My Bipolar Perspectives of a Unipolar World by Stuart Sanderson.

A Collection of Perceptions and Opinions From the Point of View of a Person With Mental Illness.

“Wake Up!”

You are part of a generation that relies on social media for interaction rather than actual physical interaction. You watch a TV that in essence actually watches you. Butting into your life and thrusting fantasy lifestyles, conglomerates products down your throat, fear via the media and secure your insecurities for yourself. You have become afraid of being left behind and you can’t settle for what you have.

The virtual insanity of the situation is utterly depressing. You have become hypnotised in belief that nature is not normal and growing old is sacrilege. Botox, tummy tucks, liposuction, face lifts, anti-wrinkle cream, spandex pants, hair transplants, veneers, boob jobs, lip fillers, fad diets, PT sessions, false this and false that. When you come to realise that you have the most beautiful asset from the day you were born. A smile.

You have abandoned it and you can’t see it may never return. You are slowly having your god given rights eroded each day. You are not allowed to be content with your life.

To be content is bad for business you see.

Do you believe what you see or do you see what you believe?

Chapter 1

Deceit, drama, dictatorship, deception, disease, death, doom, disorder and dilemma.

I didn’t choose my lifestyle. I was born and raised as society dictates. Parents can’t decide what they want for their kids because they’re under the regime too. They probably won’t have ever thought about living self sufficient and raising their children by the way of the land. The family home, mortgage, 2.4 children, debt, 3-piece suite on higher purchase, living next door to someone you don’t like and taxes on just about everything. Education systems with impossible timetables to find a job to fit in with half-terms and a 9-3 term day. Expensive uniforms on a conveyor belt of kids being fed pointless information then pressured at 16 to pass an exam they’re told will define their life by the teachers they have become convinced know everything. The reality is that the exam is just an exercise to categorise and measure the best ones at regurgitating the information that only want them to know and filter out the others so they don’t go to college or uni at the government’s expense. I guess the ones that perform badly are in fact the intelligent ones as they haven’t fallen for the bullshit. That is how I see it. I got 5 C’s at GCSE. Enough to get into College. I sat down at enrolment and was asked what I wanted to be. In the pub was the true answer, 3.30 pm on a Thursday at 16 nearly 17 with the atypical night out at Heaven and Hell upcoming. A pathologist I replied. I was told I had no possibility of achieving that due to my GCSE grades. I was confused. I asked him if I was to pass these A-levels and then go to Uni, I may not be able to study as a doctor but I could get a degree in biology or chemistry and then on to a PhD, will my GCSEs hold me back? Maybe it’ll take a little longer but it doesn’t mean that I can’t get to where I wanted to go. With this in mind I did get the degree but I didn’t progress with it any further as things change, but I could have done it. There’s a multitude of options available for people who both do well and also don’t do so well as long as they have the desire and are encouraged. Knowledge is power I guess and don’t give them too much or they might surpass you. Why isn’t how to do a tax return taught in school? It’s maths? I know my peers would have found it more useful than trigonometry. You’re schooled from 4-16 in certain subjects, learning certain aspects of each subject. No chance to question. Do you think that any country in the world would teach the history of their country in schools and show their history tarnished and how terrible they were? In England, we are led to believe that we are a role model for the rest of the world. Only as I grew older I realised what we did to Native American and to the people of the Republic of Ireland to name but 2.

You’re told how to live your life. Drilled in to you that you have to sleep at night and eat at set times, regardless if you’re tired or hungry. You can’t travel to this country or that country without x, y or z because you’re from your country. A country you didn’t choose. A country that was created by an invisible boundary, to make visible the dividing line of segregation and classification evident in every aspect of life today. Countries don’t exist, only in the atlas’s and on the maps of the world are they significant.

I wish I was invisible.

I’m now waking up to the constraints on my life and how I am still in their grasp. Working certain hours, even when I have to drag myself into the office, you need to work as you can’t survive on SSP. I have a mental illness that has been diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Given it a name. The body won’t recognise it because of the name. The name is a way of making the issue subjective and separate. I’m asked how I am feeling and coping with it. The language I have is limited to the words that have been created to describe something. There are no words in my language that can truly explain what I am going through. How do I explain how I feel?

