I think the meds are finally kicking in.

I wrote this in about 2004. The most eerily prescient part was when I said this: “At the edge, the very edge of his mind, a stir, almost like footsteps outside a spotlight. Something offstage, in the dark, but not able to move to where it would be visible.”

That is how my life has been for the last few weeks. It’s there. The mania. Offstage, in the dark, unable to move into the light.

Unable to take the stage, to take control.

Holy fuck, the drugs really do seem to be working.

My mania stopped dead.

Not at first. 25 mg was a hint. 50 mg was a good step up. 100 mg –

If 25 mg was turning a valve, 100 mg was cutting off the flow at the source.

The damn drugs did it, damn it, yeah, drugs actually can work. My skin isn’t falling off. I have a little dizziness, but compared to what was happening in my head before that … yeah, I’ll take the woozy.

But this isn’t about me; it’s about a boy I wrote. If you can believe that.

Setting is about 7000 years from now. BPs and schizophrenics are used as couriers for encoded information, because their brains can’t be read by Rosetta, the normalizing mind-reading machinery of the year 9100-whatever.

Normals are transparent. They are utterly open to the mind probes. But the crazy people … they can’t be read. They’re secure. Nothing can crack their individual, utter madness. They carry top secret information from world to world.

The most unreadable, the most mad, aren’t called crazy. They are called Blessed.

And the Blessed are terrifying. The Consulate covers up the crimes they commit, when they commit them — everything from robbery to rape to murder. And they get away with it.

Because, you see, they are Blessed.

The Blessed know this, and they know how wrong it is.

They do not care.

A courier boy, fifteen and Blessed, has been given a brain implant that normalizes his thoughts, but doesn’t compromise his basic madness. So he’s superficially sane, but underneath, he’s still unreadable, a human cipher of lunacy. And he’s spent most of his life as a courier sunk in a load of forget-enzymes, so he doesn’t remember all the times he’s been raped in transit.

Something to remember is that Cock is more insane than I am.

I think.

Thus:
==

The sixth day after his surgery he knew the first part was past.

Waking with his usual, he pushed the sheet down, reached and went to work. He was diligent about sex, even before the Delphans had taught him the mind– and dick-blowing shit they had, and slapped off several times a day if he couldn’t fire his cum into someone nearby.

Lately his sheets’d been the main recipients of his saucy gifts.

He bucked and applied his exercises when the wave passed over him, his body rippling muscles, back an arch off the mattress, semen erupting in a thick white patter from his pulsing organ along his long axis, reaching to his nipples at the hardest two surges.

Relaxing, he covered up again and let the track of goo cool and congeal, the sheet adhering to his tip and belly and sternum. Not bad, he judged, but he’d been going for his chin. Next time he’d have to work his lower abdominals a little harder at the exhales to increase the compression, maybe look for a higher angle to his dick in those last few tingly moments. At least his aim was good star-to-lar; he’d shot his load right down his centerline.

Coming was easy. Precision coming — that was a skill. These practice sessions were really meant to improve his performance when partners were around to enjoy the show, but he liked them all the same.

The room became silent, the scent of seed and sweat curling.

Something was missing.

He glanced over so reflexively he wasn’t even fully aware of it. The pillow was empty, the space in the bed taken up mainly by him, but there was a little, just a little more room to one side, where Trel would have…

Course if Trel had been there, he wouldn’t’ve just fucked his hand.

No, that wasn’t what was missing.

And then it struck and it hit with the force of a physical blow, and he had to wipe at his eyes in a moment.

Eve.

Every time he wrung it out by hand, ever since he’d been dripping the spoo, she’d had a shitty comment to make. When he was younger it was about how little it was, both the sauce and the source. When older, it was comments on range or such (fell short that time… or open your mouth next time you cumlicking freak, catch your own spill like the perv you are). And more recently it was about how he’d been doing it alone a lot lately. That dug the most, because she was right. He was alone. He’d driven everyone off.

It was so fuckin hard sometimes to come with her in there, commenting, joking, laughing at his fantasies. But that hadn’t happened today. This morning it had been just himself, his thoughts, his hand, his dick.

