from having all the energy in the world to the next day feeling like you can't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom I don't want to be bothered I don't want to hang out with anybody it feels like everything's closing in around you and it's impossible to break out of it I'd say the most frustrating part for me about having bipolar because it is different for everybody has been the medication dance it took years of trial and error to get to a point where I was even somewhat stable you're trying all these different meds and you really have to trust your psychiatrist and you really have to trust in the process you know halfway through it it's very hard to do that because you're not feeling better but you're taking all these pills and you're paying all these co-pays and it feels like it's never gonna end as somebody that's stable like I know that at any time one of these meds could stop working and I'm gonna have to go through all that all over again [Music] this is my planner from 2019 you can see what I was handling at the time I was taking maybe six different classes in addition to being over RC student athlete I was also involved with our campus newspaper and working for a sports team on top of clubs so you can see I was handling a lot one joke I have my friends that there's type-a and then there's type andrea planners for me help keep me stable say if I'm a little more manic it gets all of my racing thoughts out so just that way I can start my workday with a very clear mindset bipolar one is when a person is most likely to have a more manic episode manic episodes manifest differently for different kinds of people for me they tend to have a lot more energy I tend to be more irritable and I would go maybe up to a week without sleeping I tend to feel like I'm still on top of the world but also I was gambling I was over drinking I was spending money that I didn't have left and right that's kind of the dangerous thing about mania is that you're engaging in really dangerous behaviors but you don't recognize them as being dangerous when it comes to balancing the mania and the depression there is definitely this overarching theme of what comes up must come down often it can rather be more of a crash than a smooth fall sophomore year college and my spring semester I hit a major depressive episode I was on our school's rowing team and one february winter practice we were out on the water and came across a dead body that one occurrence triggered a series of panic attacks during workouts and practices that eventually led into a very deep depressive state and a lot of suicidal thoughts that eventually landed me in the psychiatric hospital it was quite honestly very scary they had taken all of my belongings including things that I could have used to hurt myself the doctor prescribed me of antidepressant that is obviously meant to cure depression but in cases of bipolar it actually raises the manic symptoms it's actually a very common thing to have a misdiagnosis before getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder my mood went from zero to like 1,000 and without proper medications I was spiraling out of control [Music] so I think communication is one of the most important parts of recovery Jian is one of the closest people I have in my life and he is the owner of Jackson's automotive he's known that I've been bipolar pretty much since the jump I'm very open about it I don't really hide it from anybody and he was just like okay cool so that's just something that you deal with I get excited to come up here because being around somebody that I know well you know gets it and that doesn't judge me and I count myself very lucky not a lot of people have that kind of outlet I'm gonna bang really loud is that a problem over time I learned how to help him in different ways by just being there and being a good friend and asking what the right thing to do is in the right situations even when he says sometimes like no I'm okay like a couple hours later it's worth checking in again and being like alright you still feeling that like are we still good and then if it seems like it's like tilting in one way you know we got to do something about it or hang out or do something I've dealt with my own anxiety and depression in my lifetime which is nowhere near the level or magnification of what he deals with but it definitely makes me a lot softer to it it's helpful to help other people you know it you feel better at the end of it so as much as I feel like crap if I can help him and then I see he feels better I'm like alright cool and vice versa I feel the same way when we're both having a really tough time we tend to break stuff whether it be breaking hockey pucks against the the wall out there we've flipped trucks we've cut trucks up we've parked trucks on top of cars parked trucks on top of cars that was a fun one it always ends in us being like hey man I'm not feeling great today let's talk about it so it is constructive as much as it is destructive see some of my manic episodes are great cuz I'll buy hockey tickets and then he's just like oh cool [Laughter] I loved her run running has been this huge release for whenever I'm depressive or manic so when I'm depressed I can feel those endorphins immediately improving my mood but when I manic it helps me release all this extra energy that I would otherwise just be sitting with running is just peaceful it's possibly the most peaceful part of my day currently I train with a Track Club based out of Brooklyn I've spent my entire life being an athlete of some sort so when I finished college I missed having that sense of community I love the way sports can bring people together my dad and I will talk a lot about baseball and basketball growing up he was always the one to bring me to different sporting events nothing feels better than when I can just sit back and watch a game and just relax [Music] well usually come here we cook dinner I like to cook together we do cook well watch the hockey games ever-present throughout my life he was a good kid good thing because then I wouldn't had any more if he wasn't but he spoiled me but he was a very good kid I had him when I was very young so it's always been me and him you know hit the first born I guess the first sign of really bad mental illness was when my father passed away it was very sudden there was a car accident it just happened when I was 13 and that's when I started to get like really depressed for the first time I think it was 16 I was having heart palpitations you need to take me to the hospital that might that was like the first time I ever had a panic attack I didn't know about like anxieties and the sonars like he had to tell me I didn't like see it especially growing up with parents that were born during like the Depression years it was shut up and get through it like grandma's shut up and they didn't talk about nothing no everything was new we just put on pull on your bootstraps and you go through it there's obvious signs of you know depression or anxiety throughout the family but nobody ever talked about it I'm the first person that's kind of stood up and said this is what's going on so as far as mental health stigmas go I think we're in a better place than we were a decade ago there's still a lot of room to grow in terms of how people see mental illness they might think of you know the crazy person locked up in an asylum but in reality it's a very real and very common experience if mental health was taken a little bit more seriously in this country or if we had maybe a medicare-for-all type deal it might be a lot easier for people to get help and then you wouldn't have so many people living on the streets because they can't afford their medication you know the worst case is they end up living with a mental illness and they don't have the money or the education or even the support system they need in their mental health journey would you choose to live without it that's a good question honestly I don't think I would change having bipolar disorder it's hard to say I would pick to live with an illness over not living with an illness but retrospectively it's part of what makes me me and it's something that I identify with now while it's terrifying to even think that tomorrow maybe my antipsychotic stops working and I need to go on another med merry-go-round at the same time I don't think I would give that up because it's an integral part of who I am and I don't think I would want to be anybody different at this point [Music] you

Channel: VICE

Views: 2,325,545

Keywords: mental health, mental health awareness, vice, documentary, videos, interview, vice videos, documentaries, docs, bipolar symptoms, manic depression, mood swings, mood stabilizers, bipolar depression symptoms, bipolar 1, psychological disorders, mental disorder, bipolar disorder, menal illness, depression, bipolar ii disorder, mental health nursing, out of darkness, bipolar depression, mental health hotline, mental health ted talk, mental health documentary, mental health month

Id: vcCBacPWLrc

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020