These rules we live by were made by the previous generations of people who had the power. Tyrants who were hell bent on control. Their blueprint continues to the present day with no ultimate purpose or direction. They are able to do as they see fit and make it up as they go along. The country I live in has been a contradiction of its intent and it’s actions in dealing with the Covid virus. Blundering lockdowns that weren’t enough and complete ineptitude and shambolic performances by a group of people who are meant to be the best we have. You can’t tell what is satire and what isn’t anymore. You can’t question them or live outside of their ideology. There’s labels of socialists, facists, Marxist, communists but it’s all fundamentally the same just dressed up in different clothes. The media feeds mass hysteria into every household on a daily basis that is putting the fear of god in to the population. If you ignored it and looked out the window or went for a walk and interacted with people, saw things for yourself, unplugged yourself from Facebook and Instagram and tuned into reality, you could uncover that there’s an entirely different world and way of life just waiting to be enjoyed.

Is it any wonder aliens have never landed here?

Chapter 2

Imagine a World Without Constraints

Have you ever stopped at pondered that everything you are thinking about and your thoughts are actually somebody else’s? Based on the ideas of others that have thrust their labels, numerology and regimes into our lives? The language we use. The illusion of time. Is there anything you can do that is truly exclusive? What is an original thought that you can have? Is it possible to have one?

The illusion of time creates a detachment from reality. Preoccupied by a causative past and absorbed into a prominent future. Neither of them exist as only the present exists. Do now what you need to and get on with it. I’d abolish seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, clocks and watches. There’s no need for them. If a week is in a cycle then it will rotate and have no end. A continuous motion. Animals have survived as long as us without it. It puts pressure on you too. Age is a constraint and if you hit 70/80 you worry about what day is your last purely because others died about your age. Workforce’s would prosper too. No restraint on deadlines. Get the work done, it’s finished when it’s finished. Maybe this is why the Egyptians and Mayan empires built their pyramids, just got on with it and finished when they finished

Uncharted territory and lands were explored by wealthy countries in years gone by. Countries made up with people either intrigued to explore and learn, coexist with their surroundings or possibly they were simply not satisfied with their own domain and wanted more. Boundaries weren’t established and Countries named prior to man being on Earth. We created a segregation. Jostling for power. Would there be wars if there was no differentiation between one another and we were all one nationality? Why can’t we just live on Earth and be the Humans of the Human Race so we might get to that finish line in first place?

Wars have happened throughout history. The purpose of war is peace. Peace is seldom found though. Are we doing it wrong? The Romans, Vikings, Normans, Saxons, Huns, Civil wars in both England & America, the Jacobite rebellion and the last battle on British soil at Culloden Moor on 16th April 1746 and the subsequent highland clearances so Scotland wouldn’t question England’s rule of them again. Spanish civil war, two world wars only last century and far too many more to mention. Alas, the threat of further wars still remain. A constant cycle of conflicts, conquests and control. So far it seems war doesn’t work. You’ll never have peace as long as you have segregation and constraints. Parameters on what you are allowed to do is a paralysis of your evolution.

Chapter 3

Propaganda, false prophets, purposelessness and parliamentary Pinocchios

So we are on the home straight now and finally about to conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic. In the UK anyway. I’m not going to start a debate about the why’s and what’s and how’s. What is done is done and that’s that. The only point I will raise however is that the information that has been fed to the Great British public left me scratching my head. The vaccine used was apparently a newly discovered method of defence against viruses.

The time it took to get the vaccine and then say it’s a new mechanism of defence when it’s actually being taught in universities for at least the last 20 years is disgusting.

I’ve had both jabs now. As a 38 year old male with no history of physiological illness and consistently exemplary blood test results, I was in the high risk group. I was told that I was a high risk for COVID-19 due to my underlying medical condition. I have Bipolar Disorder. I’m still struggling to fathom out the way a mental illness is the reason. The medication that I have to take is the reason for it by the way.

