Monthly Archives: September 2014

And the cravings are a real bitch!!! I am still off the sugar (not just sugary foods but sugar in any food, and most processed foods) and it is still a bitch! I am focusing on eating WAYYYYY more fruits and vegetables than I was. I keep reminding myself that I’m working on developing healthier habits that will benefit me for a lifetime. Also, a lot of the time when I’m craving crap (sugar, carbs, junkfood in general) I just have to remind myself that I am fine, I am not hungry, I’ve eaten plenty of food. Sometimes I will have a piece of fruit. This is a major addictive process that I am trying to overcome. Food, carbs, sugar, I have used to medicate so much!!! And I so want to just let go and binge on a big container of ice cream. With gobs of caramel sauce. Somehow, I am managing to keep my decision to change my relationship to food. Mood-wise, I am doing really well. I am feeling positive, empowered and hopeful. I want to continue on this path.

Just a reminder, if you’re interested in going down this path with me (PLEASE, I NEED SOME SUGAR-FREE BUDDIES!!) watch the movie Fed Up. It will motivate you like you wouldn’t believe!!

Hope your week is going well, my friends!! Peaches to your Mama!!

Another piece to understanding the complex man that is Richard Dreyfuss is to realize that he has been bipolar all of his life and has been treating the condition with lithium since the 1970s.
“I’ve known that I was since I was a kid. It’s not like I outed myself. Anyone who knew me well knew that I had it. It’s not something you could or should hide. It’s what you are.”
Richard Dreyfuss The Big Interview

I’m mentally ill, I have Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, so it’s a struggle for me, the state of myself, with all these users trying to get high. I don’t get high outside, not anymore. When I got my place, I stopped.
John Thomas, homeless guy in Wisconsin.

He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was convinced that he had AIDS and, when a self-financed critically-acclaimed documentary, Rize, about an urban dance form originating from the rough neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles failed to find a large audience, he called it quits, packed his bags, left his homes in New York and Los Angeles and disappeared on a self-imposed exile, trading in his high-flying photographic career for a former nudist colony-turned-working organic farm in the middle of the jungle in a remote area of Hawaii.
Dave LaChapelle From Fashion Photography To Fine Art

I have lived with depression, anxiety, and, as I have recently learned, an atypical form of bipolar disorder for decades. As a result, I have lived a life of ongoing scrutiny and indefinite probation.
Robert Kominar A choir of voices needed to tackle depression in the legal profession.

Cop punches bipolar grandma.

Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Medical School have teamed with the University of Southern California and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT for a four-year, $16 million study to better understanding bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. more

This from my psychiatrist:

We are winning with the bloods. Your latest test is 0.69
Can we increase by another 250mg? Should be our last increase, but we will check it in 5 days in any case.

Quotes:
Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circadian rhythm, its inner clock. In normal people, ambient conditions, especially the sun, dictate their humors and determine when they are tuckered out for the day. They’re on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Bipolar people run on cycles independent of the sun. And run and run.
Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

Of all our conversations, I remember most vividly [Robert Lowell’s] words about the new drug, lithium carbonate, which had such good results and gave him reason to believe he was cured: “It’s terrible, Bob, to think that all I’ve suffered, and all the suffering I’ve caused, might have arisen from the lack of a little salt in my brain”.
Robert Giroux (1914- )

Some of us take lithium and antidepressants, and most everyone believes these pills are fundamentally wrong, a crutch, a sign of moral weakness, the surrender of art and individuality. Bullshit. Such thinking guarantees tragedy for the bipolar. Without medicine, 20 percent of us, one in five, will commit suicide. Six-gun Russian roulette gives better odds. Denouncing these medicines makes as much sense as denouncing the immorality of motor oil. Without them, sooner or later the bipolar brain will go bang. I know plenty of potheads who sermonize against the pharmaceutical companies; I know plenty of born-again yoga instructors, plenty of missionaries who tell me I’m wrong about lithium. They don’t have a clue.
David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

It’s difficult. I take a low dose of lithium nightly. I take an antidepressant for my darkness because prayer isn’t enough. My therapist hears confession twice a month, my shrink delivers the host, and I can stand in the woods and see the world spark.
David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

Without medicine, 20 percent of us, one in five, will commit suicide. Six-gun Russian roulette gives better odds. Denouncing these medicines makes as much sense as denouncing the immorality of motor oil. Without them, sooner or later the bipolar brain will go bang. I know plenty of potheads who sermonize against the pharmaceutical companies; I know plenty of born-again yoga instructors, plenty of missionaries who tell me I’m wrong about lithium. They don’t have a clue.
David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family