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 THE
BIPOLAR EXPRESS
Finding God
on the Emotion Locomotive
©
2005 by Jim Robinson
About two months ago, I slowly
came to the realization that I was getting sick again.
At first I wasn’t sure what
was wrong. I felt very tired, lethargic, and generally sad.
My body hurt, too; I ached like a man in his eighties, and
I haven’t even turned fifty yet. My sleep was fitful,
and I would wake exhausted. The work waiting for me each day,
once igniting in me a deep passion, now felt burdensome and
futile. Everyone around
me commented on how awful I looked. “You really seem
burned out,” they’d say sympathetically. “Are
you getting enough rest?”
My wife also noticed. “You
really should go see your doctor,” she said, more than
once. Generally, I only go to doctors when I’m feeling
the cold breath of the Grim Reaper on my neck. And, finally,
this feeling had overtaken me. “I’ll go,”
I mumbled.
My doctor knows me pretty well.
Though I hadn’t been to see him for nearly three years,
he and I are kindred spirits of a sort, both of us recovering
from various addictions. Between the two of us, we share a
compulsion-driven rap sheet half a mile long, including abuse
of just about every substance and behavior imaginable. Knowing
this about me, he had always been very careful about what
type of drugs he prescribed; basically, he never gave me anything
fun. He knew my history: Alcoholic, drug addict, and suffering
from bipolar disease. He knew my mother had died from a combination
of all these things many years ago, and he had helped me early
on in my recovery to surrender to some of the biophysical
realities of who and what I am. I hated it then, and though
I took the recommended bipolar medications for a time, I swore
all along I would beat the awful thing, beat it completely
and get off the meds. Once I had accrued a few years of sobriety,
I finally felt healthier and happier than I had for most of
my life. I would get well! I would finally be cured!
Eventually, I decided I had accomplished
this feat. I had not taken any bipolar medicine in over twelve
years. By God’s great grace, in addition to having my
songwriting career restored, I had also become an addiction
counselor, and was now helping others like me find wholeness
and freedom from their bondage. By George… I was
cured!
AN OLD, FAMILIAR FEAR
This is, of course, the greatest
and most tenacious desire of every addict—to finally
have the freedom, as my counseling guru Mike O’Neil
puts it, to “sit in the normal section.” We hold
fast to this illusion, unable to accept fully the truth that
we will never “graduate” from this class. But
the truth is… we are what we are. Even though miraculous
freedom comes, the chains no longer hold us, and the darkness
no longer consumes and destroys, maintenance is required.
As with any disease, God can offer us healing. But He usually
expects us to take our medicine, too.
And so, I’m sitting in Dr.
Lee’s office, half bent from the enormous weight I’ve
been carrying for months, and he is looking at me over the
top of his glasses.
“What do you think?”
he asks.
“I don’t know,”
I say, and I’m completely serious. “You’re
the doctor. I ache all over. I can’t sleep.”
“Do you feel afraid?”
he asks after a pause, and I know right away where he’s
going. It seems as if I’m watching a movie I’ve
seen before—Dr. Lee is saying the same thing he’s
said to me before, and I’m watching his mouth move.
Everything slows…I’m sitting on the edge of the
table, my heart is thumping inside my chest, and it is the
only sound in the room. I sense an old, faintly familiar sadness
creeping across my soul.
“It’s not that,”
I say. “This is in my body.”
“Yes. Your brain affects
your body. But do you feel afraid?”
“I feel…” and
I’m searching for something, some word. “I feel…
guilty,” I half-whisper. A pause. Then: “And
yes. I feel afraid. All the time.” My spirit is sinking.
“It’s your bipolar
disease,” he said. And then, with a quizzical, half-laughing
look in his eyes, he says: “Are you surprised?”
I was surprised. And angry.
Angry that this old nemesis that had been slinking along behind
me all this time had actually dared to show his ugly face
again. And, at least a little bit, I felt something like a
vague shame, an old shame, one shoved deep inside over the
years but never fully hidden. Those of us who have this thing
understand what I’m saying. It’s a part of it
all, somehow.
RUNAWAY TRAIN
For those who might have heard
the term but never really understood its meaning, I’ll
give the simplest of explanations. Bipolar disease (sometimes
referred to as manic-depressive illness) is a mood disorder,
which means that the symptoms are disturbances or abnormalities
of mood. It is characterized by “cycling”—the
affected person is caught on a runaway train of vacillating
emotional highs and lows. The high cycles—characterized
by over-the-top exuberance, irritability, hyperactivity, and
a decreased resistance to inappropriate and/or compulsive
behaviors—are known as “manic episodes.”
