The Manic high beats everything
I asked a friend one day, a friend from my school days who has Bipolar like me, "Compared to all the drugs you have done, where does the "Manic" high stand?"
"It beats everything," he replied with a knowing smile.
Well the only drug I have done is pot and that made my head go a bit crazy and I only had it a few times and the more I refused it, the more I was offered the drug for free from all sorts of people. So I have to take my friend's advice on it.
Because the high is so powerful and the visions of grandeur so darn good, anybody would want to really achieve what your mind tells you. For many years, I believed I was one of the two last prophets that are going to visit the earth shortly before Christ returns. These prophets have a whole chapter devoted to them in Revelation chapter 11 and I wanted to know all about my job and spent many years trying to find the "other" prophet. This caused me a lot of heartache. In all the years I believed that I was one of the two prophets, few people ever seemed to agree with me. The idea of being one of the most important people in the history of the world gave me great feelings of importance and boosted my low self image considerably.
The Bipolar "high" is a feeling for me that I am all powerful and that I am right and everyone else is wrong and when I need to go to hospital I am the only one that seems to think I don't have to go. This causes people who love me much distress.
Your friends and family suffer.
My friends and family have suffered much from my sickness and I am confident this is why I will remain on my medication. I have seen my mother in tears and really worried and this image is always in my mind. The illness can be very deceiving to a person when they suffer and the "Voices" tell you everything is fine when everything is not fine. I have much compassion for the loved ones of people who suffer.
I might add that the feeling I was one of the two prophets mentioned did not go away in the six years between hospital visits, yet my need to tell people that I was, diminished considerably.
Anti Depressants make me high.
I have experienced a strange thing, and I am told it is possible. I have been in the midst of a chronic depression and yet been manic. That seems impossible but it happened to me.
I have been on about six anti-depressants and all of them have after a few weeks made me manic. So in the midst of a medicated depression I went through the roof in a state of mania and was very close to being admitted to hospital. On that occasion I stayed up three days, I had two full nights without sleep before my house-mate reported me to my case worker and the medical guys came around and questioned me.
Let me add here a notice for people who suffer depression or people who know people who suffer. The ONLY medication that didn't make me high but treated my depression and took the ill feelings away was St Johns Wort. I took it in tablet form and it was very effective for me and whenever I fall into serious depression, for me about once a year, I take St Johns Wort and it takes about three weeks to build up and be effective in my system.
You can lose your creativity on medication.
As a writer I lost my ability to write when I became medicated. I have written two four-hundred page novels and two one-hundred and twenty page film scripts and I went about three years on medication without being able to write and that was very sad for me. I have in the past few years retrieved the gift and I am most happy about it. I have to warn you if you are someone who looks after someone with Bipolar or any other mental illness that the compulsion to give up the medication so you can get back to creativity is very strong. Medication stealing a talent off you is very sad. I imagine for many artists the choice between creativity and staying sane is a hard choice indeed.
Being up for days gives me a buzz and gets me creative.
It's hard to explain and put into words the feeling I get when I stay up for two days. My creativity seems to increase and in Christian terms I become more "anointed." It's exciting to be able to stay up a full day with friends and late into the night and then go home and stay up and do another whole day and night. Around the second night up I am so in the flow of things and to type a message or write something seems really easy, as easy as just finding the keys of the keyboard. All my loved ones seem to worry when they find I have been up for a few days. All of them seem to know if they get a phone call early in the morning that I have been up all night as they know my habit of sleeping in. I look at the story I wrote about the man called Legion in the article called "The Man That Juggled Olives That Changed My Life Forever" and it must be one of the finest pieces of writing I have ever done in my life and it was done after being up all night. Writing for me is something I love and I feel my illness helps me with this. I think if my illness were taken away so might my gift for writing.
With my three breakdowns I lost self confidence.
I have to say that having Bipolar is not an easy thing. One of the things it has done to me is that it has stripped away some of my self confidence. What used to be easy like having a full-time job and doing life like an ordinary person is harder now and the idea of working full time is something that is too hard for me to comprehend at the moment.
Bipolar has a stigma also that takes its toll.
People assume because you have something wrong with your mind that you are stupid also. As a born again Christian who hears from God this puts me in a funny camp. Some people consider because I am Bipolar that I am NOT hearing from God and am deluded. This sort of relegates me to the side or the fringes in my Christian experience. Because I hear "voices" people assume that I NEVER hear the right "voice" and that they should not listen to anything I say that I feel God is saying to me and to them.
Of course when I consult a professional they are not too helpful as they call my voices auditory hallucinations. I am not really sure what they think, in all my years of seeing doctors, but they definitely DON'T think I am hearing from God as they don't believe in God.
