Tag: addiction

Open Mic Night 2018

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

This year I wanted to do something different to raise money for the AFSP Out of the Darkness Walk. This year is my third year and I am so excited! I normally go on Facebook and give people long winded stories on why suicide prevention is so important and the hotline number. The plus side to all of this are the people who come up to me and feel comfortable enough to tell me their story. I want that communication with everyone, the event started out as an original content only but quickly changed to bring more people in. I tried selling tickets online (which if you do this please check the websites credibility first. You live and you learn. I managed to raise $500 in one night. $500 I had cozies (I still have some if anyone is interested) and charged $7.50 a ticket with free food. I was hoping for $200 and when we got the final total I cried. I cried for so many reasons but mostly I cried because in a little over 2 hours we educated over 50 people about suicide and mental health. If you are able to reach one person you are successful.

I got up and told my story. I don’t do well in front of people and not fond of eye contact so I stared at the mic and probably talked a little too fast but when I said “I tried to die by suicide a year ago on 9/27/18. It was like all the was sucked out of the room. I could feel the eyes staring through me and I knew this was it, the time I wanted so bad and even though I seem very comfortable discussing my illness on social media saying it out loud was a completely different story. I never told the true story on my Facebook page but when I finished and walked away from the mic still shaking I was met with hugs, I love you’s, I didn’t know how bad it was, and please call me if you ever need anything. It was more support I expected but I welcomed it all. I never thought my words could have so much power. Which is why I started this blog and these social media sites, I wanted to spread my word and make a difference. I would quote Gandhi but his views about rape make me question his morales. I have attached some pics of the open night mic cozies and my centerpieces that turned out beautiful.

🖤

Physical symptoms of my illness.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

We all have them and they differ even with similar diagnosis.

In the last 3 years I’ve had 6 teeth pulled and I have a partial denture for 5 of them. They are my front teeth. My teeth decayed from years of not brushing them or going to the dentist. I physically could not do it. If you are reading this and not understand how that is possible deal with untreated depression. The things you are not capable of doing is a mile long. I could go for weeks sometimes months without showering, I still don’t think it is disgusting I just say it is depression. I never washed my clothes unless my husband did laundry and even then I would wear the same clothes for days sometimes weeks at a time no deodorant or freshening up. I just didn’t care. I would cut clumps of my hair out because it was so matted you couldn’t brush it. My weight verified depending on how things were. I would either gain a lot of weight from overeating or lose 20 pounds or more from not eating. I never slept in the same bed as my husband it was always on the couch for some bullshit excuse but the reason was simple. I hated me and I treated my body like it was a garbage because I was garbage. I didn’t love myself and I stayed like this for a long time. I had a job at the bank and they tried in so many different ways to tell me that I smelled and bought me little gifts of lotions, sprays, and body wash. My boss was a Miranda Priestly (which is a completely different topic.) I would forget to iron my clothes, my hair was always greasy. My husband and I would get into screaming matches over my personal hygiene. These are moments I am not proud of. I have scars all over me from picking (which I still do) the inside of my lips and my cheeks are covered in scars and tender spots from biting them so much. I think we don’t talk enough about our physical symptoms with our illness. I have and known people to have crippling migraines, cationic (It’s been years since the last time it happened to me.) alopecia, pneumonia the list goes on and on. The symptoms of our mental illness start to go down it turns physical. Please tell your story.

We notice them now, the physical symptoms and we try to take control over them before it gets worse.

I snorted Valium off a Bible. 2015- I have no idea how I’m not dead. (The months before the exorcism)

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

If you’ve read my exorcism story you will know that 2015 was just a complete and utter cluster fuck. Don’t worry the story about the Valium and the Bible will be included. I don’t believe in click bait. From January until December I was the definition of chaos.

