Today, I took a choice, I took the choice to be happy rather than being medication free, after 9 days the withdrawal was intolerable, every measure I have in my self-care checklist told me that I needed to do something to rescue myself from the place that I've slipped to over the last couple of days.

Okay you're thinking, 9 days wasn't exactly the biggest victory and really you are right, I could have given it a little longer but as I sobbed to Harriet on the phone at the end of an afternoon of crying for no other reason than the effects of withdrawal I just knew that it wasn't worth it anymore.

Right now, my heart is the saddest it's been in a long time but for no known reason and that's the worst part, over the last couple of days my moods have plummeted to the very depths of depression like they used to when I was on the worst downswing of bipolar and I'm sitting her now writing this with tears rolling down my cheeks because I feel in such despair.  The fact that I've gone from happy to this in such a short space of time is scary, really scary.

I have not given up,  going back to the half dose is half the dose I've taken for nearly 15 years and yes I may lose out on getting back some of my muchnesses but it is better to have my high functioning quality of life back than to go through any extremes of mood ever again.  How I feel now is too familiar to the long dark days of depression.

The article I released on Blue Monday was actually written last Friday when I was still doing amazingly, had I written it on Monday it wouldn't have said what I wanted and so I'm glad I was still in my happy place when I wrote it.

I took some meds about half an hour ago and so I know it is now just a matter of sitting and waiting, in a few hours the physical side effects from withdrawal should disappear without a whisper, it may take several days for my moods to get back to tip top and full on sparkly but hopefully by the time I go to London on the 28th I'll be back to my old new sparkly wonderful self.

I have to forgive myself for not succeeding, I wanted to do it so badly, I wanted to be the success story but really I'm more than a little cross that these things aren't spoken about when you go onto the medications in the first place, yes it makes you better but you also lose facets of your personality, no one told me that I wouldn't be able to laugh for 10 years, nothing like that was ever discussed and whilst I now might be on this half dose for the rest of my life I'm not even sure what I'm giving up to be this way, are there parts of my psyche that I'll never get back, it makes me sad and it makes me wonder.

I don't think anyone will judge me for taking the action that I have taken but if there are one or two naysayers out there I just want to say one thing, in the last 6 months on the half dose I have had the happiest life that I can ever remember, it can't be such a bad thing to want to remain in that state forever.


Update -

It's 10pm and within a couple of hours of taking the medication pretty much all of the medical withdrawal symptoms disappeared, the emotional ones will clear up within a couple of days because I do at least have the medication still in my system.  Harriet hugged me and took me out for dinner and I've spoken with friends and Mr F tonight, all who have reassured me that I haven't failed.  To not try something is to fail, to try something that doesn't work is just a learning curve and this has by far been one of the tougher lessons I've had to experience.

Experiencing Life in All It's Colours

Waking up this morning I breathed a big sigh of relief that no more damage had been done by the winds of yesterday, I have a little wait before the new fence is erected and I may even invite my neighbours to have some kind of winter BBQ party while we share a community garden, I made the news yesterday with a huge facepalm as I saw the story "Woman nearly trapped in her house by falling fence" Around once a year I do seem to make the news for all kinds of strange and peculiar things!  Do you remember the incident last year with Facebook, I thought I blogged about it when I was impersonated but I didn't, probably for the best, the girls banned me from ever saying abhorrent again after seeing me on the news!!

Isn't Sherlock the best drama on TV at the moment?  I watched it on Sunday on the edge of my seat and then I rewatched it with Mr F last night, I am still completely lost as a fox (I'm sure that's not a saying but I'm making it one), I did get rather distracted at the end though as I was booking a £28 train ticket to London in March, £28!!!  Can you believe that?  I paid £105 for the one at the end of January, the trains are a couple of hours different in times and I get more time there in January but really, I can afford to go more often at £28 than I can at £105!

In every facet of my life at the moment I am reconfiguring, I am looking at plans and goals and trying to work out what's essential, what stays and what goes, it's a little like a spring clean but instead of it being my house, it's my life.  Yesterday saw me halving my bipolar meds again, after speaking to my doctors I'm fairly sure that there's a chance that I can come off them completely, for anyone who doesn't know, I have bipolar type 2 and haven't had an episode since I was pregnant with Looby and she's 13 now!  I'm just at a place in my life where everything is so vastly different to what it was fifteen years ago, I have no negative influences and my days are filled with happiness, love and contentment, I'm great a practising self-care, I have no vices now apart from my penchant for tech and kitchen gadgets but I don't think that's likely to affect my mental health.