On the other hand I go to a church that does not seem to consider demon possession to be something today and so they can't help much either. This is upsetting.
Sometimes I wish I knew a Christian expert in mental illness. Some-one that knows the "Voices" I hear are both the Holy Spirit and evil spirits, some one that knows the difference between them being "in me" these spirits or just communicating with me.
Besides being misunderstood and having a stigma, we are left to suffer alone or to have other friends who suffer with us to talk to. This can get you down at times. I find that this loneliness helps me with my relationship with Jesus.
People may say I am too spiritual. People seem to like to have Jesus Christ and their spiritual life in a compartment in their life that only comes out on Sundays.
No one wants to listen in the mental health system.
One thing that upsets me is in the twelve or so years of being in the mental health system is that no one has ever really seemed to listen to me. The doctors listen long enough to work out what is delusional and what they want to know but no one seems to dig out the core issues in a person's life and refer them on to counsellors that can help with these emotional issues. That upsets me as I feel that I am not the only sufferer.
One great thing that I have to say is that the medication for me really works. When I am not on medication the voices go crazy and they deceive me and have me doing really crazy things. Without medication I would be in jail all the time I reckon.
So sadly, churches seem to fail me and the mental health system fails me in some respects and both seem to be at odds with each other. One time I told one of my doctors if hearing from God was a pre-requisite to being mentally ill, then most of the preachers in the world should be on medication.
The educated world runs on science but what is happening inside is spiritual.
In the scientific world, Noah's flood did not happen, nor did the ten plagues of Moses, nor did the miracles of Jesus Christ.
Yet I know a man that made two bottles of Coke appear out of thin air, a man who raised a man from the dead with a prayer, a man who blessed some oil which healed a whole district's cows, and another man who was raised from the dead after being dead for three days. Both of these men live in India and they are doing today the mighty miracles of Jesus Christ.
I know not many of my articles will convince sceptics of things spiritual. I don't write these things to educate doctors. I just write to share my heart with Christians who suffer Bipolar or Christians who know people that do.
I suffer as sometimes all I can do is sleep.
Mentally ill people suffer. I am staying up tonight simply because I have been stuck in a cycle for three days of sleeping all day which if it continues will put me into depression. Something I don't want to happen, so I am trying to break the cycle.
You just can't snap out of clinical depression.
Clinical depression is not something one can just snap out of. I know that Jesus Christ and His peace and joy can counteract it, but you have to access to that kind of blessing. St Johns Wort does not seem fashionable with doctors as they say it is dangerous to take with other prescription medications and yet I have never seen a doctor worry about two or three prescription medications playing up with each other. If your loved one can't get their depression under control, St Johns Wort will be valuable in many cases. Take it from someone who has suffered major depression.
Hearing evil spirits it not good.
As a person who suffers, I often hear a voice that I assume is the Holy Spirit (God's voice) but in actual fact it is a demon(a fallen angel) pretending to be the Holy Spirit. This false Jesus, who speaks to me can be very damaging to me and can distort some things for me and lead me to say and do things that are not good. Last week a pastor that runs a good church I have started to go to told me what I can ask my "voice" to confirm if it is the Holy Spirit. A good friend of mine who is Bipolar asks the same question and so now I have adopted it. 1 John 4:1-6 speaks on this matter.
It is this spirit that told me I am one of the two last prophets and got me into all sorts of trouble through the years. It is tempting as a Christian just to switch off and not listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit or this spirit and I did that once for a whole year.
I told my doctor once that I could turn off the voices by an act of self will and he was shocked and wondered why I would not do it. I told him if he was hearing from God would he turn to voice off, and he told me that God doesn't exist. That was not a very profitable conversation except that I really shocked him, which kind of shocked me as he has about three hundred patients and I was surprised another one of them had not told him the same.
There are many people hearing voices, some make a profession out of it and are called mediums and clairvoyants and make money.
Hearing from God brings blessings.
There are also people who hear the Holy Spirit very clearly and get messages for individuals or groups of people and this gift is called prophecy. In church every few weeks the LORD gives me a message for the people in the church and I am often happy when the songs and message preached that day line-up with the prophecy.
Many times I have messages from God for total strangers and people are very happy to get a message from God and most of the people are very blessed with the message. Something as simple as telling a male and female that God designed them both for each other and they should get married often brings the ladies great delight and gives the men confidence.
I hope the hours I have put into this will benefit you. I hope you have a little more insight into my mental illness now. I also have schizophrenia symptoms, and yet I did not put that in the title.
I would not turn my voices off, the gift of prophecy is something that brings me and others much blessings. For a year I have offered free prophecy to Christians all over the world on the web. It is amazing how blessed some people have been.
I have my ups and downs but some people suffer more than me.
God bless!
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