The low cycles manifest as clinical depression: dangerous
levels of lethargy, sadness, and hopelessness. Then, there
are periods of more normal mood in between . There are all
sorts of technical classifications and terminology regarding
levels of severity, and wide variances regarding cycling patterns.
We won’t go into all that in this limited space. But
as with many kinds of emotional illness, there is a great
deal of confusion and misconception regarding the true nature
of the disease. I thought it important to encourage those
who may suffer to reach out from within the prison of their
shame for the healing that is available.
It’s necessary to point
out that what I am describing is not at all the same thing
as normal mood-states of happiness and sadness. Symptoms of
manic-depressive illness can be severe and life threatening.
While individuals from across the population spectrum can
be affected, I believe an inordinate number of artists, musicians
and writers have suffered from various forms of this illness.
This has served in many ways to trivialize the destructive
reality of bipolar disorder, being somehow regarded as beneficial
for artistic creativity. Just this past December, Crystal
Cathedral's Co-Minister of Music, Johnnie Carl, became a victim
of his disease when he took his own life—on the church
campus, no less. The loss was tragic. But I was touched as
I read a quote by Linda Carl, Johnnie’s wife of twenty-seven
years, as she emotionally expressed her gratitude for the
long support of Dr. Robert Schuller and his wife Arvella:
“I just want to thank you… for allowing him to
be a part of this church and to work here, because I don't
feel there are too many other places that would have accepted
him, given the episodes that he had with his bipolar illness.”
Even in the midst of this confusing and often misunderstood
disease, Johnnie Carl had been surrounded by friends willing
to help. His wife understood this. “And he and I…
truly appreciate the gift that you've given both of us."
Many of us love someone who suffers
from this illness, and feel confused and helpless. In Part
2 of this article, we will explore in more detail the biophysical,
genetic, and spiritual aspects of bipolar disorder. We’ll
also discuss what to do about it.
Have courage. You are not alone.
PART 2
THE BIPOLAR EXPRESS
Bipolar disorder is the third
most common mood disorder after major depression and dysthymic
disorder (morbid depression and anxiety with accompanying
obsession). It affects about
1% of adults during their lifetime. Studies have indicated
that bipolar depression is genetically inherited, occurring
more commonly within families. Symptoms typically begin during
adolescence or early adulthood, and continue to recur throughout
life, with both men and women equally likely to suffer. Without
effective intervention, bipolar illness leads to suicide in
nearly 20% of cases.
There are treatment options. But
because bipolar disorder is often not recognized by the patient,
relatives, friends, or even some physicians, people with bipolar
disorder may suffer needlessly for years... perhaps for their
entire lives. Depression is not fully recognized by most health
care insurance providers; most will pay only 50% of treatment
costs for outpatient care, as well as limiting the number
of visits.
I have come to believe that, at
least to some extent, I have been experiencing this bipolar
train ride for all of my life; I lived in a perceived world
of surreal highs and devastating lows. Very early on, this
created for me a feeling of separation from others and from
the world, a phenomenon I would later try to numb with drugs
and alcohol. This is, in fact, very common; an estimated 60%
of all people with bipolar disorder have drug or alcohol dependence.
It is my belief that fellowship-oriented substance abuse recovery
groups are inhabited by an inordinate number of those who
suffer not only from their very real addictions, but also
varying levels of bipolar disease.
Sadly, shame also plays a factor
with many of us who don’t want others to know about
our secret suffering. Where does this irrational shame come
from? My recently published book,
Prodigal Song:
A Memoir, tells the story of my own battle with addiction
and depression. Early in the book, I write about the confusion
and fear surrounding the progression of my mother’s
own deterioration, lost in her private prison of fear and
drugs.
I won’t try to explain
what happened to our mother. I more often than not see only
dusty, empty rooms when I go in search for her back there,
to that place of my past where my mind sometimes wanders
but rarely lingers. I believe in words like psychosis and
bipolar disease and schizophrenia, and I believe in chemical
imbalances and “bad wiring” of the brain. I
can spout lots of technical jargon and use psychoanalytical
language to describe some things science can understand
and some things it does not. I’m supposed to have
some understanding of neurotransmitters and receptor molecules,
but all that cannot completely explain how people sometimes
become lost to themselves and lost to the rest of us. And
I believe in unseen darkness and demons, too, and I’m
not at all sure where one set of beliefs leaves off and
the other takes up. All I know for sure is that God exists,
that there is a world beyond what we can see and touch and
feel, and that within that world evil exists, too. And I
believe that for some of us in obvious ways and probably
all of us in more subtle ways the disease thrives and makes
its home in more than just our flesh, and medicine alone
rarely cures us.
