Got shoulder and lower neck pain. Must be due to a cramped position at my office desk. Thing is, it just builds up slowly, then... argh.
posted by Miguel @ 6:19 PM
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I have previously posted this on my main site, but it got wiped out in a revamp. I remembered it when I read about the 100 cups of coffee in 48 hours post. Don't try that guys, it might do you in! Like me.
Depression is usually misunderstood in this country, and its sister, bipolar disorder, even more so. Instead of introducing it by definition, which can be done on the web, I will define it by example. I will define it through my life.
Hi, I'm AC. I'm a 28-year old male IT professional based in Metro Manila. Since my college days, I have been a workaholic, a perfectionist obsessed in driving myself better and better, never mind the cost. I started my career by helping build up an IT company from almost nothing, to one of the leading firms in its sector. Since I had a messianic complex, to save the world by being the greatest, I punished myself from 1995 to 1998 with twelve to sixteen-hour workdays, six to seven days a week. Sleep-overs at the office were a common affair.
As I was to realize later, this pushed me further and further to the brink of snapping. While the average person would feel the burn out from this torture, my own brain was frying undetected. This, because I was enjoying it and thought it was getting better and better.
The fires burning in me hit their peak in February 1998. I was involved in organizing an international IT conference, and I was very excited about it. Many great things were happening, and I felt strongly about them. It was a week long, and I did not sleep the whole time we were in that Makati hotel. Being high and excited kept me up.
I was becoming weird, and everyone knew except me. I was annoying people in the conference, and was shouting out my high-tech ideas for everyone to hear. To update my parents, I called them up and stayed on the phone for three hours. My head was spinning in overdrive and ideas were pouring in uncontrollably.
Towards the end of the week, I was hallucinating. A voice was whispering to me, telling me the great things I had to do. Since these were great things, I was not afraid. I became very confident with people. I met up with a cute girl from another country who was exhibiting at the event, and we walked around Glorietta. Let's call her "L." In my altered state, it was love at first sight, though nothing further happened between us that day.
My sense of touch fell to the hallucinations when I felt that I was shot in the heart, but I was still alive. This fed into my messianic complex. Later would I find out that these exaggerated senses came about because of the blur between my subconscious and my perceived reality.
When the event was over, a coworker took me home. Some others took care of packing up my things. I could not tell my parents how I got home. I was just raving about my experience, talking non-stop. My face was flushed red and burning because of the exertion. I was treating the experience as if I were an incarnation of God, a techie Jesus Christ. I was fighting with family members because I thought I was the only one right and that they could no longer relate to and understand me. After three days, I passed out. The psychiatrist contacted by my parents supplied something I could take so that I could finally be taken out of the house.
I could now be brought to a major hospital. When I came to, I was confined in a private room. The room was all bare, there was nothing to see. My mind was burning because it wanted something to chew on - it could not stand seeing nothing. I called the place "Langley," as in "Langley, Virginia," or CIA headquarters, since I believed that I was being held hostage. I believed I have evolved to a higher life form, that my brain had expanded since it had accelerated. Since my sense of touch was amplified, the needle stuck into me for dextrose and medicines was like a knife stabbing into my arm. Still, I was raving and uncontrollable, and wanted to walk out of that room. Fortunately, I was tricked into entering the psychiatric ward, or "the basement." Told that my brain was going to be scanned, I cooperated since I wanted to prove that I was now a superior being.
My entry into the basement was welcomed by its denizens, men and women from teen age to old age, suffering from different psychiatric ailments. My excited mind was slowly being calmed by nerve-numbing drugs, but I still started out hyper. While the depressed among us had no trouble sleeping the whole day, my first few days were marked by sleepless nights. To pass the time, my superior self was talking with and "counseling" the other depressed folks. While my delirious self was a sight to fear for some superstitious patients, I still managed to pick up some friends. In my strange dreams, I was thinking of "L" and how life was meant for me in her home country, in the context of my secret life as a superior person with an unbelievable mission.
I spent two weeks in the basement until I was deemed well enough to stay home. Life at home was boring, since I was not allowed to use the computer and the phone. A complication came up - I was allergic to one of the anti-psychotic drugs which was stopping me from going wild. These drugs numbed by brain, keeping me from thinking creatively. Since I was taken off it, my flip side started coming back. I took a trip to Los Banos with my mom and her cousin, an artist. I was talking about the weirdest things, as if I had ESP and could tell the true reality and the future. Back home, I was thinking of my grand schemes again and was "recruiting" friends to join me. Naturally, this did shape their opinion toward me! I was getting weird again, but I did volunteer to return to the basement.
When I got back, I was getting excitable again. I was drinking water and "baptizing" people by spurting it back on them. I resisted upon being restrained, so I was banished to the isolation room. This is a padded cell whose door could easily be opened by the outside, but not from the inside. Confinement here drove me to think that my secret mission was being affected, so I had to get out. I started to take apart the air conditioner, to use it to pry open the door. To gain attention, I did something... I'd rather not mention here.
The reaction was that the basement crew had to tie me to the bed in a cloth straitjacket. I lay there, staring at the ceiling and dreaming, with a song playing in my head over and over again. I figured a way out. I would lie down on the side of the bed so that my full weight would rest on the cloth strips, which would eventually tear. I would alternate that with lying on the bed, or flipping over to the other side, to stress the cloth. I never did finish that scheme, and had to spend life in there until the doctor figured out what combination of drugs would tone down my psychosis.
I spent the rest of my second two weeks in the basement in a stupor. The mind numbing drugs made me feel like a zombie, and it would take months until I would be truly myself again.
The threat of going psychotic and back to the basement is still there until today, if I don't take care. I voluntarily returned for a week in June 1999, since I had another event that kept me up and hyper for three days. I don't drink much alcohol since it can react with the stuff I take until now, and I don't dare try drugs since who knows what would happen. I did visit "L" in her home country, when I went there for business; needless to say the magic was gone.
Being bipolar means swinging between high and low, and I do get my lows. These are few and far between, though, and are often triggered my incidents of disappointment or frustration. I am "more high" than the average person, and it shows in my being talkative and imaginative. Whenever I feel that my life is ordinary and uninteresting, I remember that the events and experiences I describe here more than make up for it.
posted by Miguel @ 9:09 PM
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Hearing loss is pain, too! It's not too bad that I have a tinnitus problem - at least it prevents me from wearing earbud earphones, shown to damage hearing, before I suffer any damage.
posted by Miguel @ 9:06 PM
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