So, I look it as a person who has at SMI (Severe Mental Illness), Bipolar or Schizophrenia, and are prescribed antipsychotics or anticonvulsants, have their immune system compromised by it. Now, this wasn’t explained to me and I guess others also found that it was forgotten to be mentioned by the psychiatrist? I have brought the question up and it is simply answered by ‘but you have the vaccine now and you were a priority for it. You have been stable on the medication and no episodes so it’s positive for you at the moment. You have to think about it and would you like to be experiencing what you were or how you are now?’

Why do I just say that you are right Dr. Thanks. Really I should be saying it shouldn’t be a choice and you don’t have any right to say that it is a positive just because I have fitted in to your tick box questionnaire.

The pharmaceutical industry is all about greed, money and profits. Seems everyone is going to have the Vaccine. That non-compulsory vaccine everybody has to have. If you don’t have it then you can’t go on holiday etc. Socialism: Ideas so good they have to be mandatory.

The propaganda is that strong in the UK, that people believe what they want rather than what they see. The Country were an Instagram post is more influential than lessons in the classroom.

Now, on to the leaders of our respective countries. Are they really the best we have? I’m going to leave it at that!

I have found the works of Alan Watts highly intriguing. Why aren’t his philosophies taught in Schools?

The purposelessness of being alive is the key for happiness in my opinion;

You pick up a pebble on the beach: look at it, beautiful, don’t try to get a sermon out of it. Sermons-in-stones and God-in-everything be damned – just enjoy it! Do not feel that you have got to salve your conscience by saying that this is for the advancement of your aesthetic understanding. Enjoy the pebble. If you do that, you become healthy. You become able to be a loving, helpful human being. But if you can’t do that, if you can only do things because they’re somehow, you are going to get something out of it, you are a vulture.

So, we have to learn, you don’t have, you know, you don’t have to do anything, but it is a great idea, it is a great thing if you can learn what the Chinese call “purposelessness.” They think nature is purposeless. When we say something is purposeless, it is a put-down. There is no future in it, it is a washout. When they hear the word purposeless they think that’s just great. It is like the waves washing against the shore, going on and on, forever, with no meaning.

It’s like if you go out for a walk with a destination in mind, then your outbound journey is fixed on that destination and you are focusing on that. Imagine if you’re just walking with no destination or reason for it other than walking. You have no purpose for the walking so that it is purposeless. You will find that you are at your most beautifully engaged with your own unique being and your at one with everything around you by the purposelessness of your actions.

Now on to the people who lie more than weather reporters.

Politicians.

I have come up with an idea. Connect all these politicians who address the public, to a lie detector for the duration of their speeches.

I’m not sure what the hell is going on with the World at the moment. It’s been a weird decade so far. I do have to admit I suspect that there is an ulterior motive for the occurrences so far that plainly don’t add up. Materialism is the new Communism it seems and the pen drive is definitely mightier than the sword. I’m just glad I’m the age I am as I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up now in the virtual insanity of life on Earth.

Chapter 4

What do You Desire?

As I sit here with a million and one thoughts rushing about my mind, akin to my understanding of what the chaos theory must be like, I wondered if this might be my actual clarity. You can be searching for the solution to something that doesn’t need a conclusion. You are free to accept or refuse any advice given to you. What questions you have are as unique as you are. Therefore, they have a unique answer.

How do we know that the way we should be thinking is irrational? Because it’s different from the next person? Because someone who has regurgitate a text book in an exam, is now an expert on what you are experiencing with your own thoughts? We are bound by our language to speak our minds. I’m still waiting to uncover the words in the English language that accurately describe how I feel at times.

Then there’s the paradoxes from an early age we encounter to make sure we are looking up to the people who are teaching us all these wonderful new things, the history of our proud Country and it’s leaders. We are told in school by the same people to try harder! How do you try harder? Listen carefully they say. Isn’t simply listening sufficient?

I’m not you and your not me. We’re individually unique yet fundamentally identical. We can think about anything we want and no one else will ever know what it is, yet we have the ability to communicate with others telling them what we want them to know. We can cherry pick what information we see as desirable, and can share it to portray ourselves as we wish to others.

