Living While Insane

In the latter part of 2019, I was feeling a bit delusional. I was in love. Unfortunately, the object of my affection was over 50 years my junior. I went to the VA looking for a psychologist. I knew I couldn’t go back to my VA psychiatrist because she had already cast me off, but I assumed (crazy people assume a lot) I could get seen by one of their psychologists. Unfortunately, my former VA psychiatrist responded to my request. I told her what was going on in my life. She said I wasn’t delusional, I was just daydreaming. But she agreed to send in a referral to Veteran’s Choice for me to see an outside psychologist.

I started seeing this guy. He had a recent PhD certificate in Clinical Psychology on his wall, so I was feeling pretty good about seeing him. I guess he knew what he was doing because within six months I was feeling pretty good. I certainly wasn’t delusional (daydreaming) anymore. I clearly saw that my misguided affection was wrong and I needed to redirect my romantic energies in a more logical direction, so I started writing. That’s what I do to calm my raging mind.

An offshoot of my feeling good about seeing this psychologist was a crazy idea that crazy people often get when they’re feeling good. I got the idea I could go off-meds. Not all meds, just my mood stabilizer. I kept the atypical antipsychotic (keeps me on the straight and narrow) and the antidepressant (keeps me from being overly sad or suicidal), but I decided I was well enough to go off the really big one. Well, my VA psychiatrist got rid of me because she thought I was in remission. That’s a technical medical word meaning you’re no longer sick from what ails you. People with cancer go into remission all the time. Unfortunately, most cancer doesn’t actually disappear when people go into remission. It just goes into deep hiding in various places in the body where diagnosticians don’t usually look for hidden cancer cells. Fifteen years later the cancer has recreated itself and tries very hard to kill its mistaken host.

Not only did my former VA psychiatrist think I was in remission and no longer needed her attention, she also altered my diagnosis from Bipolar Disorder I to Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Type. Schizoaffective Disorder is like Schizophrenia, but not as severe or debilitating. In other words, not only was I prone to mania, but I could also be delusional (or just severely daydreaming).

Anyway, I asked my psych med provider if I could go off the mood stabilizer because I was feeling so good. She said she liked patients who didn’t take too much medication. So I weaned myself off the mood stabilizer. Everything was good for a while. Then things started getting weird. The weirder life got, the more delusional I became. I knew I wasn’t simply daydreaming. I was positive people were watching me. People were intent on my destruction. I had to get away from where I was living or these people were going to do me in.

It got so bad, I decided to move to Texas. My son was understandably upset that I was moving, but people were watching my every move. I was a danger to my community. I told my son this was so, this was the reason I had to move.

The upshot of all this is I did move to Texas. The good thing, though, is I recognized how horribly my life had gone wrong by being off-meds and requested my new VA psychiatrist down here in Texas that I needed to go back on my mood stabilizer. Last night after dinner, I took my first dose of the mood stabilizer. Hopefully, life will get better soon.