Video transcript
If you don't know my situation, you might think, oh hey, this girl's really fun, she's really great, when in reality, I'm going down more of a destructive path. Logic brain is telling me, this will end soon, you'll get out of this, it's just a cycle. And then the emotional side of my brain is like, nothing's ever going to be okay again, you're going to be stuck like this forever, this is the rest of your life. Being bipolar is like white knuckling every day of your existence. The highs can be really great, and the lows are always very terrifying. During a manic episode, the longest time I've gone without sleep was either seven or eight days. A lot of fast talking and grandiose feelings, like you're a superhero. When I was in a very deep depressive state, I would just spend a lot of time in bed, not feeling like myself. It is something that is just so oppressive, that you literally can do nothing to shake it. I feel bad, there's nothing I can do, I'm helpless as a parent. When I was first diagnosed, I wanted to do it without medication. It turns out, it's very, very difficult. This is a mood stabilizer, an anti-psychotic and an anti-depressant. That perfect cocktail of medications that help keep me stable. My name is Andrea, and I live with Bipolar Type 1. My name is Alistair, and I live with Bipolar Type 2. Usually, I'll roll over when the first alarm goes off, take the pills, roll back over and go back to sleep for a little while. I try to take them at the same time every day. Even if I miss like one dose, I start getting... This is Effexor. It's the only bipolar medication I take during the day, except for anxiety medication. The first med that I take at night is Zyprexa, it's an anti-psychotic and mood stabilizer. And then this is just a vitamin D, because I'm super vitamin D deficient. Bipolar is a mental illness, and it's characterized by mood swings that can last anywhere from a week to a couple of months. If you're Bipolar Type 1, you have a lot more highs and mania than you do lows and depression. And if you're Bipolar Type 2, you generally have more depression than mania. Personally, I have a rapid cycle, so I can go from one to the next really quickly. It can range from having all the energy in the world to the next day feeling like you can't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom. I don't want to be bothered, I don't want to hang out with anybody. It feels like everything's closing in around you, and it's impossible to break out of it. I'd say the most frustrating part for me about having Bipolar, because it is different for everybody, has been the medication dance. It took years of trial and error to get to a point where I was even somewhat stable. You're trying all these different meds, and you really have to trust your psychiatrist, and you really have to trust in the process. Halfway through it, it's very hard to do that, because you're not feeling better, but you're taking all these pills, and you're paying all these co-pays, and it feels like it's never going to end. As somebody that's stable, I know that at any time, one of these meds can stop working, and I'm going to have to go through all that all over again. This is my planner from 2019. You can see what I was handling at the time. I was taking maybe six different classes, in addition to being a varsity student athlete. I was also involved with our campus newspaper, and working for a sports team on top of clubs. So you can see I was handling a lot. One joke I have with my friends is that there's type A, and then there's type Andrea. Planners for me help keep me stable. Say if I'm a little more manic, it gets all of my racing thoughts out, so just that way I can start my work day with a very clear mindset. Bipolar 1 is when a person is most likely to have a more manic episode. Manic episodes manifest differently for different kinds of people. For me, they tend to have a lot more energy, I tend to be more irritable, and I would go maybe up to a week without sleeping. I tend to feel like I'm still on top of the world, but also I was gambling, I was over-drinking, I was spending money that I didn't have left and right. That's kind of the dangerous thing about mania, is that you're engaging in really dangerous behaviors, but you don't recognize them as being dangerous. When it comes to balancing the mania and the depression, there is definitely this overarching theme of what comes up must come down. Often, it can rather be more of a crash than a smooth fall. Sophomore year of college, in my spring semester, I hit a major depressive episode. I was on our school's rowing team, and one February winter practice, we were out on the water and came across a dead body. That one occurrence triggered a series of panic attacks during workouts and practices that eventually led into a very deep depressive state and a lot of suicidal thoughts that eventually landed me in the psychiatric hospital. It was, quite honestly, very scary. They had taken all of my belongings, including things that I could have used to hurt myself. The doctor prescribed me an antidepressant that is obviously meant to cure depression, but in cases of bipolar, it actually raises the manic symptoms. It's actually a very common thing to have a misdiagnosis before getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder. My mood went from zero to like 1,000, and without proper medications, I was spiraling out of control. So I think communication is one of the most important parts of recovery. Gian is