January through February – I emotionally abused strangers on the internet. (The Xanax and Valium started here. That isn’t an excuse for what happened but is important to the timeline.) I cat fished people and it was for attention. I craved that attention so I joined a chat room and I saw all of these people pop on and the chat would be so excited to see them and they would give these long winded dramatic stories of “their life” I think we chat room full of catfish and the few true people there got more emotional baggage then they needed. I made the story so outrageous it was only logical in some outrageous fiction novel. I joined in with this group of people talking about drugs (that wasn’t completely a lie) overdosing (some truth there too) abusive partners, emergency surgeries. I just needed that attention and the more I got the bigger the lies became until I had to fake my own death (on at least 4 different occasions.) it was only after I completely broke someone’s heart that the attention I craved was given to me in another form. I was honest and even then so much damage was done. My hurt still hearts for her and I still have an enormous amount of guilt for what I did. If you are still here then you realize that I’m seriously not a horrible person.

March through July- I started walking because my psychiatrist said that exercising would improve my moods along with the weight loss. Then those damn Facebook ads started popping up (thanks big brother) with those weight loss tablets that are all natural and all you had to do is take them. They magically made your cellulite, carbs, water weight, freckles, credit all improve. (You get where I’m going with this) Well I started taking those and then decided they weren’t enough so I bought/stole diet pills from Wal-Mart and started taking them all day long. My hypomanic that started has now turned into a haze of pills and mania, but I got attention. It was extremely negative attention from the wrong people but it was attention.) When I would start shaking from all of the caffeine from the diet pills and Redbull I would take Xanax and Valium to calm myself down. In this period I’m randomly taking my antipsychotic and mood stabilizers.  I was itching one day bad and I grabbed the first thing I could find which was my Bible tore out a piece of the first page and snorted Valium. (I still question if God has forgiven me for this.) I got so obsessed with snorting that I would snort anything. I mixed Goodys headache powder with Valium to help with my headache and my high. Never snort Goodys it burns and I’m surprised my nose didn’t bleed excessively during the process. I was extremely angry during this period as well. There was a huge part of my past that I never talked about and it was triggered. I did everything I could to make go away. I hated my husband because he wasn’t there when it happened. He wasn’t present in that part of my life the way he should’ve been.) I was a mess and became an expert at lying to get my way and making sure I always had what I needed to make me forget. I pushed away my best friend who always tried to help. I made myself hate her because she didn’t understand and no matter how many times I tried to overdose or how high I got she was always there supporting and helping me. My husband was the same way. It was so much easier to hate them then for me to hurt because I was in so much agony over everything that was happening that had happened I wanted to be high I needed to be high to function. I wasn’t functioning though not the way I thought. I was drowning myself in pills. It is easy to feel sorry for yourself and use that as an excuse for every horrible thing you did to anyone especially yourself. When you hate yourself that much every bad decision feels like a good one. All of this leads up to the point where I try to kill myself which I document in the other post about my exorcism. As for the horrible thing that happened to me I’m sure you figured it out but that isn’t something yet I’m ready to discuss.

I can’t take back any of the things I did. I can only thank the people who stayed in my life that supported and loved me through this. If there are any doubts in my story or you think that they are in anyway not true please let me know I have receipts for all of it… trust me.

Fuck you 2015 you tried to kill me but I fucking survived.

🖤Earliest childhood memory🖤 Day 4 (parents should have a fund for therapy instead of college)

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

My earliest childhood memory: I have quite a few.

The first one was when I was about 3 or 4 and I had one of those blow up punching bags that looked like a clown. I was outside playing with it and my mom told me to be careful since we were playing with the water hose and not to bring it back in the house, but I didn’t listen and I tried to walk up the small metal black steps and fell down popping my punching bag. I cried so hard but my dad bought me a new one.

When I was about 5 and my granny and granddaddy took me to the circus at a local gym area and we were riding back in their old box Chevy when “Black Velvet” came on and I remember falling in love with it. I sang it on the way back home and when we got back my sister told on me and I was told that was a bad song and I shouldn’t listen to it because I didn’t understand the lyrics.

