Schizoaffective: Evolution of My Illness by Doering Randal

Author:Doering, Randal [Doering, Randal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

June: dad’s birthday

The answer to the question of what could possibly go wrong came early in June, when my gentle hypomania turned into the nasty, head-on mania that I had feared. My energy went out the roof, and I started buying things. All of a sudden I “realized” I needed a new web site, and I needed to buy more books, and of course summer was imminent, so I needed new shorts and t-shirts. I spent hundreds of dollars I didn’t really have, so I figured what the hell, I’ll put it all on plastic!

My days became a back-and-forth battle between trying to control my spending and finding new things to want. In absolute terms, I was spending small amounts of cash. But in terms of my personal budget, wasting four hundred dollars in a single month was a disaster. My disability income was a lot less than two thousand dollars a month, and here I was chewing through a quarter of my entire income on frivolities. Because of this, I started having bad dreams in which I ran out of money and became homeless.

Anxiety attacks came and went as I wondered how I would ever get back on track financially. Every time I resisted a purchase, the money I saved seemed to burn a hole in my pocket. I just had to have a new business suit, and even more books, some pieces of art to decorate my room, and rich foods to eat. Some of you who are reading these words probably know the crazed spending that comes with mania.

I had an appointment with my shrink, and she asked how my symptoms were. I told her I was having a hard time controlling spending, that I was now in full-on mania.

“I’d say it would be a good idea to try the lithium a little longer,” she said. “It really is effective for many people.”

“I think lithium reduced my symptoms,” I said. “I should be totally out there, but the drug reduced the attack to hypomania for a time. Yes, I want to stick with it for a while and see if it gets control of the affective symptoms.”

So that was what we did.

With the hypomania gone to full mania, the story ideas I had been having dried up. I had lots of energy, but it expressed itself as jumbled thoughts and spikes of pain when my mind was filled with calls for urgent action. One of the worst symptoms was not being able to sleep at night. I woke up every half hour, full of manic energy, and when I could not go back to sleep, I tossed and turned for another half hour. I had not experienced these symptoms in a long time, and I didn’t like them. But what could I do but take the lithium and wait for it to control the illness?

“Why do you exercise every goddamned day ?” Heather snapped, as I went on my morning walk. “It’s not going to make me go away.

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