More than anything, though, I have good people around me so if I do start to waver they'll be the first to let me know and if worst comes to worst, it'll take 2 weeks to get back on the medication but I honestly don't envision that's going to happen.

In my life, on most days, apart from where I wake up in the morning with a cat or dog sitting on my face and have a moment of perturbed thought wondering what the heck it is, I'd go so far as to say that I'm bright and bouncy, I can't actually remember the last time I was in a bad mood but isn't that how life should be?  If you have a job you love, great friends and a fabulous pocket-sized bohemian geek, well then life should make you smile, shouldn't it.  Look I'm not going to make anyone responsible for my own happiness because only I can be in charge of that but we all only have one short life so it's surely better to throw heaps of positivity at it, live the life of a bohemian romantic and just get hurt, sometimes rather than being afraid of life, living in fear and never experiencing life in all it's glorious colours.

When I came out of my last marriage I could have become gnarled, bitter, twisted and I don't think anyone would have blamed me but it's just not me, I always say I'm a hopeful romantic, not a hopeless one and if I had become some kind of disillusioned hermit then I would have been shutting myself off from the wonderful happy heart I have now, life is far too short not to take chances.

Why I'm reducing my Bipolar medication

13 years ago, there or there about I gave birth to my beautiful Looby by C-Section, no sooner was she born than I was handed a box of medication to control my Bipolar ll disorder and several months later I eventually found a medication that worked for me and my life was changed forever, I still have slight hypomania and I still have times of depression but for the most part the very extremes don't happen which mean I can live, love and function and for 12 years without any change in my meds this is the way it's been.

Here's the thing though, whilst controlling the most extreme effects of my psyche what this medication has also done has robbed me of some fundamental emotions that most people need to get by and function with, for 12 or so years I never felt real emotional pain and I also lacked empathy and lost the ability to laugh at the most simple of things, for all intents and purposes I became a high-functioning robot, that doesn't mean I didn't feel happiness because I did but it's just not like a normal person would, there were still times I would cry but it would be all too short before I just got on with life.  The impact of this was mostly good, it's amazing what you can do without being controlled by emotions but as time has drawn on Robot Mandy has become more and more noticeable.

Around 6 weeks ago I started a program to reduce my medication to half of the dose, it was felt that it was the right time in my life, I was in a good place, have great friends, amazing kids and I know myself inside and out and practice self care so well that I would notice instantly if something was wrong and could revert to the top dose.  I told my good friends and also my daughters so that if I didn't notice something but they did they could come to me and talk to me about it, I trust those close to me enough to know when my behaviours are different from the norm.

So what has happened in a month has completely blown me away, I have emotions now, I have my empathy back and I am able to laugh, get excited and all of the things many people would take for granted, however, the double-edged sword of emotions is that I'm also now feeling absolutely whacked by sorrow, pain, loss and loneliness, all of the emotions I should have experienced when Paul left but didn't, I never grieved at all, I just got on with life and at the time I spoke about it with friends because I was worried with the numbness.

Right now, life is hard and messy, being flooded with emotions is unexplainable unless you've been through something like it yourself, the nearest thing I can equate it to is when you become a teenager and you're hormone flooded body doesn't know what the hell is going on, I have no choice but to sit it out until everything levels off or I could just make the decision not to bother and go back to the medicated level I was at, I've had definite moments when I've considered it because my heart aches but that's the cowards way out and I know if I can just make it through the next few weeks and months then I should be ok in the end, everything will settle, I'll let go of all of the pain and to all intents and purposes I'll be pretty bloody normal (ish) for the first time in years, I might even be able to read books again.

So why am I writing this all down, well I firmly believe we need to talk about this stuff, there's little enough information out there for people and actual experiences from real people are still in the minority, we misunderstand mental health because we lump each part of it together, even within Bipolar there are many many different presenting symptoms and whilst some people will need heavy medication there are plenty of high functioning individuals who take no medication at all, I don't feel no medication is an option for me just yet and it may never be but for some self-care, diet, exercise and therapy alleviate the need and that's good.

Whilst I may write about amazing shoes, or a fabulous autumn coat, at the heart of everything I write is me, slightly eccentric, mostly happy, smiley, bipolar me, I'll always be Bipolar but I'm also a business owner, mum, friend, advocate, mentor and I believe that mental health shouldn't stop people doing anything, you just have to do things on your own terms and the more we go out there and talk about our health just as we would if we had asthma or diabetes the more understanding and tolerance there would be.  Bipolar is just a label, I'm actually defined only by my own actions.