That fucking bitch hadn’t said a word.

Eve?

Nothing.

Eve? Hey Eve, I got goo on me.

Silence, almost hissing.

He ran his fingers over the little slick. Wanna taste? I know you like it, you two-bill cunt.

At the edge, the very edge of his mind, a stir, almost like footsteps outside a spotlight. Something offstage, in the dark, but not able to move to where it would be visible.

He slipped his cummy fingers over his lips, licked. Mmm. Salty. Second favorite treat. After Adam’s, course.

Almost. Almost there was a … and then gone.

Gone.

The most fucked up part of it all, he reflected for years afterward, was how alone he suddenly felt, how terrified and sad he was for a few heartbeats, and then the sense of freedom overrode everything else and he nearly woke up the whole fuckin Barque district with his shouts.

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It’s still working, but it’s lost some of its efficacy (obviously, or I’d be asleep now). The manic uptick is a bit harder than it was, say, five days ago.

I hope this is just a bit of tolerance. I’ll be up to 50 mg next week, and maybe that’ll offer a better regulator. For now, where I am isn’t unworkable, just … difficult. Like my regular cyclothymic phases. Not quite manic, not quite BP I, but still not what I consider optimal. Not at all where I was, say, last Sunday. That was a good, balanced mellow.

I’m a weird mix now between jazzed and tired. That’s part of the up-cycle. You find reasons, excuses, to be wired, excited, intense. But the base fact is simply that you are wired, excited, intense. There’s just no reason for it. It simply is.

Worst part is that the upswings are also disinhibiting. Like being a bit drunk, but without the alcohol. You’re just a little too willing to do things that, ordinarily, you would never do. Or at least not usually.

Like be awake at 4 AM on a Saturday, writing about your own personal madness in a public forum. Sigh.

Yup, 25 mg isn’t quite enough, I think. But it beats the living shit out of where I was two weeks ago.

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Cyclothymia is still one of those things that’s being studied and understood further; the translation, practically, is, we don’t know what else to call it just yet, but we’ve got a new edition of DSM to take to press, so, well…

When I went in to talk to the psychiatrist last Wednesday, I was in the middle of a full-on bipolar fugue. I was bouncing between the oh what the hell who cares depths, and the I can do it all king-of-the-world on the bow of the Titanic upswings, and even as the doctor was asking me if I had suicidal or homicidal ideation and I was saying no, no way, well, yes, I was.

In fairness, not actually planning anything. To me there is a significant difference between thinking I’d like to just die versus actually planning ways to make it happen. To my mind the latter is suicidal ideation. But, for the sake of perspective, I’ve been prone to such thoughts since I was fifteen. So I guess a better question would have been if I was relatively more prone to suicidal ideation of late. And still the answer would have been, well, sort of, maybe, I don’t know.

Rapid cycling means you don’t shift moods over months; it happens over weeks instead. Mm-hmm. There’s even ultra-rapid cycling, which is minutes or even seconds in duration. Mm–hmm.

Anyway, the good doctor suggested I try lamotrigine, which was originally designed to handle epileptics, but in 2008 was approved as a treatment for BP I. I had enough presence of mind to ask if he had any samples. He did — actually a starter pack. A month’s supply.

Don’t expect much, he warned me, not at first. It’s only a 25 mg dose, once a day. It might not take effect right away with such low levels. Well, all right.

So much for that.

It kicked in fast enough — 30 minutes after the first dose — that I actually doubted it. I figured it had to be a placebo effect. Had to be. But by 8 PM that same night, I knew there was something different. Somatically, I felt circulation return to my hands and feet. (Cold digits seem to be a physical symptom of my particular presentation.) I also felt a clench of anxiety in my gut release. Finally, I realized that my mind, which had been in overdrive earlier that day, had relaxed, and that the thrusting urge to think and produce and be and express was in idle, or at least disengaged.

That night I had the first decent night’s sleep I’d enjoyed in at least three months.