I’m not any better than you. I’m no more wiser than you are either. I’m no more intelligent than you are. I’m neither a better person than you. My opinions about things are no more important than yours. I’m in actual fact, offering far worse advice on things due to the fact I have been a far worse person than you ever have.

Let me explain. See if you’re in a long distance running race and you’re last. You can see the entire field of competitors battling it out. Who is poised for the next move, being cautious. Who is struggling with the pace. When you have got to the front of the field and are leading the way, you can say how you did it. With our own unique traits, we can choose if we want to do this or if not. Free to say our piece and we can decide on the method we use to do it. I don’t like to preach my opinions and force them on others so I try not to give up my thoughts on a topic in conversation unless prompted. I can tell if I have to tailor my answers to benefit the situation or if it is easier to do, I’ll just say I don’t have an opinion about it.

We have a select group of people around us who are all we need. It’s called “The Snow White Syndrome”. She had 7 dwarfs, we have 7 people. I bet now that if you count the most important people in your life, the inner circle, the real ones that care, you will name 7 people. I do. These are the ones that you take heed of. Listen to and talk with. Understand.

Since my diagnosis with Bipolar Disorder, my eyes have been opened up to a completely different World. We have to understand that if you have any illness, naming it doesn’t mean that we are going to get better. The body won’t recognise it because of a name. We just make it subjective and separate it from ourselves. Easier to then diagnose and categorise. Medicate and prescribe for it and then off we go. Every time I go to the Pharmacy (frequently) there’s a queue out the door. We are a nation of junkies. Legal drug addicts with prescribed remedies not cures. Remember, a cured patient is nowadays a lost customer to the Pharmaceutical Industry!

We are being watched 24/7 too. GPS in phones with their cameras which are also in our computers and laptops. Alexa in your home only joining the conversation when you say Alexa? Evidently she must be listening to hear when she is required! Logging in to public places to access the WI-FI by registering your email and phone number. Apple-pay so you can pay for things that you don’t want to impress people you don’t like with your watch and then answer a phone call on it. An apple a day keeps the doctor away will be a reality soon with iDoctor from Apple. Plug yourself into your iMac from the chip in your wrist you have had implanted and you’re sorted. We are attached already to the social media platforms for gratification and the need to share information with the World that we shouldn’t or need to. I have had accounts, I no longer do. Granted there’s benefits for their use but they have simply become a popularity contest and a way of showing off when all that glistens isn’t really gold! (Asking if anyone has the phone number for somewhere when you’re on the internet already?!?!).

We have a great need for acceptance. When we see something, we have an option of liking what we see or not liking what we see. We base our behaviour towards what we like. Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We notice only what we think noteworthy, and therefore our vision is highly selective. Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. We choose our friends and partners. We are not chained to anyone so if we aren’t happy, walk away. I’m lucky to have been born in England and I have had the ability to choose if I wanted further education, my vocation, what clothes I wear, music I listen to, where I live, what I spend my money on and how I live my life is pretty much my choice if you take 5 minutes to look at it. I can choose not to work and receive state benefits which entitles you to free dental care, prescriptions, eye tests, numerous child care exemptions and a guaranteed fortnightly payment which also covers all the National Insurance for your Pension.

We can be judgemental about the people who are doing this. What gives us the right to comment on it though? Do we think we are better than them? Does it mean that having 4 bedrooms in a detached house with an interest only mortgage, financed Mercedes or BMW on the drive and some other guys name on your underwear makes you superior? Buying things that you don’t need to impress the people you don’t like. The things that you own end up owning you.

However, we have this notion of being totally infatuated by the causative past and prominent future of our lives. We have to be in work till this age, withdraw your pension at that age. It’s not reality, it’s a fallacy. We are therefore detached from ourselves and from reality. The reality facing me at the moment is that I have to tackle the problem of explaining to my parents who are in their late 70’s, what Bipolar is and why I’m seeing the Psychiatrist for what I am experiencing currently, which is the early onset of Psychosis.

We’ve had the Stone Age, Iron Age etc. We’re now in the Offended Age. No matter what you say, somebody somewhere is offended. Why? If you don’t like it, move on. You’re offended because you chose to be offended.

We need 3 fundamental components to survive, oxygen, water and trees to recycle the Carbon Dioxide. Yet we’re destroying all of these slowly. Pollution of the seas and atmosphere and destruction of the rainforests. Attacking ourselves from all sides. We pay more attention to the satire of Love Island or Instagram posts than what is happening on our planet. Petrified of falling behind in the Rat Race.

It’s ironic how it is called that, the ‘Rat Race’. Rats have zero respect for authority and they observe no regard to any rules. They also have sex about 50 times a day! Now that is the kind of Rat Race I’m interested in!

Remember, before you speak, think about your words being true, necessary and kind. Of course you don’t have to do anything. Especially anything that I have said. You have the choice to be a different person from the one you were 30 seconds ago.

Finally, I will leave you with this. Imagine if the Big Bang is still expanding out? Everything that is in the galaxy, was originally part of that same spark? We are all one of the same and there is no separation. Trees, water, oxygen and humans aren’t separate entities. This is why they rely on each other to survive, just like the organs of our bodies, they are simply working in tandem. Thusly, we need to abandon the notion of birth and death. No stop and start. Without a beginning or end. We are part of the same universe. Universal. When we look at the stars in the sky, we are looking at ourselves. We are part of the continuing cosmos. Expanding. Infinite. Remember that the first rule of science is that energy can not be created or destroyed, only transferred.

Chapter 5

Bipolar: Me, Myself and I

Many people have had their opinions on my mental illnesses. Match making their assumptions to certain things I’ve done in the past, my behaviours and actions, my persona, my decision making and the obsession to listen to the whispers from those claiming that they have the exclusive story on my life, to the easy answer. From this basis they feel that they have the right to become judge, jury and executioner. The complexity and depth of knowledge an individual requires to be such, arguably still hasn’t been reached.

There’s no explanation for the cause of Bipolar Disorder. There’s 3 theories that are the most common in cases which are used as a benchmark but these aren’t set in stone. It’s currently classified as a lifelong affliction by the medical profession. The medication that is prescribed isn’t a cure either, only a remedy. There is no cure. The medication I have, Depakote (Sodium Valproate) is an anticonvulsant that slows down the neurones in the brain. It is potent, as it needs to be, and makes me docile. Things are harder. Concentration, memory, cognitive function, muscle spasms and weight gain. It also increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

The medication used for Bipolar and Schizophrenia patients are reported to shorten the life expectancy of the individual by 9-20years and 10-20 years respectively. More than smoking 40 cigarettes a day. So If you’re going to the effort of being interested and intrigued with a person and their circumstance, maybe save yourself sometime and get the full picture by actually asking the person.

I’m the first to admit that in the past I abused drink and drugs (cocaine) to cope. People put my consumption down to the cause of my mental illness. Bipolar Disorder is not caused by drug abuse. Substance abuse unfortunately goes hand in hand with Bipolar Disorder. The fact cocaine was used as an antidepressant not to long ago shows it has some positive effects. People say that I will have the come down and it’s dangerous. They never step back to realise the medication that I take daily is working on the same principle. That I have to feed my addiction so to speak. I’m a legal drug addict. If I didn’t have my daily dose, not only would it be the bipolar but also the withdrawal from antidepressants and antipsychotics or anticonvulsants.

The stark reality is that it’s far from romantic or desirable to be living with a mental illness. Everything that I was doing was a response to the pain and suffering I was going through. My responses may not have been the most productive or proactive nor positive but I have since learnt from them. My purpose on this Earth is not to make you understand my journey, I’m here to be on that journey.

But some people are always happy to give their understanding and not so keen on hearing mine. People who don’t really know me or haven’t seen me for a while, comment when they find out I have bipolar disorder, that they would have never known. I often wonder why that is? Do you have to act a certain way in front of people? Are you supposed to strip naked and climb up a building then hide in your bedroom for 3 days? Do these people understand that people with illnesses are given medication? Bipolar Disorder sufferers are no different.

