Gum on My Shoe

TW: Mention of suicidality and self-harm

Talk was like the vitamins of our friendship: Large daily doses kept it healthy. — E. L. Konigsburg This post was inspired by a recent video call with Fran. As we were talking I noticed the vitamin tablets I’d set out on my desk earlier in the day. I decided to take them there and then rather than wait until later and very likely forget. “I’m just taking my meds,” I said, swilling them down with mouthfuls of room temperature coffee. Fran waited until I’d finished then asked, “When you say meds you mean vitamins, right?” I figured she just wanted to check I hadn’t contracted some prescribable health condition without telling her. “Yes,” I confirmed with a smile. Her reply caught me off guard. “You call them meds because you want to be part of the club.” I stopped myself laughing just in time. It was neither a joke nor a question. There was no need for Fran to elaborate which club she meant. Our book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder is ...

This article is excerpted from chapter 3, “The Way to Wellness: Treatments, Therapies, and Vigilance,” of our book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder . Getting Well and Staying Well In the last chapter [The Illness Experience: Understanding Your Friend’s Diagnosis and Symptoms] we explored the symptoms Fran lives with day-to-day. Let’s turn now to how she limits their impact, so as to live as fully and richly as possible. We discuss only medications, therapies, and other treatments Fran has used personally. These may not be directly relevant to your friend’s situation. As Fran expresses it, “What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. We need to find our own ways and make peace with them.” It is also important to note that no strategy works forever. What we report as having worked for Fran in the past may not do so in the future. In the realm of chronic illness, wellness is a dynamic experience. We hope, nevertheless, to convey two...

Being there for someone who lives with illness of any kind isn’t always easy, and it can be especially hard, for you and for them, when symptoms return after a period of relative wellness or stability. (I’ve written previously here and elsewhere about managing the contrary situation, where a friend or loved one is doing well.) This is something several of my friends experience. Despite differences in their diagnoses, certain common themes keep coming up. It helps me to remember that no matter how hard or scary things might be for me when a friend’s symptoms return, it’s far worse for the person living with it day to day. Return or Relapse? Some people might call this a relapse. I prefer to talk about someone finding themselves in a similar situation as before, or their symptoms appearing to have returned. Neither Fran nor I are qualified to diagnose a new episode of mania or depression, for example. That’s her clinician’s role. What I can do is pay attention to how Fran pre...

Trigger warning: medication and suicidality stash (stæʃ) COUNTABLE NOUN: A stash of something valuable is a secret store of it. Synonyms: hoard, supply, store, stockpile A few weeks ago, Fran sent me a photograph. I immediately recognised the meds containers lined up on her bathroom cabinet for what they were, and what they represented. Martin: Your old stash? Fran: Yep. Martin: You’re ready to let go. Fran: Yep. Fran had a stockpile of medication when we met in 2011. I don’t remember when she told me but it was never a secret. It wasn’t easy to accept that my new and frequently suicidal friend kept a quantity of potentially fatal medication, but I came to understand it was important to Fran, and paradoxically protective. We discuss its significance in our book High Tide, Low Tide : Most of our conversations on the subject [of suicidality] focus on exploring and defusing her suicidal thoughts, but we occasionally touch on how she imagines she would kill herself. In her auto...

Following on from my article Three Things I Wish People Knew about Loving Someone with Mental Illness I want to share a few things I’ve learned about mental health medication. First, a disclaimer. I have no first-hand experience of taking mental health medication. What I’ve learned comes from my nine-year friendship with Fran and from other close friends. My loved ones live with a variety of mental health conditions and symptoms including anxiety, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder (BPD), depression, visual and auditory hallucinations, suicidal thinking, and self-harm. Some live with more than one of these. Several also have physical health conditions to deal with, including chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME), type 1 diabetes, fibromyalgia, hearing loss, visual impairment, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite their different conditions and histories, my friends have many experiences and approaches in common when it comes to medication. I’ve cho...

By Peter McDonnell As on most weekends, today I was out and about visiting nearby open gardens run by The National Garden Scheme . My mum and I park the car after the usual drive through villages of thatched cottages, village halls, churches and well-kept lawns. During lockdown the large properties that host the gardens are not busy and we are often treated to a personal tour by the owners. You can see how happy they are sharing stories old and new about how their gardens came to be. You can pick out the differences of the owners’ individual spots of fondness, occasionally accompanied by a comment of slight aversion to their spouse’s decision to place some quirky item amongst the otherwise perfect design! We walk around for about an hour, my mum teaching me the names and attributes of flowers. This is where I get my photography done. Most of the roses are past their best now that it is August, but I’ve taken many photographs of my favourite flower over the last two months. ...

By Andrew Turman Painting by the author. In this day and age, it perplexes me as to why Electroconvulsive Therapy, or electroshock, still seems to get a bad rap. Some people not only question its use, but also call for the ban of this controversial treatment. I, for one, can attest to the efficacy of its use for not only depression, but also mania. Just last week, I underwent shock treatment three times to control my mania, upon which the use of very dangerous psychotropic medications do not seem to have any effect. The treatment itself has seen little change since it was first developed: it involves brief electrical stimulation of the brain while the patient is under general anesthesia. This stimulation induces a grand mal seizure in the patient, which under close monitoring, is harmless. This seems to “reset” the brain, much like rebooting a computer. Extensive research has found ECT to be highly effective for the relief of major depression, as well as being an effective tre...

By Andrew Turman Trigger Warning: Suicide This article was originally published August 2017. To set the scene: my Daddy’s birthday is the ninth of July. By the first of August of last year, I was in a full blown psychotic depression, my first. To let you know how bad things were, let me say that the whole space-time continuum had warped on me. Somehow, Rebecca would go to the store and return home before she actually left. Not really, but it was truth in my mind. I could not even do simple math, nor could I operate a calculator. I was psychotically depressed. Symptoms of a psychotic depression include the symptoms of a major depressive episode, along with one or more psychotic symptoms, including delusions and/or hallucinations . Delusions can be classified as mood congruent or incongruent, depending on whether or not the nature of the delusions is in keeping with the individual’s mood state. Common themes of mood congruent delusions include guilt, punishment, personal inade...

I see, hear, feel and believe in things that others do not. Medically, I have been told this is Psychosis. I do not believe that is what it is. What I see and hear are as real to me as anything else in the world. I see through the cracks between what is generally accepted as this world, this reality, and the Veil – the world of ghosts, call it Purgatory if you will. I see the two bleed into each other and the gaps in between. There are Classes of ghosts: From the every-day individual that can’t accept death and wander, or sit forlornly, forever lost; to the Messengers and the Reapers. The Messengers are the ones I hear. Sometimes they yell and shout angrily, or laugh derisively, but mostly they taunt and tease, telling me I am wrong and bad or that I shouldn’t be here. Urging me to Self-Harm and Kill myself. They also tell me to harm other people. This means that medically I am considered a risk not just to myself, but to others as well. I am the dangerous, risky sort of Mentally ...