It’s not perfect. It’s not even totally regulating. I can still feel the mania pushing a little, trying to get back into full power, but it doesn’t seem to have any traction. It’s not like the lamotrigine flipped a switch; it’s more like turning a valve. It’s the difference between a flood and a trickle. A trickle I can handle. And I still haven’t worked up to the full therapeutic dose (by most guidelines).

Other behaviors seem to have fallen off as well; more on those when it’s germane. But for now, this is really quite amazing to me. I don’t feel compromised in terms of creativity — something that I was worried about — nor do I feel doped, sedated or otherwise numbed. When the energy rides high, I’m actually able to channel it into something useful. I know for a certain fact that my productivity has about doubled in the last week. I don’t expect that to last (for a number of reasons), but at least I’m not stuck holding on for dear life while the goddamned windhorse mind just gallops away beneath me.

Lamotrigine is dangerous, by the way. The worst side-effects from taking too much too soon involve a syndrome that kills off your skin’s connective tissue, leaving your epidermis to slough away in great, bloody swaths. (This is why you start with a very low dose to judge reaction and allow the body to acclimate.) The worst side-effect from dropping it at therapeutic levels (from, say, 100 mg to 0) is seizures, even in non-epileptics. So, you know, ahem.

But the odds of adverse reaction, for me, are far less significant than what I know would happen if I kept on untreated. Not suicide, but certainly not the kind of life I would prefer to live. I’ve been riding this damn cycle for at least 20 years, probably more, and I am tired, tired to fucking hell of it. This is the first time I’ve ever felt decently stable for more than a couple of days — and it happened right in the middle of a major manic episode. At this point I’d say I’m about four-fifths believing that things may actually — finally — find an equilibrium.*

I’ll follow up later, with more details as warranted. For now, for those of you who might have been concerned about me … well, things are far better than they have been in a very long time.

====

* How’s that for guarded optimism?

EDIT: Based solely on my own experiences, I think some people who suicide when in BP I do it as a spur of the moment thing. They don’t plan it. They just have motive, means, and opportunity (as the formula holds for crime and Murder One), and in that moment, they do it. Hey, I’ll order a pizza. Hey, I’ll shoot myself. As simple, and as immediate, and as sad as that.

It’s just that quick. Bryce, I guess I can understand your concern for me. Thank you for caring. It means a lot to me that you kept up your replies. You saw it more clearly than I did.

EDIT 2: 25 mg is not enough. Up too late. Cycles I know. Not quite enough.

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====

Baby Grace is the victim; she was fourteen years of age.
And the wheels are turning, turning, for the finger points at me.

But I have not been to Oxford Town.
No I have not been to Oxford Town.

Toll the bell; pay the private eye. All’s well.
Twentieth Century dies.

And the prison priests are decent. My attorney seems sincere.
I fear my days are numbered.
Lord, get me out of here.

This is your shadow on my wall. This is my flesh and blood. This is what I could’ve been.

And the wheels are turning and turning as this Twentieth Century dies.

If I had not ripped the fabric
If time had not stood still
If I had not met Ramona
If I’d only paid my bill

This is my bunk with two sheets. This is my food, though foul. This is what I could have been?

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Calendar comes up clear for the day. Today. Starting 5 hours from now, and me with no sleep, and knowing I won’t get any sack time before then.*

Good, so I can coast behind the monitors. Just shift, paste, compose. Wave hi, howyadoin.

Fuck, fuck me, I am so tired.

Not physically.

====

* Why didn’t I go to bed? Good question. It’s insane to not go to bed when you know you need to, isn’t it?

Earlier tonight, lucid. Now … yes, that fast. Less than five hours.

You clock in and go to work, clock out for lunch. Somewhere in that time, in that half-day stretch, apparently, I go mad.

That is your lunch. This is my life.

And this is not drama. It’s quarter to four in the morning right now as I write this. This is a journal, kids. That’s why I created the “Sickness” tag.

So you can see, and wonder why, and … if you’re like me, know. It’s not just you.

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I think Bowie was hard for heroin.

Well, duh, it was the 70s, he did drugs; it is generally presumed that he did coke.