Another fantastic comment that you hear is “but so-and-so is bipolar and they don’t do that. They can do this etc etc etc”. No two people are the same. Simple as that.

Some days I have a irritability for everything. Be it a tree in a garden, a bird in the sky or a programme on the TV. No reason why. The medication will possibly be increased to the maximum dose (2,000mg) per day because of this. I’m fine with that. The fear I have is that I have found myself to have a different thought process when I’m irritable and It is a new experience for me. I’m not saying I’m going to do anything reckless but then again I’m not sure what I am going to do. Irritability can lead to lashing out and that’s my concern.

Does anyone think less of me because I have Bipolar Disorder? The common perception is that it is linked to‘crazy people’ or ‘maniacs’. Well to anyone who does, I’ll leave you with the words of Alan Watts;

“No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.”

“You don’t get it unless you’ve got it”. If you have a mental illness, you can find it extremely difficult to explain how you feel and what you’re going through to people who don’t suffer.

This is my explanation of what Bipolar is to me and how it effects me, day in, day out.

Bipolar disorder is a Severe Mental Illness (SMI) that affects your moods, which can swing from 1 extreme to another. It used to be known as manic depression.

People with bipolar disorder have episodes of:

• Depression – feeling very low and lethargic

• Mania – feeling very high and overactive

I have a form of Bipolar called Rapid Cycle Bipolar Disorder. This is where a person with bipolar disorder repeatedly swings from a high to a low phase quickly without having a “normal” period in between.

People think depression is sadness. People think depression is crying.

Depression

People think depression is dressing in black.

People are wrong.

For me, it’s an detachment from that everything you are.

Depression is the constant feeling of being numb.

Being numb to emotions, being numb to lie.

You wake up in the morning just to go back to bed again.

Days aren’t really days; they are just annoying obstacles that need to be faced. And how do you face them?

Through medication?

Through drinking?

Through smoking?

Through drugs?

Through cutting?

When you’re depressed, you grasp on to anything that can get through the day.

That’s what depression is for me, not sadness or tears, as you’re not feeling sad or upset.

Plain and simply it’s the overwhelming sense of numbness.

The numbness and the desire for anything that can help you make it from one day to the next.

This is what depression is to me.

Mania

The mania part of Bipolar is utter chaos. One positive with mania is that I’m so enthused by everything. I’m at my most creative during this phase, so l’m writing stuff down, making plans, playing the guitar and really upbeat. I engage with everyone, acting as though I don’t have a care in the World.

Waking up in the morning refreshed regardless if I had 1 hour or 8 hours kip the night before. I don’t really need that much sleep in this phase I’ve found. I’ve gone 11 days before with no REM sleep. Your body adapts and there is no obligation to sleep 10pm till 6am. You sleep when you’re tired.

I’m extroverted to the point that I’m all over the place, interrupting some conversations. I’ve been told to shut up as I switch topics so quickly that it’s hard for others to keep up with me. Sometimes I can’t keep up with myself!

Unfortunately this goes hand in hand with exuberance and reckless behaviour in the sense that I don’t stop and think about the necessity of the situation. I bought last years Christmas presents in April for everyone

People can mistake this behaviour for me being under the influence of drugs. But I’m not. I’m the first to admit that in the past I’ve been in Class A for entire weekends. The comments abound with some are that I still am. It’s the drugs that caused my mental illness. Even remarks that I don’t have bipolar, I’m just a Coke head.

Medication, street drugs or alcohol can’t cause you to develop bipolar disorder, but they can cause you to display some behaviour similar to both mania and depression. It can often be difficult for people to distinguish the effects of alcohol and drugs from your mental illness symptoms.

I can assure you that the manic phase of Bipolar is nothing like the high I’ve ever experienced before from any drug. No drug has come close to anything like it. Also, a comedown from drugs is that far from the feeling and angst of the depression, you wouldn’t believe. The thing is that these are the closest things to explain the situation with someone so they can relate.

There simply aren’t the words in the English language that can accurately describe how living with Bipolar truly is.

