Bipolar Recovery

This blog is my personal work. It represents the culmination of 20 years of mental illness, followed by 10 years of stable mental health.

I am not a doctor or a mental health care professional.

The content of this blog and links to my vlogs will on occasion contain my personal advice and recommendation on how to manage mental illness.

In choosing to heed or disregard my advice over say, that of a professional mental health worker, you should understand where I am coming from, and judge accordingly.

I am former mental health patient and a survivor of abuse at the hands of coercive psychiatry. I am former member of that percentage of the population that suffers unresponsive and treatment resistant mental illness.

During the course of several hospitalizations and years spent exposed to mental health services it became apparent that I simply did not respond to talk therapy or psychiatric drugs. For people like me, there are usually only two possible life trajectories. In the one life trajectory I spend the rest of my life below the poverty level. With bouts of homelessness, being in and out of both intensive and occasionally involuntary psychiatric treatment, as well as high risk for criminal behavior and law enforcement intervention. I would spend my life in and out of shelters, adult group homes, rehabs and jail.

With no family, no wealth, no privilege, no safety net, and ineffective mental health treatment my life would have been, should have been a total waste. Alternately the other trajectory is that sooner or later, I would have succeeded in taking my own life.

The life of a person with rampant unmanaged mental illness truly is suffering and hell on earth.

By the time I was 20 years old, I had experienced everything in both trajectories. I had experienced living on the street homeless, being jobless, without family or support, penniless,drug addicted and on occasion, jailed for various petty crimes and misdemeanors. I had attempted to commit suicide a half dozen times.

By the age of 25, my life had stabilized. I was successfully functioning again. I had my own apartment, a car, a bank account, a pet, a steady job and I was social again.

During that time, I cured myself of Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia and PTSD.

By the time I had reached the age of 30, I was in a successful, loving long term relationship. I was employable, healthy and optimistic. I had gotten my GED and finally stepped foot into college and began taking classes. I had been depression, self harm and suicide free for a decade. All this was accomplished without therapy or drugs. I had lived without medical coverage or any kind of insurance or support for 7 years as an adult. By the time I could finally access health care and get my own doctor, my mental health problems had finally gone away for good.

In terms of recovery, what I did, I did out of desperation. I am always amused when people tell me they have tried everything before succumbing to psyche meds or ECT. Rarely am I convinced these people have truly run the gamut of therapies available.

I had tried everything because I had nothing left to lose. My advice, and my recommendations, come from the perspective of a person fully healed of mental illness through self healing, self therapy and self help.

Although there were several teachers and guides along the way, no one could do the real work of unriddling my mind and emotions, for me but me. It was nobody’s business but my own. As such the only person responsible for my recovery is me. When I speak of how one might go about doing these things, it is not from the perspective of clinical analysis, reading studies, or from any medical or psychiatric credentials whatsoever.

As much as we are all the same, we are all different. What may work for one person may not be effective for another. I understand this and I hope if you are considering the pages on this blog, or my youtube videos, that you understand this too.

The methods I used to recover from mental illness were experimental and unorthodox and may not be for everyone! There is no one single effective cure for any or all mental illness. The methods and therapies I resorted to, I turned to because nothing else worked! Your mileage may vary!

When I speak to you of advice, recommendations and recovery, I speak to you as a former patient, sufferer and survivor. I took personal responsibility for my permanent recovery and that is what I expect you to do. I am not responsible for any medical, psychiatric or life choices anyone makes after viewing my blog and videos. You are solely responsible for acting on any of my anecdotes or advice.