But there are hints in his songs of something deeper, and until August of last year, I didn’t get them; now, maybe, I do, a little.

It started like it usually did; a deep ache near my solar plexus, a churning sense of inflation that was not, was not right. I’d had it before, so I figured that if I let it abide for a while, it would ease off — after a few hours. As it had done before.

Those hours passed, and by 2 or so AM, I knew it wasn’t going to ease off. It wasn’t anywhere near easing off. It felt like I was being punched in the solar plexus, hard, about once a minute. So I managed to make it to my car, and dragged myself to the ER, and everyone from the admitting nurse to the attending physician asked me one question first: Do you still have your gall bladder?

And I thought, oh no.

Things came and went, and drugs came and went, and long and short was that I had the worst gallstone experience in my life — 20 hours all told — still have the damn gallbladder (I’d rather eat chicken and fish the rest of my life than be cut open like a Christmas turkey, thanks, to have my giblets sucked out) — and we’re still learning if my diet change has had any effect on the 12mm stone in my gut.

12mm, yes. About the size of a .50-cal rifle ball. I’ve seen biopsied gallbladders that looked like they were full of gravel. Not there yet, and do not intend to be.

But that’s not the point. The point is what happened to me about 20 minutes or so after I was palleted in the ER.

They shot me up with 10 mg of Morphine.

It didn’t ease the pain for more than about ten minutes, but for a brief time, it was … just astonishing.

Coolness filled my limbs, and for a while, everything just … floated. I felt at ease, calmed, soothed. I felt like I feel after really, profoundly good sex. You know how it is after you come, and you relax into your lover’s arms, and you really, truly believe that everything is going to be okay, even if there’s no reason to believe it at all?

Like that.

And the first lucid thought I had then was, Wow, I can see how people get hooked on this shit.

From what I can tell, coke is a bit like a caffeine high. But junk seems to be a lot closer to what I had with Morphine, a general sense of — of total detachment, and relaxation. I gather Morphine and heroin do the same kind of things, for the most part, in that they emulate endorphin release. And I really can understand how you can get hooked on junk.

Because, for that few minutes, I really was quite pleasantly serene.

When I was in college I avoided the hard pushers because I didn’t like the idea of shooting into a vein. I don’t like needles; never have. Now, I would avoid heroin because I can see, quite entirely clearly, just how stuck on it I could be. Stuck with a valuable friend, as Bowie said, or hooked to the silver screen. (Ibid.)

Pot isn’t like it. Acid — hell, LSD is nothing like it; acid is just an array of synesthesia. Boring, pretty fast, I think. Did pot, did acid, twenty years ago, meh. But that damn Morphine — it’s hard for me to forget. Five months ago, just 10 mg, and you betcha, I wouldn’t mind feeling that way again. It’s not intense enough to be called a craving, but it’s definitely a desire. I’m nowhere near as hooked on Morphine as I am on nicotine, for instance.

But I could be. I could be.

I didn’t ever want to do IV drugs for years, because I hate needles. Now, I know a much better reason.

Because if I ever shot up, I’m quite sure I would trade anything, do anything, to keep that vein tapped.

It’s haunted me for half a year. I hear the ghosts in Bowie’s music. And I don’t know how he got clean — I know he didn’t stay clean; from time to time he shot that silver again — I can hear it in his music — but my non-god, how could he have had that monster on his back, in his soul, and how could he have turned from it?

I used to think of junkies as degenerate. They’re not. Maybe when they’re trying to get their fix, they are; but when they have that nectar flowing in them, they are not degenerate at all; for a while, for a few minutes at least, they are the happiest people on the planet.

So, maybe a bit more now, I get Bowie, and I know why no one should ever try heroin. It’s not because it’s illegal. It’s not because of all the punishments you get if you do it.

It’s not even because of how bad it is, after you’ve had it, to live a normal life.

It’s because you will never, ever let it go. There’s no patch for this. There are no gums you can chew.

10 mg of Morphine was enough to prove to me just how badly I wanted, and still want, this forbidden drug; and in my lucid moments, it’s enough to convince me that if I ever really shot the hard H, I would follow its path into self-annihilation rather than be without it again.

