a MaNiC dEpPreSsIvE nAmEd LaUgHiNg BoY [hAw HaW]

Growing Cold

2009-11-13T01:59:00.000-08:00

I don't understand whats been happening to me lately.

I grew up with an alcoholic somewhat mental father and a depressive, timid hippy of a mother. But despite their faults they were both fairly moral people who taught me to care about others, sacrifice etc.

But the last few years, and especially the last few months I've felt myself growing more distant and nihilistic about other people, and even myself. I'm not angry with people, or particularly depressed about my own situation. I've just kind of shut off.

I can only deduce that it is a defense mechanism against all the fucked up, traumatizing shit I've been through the last few years. I've seen every aspect of drug addiction, legal trouble, near deaths, actual deaths, suicides, disease etc. I think my mind has finally just decided "NO MORE!". I feel bad about it afterwards sometimes, but at the time of the crisis I just shut off completely. I feel as if I'm becoming a sociopath (which I think is impossible...I think it's a birth thing).

I feel that it's hard for me to show love, or receive love. My sex drive has decreased dramatically since the spring/beggining of summer. I find myself saying very fucked up things. I find myself using people and later trying to justify it. I'm going to great lengths to hurt people who have hurt me. I am being psychologically vindictive.

I don't know if this is from my life experiences or from my illness, but I haven't experienced such incredible sociopathic nihilism since I was 17 or 18.

Maybe you're the ones who need help...

2009-08-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

My perspective on manic depression is quickly turning from feeling bad for myself to feeling bad for others. When I was growing up I didn't fit in and was picked on quite a bit. I was tall, overweight, and came from the city to an all white suburb. After a few years of attempting to fit in I began purposely ripping my clothes, writing offensive things on my shirts, dying my hair etc. (this began in the 6th grade). I was sick and tired of making being different MY problem. It wasn't MY problem. I was a good kid. I got good grades, and was polite. I was kind. I was generous. I would jump in front of a bullet for a stranger. I forgave and forgot. At some point I realized, this is not MY problem, it's THEIR problem.

Now here I am after officially having Bipolar disorder I since I was 17 (almost 8 years now), thinking again "this is my problem, I'm doing something wrong". Well, they tell people to just "be themselves" and anyone who doesn't like you isn't worth being friends with anyways. So I say again, this is no longer MY problem, it's everyone elses.

When I first started showing signs of mental illness I had some problems. I had to learn to control my anger, and not kill myself during depressions. I had to learn to stay away from people when I was in a heightened state, and try and control my impulses. I had to learn to recognize my delusions and hallucinations as "not really there". But now that I've started to get a hold of these things (without medication) I feel quite positive about my illness. It has made me the person I am. On medications I was an empty shell. I rather be dead.

This is who I am. This is who I will always be. If you don't like it, then don't sit around waiting for it to change. It won't. In your eyes "I'm crazy"! If you don't like "crazy" people then why are you around me?

Up until this point I have never hurt a person (who didn't truly deserve it) on account of my illness. If I ever do, then maybe I will consider medicating myself again for the safety of the public. But as of now the only "problem" with my illness is that people just don't get me most of the time.

For my entire life I prayed that I could just be "normal". But I have seen what this "normal" is. It's cruelty, closing your mind, going along with the way things are, never standing up for yourself, never having the guts to say something that people don't agree with. It's repressing human nature, and human liberty, and human potential for the sake of safety and acceptance. Just like I prayed for all those years to be a normal kid, I now pray to be as far from normal as possible.

I can't say manic depression has been all fun and games. It hasn't. I've had some truly frightening experiences, and have gotten very close to suicide. I don't recomend people with mental illness to refuse meds on any political or religious reason. I only recomend those who feel different but not better to explore the option of going unmedicated. While I have seen death and hell in my experiences, I have also seen new life and paradise. I have seen glowing colors refracting from the sun, each and every vibrating atom in sight split apart into trillions of balls and then condense back together again. I have seen the other side of life, and what may be after death. I have heard the voice of god tell me that no matter what, everything will always be okay.

You can read this and call me nuts. "He's just another manic depressive thinking he's an alien or the son of god or whatever". But I'm not in an altered state of mind right now. I am sane and sober. I am simply looking back at my experiences and seeing value in them. Some people try to shut these things out. The voices and the visions and the emotions are called "abnormal" because the majority does not experience them. So in the time of Elijah Mohhamed or Jesus Christ or the Aztecs would people like Paul or Quetzacoatl be shunned for their unique minds? No! They were revered for their special communications with the divine. These days if you say "I'm the son of god", you get put away.

Is it possible that maybe this is just a part of our evolution? Is it possible that we will all wind up needing this ability one day? Is it possible that maybe just a few need this ability to direct the rest? Why is it that we hear voices? Why is it that we seem to believe we are other people in other places sometimes (astral traveling?)? Why is it that we have these bursts of energy and creativity? Are these simply malfunctions of the brain? I believe certain disorders such as anxiety, ocd, and depression are most likely malfunctions because I cannot see how these things serve any greater good.

But manic depression and schizophrenia (and even some forms of autism/aspergers to a certain degree) have so many signs of high functionality. Autistics and people with aspergers are often very emotionally withdrawn, yet amazing at things like math and puzzles. Manics hear voices (god, extraterrestrials etc.). Schizophrenics get obsessed on an idea that we call strange, but may very well be something worth listening to (how would we know since we ignore them on the street and give them medication to shut them up?).

There are many levels of intensity in these disorders, and I understand that sometimes the illness can be too intense for some people. It also depends on their outlook on life, prior beliefs, life situation etc.

