I’M BIPOLAR . . . and you’re not

I hope.

The bipolar tornado sucked me into its vortex and tumbled me into a desolate, rubble-strewn landscape that I still do not understand. There was, is, no roadmap through this mental maze. There was no way out of Dodge.

My purpose is to give, at age 71, my personal experience with bipolar disorder, to promote understanding of the disease and tolerance and support of those who have it. I also want to encourage support for pending federal legislation that would put insurance for mental illness on par with “ordinary” health insurance.

There are 5.7 million bipolars in America — about two in every one hundred people that you meet. About 20 percent, or 114,000, will commit suicide. Bipolars lose much of their lives because they function poorly or not at all, and bipolars die 9.2 years on average earlier than their contemporaries. But I have no intention to give up a fraction of that number. By one estimate, America’s 5.7 million bioplars “lose” each year a total of 1.5 million days of productive time, a huge loss to society

Bipolar disorder is genetic. You’re going to get it or you’re not. The National Institutes of Health say that two-thirds of people with the disorder will have one close relative who has the illness.

• What it is

Simply put, bipolars experience wide mood swings from manic or hypo manic (just below manic) highs, move down through a “normal” middle ground and plummet into severe clinical depressions. The cycles are repeated over and over.

For me, a depression is like swimming through molasses with your eyes open and gasping for air through a soda straw. Deep depressives, myself included, lose energy, feel little self-worth, see no future, and have suicidal thoughts. They isolate themselves from people and society.

Bipolar first clobbered me when I was a sophomore in college. My class rank fell almost 30 points. I isolated myself in my room, stopped making friends, and dropped out of all activities save music. I lost the ability to play the trumpet well, a major love and prop in my life.

No one knew what bipolar illness was. I recovered naturally and without treatment, and did very well in graduate school. Then the cycles started all over again, totaling 20 over my lifetime.

On the way up and down, bipolars pass through a high-performance middle ground, where they are unusually productive, and often AAA personalities and very creative. History includes such bipolar brand names as Winston Churchill, the composer Gustav Mahler and Ted Turner.

During the middle grounds I helped raise and educate three kids, ran two companies, authored three successful books and taught strategic planning to thousands of executives. I graduated from two fine universities, Yale and MIT; I founded a very successful consulting company, and have a national reputation in my fields of strategic planning and marketing.

2001 saw the most horrible experience in my life. The stress of a divorce, a move to New York City, finding the love of my life and my meds failing to work threw me into a devastating five-year set of cycles. Stress adds to the volatility within each cycle, with sub-cycles daily, weekly or monthly.

A succession of new medications sometimes made me a zombie, had hallucinogenic effects and removed me from the world, and insulting to family, friends and strangers alike — angry, irritable and volatile. Disconnected thoughts raced through my brain, spewed out so rapidly that people could not understand me. It felt as if all of the horns and jackhammers of New York and angry bees were in my brain. And throw in a touch of paranoia and obsessive-compulsive behavior.

My brew of drugs was very toxic. They induced a stroke, and damaged the “executive” function in my frontal lobe. My ability to teach, consult or concentrate failed. I would write page after page of a new book, over and over and over again, not realizing that I’d written it before. Using a computer, looking up names in a telephone directory or even using a remote control can frustrate me, quickly causing headaches and a rapid drain of energy. I have learned to compensate for and work around these tasks.

Fortunately, I was left with my conceptual thinking, verbal skills and sense of humor.

Of course there were lighter hypo-manic moments. I surprised my wife as she was leaving a speaking engagement with part of her audience. I was in our new Jag convertible, top down, trimmed with carnations, Cuban music blaring, and leopard skin bra flying from the radio antenna. She was surprised, very surprised, and not at all pleased.

I got a better reception when I leaped out from behind a pillar in Newark airport bedecked in Christmas decorations and wearing a sombrero with dangling Christmas tree ornaments. She and the Delta agents laughed a lot.

• Treatment

The best treatment of all has been my intelligent, pragmatic and ever positive wife. Three physicians agree that I would probably be dead without her. Good friends who have stuck with us through the great and grim times were essential for both of us. Fortunately, most of the time I have a fine medical team that has treated me over the years: Psycho-pharmocologist Bill Petrie, psychiatrist Tom Campbell, both in Nashville, and Bob Leahy, a cognitive therapist in New York City.

Conventional chemical treatment is black magic — a brew of two to six drugs. There are no specific treatment protocols, and drug cocktails are a matter of trial and error. The stew sometimes includes anti-seizure drugs, anti-depressants, uppers, tranquilizers, sleep medication, anti-anxiety drugs and herbals and anti-psychotics. Of course there is ECT (shock therapy). Cognitive therapy is a must to give bipolars and their families ways of practically coping with their illness and dealing with the outside world. Meditation also helps.

I’ve done the lot. I take seven drugs and herbal stabilizers now and have taken 80 different kinds during my lifetime. The drugs have profound effects—nausea, fatigue, fuzzy thinking, weight gain, gastric upset, loss of focus and sleeplessness. They can make you a zombie and send you into unimaginable worlds.

Then the drugs unexpectedly stop working and you go through six months to years trying to find the right combination again.

Bipolar disorder is difficult to diagnose because it mimics many other diseases and symptoms occur and patterns have to be seen over a period of time.

There are precious few experienced psycho-pharmacologists and cognitive therapists who can effectively treat bipolars. General practitioners, general psychiatrists or inexperienced physicians simply cannot treat the disease. It has taken many searches to find the best. It has become a faddish disease that some inexperienced physicians use to simplistically explain another disorder.

• The Cost

I have made at least 2,500 physician visits and I still consult my psychopharmacologist three to four times a month to fine-tune my meds. I have been taking medication since 1966.

My treatment cost has been, conservatively, close to a million dollars — $550,000 for physicians and $400,000 for other stuff.

The personal cost is even higher. During the “siege of 2001,” I lost millions of dollars of income, and millions more when I was sick, ineffective and still had to maintain our lifestyle until we decided I could no longer work. Fortunately, the income from my wife’s very successful consulting company now supports us well.

Please don’t misunderstand my message. I am not whining, angry or playing the victim. I have had an outstanding life for a bipolar. I have had a lot of fun and adventures. I am blessed with a wonderful wife, three wonderful children and very good friends.

I live from day to day. I am happy and lucid now. Tomorrow?

C. Davis Fogg is a Wakefield-based business consultant.