Do you folks know, that before I was a vlogger on Youtube, I was a blogger. That’s right. In October of 2006 I began the baby steps of writing my manuscript by an exercise of reflection and notation. Meaning, I was writing down the story of my life as I could remember it, year by year, subject by subject.

Hidden in the private section of my blog are about 20,000 words of my first attempt to stitch together some kind of chronology of the events in my life focusing on the mental health history.

As I was recollecting my time spent in psychiatric hospitalizations I recalled the incidents surrounding my diagnoses. I was initially admitted because of a suicide attempt. After a few weeks of living in the surreal world and restrictions of the Special Treatment Unit I was stressed, scared and anxious. After being antagnosised and threatened by a psych nurse, I catastrophically lost my temper and in the process I was restrained and isolated by the staff. This was interpreted as a full blown psychotic mania. After all, how delusional and grandiose and invincible does a kid have to be to challenge, threaten and then fight against 20 adults who are in the process of challenging, threatening and assaulting the kid? A 14 year old juvenile demanding the respect of an adult? This kid must be psychotic!

Thus began my experience of involuntary medication.

When I was diagnosed I was summoned into my psychiatrists office. She explained to me that I had a chemical imbalance in my brain. Without a shred of real empathy she tried to let me down easy. It was not my fault she solemnly told me. It was not because I had a bad childhood. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was not being punished. I was mentally ill. She explained the nature of my impending lithium treatment like this.

“Your brain does not make enough lithium to naturally balance itself.”

Thanks to my bunk genes I needed lithium to rebalance my brain chemistry, which would then balance my moods. Elsewhere I have talked about what a nightmare 6 months of 1500 mg of lithium was. Punish the body to manage the mind. As a minor with no one looking out for me or asking critical questions of this psychiatrist I had no choice but to take lithium and a brain damaging neuroleptic voluntarily, or face the ignominy of being restrained and injected 3 times a day. I was raised to be staunchly anti drug by my parents. Year after year I grew up with the idea that only losers and mentally weak people took drugs. ( I was a teenager, go easy)

Can you imagine going inpatient and then told you are being prescribed a cocktail of drugs that would destroy your personality, your health and your body? You are told that because of the severity of your mental illness everyone needed to be protected from you. They violated me with their drugs against my wishes. I had spent years being assaulted and violated at home and at school, I survived it all, and placed my trust in the professionals. Then they chemically raped me.

You have a choice they told me. Take the poison voluntarily or involuntary, but refusal is not an option. I had to make that decision 3 times a day for 6 months. At 15 refusal became an option and I exercised it.

Flash forward 17 years.

I had been depression free for decade. I had been suicide attempt free for 12 years. I had been manic episode/psychosis free and self injury free for almost as long.

I began to wonder. what are my chemical imbalances like now? Were they rebalanced? As I delved deeper into memories half a lifetime ago, I thought back to the tests used to determine I had a hereditary biological illness that caused my manic depression.

I could remember the MMPI, the Rorschach, the endless therapy sessions and interviews. The blood test to screen out neurological or genetic diseases.

Ah! there it is, I thought There is a blood test for bipolar. That is what it was, that is how they knew I had a chemical imbalance.

Emboldened, I popped open a browser and began Googling bipolar blood tests. I was willing to spring the lab test fees out of pocket just to know. I just wanted to see the paperwork and the chemicals that were tested for bipolar. I could not find a single lab test I could take to would ascertain my chemical balances. I even called my GP and asked her if she could draw up an order to test for bipolar. There is no test for bipolar. In fact the only tests were these behavioral inventories which inquired after my moods and general personality traits. I was baffled. How did they know I was bipolar?

This began a search into how my diagnoses of bipolar was rendered in the first place. I looked high and low and searched Bipolar support forums to find out how anyone got their Dx.

The people on the boards, talking about being diagnosed Bipolar wrote gems like this.

“Hey gang I am new here, just looking for info and support. After talking to my Pdoc about my symptoms and mood swings she told me I was probably Bipolar. As we discussed it I realized, Bipolar described my personality more accurately than any personality inventory ever did, better than astrology even. I know I have this disease. I have been like this my entire life.”

This is not a specific comment by a specific user at a specific forum. This is construction, an amalgam of the average post of a person newly Dxd with Bipolar.

Invariably the replies and offers of support from the other forum members would be something like, “Welcome to the club! what meds are you on?”

My click search for the chemical imbalance test led me to Psychetruth channel on Youtube. There I learned the truth. There is no test for bipolar, this is no blood test for bipolar, no urine screen or oral swab. This supposed biological disease is not diagnosed by clinical testing. The diagnosis is rendered by consensus. You talk about your symptoms, the doc goes through the DSM and picks the insurance code that matched the symptoms you present the most accurately.

Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons is an amazing blogger and reporter. I have always loved his work but I think he outdid himself in a post titled ‘Once Diagnosed Never Undiagnosed’ on December 11th about the nature of bipolar, personality and recovery.

I snagged this bit from close to the bottom of the post.

“I know I am going out on a limb here that someone will likely chop off for me, but I believe that much of what we call bipolar disorder is in fact a personality disorder or constellation of behavioral issues. That’s why I am so opposed to diagnosing kids with bipolar disorder and why I am so against the long-term use of anti-psychotics in treating bipolar disorder. In the latter case, it’s like using a nuclear bomb to clear a field of stumps.

