Topic: Luck - Musings on Mental Illness

A few weeks ago I watched this documentary called “32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide.”

I’m a sucker for a good personal documentary, and the more personal the better.

32 Pills… follows the story of a woman going through her older sister’s stuff after keeping it in storage for something like six years after the older woman’s suicide.

Throughout the documentary we learn how brilliant, talented, and creative her sister was. We also learn how troubled she was.

Older sis had some serious mental health issues. So serious, in fact, that she was on hundreds of different medications over the course of 10 years. There was one scene where the documentarian set out all of her sister’s prescription bottles on one of those long folding tables. The bottles took up the entire table, and there were still bottles left in the giant tub that she was pulling them from.

There was some debate as to the true nature of her illness. Bipolar, borderline, no one knew for sure. What they did know was that the medications, many of them generic and name brand forms of the same thing, didn’t work for her.

They didn’t stop her from checking herself into Bellevue multiple times. They didn’t stop her from making 20, or so, previous suicide attempts. And they didn’t stop her from making that final, successful, attempt.

So what does this have to do with luck?

Well, I have mental illness. I AM mentally ill. For me, it started sometime around Jr. High, but the years leading up to it were no picnic. I don’t know if the years of bullying I endured caused the anxiety and depression, or if they just laid the foundation for a building that was in progress long before I ever took my first breath in the world.

I do know that my mother has, what my grandmother called, a nervous disposition. I know that her anxieties often had a profound effect on my life. But I also know that we never talked about my mother’s anxiety, and still don’t talk about it to this day.

But anyway, I have anxiety and depression, and a touch of seasonal affective disorder, and that makes me lucky.

Why?

Well, I have been on meds for the past few years. Actually, let me go back.

When I was in my 20s I was diagnosed bipolar. With the type of mood swings I had, and the way my anxiety would manifest as hyperactivity, that seemed to fit.

I was put on lithium and Zoloft, and took it faithfully for 10 years. It seemed to help a little, but I think the biggest thing those drugs did was give me a sort of security blanket.

In 2000 I went off all meds, and stayed off until around 2015.

So, for 15 years I went unmedicated. Well, sort of. I was on depo-provera, which seemed to help a lot with the anxiety. I don’t really know how that worked, but I suspect that my brand of mental illness is directly tied to my monthly cycle, and that my body has a love/hate relationship with estrogen.

Around 2015 I realized that the depo-provera wasn’t really doing it for me anymore. Plus, my doctor felt that I had been on it for too long, so I switched to something else.

I was also going through a serious rough patch in my life, and my anxiety was working overtime.

Way back in 2000 I had promised myself, and my doctor at the time, that if I felt that I could no longer cope without meds that I would go back on them. I decided to keep that promise to myself and got help.

I ended up going back to the doctor who had originally diagnosed me as bipolar (a long story for another time), and was put on Zoloft again. He also put me on a new drug called Latuda. An antipsychotic that was approved for use with bipolar depression.

Latuda was like a godsend. It completely nullified my anxiety, and did so within days of using it. It worked better than anything I’ve ever tried.

It worked so well that I was, and am, able to drink coffee without losing my shit.

It’s that good.

And here’s what makes me lucky.

First: my brand of mental illness is fairly mild. I COULD survive without medication, but that’s an exhausting proposition. Still, I am a good 80% functional without it. Ok, maybe 70%. And I’m reasonably ok at faking it for that remaining 30%. The years that I went unmedicated weren’t easy, but they could have been so much worse. There are people that are so much worse.

Second: I found medication that works. I was lucky that I didn’t have to play medicine roulette. Sure, I had to make a few adjustments, try a few different things. But the Latuda was the first new drug we tried and it worked right out of the gate. The only reason we tried anything else was because of insurance.

Third: I have a good job, with insurance, and a partner who has the financial means to help me out when I need it. Last year I switched to my employer’s insurance, which had $1,500 deductible that I had to meet before coverage would kick in. Chris was able to help me meet that deductible so that I could continue taking my meds (Latuda is $1,000 a month without coverage) and get my coverage started.

Hearing stories of people with mental illnesses worse than mine, I sometimes feel like an imposter. Like I’m not nearly sick enough to consider myself among the ranks of the truly mentally ill. That I’m too functional and too stable.

Sure, I have trouble in the darkest days of winter, and Christmastime is the worst part of the year for me, but I still manage to get up and function. I barely function, but I function. I know that there are people who can’t even get out of bed during that time of year.

But then I have to remind myself that I am medicated, and that does make a difference.

I also have to remind myself that my luck in the mental illness lottery doesn’t make me any less sick. It just makes me sick in a different way.