PART 4: FLA – NEW JOB – DIAGNOSIS

     When I got to Florida I didn't have much money to drink but I still managed to get loaded once our twice a week.

     Then I began having alternate nights where I could not fall asleep. It was insomnia like I never experienced before. I'd be lucky to sleep one or two hours. The night seemed endless. After a couple of nights like that I wouldn't be able to keep my eyes open after supper for pure exhaustion. Then a night or two later the sleepless cycle would be back.

     I also had continuous trouble with depression. I didn't think of it as an illness. It was just the way I was. I blamed the depressions on loneliness which I'm sure was an active ingredient but probably not the whole recipe. Once while I was dating my now wife, she asked me about my disposition. I answered, “I guess I'm just not a happy person.”

     In the interest of brevity (which has already been surpassed) I'm not going to tell a lot of specific stories of the craziness that transpired in this period. Suffice it to say that drinking and nonsense went on. And the pattern of sleeplessness and depression was a long term fixture. My faith was remembered but not often visited through this time.

     That's not to say that nothing happy happened through this time. There was this pretty girl that would come down to my book store from the beauty salon where she worked. She would look at books and visit with me. Sometimes she brought me cookies.

     I was still back living with my parents after helping them through a tough time. So it was in their home were my first official date with Eileen was sealed on the phone. I think I did something akin to a dance of joy and shouted, “yeah! I've got a date!”

     She got my attention and kept it despite a lot of junk happening with me at the time. The biggest question is why she stuck with me. I was often drunk and antagonistic when we were out together.

     One day I was in the car with my parents and we had to stop at my store for something. It was a Sunday and all the stores in the strip were closed. Hanging on the door was a massive handmade valentine to me from Eileen. How can you not love that.

     My parents loved her. After we were married I learned that my mother had said to her, “I hope you're going to be my daughter-in-law.” This was before I even proposed.

     Eileen has stayed with me through a lot of stuff that I know she didn't bargain for. We've been married over 30 years now. That in itself is much grace.

     I remember a night after we were married. I had gotten a hold of a cheap unsophisticated computer. This was before there even was a Windows.. I was trying to learn a little bit of computer basic. I hadn't typed for years. I began creating silly conversations between me and the computer. I was typing maniacally. I started thinking, my god, look how fast I'm typing. I was amazed! I couldn't stop it. I was fascinated and driven. I had to keep doing it again and again. I was up past 6 in the morning doing it over and over.

     This probably should been a hint about something. But it would still be many years before I understood what that was all about.

     Bear with me a little longer. We are getting there. I promise.

     To cover the next several years in a paragraph: My parents died. We moved to Homosassa. I'm pretty sure I drank less. A lot less. But when I did drink I drank until I was sloppy drunk. I don't even remember exactly when it happened but one day I realized I hadn't had a drink in a very long time and I wasn't particularly interested in starting again. So I didn't. We attended church at what was then the Christian Progression Center until we followed a break away that became Faith Assembly. We had children. Life marched on despite my depressive tendencies. We had accomplished a certain status quo.

     I applied for work at a small electronics factory in Homosassa. It was probably the best job interview I've ever given. I was bold and confident. I knew nothing about electronics but assured my soon to be new boss that I would learn fast. I started on the assembly line and was soon moved to shipping and receiving where we were also responsible for testing the products we built to be marketed by a company out of New Jersey.

     Want to know what we built? I'll give you a hint. “Help I've fallen and I can't get up.” Other companies have since filched that line or come up with close facsimiles but we built the original product.

     In less than a year I was running the shipping department. Before it was done I ran shipping and receiving, the production lines, purchasing and supervised repair techs. I ran the factory part except for engineering. By the way, I still had no clue about electronics but I supervised the people who did. Locally I only answered to one person.

     The bad thing was that I was caught between a local owner and a corporate entity that by contract paid the bills including my paycheck. Nationally I had to answer to an entire corporation full of executives. My tenure depended on both local and corporate being pleased and they didn't always have the same agenda. The job brought with it a certain level of stress in and of itself. When you added the corporate/local dynamic the stress was multiplied.

     Now here's the thing about stress: it has a way of exacerbating certain health issues. Those health issues may have existed for a very long time but remained undiagnosed. They may have been hiding just below the surface awaiting the chance to make a real show of it.

     On the plus side I moved up in the company very quickly. This was probably due at least in part to the same condition that was soon to bring me down.

     Some things had the appearance of being beneficial. I seemed to have the ability to move into new responsibilities with little or no training.