I do think–as the questioner asked–that these personality issues are used by society and the medical industry to marginalize humans and to engage them in a treatment paradigm that can serious consequences. I’m not opposed to the short-term medical treatment of bipolar disorder (provided it’s done without the use of anti-psychotics except for brief periods) and am certainly not opposed to free individuals making their own choice about what kind of care they want, but at a certain point people have still got to come to grips with themselves and who they are and what their lives are about. There isn’t a medication or drug in the world that can do that for you. You have to do that for yourself.”

This is what I have been saying on youtube for 9 months. Ever since my first bipolar recovery video back in Feb/March.

Folks, I have not been disabled by depression, mania, suicide, psychosis, compulsions, anxiety or obessesions for ten years. Thanks mostly to alternative therapy, nutrition, stress management and meditation. I have been free of bipolar without therapy or drugs,

There is no test that I can take the Undiagnoses me Bipolar! That is one of the reasons my 2006 blog stopped, and I took my talks to Youtube.

20 years ago I was told I had a genetic chemical imbalance.

Are my chemicals still imbalanced? Inquiring minds want to know.

Oh wait, there is no test that confirms this theory one way or the other. There was not then and there is not one now! I was an overnight activist in one sense. I was lied to 20 years ago and people are being told this lie today.

It just has a strong appeal to it like those bunk alternative medicine detox kits.

Detox now! Cleanse those toxins out of your system with product flushX!

People readily believe they are toxic despite the fact these products never claim to remove any specific toxins.

What kind of toxins do they get rid of? “Toxins, you know, toxins.”

Then they buy bogus detox scams.

People easily come to the conclusion that The Chemical Imbalance is REAL. It sounds plausible. It is even probable some chemical changes are at play when someone is depressed versus euphoric.

Without a test, it remains a guess. Not a fact. These days it is more of a marketing pitch.

The newly diagnosed preach it! They know it is a chemical imbalance Why? Their doctor told them it was so. Doctors are always right. They are never wrong. Do you have an M.D? then how can you say there is no chemical imbalances. Lord help me come to accept my chemical imbalance that you gave me.

I get comments like this in my email and on my videos regularly.

One of the first people to contact me after my first series of bipolar recovery videos was a man in the U.K. in his late 30s.

” I love being Bipolar ” he told me. It described him perfectly. He would not want a cure he told me. He did not want the bad parts of Bipolar to be gone because he said, Bipolar is part of who I am, the good and the bad.

Once I read this several times. I knew I had to start talking. That man completely identified his personality as an illness.

At any rate. I have been complaining for the last year that there should be some test, some debriefing session. One Final Therapist Appointment for closure. There had to be way I could get any psychologist or psychiatrist in the profession that labeled me and treated me, to see and acknowledge the complete remission of manic depression and schizophrenia. To affirm and validate this. I felt it was important to share my methods with the profession and explain to them how I did it in the interest of science.

There are no receptive ears for this in psychiatry.

Here is some more from that WunderPost by Mr Dawdy.

“Speaking of psychiatrists, I saw mine yesterday as I do every two months or so. Despite being off-meds at his urging, I continue to see him just to be on the safe side. But I’m beginning to wonder how safe that side is. You see, I’ve had almost two years of not just being subsyndromal, but of being virtually non-syndromal and the last five months of that has been without the aid of medications of any kind and so I had to ask him if I even passed muster as someone with bipolar disorder anymore. His answer discouraged me.

“Once diagnosed, never undiagnosed. But once diagnosed, not always symptomatic.”

We talked about this and my original diagnosis in 1989–that was eight psychiatrists ago–and how I think I never was anything more serious than perhaps a bipolar 2, but I was diagnosed in the days before bipolar 2 existed. We talked about bipolar disorder as a personality disorder and how that may be far more applicable to someone like me than the big old ugly diagnosis of bipolar disorder 1, manic-depressive and mentally ill. It became clear to me after a few minutes that there was no budging my doctor on his view of once-diagnosed, always-diagnosed. So I told him something.

“What’s the point of treatment and going through years of agony and finally getting vastly better only to be told that there is no goal line I can possibly cross that will lead to me being undiagnosed?”

He didn’t have an answer for me. Our appointment was over. But my concerns are not. How is it that I can go along with the rules of the mental illness paradigm for almost 20 years and actually meet almost every conceivable endpoint of recovery and still be told I have the disorder? That doesn’t strike me as fair, logical or particularly humane. In fact, I am feeling rather screwed over by this whole process that has consumed my entire adult life. What if we, as a culture, told that to cancer patients? Would there be a movement of cancer survivors? Or would their be hoards of former cancer patients huddled in the corner, well but still diagnosed? You know the answer: we’d never stand for that.

I think it’s high time we started examining what personality issues psychiatrists might have–and if you know anything about the history of the DSM, you know they have loads of issues of their own–and began a push to stop this nonsense of labeling people for life. Oh wait, there’s already a movement like that. Is it any wonder it’s had little success given that even fairly humane docs such as mine buy into the Dx’d for life nonsense and that there’s a $250 billion industry very interested in keeping people like me sick for life even when I am more well than most normal people I can think of?”

Again, this is the message I have been trying to communicate via Youtube videos for almost a year. Bipolar recovery is possible and even permanent.

I am with Philip. I was certified insane. Now, I want to be certified sane. Is that too much to ask for? I want to be Unlabeled. Sure, I still have a creative, occasionally moody personality. Gone are the depression and thought disturbances that made living with my personality traits so challenging.

I define recovery as the complete cessation, permanently of disabling mental health symptoms. I achieved this through experiment, trial and error, patience, perseverance and discipline.

This video by Psychetruth helps shed some light on the current definition of recovery.

Recovery for Mental Illness ReDefined by Psychetruth