Chapter 6

Clarity

Our thoughts and words are conventions. It is dangerous to take conventions too seriously, because a convention is just a social convenience, for example, money. It’s absurd to take money too seriously and confuse it with real wealth. In the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are “coins” for real things. If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.

When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was. I have realised that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.

You see, for all life is an act of faith and an act of gamble. The moment you take a step, you do so on an act of faith because you don’t really know that the floor’s not going to give under your feet. The moment you take a journey, what an act of faith. The moment that you enter into any kind of human undertaking in relationship, what an act of faith.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way. Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself. Where there is to be creative action, it is quite beside the point to discuss what we should or should not do in order to be right or good. A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good, in conducting relations with other people so as to live up to a rule. Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence. Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are ‘itself.’ It acts, not according to the rules, but according to the circumstances of the moment, and the ‘well’ it wishes to others is not security but liberty.

Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say “Well, that was pretty great.” But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say “Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?” And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream … where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.

Another real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the “I” out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realisation that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate “I” or mind can be found.

Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Once again, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I”.

Chapter 7

Psychotherapy or Pseudoscience?

I’m not against attending this but I have my concerns about it. After my appointment with the Early Intervention Team, I felt they were of the persuasion that the events of 2013 were the instigator of my issues. Break up with my fiancé, redundancy and then losing a close friend. The only issue is the latter and the interactions between us we had over the last 6 weeks of his life is testament my character.

I wasn’t so long ago hell bent and succeeded with the chasing the 2.4 children, in my hometown (now I am just going to have say something here, the people who I know, the potential of the town and it’s soul is no longer evident. Before you snowflakes brand me something or other. Be honest enough to yourself and take the one hour or so that you will spend insinuating I’m racist/facist,prejudice etc (knobhhead i can live with) even though I don’t think that it’s a topic I raised ), go on a day’s visit to spend the time in the lovely town Centre of Rochdale in Greater Manchester. Busily compile your own unique thoughts. Speak to the multi cultural populous for their input. Any questions about anything you want. You can never understand or comment on me or my journey when you haven’t been in my shoes or walked my path.

I confide in someone that I have confidence in. I don’t have confidence for you (Psychotherapist) as you sit there looking attentive but obligated to bring your sorry ass down here for £30k a year?!?!?

I’m not being obstructive. I just don’t have to listen to you telling me what I know.

Let’s talk about why SSRIs like Sertraline are ineffective for me yet, Mirtazapine (TCA or NaSSa) work wonders with their opposite modes of action?

Is Depakote the best mood stabiliser?

This was only prescribed for me as I had 3 Tonic Colic seizures awaiting Psychiatrist appointment so I’m completely aware of the thinking behind .

Lithium is the primary medication prescribed and only Valproate is prescribed for Bipolar when the Lithium is not responding. Maybe I’m becoming more erratic as shit needs sorting pronto.

Takes this analogy though;

• Bipolar Disorder is a wild animal

• You experience the adrenaline rush of the chase/hunt and reap the rewards

• You can have depression yet you have a capacity to still go to meet mania of the adrenaline rush

• Over time the rush is now just a crushing blow

• You try to Satisfy your appetite with sex, new things to keep relevant

• Sex fades, you’re not going in the direction you desire

• You have become old. Lions age and they can’t do anything that they once wanted to.

• Is Psychosis and bipolar degenerate?

Epilogue

Don’t Look Back in Anger

Some might say they don’t believe in heaven. Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell. Take the time to make some sense of what you want to say and cast your words away upon the waves. Bound with all the weight of all the words you tried to say. Chained to all the places that you never wished to stay. Maybe you will never be all the things that you wanna be. Now is not the time to cry. Now’s the time to find out why. All this confusion. Nothing’s the same to you. But I can’t tell you the way you feel. You need to be yourself, you can’t be no one else. You could wait for a lifetime, to spend your days in the sunshine. You might as well do the white line. Cos when it comes on top . . .You gotta make it happen! I don’t know, I don’t care. All I know is you can take me there. So what would you say if I said to you, It’s not in what you say it’s in what you do. You point the finger at me but I don’t believe. It’s better people love one another. ‘Cause livin’ your life can be tough! True perfection has to be imperfect.