Recovery from bipolar disorder

A Multitude of Recoveries Through Alternative Mental Health Treatments

I don't know where to begin. I guess I can say that I was diagnosed with Bipolar I and assorted other things at the age of 27. However, due to a misdiagnosis it should have been much earlier. Ever since I can remember I have had depression at the age of five. I spent much of my childhood crying, temper tantrums, and depressed with no friends. I even used to bang my head against the wall and my mother at one point thought I was autistic. I couldn't relate to people. I was hypersensitive and my head would race with bizarre ideas and negative thoughts constantly. As a teen I was antisocial, nervous, filled with anxiety. I was obsessed with religion and God; wanting to become a nun and praying incessantly. I was suffering delusions and obsessions. At one point I even thought the world was going to end and I collected canned goods and candles in case of a nuclear holocaust. I was impulsive and morose as a teen. My first relationship was ridden with dependency. I didn't believe in myself, I didn't know how to interact with people, I couldn't control my temper and I couldn't hold a job for long. My feelings of inadequacy and my lack of sound judgment led me to cling to relationships that were unhealthy. My relationships often ended in violent disputes with me trying to run one boyfriend over with my car. The friends I did make in university had problems like myself. I only hung around people with problems and I found they couldn't be there for me, nor I for them. The illness made me sick and self-absorbed. I spent four years in university on Zoloft. Little did I know that I had Bipolar II, which was the early onset of Bipolar I. I was irritable, moody and depressed. My psychiatrist misdiagnosed me as having a personality disorder. The meds didn't really help and they made me rapid cycle. I spent those four years flying into rages that would last for hours.. I was blamed for my behavior and felt that I was inept and could not understand why I couldn’t hold a job. Because of my difficulties interacting with people and my inability to hold a job I felt secretly ashamed. I avoided any discomfort by avoiding people. My moods would swing from elation and then to exhaustion throughout the day like a battery that needed to recharge. I had my first major manic episode at the age of 23, in my last year of university. I had one half credit needed to graduate and I completely lost my mind. I ended the relationship with my boyfriend, didn't show up for class, hallucinated, went to the local University pub and drank all my tuition money day and night for months. I was so upset I hallucinated I thought my life was over and I didn't tell anyone because I was too scared they might think I was crazy. . I went off of my Zoloft cold turkey, threatened my psychiatrist that I was going to give him a mental illness with a baseball bat and took off to save the world. I didn't know what Bipolar disorder was. I didn't know I had it. My sex drive went sky high, I was rowdy, obnoxious, made more friends in those few months than in my entire life. I was kicked out of bars. I once grabbed the microphone off a singer, pinched his butt, and started singing on the stage and of course, my friends and I were kicked out again. I took my mother's car and drove off to chase a man that was way older than me. I thought God had sent me to save him from alcoholism. So I locked myself up in a rehab center just to be with him. Before that I was planning to flirt with men, drug them up and take their wallets to pay for a road trip with my friend.. We were planning to go to the desert and feed ourselves with pop, chips, and candy bars. I was involved in many other escapades and then I crashed into a depression so bad I wouldn't bathe, I didn't leave the house for a year and a half. I chain-smoked almost two packs a day. The sunlight hurt, noise hurt, and I isolated. All those friends I made abandoned me and I found myself living with an older man and a practicing alcoholic who was half psychotic from the alcohol most of the time. My life had become so awful, I remember clenching my teeth every night I slept that my jaw would hurt so bad in the morning. I felt trapped and couldn't leave . My depression was so bad I couldn't help myself or feed myself so I depended on this man whose problems were as bad as mine. Violent disputes, cops coming over, ambulances. I remember feeling so burdened I put a cigarette out on my hand to escape the psychological torture for a while. Even though I was in the depressed phase I was still psychotic and delusional. I jumped from psychiatrist to psychiatrist. They thought I just had depression and they put me on Paxil, Serzone, and Prozac, to name a few; however, nothing worked. I met a psychiatrist that finally diagnosed me correctly and I was put on a cocktail that shot me out of the depression. However, the mania grew and my condition got worse. I was deteriorating fast and none of the drugs were working.. Everyday for two years I was psychotic, in a rage, acting out, crying, screaming and becoming increasingly dangerous. I was living in a homeless shelter for six months and I was so insane that at one point I scared everyone in the shelter. I blew up over a remark at dinner and they all ran up the stairs and locked themselves in their rooms. I was hospitalized for a while at the age of 27 and I remember only bits and pieces. I remember wanting to attack a nurse. I remember being so drugged up on anti-psychotics that I was drooling and couldn't walk to the breakfast area. I remember going numerous times time the emergency room pleading to be locked up and they wouldn't let me in. I remember being treated like I was stupid and a child by mental health workers. I felt dehumanized, abandoned and like I was sinking into a surrealistic nightmare I couldn't wake up from. My eyesight even changed so that everything looked like a neon sign, all vibrant and intense. I started wandering and got distracted. I was mesmerized, stuck in time, and unable to leave stores. Every day I drove for seven hours or so, blasting music unable to stop. My memory was growing worse and I gained so much weight from the meds I couldn't walk to the end of the block. My face was turning orange from all the meds and my hair was falling out. Nothing was working and I started praying everyday for cancer to end my