And maybe the details don’t
matter as much as we think. Because for whatever reason
and perhaps for no reason at all, our mother became ill.
Her life changed, and ours with it. I’m not sure when
it started or how quickly it worsened. It was, in a way,
like the slow closing of a morning glory at dusk. She began
to lose her light, and we all watched her fold into a darkness
that would eventually cause her to wither and never open
again…
Not
understanding my mother’s condition, and lost in the
surrounding shame and fear of watching her decline into her
private emptiness, my family hid rather than helped. Ultimately,
the dark cloud would overwhelm my mother, and she committed
suicide.
I suppose
a part of me has always dreaded this same sort of fate, for
many years recklessly trying to fulfill this false destiny
with the most destructive of behaviors, and twice attempting
to take my own life. But
then… then something happened. I discovered that at
the source of my aching emptiness there lay a soul dying of
loneliness. And, crying out to the God I had spent my whole
life running away from, I discovered He had been there all
along.
RETURNING
TO THE FLOCK
Why
are we so afraid to open ourselves to others, to uncover our
wounds and let them see, let them touch? Why do we so often
succumb to this shame that keeps us in bondage? I believe
it is because we allow the shame to isolate us, to cut us
off from others and therefore perpetuate the illusion of our
being alone. Only by culling us from the flock, so to speak,
can the enemy kill us. And so, the lies draw us deeper into
the deception of self-loathing. Christ—and those who
truly share His nature—wait to welcome us Home. But
lost in this darkest of places, on this seemingly unstoppable
train barreling down the mountain, we simply have trouble
believing we can ever jump to the safety of His arms.
How do we abandon ourselves to
such trust? We
must learn to reach out.
First,
we need to seek professional help. The new generation of psychotropic
drugs is far less dangerous and much more effective than those
drugs used in my mother’s time. We look for doctors
who understand the multiplicity of this disease dynamic. These
professionals, if they fully understand that drugs alone are
not the ultimate answer, can give those suffering from depression
a fighting chance, a helping hand out of the pit, thus enabling
them to do the physical, emotional, and spiritual work necessary
for long term recovery. Ultimately, we who battle this thing
can re-engage with the world, with life… with Christ.
Then,
we need a support system, a fellowship, a safe place
for connecting with those who have lived some part of their
lives suffering from the pain of similar wounds. We move beyond
our comfort zone and, one day at a time, seek the healing
face of Christ, often in the faces of strangers who are seeking
their own recovery. This is a biblically
sound principal, yet one sometimes looked down on by those
in the Christian church. These days, some of the people I
work with both inside and outside the church walls have trouble
with the whole “recovering” thing, as if true
healing is somehow less miraculous when performed as a process
rather than an event. But to me, nothing could be more beautiful
or meaningful than a God who is willing to meet me on my knees
every morning, and to walk with me one step at a time, this
friend Jesus who seeks intimacy rather than waving a magic
wand. And, by connecting with others suffering from similar
hurts, we open ourselves to His deeply relational—and
uniquely beautiful—healing.
COME
ABOARD
This
Bipolar Express is indeed
like a runaway train.
Often, it is little more
than a far-away whistle, a faint rumbling through the wooded
night. But sometimes the brakes fail, and the black
machine lunges forward, out of control.
It is then we learn we cannot face this thing alone. We need
help.
For
those who have a family member or friend suffering from depression
and associated diseases, there are a number of resources available
where we can connect with caring people who understand. My
website is one. And here are some others: www.psychiatry24x7.com
www.dbsalliance.org
www.healthyplace.com
These are but a few of the places where you can find
help regarding diagnosis, symptoms, and treatment.
I encourage
you to reach out. The ride can be scary. But there
is always hope in Jesus…there is always healing for
the broken spirit. Jesus never tells us that the journey will
be without suffering. But He promises that, should we but
dare to fall into His arms, we need never again travel alone.
Come
aboard. Together, we’re heading Home.
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