If you could take a pill and this would be all over would you?
My immediate answer is yes. And let me clarify, by “all over” I do NOT mean suicide or dying in any sense. I mean could my disability, this disorder I was born with, be taken away from me. And then the answer seems clear, yes. Give me the pill. I’ll take it with a smile and a gulp of water and just sit calmly as I wait for peace.
I have bipolar II disorder which comes along with some fun highs, some pretty low lows and a lot of demons that just love to catch you off guard. I am one of the lucky ones. I have found ways to manage my disorder fairly well. I am so fortunate to have a really amazing therapist and psychiatrist who specialize in bipolar disorder and collaborate with each other. They’ve worked with me on identifying my mood states, finding the proper words to accurately describe how I’m feeling, notice warning signs and triggers and practice interventions to not soar too high or dive too deep. They listen, they care, and most importantly they call me on my shit- in a compassionate way of course. They also offer guidance in the necessity of medication management for this disorder. I don’t care what you’ve heard but with a disorder like bipolar disorder the only way to properly manage it and hope to reach remission (even if it’s just short term) is to work with pharmaceuticals.
So again, back to the simple question. Would I take the pill? Yes. 1000% yes.
But then they tell you the caveat. It’s not just one pill. Oh no, it’s quite the concoction. And it’s not your basic SSRI’s that have been the focus of research for decades. It’s either old school anti-psychotics that are well-known to have serious negative side effects or it’s a new class of drugs that we’re just on the brink of initially understanding. So not only do you have to take more than just one pill to fix it, you also have to go through trial and error. Maybe this medication helps slow me down but my racing thoughts are still negative and intrusive so it doesn’t slow me down enough. So then you try increasing the dose, but nope, that’s not right either. Now it’s too much. So you lower it back down and add in a new drug. And this new drug? Yea, this drug is the magic drug that’s gonna fix it all. It’s wonderful and is gonna finally bring you the relief you’ve been searching for. So you try it. But the starting dose isn’t high enough to have any impact. So you increase the dose. Now your anxiety heightens, but your racing thoughts are mild and the negative intrusive thoughts aren’t hitting you nearly as hard. When the anxiety isn’t overwhelming, you’re able to write and speak coherently. But the anxiety comes back. So do you lower the dose of the drug that reduced the racing thoughts that made it hard to function or do you keep that drug and add in a new one for anxiety? You pick the latter. You’ve been told that the anxiety will lessen once some other doses are reduced or increased. So allegedly the anxiety is temporary. So now you add in a new pill to treat the anxiety, but it works pretty quickly and lasts for a few hours so you’ll be able to function at least for those few hours.
And then it’s back to waiting. I forgot to mention the waiting period of the trial and error process. You only want to change one drug at a time so we can figure out exactly what it’s doing. And then after you change it you wanna give it a few days to see what is going on in your brain now. So you wait. For me, it’s been a lot of waiting in agony. Just hoping and praying that it will pass, your body is just getting used to it or the other drugs just need to be adjusted. So you wait, sometimes patiently other times not so much.
You’re told this magic pill to fix your broken brain still exists. It’s out there. Well, they’re out there. We just don’t know exactly which pills we need or which dose they need to be at. But give us time and we’ll finally get this puzzle put together properly. We’ll somehow blindly figure out which chemicals you’re missing and which are overflowing and we’ll add in the new chemicals to fix the broken ones. So now, with all of this information, do you still willingly take the pill?
But wait, will the pills take away the good parts of the highs? Will I lose the parts of me that I've learned to call home? If this drug fixes it, then who am I even? Am I ready for that? Will I ever be ready for that? What if you’re lying and it’s not all that you say it’s cracked up to be. What if the “normal” and “functional” brain is actually horrible and boring. Do I want that? Is it better to keep the highs and the lows simply because those are the demons I already know? The demons that make up who I am? Now I’m not so sure I want this miracle pill. But they promise you it’s better so you’re willing to try again.
The turbulence in my head still exists. Some days are better than others and that keeps me going, gives me hope that out there is the right drug to fix it all. Well, not all. They never said the pill would fix the trauma, the poor modeling your parents gave you, the bad things you did while you were sick. But it makes you functional to the point where it’s manageable to address the rest of it.
So I guess my answer remains yes. Even on the days where I want to call it quits. The days in which my exhaustion from messing with my brain seems too much. The days in which I’m terrified of what the potential side effects will be. The days where I can’t remember just how bad it was without any medication treatment and I think, maybe, just maybe, I’d be better trying it on my own. Somehow through it all, this sometimes torturous process, I still say yes. Give me the pill. I’ll try for as long as I live to get the advantages that a properly functioning brain gives you.
And I guess worst case, if this functional brain you speak of is truly disappointing then I can always go back to my broken brain.
2087
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