     When the purchaser was fired I moved into his position without even knowing how to read the parts. One of my coworkers helped me to understand that enough to be able to track the all the little resistors, capacitors and so forth.

     The software for tracking the inventory, vendor, cost, etc. was completely alien to me and I was not well versed in using computers at the time. The person I was replacing offered to stay on a few days to get me started. I declined his help. I figured things out and trained myself.

     But the ability to succeed and master new positions on my job was increasingly peppered with depression. In the same day I would excel in one respect while being crushed in another. But I still managed to keep things covered.

     My local boss seldom said anything encouraging to me but one time a mutual friend who had met him at Chamber of Commerce function told me that he spoke extremely highly of me.

     The more time moved on, energetic up behavior started becoming as destructive as the depressions. Things that seemed to make sense in the moment I did them maybe didn't seem to sensible later. A day or two later I'd think, why would I do that. That's just weird.

     Things started coming to a head when I came home from work one day and I couldn't stop crying. I said to Eileen, “I can't do it anymore.” I don't remember if she asked what I couldn't do or what I may have said out loud but inside I meant I can't do anything anymore.

     Never-the-less I continued to get up and take care of business but continued becoming less effective. Unknown to me, while I was doing this, Eileen was making phone calls and finding information. Within a short time she had discovered a place where I could go for free and get “group therapy.” I put group therapy in quotations because technically it was not professional although in practice it was very educated, informed and professionally minded.

     The group was formed and run by a Baptist Pastor, Dr. Jerry Moore. His doctorate was a doctorate in theology but he also had a thorough background in counseling and psychology. Although he didn't have the title himself he had taught differential diagnosis to those who would. After I began with the group he began to see me in private counseling as well. Officially it was under the heading of pastoral counseling but it was of a caliber that lived up to anything I received by any secular professional. He also had working relationships with the local mental health professionals.

     After several sessions he said to me, “I'm beginning to suspect something here but my credentials don't permit me to diagnose, only evaluate. So I'm going to refer you to someone who can diagnose and will probably put you on medication.”

     This is where I heard the words bipolar disorder for the first time. Dr. Moore explained to me that it was new terminology for manic depression. I'd heard of that but didn't really know what it meant. He explained that it was a psychiatric condition characterized by mood swings between two poles, high and low. The highs are called mania. The lows are akin to clinical depression but you cycle in and out of the two extremes.

     When I met with the psychiatrist, she immediately put me on Prozac. Shortly after I went into a period that lasted about a week where I couldn't sit still. Nor could I stick to a single project. I began bouncing back and forth between a number of projects at once. And it didn't matter if I knew what I was doing or not. I installed a back door in our kitchen having no knowledge of how to do it, no instruction and no plan. Fortunately, I finished that project. I left a walkway half finished and I don't remember what else.

     Now here's the thing. Apparently Prozac and other anti-depressant medications can incite mania in someone who is Bipolar. When this was reported to the psychiatrist the diagnosis was sealed. I was put on Lithium in conjunction with Prozac. Since then there have much safer medications that require less intense monitoring than Lithium.

     The diagnosis explained things that went back for years. The ongoing pattern of depressions through most of my life. Remember the maniacal typing all night. Sleepless periods, alternate excelling and crashing. Many bipolars self medicate with drugs or alcohol. Most importantly... now it had a name and a treatment.

     I'd like to say that life became healed and wonderful but the fact is that not everyone responds well to medication. I continued to cycle and do to this day. What happened with medication is that the mania eventually virtually disappeared but depressive cycles continue. Somehow that feels like a bit of rip off. My mania was never off the charts and I could feel good and be productive (sorta). Sometimes mania led to bad choices and ideas that caused problems. One doctor that I had seen over the years told me, “You're actually fortunate that your mania is fairly minimal because that's what gets people in real trouble.” This occurred when he had added dysthymia to my diagnosis. Dysthymia is a chronic low level depression believed to be genetic.

     Bipolar is also believed to be genetic although my psychologist brother believes it was caused by my drug experience. I wonder if you are born predisposed and some life event triggers the presentation.

     Anyhow the psychiatrist believed that dysthymia was helping keep my mania under control.

     Sometime after I began seeing the first psychiatrist I had wondered out in the yard without saying anything. Suddenly Eileen popped through the door with fear in her face. I realized then that in her mind I was essentially on suicide watch.

     You may wonder how disabling depression can really be. I can only tell you this. It eventually progressed to the point in my treatment when my doctors gave me a goal. Get out of bed in the morning and shower. They felt that just that was a realistic goal at the time.