Out of My Mind by Shalom Camenietzki

Author:Shalom Camenietzki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Regina Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Rapid Cycling

People with bipolar disorder are said to be rapid cycling when they experience four or more mood swings in one year. The rapid cycling may be extreme, such as mood swings occurring in a few days, or, very rarely, even on the same day. The latter is nothing but hell on earth, and those experiencing frequent and extreme mood changes report feeling incapacitated and confused about their identity. Once, while hospitalized at the Clarke Institute, I met a patient whose moods swung several times a day. He was not an articulate person, and I asked him numerous questions before I grasped how genuinely infernal his life was. He lived in a small town in northern Ontario and suffered immensely because, wherever he turned, he was called crazy.

Once, while rapid cycling, I became very manic. I began ranting so incoherently that my son Martin, usually a stoic and composed boy, burst out crying. Dr. Mandryk arranged for me to be admitted to the psychiatry ward at Etobicoke General Hospital. My wife drove me there, but on the way I yelled incessantly at her, and since she adamantly refused to drive me back home, I grabbed hold of the steering wheel and the car dangerously veered right and left.

At the hospital, I was given a heavy dose of an antipsychotic that soon quietened my loud ranting; I was relatively calm and lucid the next morning. The unceasing advances in drug therapy made it possible to bring down my overexcited ranting and raving in a matter of days, sometimes within hours.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.