life. It felt like something was taking over my body, a different person. The doctors added on, yet another diagnosis. I felt like a hopeless freak. My thoughts were becoming twisted and I hated myself. The endless torture of waking up sane for a couple of minutes and then being possessed by that other person for months and years was becoming too much to bear. The only thing that saved me was a vague memory of a friend of mine who had Bipolar as well. I had lost contact with my friend two years before and was a little sheepish, but thoroughly desperate. I phoned her and she was telling me how she was no longer on disability for almost three years and not on meds and back to teaching. I couldn't believe it. She had spent six years on disability and overweight from the medication the doctors had given her. She went through 13 electric shock therapy treatments to control her mania. She had been on so many medications and yet still ended up in the hospital every year. She explained she found this natural therapy through a friend of her brother who discovered Equilib on the web. I was amazed to hear her tell me how she had lost 80 pounds from changing her diet and all the energy she had from not being on tranquillizers anymore. The Equilib pills literally saved her life and she was back to teaching full time. My friend expressed her bitterness over losing so many years to Bipolar disorder and towards the inadequacy of the mental health system. We talked for hours about the torture of what happened to our lives and the absolute change that she had experienced. I was so shocked that the solution was so simple and I could barely believe that this product, Equilib, (a natural product) could help me. My first reaction was skepticism, because I thought my problem was too complex that the solution could not be so simple. However, I was so desperate and the doctors had run out of options for me. I told my psychiatrist I ordered the product and was going to try it with or without his help. I expected him to reject the idea. . However, I needed him to wean me off the medication. I thought if he didn’t help me I would try another psychiatrist until one of them would To my surprise he said yes. I was floored. I couldn’t believe that he had said yes and had heard of this product before. I explained to him what the Equilib people had told me about diet and Bipolar. To my surprise he already knew. He knew that studies have been done on the effects of sugar on the bipolar brain. But I guess the medical profession did not take that seriously enough. I was more than annoyed at the whole field. I mean all the meds and doctors and psychiatrists and talk therapy and nothing worked for me. In fact, I was deteriorating and my psychiatrist even told me my prognosis was poor and I was one of his worst patients. I really started to believe the Equilib product would work when I did what the Equilib people told me to do. I stopped eating sugar completely. Within four days I was completely stable on my meds while I was being weaned off of them. I had never, since my first episode five years earlier been stable once. I felt like I had just woken up. I thought, jeez, if this product could stabilize me in four days on meds and all the psychiatrists couldn't for nine years they must know what they are talking about. So I went all the way. I did exactly as they told me and I am now stable for the first time in my life! The Equilib company provided me with a contact and she helped me through the many changes. She knew a lot about natural therapies and things I could do to further my stability. She also provided a listening ear and encouraged me through the med changes by telling me how other people on the product got better and what I could expect. I am now a different person. I am no longer angry, not depressed, and nor am I anxious. I have so much energy. I am able to exercise again because I am not drugged up. I am losing weight (so far 45 pounds!) and I going to college. For the first time I am confident I can work full time and study too. My memory and cognitive capabilities have been repaired. I am in control of my life again and myself. I am just getting to know the real me and it is wonderful and a bit scary. Now I feel I can carry myself with dignity. I have quit smoking and started organizing my stuff, something I lost. For the first time, I am able to clean my house. I don't live in a pig sty. This product has saved my life. I still go to my Bipolar support group to show people the change in me. My psychiatrist is shocked and is flogging the product to his patients. The wonderful thing about this product is it is like a cure. It is not a drug. I feel I have a future and I am looking forward to having a normal life. All I can say is thank God for for this product. It really saved me in the nick of time. I know of people that did not make it. They killed themselves. Equilib is not a scam or a money-making thing; this is the real thing. I wish I had taken it two years earlier when I found out about it but I was skeptical and I lost two more years of my life. I have tried to tell every person I know who is suffering from a mental illness about Equilib. Most people are skeptical and sometimes I just get annoyed because I’m living proof and they still won’t listen. I have two friends, I have made recently, whom I convinced to try the product and so far they are going through the rapid changes I have been through. The complete turn around All I can say is that the Equilib works. My life has changed so rapidly that I actually see a therapist to talk about how to deal with being sane! That is a new one for me. Also, I talk about how to deal with my real emotions and the losses I experienced. I went through a grieving period for a while. Bipolar robs you of so much. It takes away your dignity, your sense of worth, your belief in yourself, and destroys your relationships and for many; your will to live. I was so angry for losing all of that. I thought I could deal with the issues back then when I was insane. But now that I am sane, I am truly beginning to deal with the issues without the cloud of the illness blurring the lines. Life is completely sane is wonderful. Slowly my self-esteem is rising with each challenge I am now able to overcome. I am learning that I can stick to things and can accomplish much. I have a promising life now, because of Equilib and this is the message I would like to share with you.