Then there are the memories of people passing away. There was this doorway between the kitchen and living room in the mobile home I grew up in and I remember when family members would go to the hospital and my mom would rush in the doorway stand there and let out an exacerbated sigh. We knew what it meant. I saw so much death growing up it became a normal part of my life. When my dad died my mom had some neighbors pick us up from school they were watching “White men cant jump.” (I still can’t watch it) and playing Sonic 3. My mom called and told them to bring us home. My dad had an accident at work and he was supposed to come home that day, but when I ran in the house the hospital bed was empty and my mom was crying. I didn’t really cry instead I got peroxide for a splinter in my finger. I’ve never accepted death well.

I realize my childhood memories aren’t exciting but rather sad.

I have other ones of playgrounds black swings that were so hot it would burn the back of your legs, metal slides, sports, fires metal buckets cut in half, roasting marshmallows, my granny (even when her alcoholism got bad) picking from the garden, chasing my cousin down with the water hose, stealing matches and setting things on fire. My family was a bit fucked up (everyone has those stories) alcoholics, drug addicts, abuse, custody fights. You know the normal shit you grow up to tell your therapist.

Amy Bleuel (the founder of the semicolon project) is my hero

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

https://projectsemicolon.com/about-project-semicolon/

Thank you Amy for everything you did. I have 4 semicolons and your project and strength are an inspiration.

Project Semicolon was founded by Amy Bleuel in 2013, as a tribute to her father, who died by suicide in 2003. She was a Christian

Amy Bleuel

Bleuel lived in Wisconsin. After her parents divorced, Bleuel chose to live with her father and his second wife at the age of 6. Since then, Bleuel endured being physically abused by her stepmother. At the age of 8, she was taken into state custody by a child protective service. Bleuel began self-harming and attempting to kill herself after she had been sexually abused at the age of 10, and raped at 13. At the age of 18, Bleuel’s father died from suicide, and she was subsequently released from the system. In her early years in college, Bleuel was raped twice and suffered a miscarriage.Bleuel suffered from alcoholism at the age of 30 and had five major suicidal attempts.

Bleuel died on March 23, 2017, aged 31; the cause of death was ruled as suicide. She was romantically involved with her partner David.

Thank you to the Project Semicolon community for your amazing support. Today, although sad, we’re reminded of the reason why Project Semicolon exist. Suicide has the ability to strike at the heart of the very cause that aims to eliminate it. Today we lost a giant and from this day on, together, we’ll carry her legacy forward.

CEO – Michael Shields

–

After overcoming many obstacles in her life including bullying, rejection, suicide, self-injury, addiction, abuse and even rape, Amy has found strength and a love for others. Amy struggled with mental illness for 20+ years and has experienced many stigmas associated with it. She now shares her stories around the nation giving hope to others struggling with mental illness.

“Despite the wounds of a dark past I was able to rise from the ashes, proving that the best is yet to come. When my life was filled with the pain of rejection, bullying, suicide, self-injury, addiction, abuse and even rape, I kept on fighting. I didn’t have a lot of people in my corner, but the ones I did have kept me going. In my 20 years of personally struggling with mental health I experienced many stigmas associated with it. Through the pain came inspiration and a deeper love for others. God wants us to love one another despite the label we wear. I do pray my story inspires others. Please remember there is hope for a better tomorrow.” – Amy Bleuel

Bad Mom – my poem about my relationship with my daughter.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

I watched a video of my daughter when she was just 5 years old carrying an oversized black backpack walking into school by herself for the first time. This may not seem like a big accomplishment to some but for her it was one of the proudest moments in her life.

I watch the video proud and ashamed. Proud that at just 5 years old she could accomplish such an enormous task, but I still fight to get out of bed I know it sounds cliche See I have bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, severe generalized anxiety and issues with psychosis.

So for me some days getting out of bed is my biggest accomplishment and I know she sees it. I know that even through heavy wooded closed doors she can hear me fight with her daddy about the bottle of pills I can’t let go of because in my mind being dead is more useful to her than being alive.