Don’t know how anyone breaks the habit once they get it. But I sure as hell do respect those who tried it, used it, lived with it … and left it.

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==

I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.
Who do I pray to to straighten out this problem?
Straighten out this problem, straighten out my mind,
straighten out this crooked tongue?

My mind has wandered from the strait and narrow;
my mind has wandered from the flock, you see.
My mind has wandered; the man just said so.
My mind has wandered; I heard it on TV.

And the flock has wandered away from me.

All around the world now like a big bright cherry cloud
traveling from home to home, TV sets and telephones,
here it comes just like a storm; bathe in it and be reborn.
Time to let the world know.
Welcome madness, say hello.

Like a wave we cannot see washing over you and me,
hiding here and hiding there, madness hiding everywhere.
Such a curiosity; here it comes to set us free.
Plenty left for you and me.
Say hello, insanity.

I am the virus; are you the cure?
I am morally, I’m morally impure.
I am a disease and I am unclean; I am not part of God’s little oiled machine.
Christian nation, assimilate me. Take me in your arms and set me free.
I am part of a degenerate elite, dragging our society into the street,
into the abyss and to the sewer, don’t you see?
The man just told me, he told me on TV.

Do you think you’re better than me?
Do you want to kill me or befriend me?

And the alcoholic bastard waved his finger at me, and his voice was filled with evangelical glee.
Sipping down his gin and tonics while preaching about the evils of narcotics,
and the evils of sex, and the wages of sin while he mentally fondles his next of kin.

My mind has wandered from the flock, you see.
And the flock has wandered away from me.

And he waved his hypnotizing finger at me.

Let’s imitate reality.
Let’s strive for mediocrity.
Let’s make believe we’re all the same.
Let’s sanitize our little brains.

I’d love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed.
I’d love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head.
I’d love to hear you laugh tonight; I’d love to hear you weep,
I’d love to listen to you while you’re screaming in your sleep.

Christian sons, Christian daughters, lead me along like a lamb to the slaughter.
Purify my brain and hose down my soul; white perfection. Perfection is my goal.

Do you think you’re better than me?
Do you want to kill me, or befriend me?

Christian nation, make us all right.
Put us through the filter and make us pure and white.

My mind has wandered from the flock, you see,
and the flock has wandered away from me.

Let’s talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter.
Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters.
The white folks think they’re at the top; ask any proud white male.
A million years of evolution. We get Danny Quayle.

All around the world now like a big bright cherry cloud
traveling from home to home, TV sets and telephones;
here it comes just like a storm. Bathe in it and be reborn.
Time to let the world know.
Welcome madness, say hello.

Let’s imitate reality. Let’s strive for mediocrity. Let’s make believe we’re all the same. Let’s sanitize our little brains.

I’d love to take you home with me. I’d love to tuck you in.
I wish I could protect you from the wages of our sin.
I’d love to hear you scream tonight, I’d love to hear you cry,
protect you from the madness that is raining from the sky.

*

Let’s imitate reality. Let’s strive for mediocrity. Let’s make believe we’re all the same. Let’s sanitize our little brains.

I’d love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed.
I’d love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head.
I wish that I could keep you in a precious Chinese box; on Sundays I would pray for you so it would never stop.

I’d love to hear you laugh tonight, I’d love to hear you weep.
I’d love to listen to you while you’re screaming in your sleep.
I’d love to soothe you with my voice and take your hand in mine.
I’d love to take you past the stars and out of reach of time.

I’d love to see inside your mind and tear it all apart, to cut you open with a knife and find your sacred heart.
I’d love to take your satin dolls and tear them all to shreds.

I’d love to mess your pretty hair.

I’d love to see you dead.

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Used to be that I knew the depths of the sadness, the depression.

But lately, it’s been countered by up phases. I don’t know how to describe that. Best analogy is when you’ve had too much caffeine, I guess.