one of the closest people I have in my life, and he is the owner of Jackson's Automotive. He's known that I've been bipolar pretty much since the jump. I'm very open about it. I don't really hide it from anybody, and he was just like, oh, okay, cool, so that's just something that you deal with. I get excited to come up here because being around somebody that I know gets it and that doesn't judge me. I count myself very lucky. Not a lot of people have that kind of outlet. I'm going to bang really loud. Is that a problem? No. Okay. Over time, I learned how to help him in different ways by just being there and being a good friend and asking what the right thing to do is in the right situations. Even when he says sometimes, like, no, I'm okay, like a couple hours later, it's worth checking in again and being like, all right, you still feeling that? Like, are we still good? And then if it seems like it's like tilting in one way, you know, we've got to do something about it or hang out or do something. I've dealt with my own anxiety and depression in my lifetime, which is nowhere near the level or magnification of what he deals with, but it definitely makes me a lot softer to it. It's helpful to help other people. You feel better at the end of it. So as much as I feel like crap, if I can help him and then I see he feels better, I'm like, all right, cool. And vice versa. I feel the same way. When we're both having a really tough time, we tend to break stuff, whether it be breaking hockey pucks against the wall out there, we've flipped trucks, we've cut trucks up, we've... Parked trucks on top of cars. Parked trucks on top of cars. That was a fun one. It always ends in us being like, hey man, I'm not feeling great today. Let's talk about it. So it is constructive as much as it is destructive. See, some of my manic episodes are great because I'll buy hockey tickets and then he's just like, all right, cool. Let's go. Yeah, it's not the worst. I love to run. Running has been this huge release for whenever I'm depressive or manic. So when I'm depressed, I can feel those endorphins immediately improving my mood. But when I'm manic, it helps me release all this extra energy that I would otherwise just be sitting with. Running is just peaceful. It's possibly the most peaceful part of my day. Currently, I train with a track club based out of Brooklyn. I've spent my entire life being an athlete of some sort. So when I finished college, I missed having that sense of community. I love the way sports can bring people together. My dad and I will talk a lot about baseball and basketball. Growing up, he was always the one to bring me to different sporting events. Nothing feels better than when I can just sit back and watch a game and just relax. Do you want to pick one? I want to try that vanilla mocha chunk. Okay. Cheers. We usually come here. We cook dinner. We like to cook together. We do cook. We'll watch the hockey games. Especially the Rangers. Ever present throughout my life. He was a good kid. Good thing. Because then I wouldn't have had any more if he wasn't. He spoiled me. But he was a very good kid. I had him when I was very young. So it's always been me and him. You know, the firstborn, I guess. Always special. The first sign of really bad mental illness was when my father passed away. It was very sudden. It was a car accident. It just happened when I was 13. And that's when I started getting really depressed for the first time. I think I was 16. I was having heart palpitations. He had to take me to the hospital that night. That was the first time I ever had a panic attack. I didn't know about anxieties and this and that. He had to tell me. I didn't see it. Especially growing up with parents that were born during the depression years. It was shut up and get through it. Like Grandma Jean, shut up and get through it. They didn't talk about nothing. Everything was, you just pull on your bootstraps and you go through it. And that's the end of it. Exactly. There's obvious signs of depression or anxiety throughout the family. But nobody ever talked about it. I'm the first person that's kind of stood up and said, this is what's going on, guys. As far as mental health stigmas go, I think we're in a better place than we were a decade ago. There's still a lot of room to grow in terms of how people see mental illness. They might think of the crazy person locked up in an asylum. But in reality, it's a very real and very common experience. If mental health was taken a little bit more seriously in this country, or if we had maybe a Medicare for All type deal, it might be a lot easier for people to get help. And then you wouldn't have so many people living on the streets because they can't afford their medication. The worst case is they end up living with a mental illness and they don't have the money or the education or even the support system they need in their mental health journey. Would you choose to live without it? That's a good question. Honestly, I don't think I would change having bipolar disorder. It's hard to say I would pick to live with an illness over not living with an illness. But retrospectively, it's part of what makes me me. And it's something that I identify with now. While it's terrifying to even think that tomorrow maybe my antipsychotic stops working and I need to go on another Med Mary go around, at the same time, I don't think I would give that up because it's an integral part of who I am and I don't think I would want to be anybody different at this point.