I know that in her eleven years on this earth she’s seen me go to a psychiatric hospital, overdose on pills more times than I count, has a shotgun temper breaking windows and doors out of anger and do things I can’t always remember, but I always remember her crying and saying, “Mama please don’t leave.” Every time I storm out of the house after screaming about something as simple as not being able to find the remote and I know I sometimes I can’t help it, I try to control it or maybe I could control it if I try harder. It is so frustrating after years of therapy and medication still never knowing what could possible trigger it knowing I will never be that Mom who is always comforting because I can’t comprehend your emotions. I can’t just be happy or sad or neutral. It is always one extreme or the other or a mindless zombie from the 1200 mg of medication I take everyday just to function. I am sorry Cami. I’m sorry that I possibly have you the same demon that haunts me. I’m sorry I get so mad at you for no reason, that you can’t go to school and tell your friends anything besides you worry about me all the time. I’m sorry this disease has made me so selfish that I take time from you. That I can’t remember when you took your first steps or your first words, but I remember that time I overdosed on Xanax in the bathtub. I’m sorry I’m not a good mom. Your daddy tells me I’m a good mom, but I think he doesn’t want me to hurt more, because I’m not a good mom. I’m selfish, distant, angry, isolated. I keep our relationship at a distance so I don’t hurt or disappoint you. I’m sorry that my illness has become a normal part of your life and I tried not to cry the day your daddy got my medicine and you said, “I don’t want to be like you and take medication for the rest of my life.” It hurt because I don’t want you to be like me either but how do I explain that to you. I’m not always strong enough to fight the courage to put the bottle of pills down. That your memories may consist of that was the time my mom tried to kill herself, rushed to her doctor, fought with my daddy because she couldn’t control her emotions. She ruined holidays, birthdays because of something so small I can’t even remember why but I know she loves me even though she is selfish, isolated, distant and angry she loves me. That you knowing I love you even though I don’t know how to show it is the one thing you remember most about me and I tried to be a good mom.

🖤

This is why people don’t take mental health seriously. Anxiety isn’t a fucking choice.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

*I realize I may lose or gain subscribers for this post, but it is for the greater good of mental health this is said*

I caught the end of the segment but she said her anxiety was so bad she contemplated suicide and my heart broke and thought how brave she was to tell her story and then she said it. “I didn’t want to take pills for the rest of my life so I medicated and found what inside myself was causing the problem and then I stopped eating sugar for 3 months and I was better.” There are some people who can go without taking meds for their illness and I think it’s awesome but to make it sound like anxiety is a state of mind pisses me off. Your “emotional moment” that you used to gain views that magically disappeared makes me dislike you more. We all can’t be famous and have all of this time and money to magically become healed. If you want to talk about mental health let’s be completely fucking honest.

How I feel about my overdose

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

I was numb in my first post about it and I gave you the logistics of what happened, but I never explained to you how I felt then and how I am feeling now. I am mourning the loss of a piece of myself and yes it was fragile and broken, but it was still a part of who I was and still am. I feel like once anyone reaches this type of milestone we should celebrate our hard work but mourn that piece of you that had to die for you to get here. The piece of you that was a tidal wave of emotions that made you cry and was so angry for no reason. The one that couldn’t live without benzos, that was so selfish I forgot about others, I lost so many friends but it never mattered, being high and numb was the only thing that mattered as long as I was high I never felt ashamed. I pushed everyone away because my death would be easier that way and determined that no one loved me anymore. I isolated myself in my illness and addiction I wasn’t a person anymore. I know it’s been said so many times about people with addictions but it is true. I mourn her still, I will still mourn her because she was a lost child digging through a sea a demons drowning in pills never seeing her opportunity to free herself from everything but now I am free.

I looked in the mirror yesterday and I cried for her mourned her loss even through everything and where I am I could still see her reflection. She still lives in there that sad little girl and as much as I wish I could save her but I would never be able to reach her without falling back down the rabbit hole. I want to tell her I’m sorry I won’t be able to save you, but I love you.