Maybe instead of doping and locking up these "nutjobs" we should give them the coping skills they need to survive with the disorders and study the things they have to say, and the things that they create. Is it possible that maybe we are the future of mankind? Is it possible that maybe you're the one who needs help???

I see a bad moon rising....

2009-07-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so...I've been feeling a bit jumpy lately, and my vision is starting to change a bit. I feel that I may go into a manic cycle very soon, and I must admit....I am looking forward to it. I know there may be some trouble, and I may lose a few more friends...but atleast I can get some work done. I've been neglecting my story I've been trying to write, and my music. I've also missed drawing and painting.

I know everyone around me is going to hate it, but I need to feel free for a little while. I smoke pot sometimes to calm myself down if it goes on for too long. But as long as I don't spend too much money, fuck random people, or run away to the circus I should be fine.

I know that this is the exact opposite of what I should be telling people. I don't recomend this for anyone. But all of my manic episodes and psychotic breaks to date have never included violence, so I feel that the only one I'll be hurting (if anyone) is myself. I also don't recomend smoking marijuana to self medicated. I've seen many manics become paranoid from marijuana, and others realize that they can shut off their mood swings with drugs and go into harder and harder things (as I did).

Marijuana is a personal choice of mine. It is a cheap way to control my mania. I have had years of experience with it and feel that it is more beneficial for me than not. But like any medecine it effects people differently. I have it recomended through a licensed physician under Proposition 215 of California.

In the past I used depakote (valproate/valproic acid), zoloft (sertraline), seroquel, and either triazolam (halcion) or Flurazapam. They clouded my mind and killed off my connection with life, god, and creativity. Even though I am a severe manic depressive, I don't directly hurt people with my breaks from reality and what not. Atleast not yet.

A Thiarna Dean Trocaira.

-LaughingBoy

And on the first day God said.."Let there be Laughing Boy"

2009-07-16T02:03:00.001-07:00

Well here's where I introduce myself. I am Laughing Boy. I am a 23 year old male from Southern California. My dad was Canadian and my Mother American. I grew up between Hollywood California, and Nova Scotia Canada. I finally settled in the Santa Clarita Valley in the mid 90's and spent my adolesence there.

I grew up in the punk rock/hardcore punk scene and played in four bands since I was fourteen. I started out in a progressive protestant church, then became a Mormon when I was 12. After my fallout with them I spent years as an agnostic. I messed around with everything from hedonism, to atheism, to deism, to paganism. I became more involved with the Zen practices, and after a few strange experiences on psychadelic drugs and through psychotic breaks I "found god" and now practice a mix of pantheism, deism, gnosticism, zen buddhism, and ACIM. But don't be so quick to judge. My faith is a complete reinterperation of the bible. I call myself a Heretical Zen-Christian.

After medication didn't work for me, I began using opiates starting with vicodin, then oxycodone and morphine, and eventually winding up a complete heroin/methadone junkie for about four years. I cleaned up and decided not to take my meds anymore. I felt that they had crippled my creativity, spiritual connection, and sense of self. I am not advocating stopping your meds. It's a personal choice for me, and could wind up terribly. It's sort of an experiment.

At the age of seventeen after four years in mental health treatment being diagnosed with generalized anxiety, social anxiety, a.d.h.d., borderline personality disorder and major depression they finally came up with a diagnosis of bipolar. It started with fits of rage which would wind up with everything from holes in the wall (at the least extreme) or having my hand broken two more times before even healing from the first.

I would spend months happy and never tired, writing, reading, making music. And then I would spend months sucidal and depressed, consumed by a strong and irrational fear of death and dying. After a few years I began occasionally hearing voices. Then I began spending weeks or months not sleeping, with an unimaginable amount of energy and tensity. I would talk so fast, and for such extended amounts of time I would literally throw up.

After a few years of this I had my first true psychotic break when I thought I was the cop from that T.V. show "Life on Mars" where the cop goes back in time to the 1970s. The next morning I had my second psychotic break and had a long series of delusions involving the Alaskan wilderness, Sarah Palin, a Pile of bloody deer antlers, the mexican ocean, and being in the army.

I then went for a period where I was convinced that god had a constant "ticker" of information going into my mind. I couldn't stop reading and writing. I was obsessed with the idea that I had a calling from god himself to bring all the faiths and political ideologies together. But then it stopped one day and I began to believe that god had given up and me, and the devil had taken over. I couldn't look in the mirror because I saw the devil's eyes in my eye sockets.

Then the love of my life came out of a coma after two weeks and I was then convinced god was still there for me, so I baptized myself in the shower, cut off all my hair, shaved, then burned all the hair. Soon after this I had my third psychotic break involving listening to the radio through a broken television, and my mom calling me...but not really being there. This break sent me to the hospital.

Ever since I have been clean of both street drugs and my prescriptions and feel great.

This blog will include my daily life and it's obstacles and troubles, current status of my mood and overall mental health, as well as my ramblings on everything from politics to god to media gossip...I know...weird huh? If you like what you read, please follow this blog.

My overall mission for this blog is to give a real life, real time chronicle of a severe manic depressive. I want to give people afflicted with this so called "illness" to maybe get a little courage from this blog, and say "Yeah...Damn straight I'm a manic depressive! What are you gonna do about it?". I would like to show the world that this "disease" doesn't have to be a negative thing in people's lives.

On a final note, if you know anyone with a severe mental illness such as bipolar I, bipolar II, or Schizo affective disorder please direct them to the blog. Thank you.

-laughing boy