They swing back and forth. In a standard calendar month I feel about right for maybe five days. The rest…

When I’m down I know it and can deal with it. Just my phases, my sadness. It’s the up times that I can’t…

They’re happening at the same time.

This is way beyond my control. How can I be both recessed, dropped into the darkness — and, at the same time, feel like I can take on the world?

Something is seriously wrong here.

You ever see a sine wave?

Up, down, up down. Like that.

You see the center axis?

Well, so do I. Up, down, up, down. Bad days. good days. The cat shat in the kid’s backpack. Finished paying off that note. Boss is being a turd. Lover is very nice one night. Up, down. But usually near a baseline. Right?

What does it feel like to live there? On that center axis. Because I don’t know, and I don’t think I ever have.

That’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s not a sine wave any more. It’s a scribble. And that fucking scribble is shooting high, and it really, really scares me. Because when I’m high, I really am high. Far better than any coffee buzz you ever had, way, way more than sugar. Six thousand ideas spark through my head in one minute, and they all seem achievable, and the part, the worst part, is that I know I will crash, crash hard, and all those things will just dissolve into random embers in the dark coal black of … of whatever happens to me when I implode.

I am writing this from inside one of those scribbles.

I can live with the sadness. It’s life. What I cannot tolerate any more is how the glassine towers of possibility that I make are just shattered, destroyed, lost. I hate the depths not because they are deep; I hate them because I know that I will be high again. And I don’t want that buzz. I don’t want that high.

I have a character, Cock, whose story is slowly unfolding in a long narrative. You might have met him. He is bipolar and schizophrenic. When I was describing him once to someone, I was asked, “but how do you know what it’s like to live that way?”

It is not listening to angels. It is just wrong, off tilt, off axis, off … sane.

This blog is not and never has been about my issues. But this is a big thing, and if you’re a psych major, you might want to tune in about … oh, about now.

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There are two puddles of cat puke in my house, one on the stairway (perfectly arranged to be hit in the middle of the night), the other in the upstairs bathroom.

In the last four weeks I’ve tossed about six hundred bucks into these sweet little critters. And there is no guarantee they’re going to be well. And they’re young. Ten or fifteen years or so left to them…

Every idiot at work put on the Extra Idiot™ Ne Plus Ultra helmet and went way, way mega idiot.

So, slogging past the barf and thinking about life in general, I thought, you know, I have the damn Bersa. This is a .45. It’s loaded with hollowpoints. Viscoelastic Shock ‘R’ Us.

When you think about it, I think it’s normal. I think we all occasionally think, you know what, fuck this.

The ones who are crying for help slit their wrists, or take pills, then call 911. Well, I’m not doing that. I’m not standing on a ledge either, begging for the world to shine its spotlights on me.

It’s just been a tiring couple of weeks, is all. I hate this time of year anyway.

I know this is mostly my own neural misfiring, my recurrent dysthymia. It’s not like I’m gonna shoot myself.

I won’t. Life is, overall, pretty good. I’ve had some good days and good nights. Plus, I’ve had to clean up the aftermath of a brains-shot suicide. In a word: Blecch. In two words: Jelly ewwwwwwwwww.

No, it’s a tired kind of thing. A back shelf kind of thing. If I get overwhelmed to the point that bla bla bla kind of thing. I have a pretty good idea how I’d react, for instance, to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

Not even sure why I’m posting this, really, except I think this has always been a fairly honest, straightforward blog, emotions and all. And, if the TSA keeps going as it has been lately, we’ll all be naked to each other anyway.

I know what I’m in. I know what clinical depression is. And I know it will pass. I’ve been here since I was fifteen or so. Still alive. Intend to continue to be so.

Some days, in my darkest days, the certain knowledge of the .45 is enough to keep me going. Because I know how easy it would be to just stop. Well, easy has never been my personal favorite track. I am a professional asshole.

This is not a threat, nor a warning, nor anything else. I’m just really goddamned tired right now. It’s been a shitty week, but it’s not been a bad life, and I look forward to seeing the sun rise on my selfish little face again.

EDIT: Welcome, 2010. And, in advance, well, fuck you too.

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