A year ago today I overdosed.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

My mouth almost goes numb when I say it. It is hard to fathom where I was a year ago compared to where I am today. I don’t have a lot of memories from that day and everything that is a reminder is erased. These are a few of the things I could find. I know that I was popping Halicon and Xanax chasing it with whiskey. I was in a “support group” on Facebook and those ladies were watching my downward spiral. I made several lives in the group one of which was me staring in a shower head and then there was the final curtain call. I was down to the last few pills in the bottle and I went live. I have no idea what I said but I know I ended it and passed out. I don’t know how long I was out for but the ladies in the group freaked out and started blowing my husbands phone up. I remember coming to when my husband came rushing home pissed at the entire situation. I realize now that he wasn’t just angry, he was terrified. If I never went live then I would probably be dead. He picked me up and threw me in the truck and took me back to work with him. I was passed out but the moments I came to were nothing but incoherent screaming. People have a lot of preconceived notions of overdosing. It isn’t always like what you see in the media. You can overdose not throw up, not have your stomach pumped and just go in and out of consciousness for hours. So now it is after 3:00 and we pick our daughter up from school and I’ve managed to slightly stabilize myself (in my mind) to have a really good shouting match with my husband. He sends our daughter outside while I’m screaming and swearing. (I didn’t eat anything that day and I had enough benzos in me to knock out a horse, I’m slightly intoxicated and I’m manic.) I have no idea what I yelled about, but I guarantee you it was nothing but slurred speech, half sentences and swearing lots of swearing. We got into a huge fight and he called my mother and kicked me out. I didn’t know if I was going back inpatient but I didn’t give a shit I just didn’t understand what was happening. The suicide attempt to me wasn’t a big deal it wasn’t my first time and me abusing Benzos also a norm for me. He took my phone and wouldn’t let me have it. I wasn’t allowed on social media or to talk to about it to anyone who wasn’t involved or aware what was going on. I found out later he did this to keep me from going inpatient unless he felt like I needed to. I slept on a mattress in my moms living room for 3 days. The first night I passed out and felt like shit when I woke up. I was so hungover blinking hurt and detoxing was torture. My marriage almost ended and I have forever traumatized my daughter from the ordeal. We forget sometimes that our actions can kill the people around us even if they don’t kill us. This doesn’t mean that I won’t ever get bad again and I won’t deal with suicidal thoughts. It just means that I’m finally at a place where I can get help the right way.

conversation1conversation2conversation3

Media (social) killed suicide, addiction and mental illness

Bipolar Happens1 Comment

forblog

I wish I could talk about everyone who was fucked over by the media for their illness, addictions and suicides but it would be a whole book.

If you are an everyday person like me getting diagnosed with an illness is just that a diagnosis. No one is reporting my suicide attempts, addiction issues, the medication I am on and it is because I am just a normal everyday person. Of course my immediate family and friends are concerned but it doesn’t make the front page of magazines or posted on all the social media outlets with tacky and smutty titles, however if you are a celebrity that changes and it is sad that so many of them hide their illness or addiction for that reason and that our society is so desensitized they lack all forms of empathy. The only thing people see is green. That dollar sign for who gets the scoop from a close family member, the autopsy report, pictures of their death but the media doesn’t grieve the loss of someone who had an impact on the world, the same people whose very words may have saved your life. We don’t see that we won’t remember them for their accomplishments or the impact they had on us. We will remember them for every controversial thing they’ve ever done all indiscretions made public. We do it for the views right? to get a retweet? for more followers? We’ve made that our priority instead of seeing this happening and demanding a change. We need our government to do more for us, we need as a society to stop desensitizing death, mental health, and addiction. I know we can’t save anyone, but instead of finding the negatives in their lives let us find the positives the amazing accomplishments but most importantly let us make mental health an open ended conversation. We need to be more comfortable with who we are and the media (social) needs to back the fuck off. Celebrities are still humans and I think as a society we’ve forgot this too. Let’s work on bringing up mental health in a more positive light.

What are your thoughts?