New Buzzfeed article- 6 Things I Wish I’d Heard as a Bipolar Teenager

Bipolar isn’t the whole story of my life and definitely not my teens, where I started to become ill but was mostly unable to cope under the psychic pressure that teenagehood is, a stew of hormones, trauma, the Manic Street Preachers and very shitty make up.  It was a pretty lonely, pretty frightening time, pretty silly time for me at points. So I wrote an article for Buzzfeed on things I wish someone had said to me as a teenage mentalist. You can read it here.

Spoiler- it doesn’t end with me shiny haired and recovered, because that’s never how it ends.

Give Us Your Body, We’ll Give Your Mind

I wish I could go back time and never have taken psychiatric medication. I’m not even sure how much I credit it with my stability. There are definitely times that it was helpful, but did I need to take it always, forever?

When I was prescribed carbamazepine when I was 16, nobody told me why, or what it would do, or what side effects it did. I was so drunk and dizzy on them, so sleepy, I’d fall over. I was 16 and my life should not have been like that and if it had to be I should have been told why. You take them because an adult told you to and your life was falling apart and you were scaring everybody with how you were behaving.

When I was 17 I was prescribed olanzapine and again nobody told me why or what side effects it had. I gained a frightening amount of weight in such a short space of time that I stopped recognising myself, I felt like my body was being inhabited by an alien.

I’ve been on antipsychotics my entire adult life so far. I never got to know who I was without them, except for the periods I’d stop taking them to see how I felt, and naturally I got ill (ill or withdrawal? I still don’t know). It’s not as easy as just going, “I’m not taking them”- you get labelled, “non-compliant”, “difficult”, and when you’re trying to live your life, rocking the boat is scary.

Now I’m 30 and I’ve been off them for about 6 months. I had tried many times to, and I was okay to stay on them postnatally as I could see how they’d help (even if it meant I could do no night feeds, and miss out on that special, defining parental experience).  I came off them, finally, when I had to go back to work and realised I couldn’t take them and parent, and work, and that I’d had enough of weight gain. It wasn’t as hard as it had been before because I was in a good space mentally, I’d titrated down, and used antihistamines to take the edge off.

I’ve only lost 7lbs since being off but it is the first time in years the scales have gone down.  I am almost 5 stone overweight and the only time I’ve been slim in my adulthood was when I had an eating disorder. I wasn’t a slim teenager either but I wasn’t fat, and I wasn’t the antipsychotic fat I am now, with a bloated face and huge tummy.

Doctors have never taken me seriously about this. Despite gaining 3 stone in 3 months on a dose increase.  Nobody was ever honest about this with me, about side effects in general. I was always made to feel it was my fault, that I was just stuffing my face, when I wasn’t. Always told to do more exercise when my medication made me so tired that I could barely get up in the morning, and when I said that I was told to go to bed at 6pm.  Whenever diabetes was mentioned, it was always with an apologetic shrug. Despite the fact that due to my medication I was supposed to get annual health checks and blood sugar tests, I only got one- my first one- last week.

Now the inevitable has happened, what I’d hoped to escape by getting off them, but I haven’t. I have prediabetes and now I have a fuckload of work to do to try and undo this, to avoid diabetes, if I can at all, I don’t even know.  I need to, what choice do I have? I am already on my knees with exhaustion, I commute 3 hours a day, I work full time, I have a baby, I am trying to manage my mental health without medication and it is hard.  But I am not going back on it ever. I am petrified of getting diabetes, of anything that will shorten my lifespan. I’ve always known the 20 years younger statistic,  I’ve quit smoking, my cholesterol and blood pressure is perfect at least.

I’m not blaming the medication entirely, but I wouldn’t have gotten to this weight without it, and I have no idea what it’s done to my body. And I’m scared and worried, and wondering- was it worth it?

One

I have a one year old. How the hell did that happen?

Happy first birthday to Sunny Boo, little Bean, beautiful Oisín. It is a singular joy being your mum and watching you grow from a mini Bean to a human Bean. At one, you still love the cats, you love music and dancing, shaking your head and jumping up and down on your bum, bibbling, pretending to have a tantrum then laughing, Chu and Where’s The Cat (‘at!), the light of the moon and little eggs laying on leaves, hurling yourself onto teddies, talking to the bookshelf, cleaning your high chair tray with a cloth, watching other people, being carried up the stairs by your dad still makes you dance with happiness every night. You still love your little baby gym- you couldn’t even reach the dangly toys when we got it and now you can lift the whole thing up to tip over, and those toys are well chewed. You love the feel of the wind in your hair. You love being sang to, sometimes when I sing to you at bedtime you flip out so much I have to stop. You are hilarious and make me laugh more than anyone else. You push books to us to read and flick back to your favourite pages. When you have night terrors I feel like I’m walking an ancient path, responsible for such a small life beginning to make sense of their world, a sovereign being in your own right, but being carried around by your daddy and a cat always makes it better. You have weird taste in food and love anything strong, you turn your nose up at mild cheddar and yomp down the vintage stuff, smoked salmon and celery. You make the most amazing noises (the cats have their own special ones) and sometimes wake up in the night to babble with slightly unnerving clarity. You’re the most sociable and sweet baby I’ve ever met, you share your happiness with everyone around you, looking into our faces with a grin. You have the best selection of smiles, the softest skin and the longest eyelashes. Having you has made me reevaluate what’s important, made me kinder, happier, given me the closest thing to the answer of what the universe means that I think I’ll ever get. You’re the best and we love you. And thanks to everyone who’s been through this year with us, helped, hung out, given advice, made him giggle.

Oh, and happy 8th birthday to the cats too!

One year ago today:

Now: