Free Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I've Lost My Damn Mind: A Manic's Mood Chart by Derek Thompson

last year, I reverted back to my childhood for certain portions of time. I became obsessed with video games again (Guitar Hero dominated my life) and I’m the furthest thing from a gamer you can find, aside from California Games, of course. I would still to this day binge drink on Hi-C Ecto Cooler from the tin can while playing that incredible Nintendo masterpiece all night long. I also stocked my fridge and freezer with all of my favorite childhood foods. My favorite would have to be Eggo Blueberry Waffles. Growing up, my dad used to create these unbelievably good Eggo breakfasts on Saturday mornings as my brothers and I “rotted” our brains on cartoons. Speaking of those cartoons (which I’m still secretly kind of obsessed with) I came out of my episode with a complete file on my computer dedicated to pictures of Foghorn Leghorn . . .
    . . . My apologies for that delay. I just spent the last twenty minutes watching Foghorn Leghorn cartoons on the Internet, and they are still hilarious.
    That’s just one of the many bizarre experiences and random past obsessions that resurfaced during my episode. I mean, I hadn’t had any desire to play, let alone purchase, any gaming system since I was in middle school, but I bought an Xbox 360 and played the crap out of it during those couple of manic months back in Denver. I hadn’t watched a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon since the late 1980s, yet suddenly I couldn’t get enough of them. Lastly, my diet--well, when I ate; see, I managed to lose about twenty pounds during the episode. I’m thinking of marketing this diet plan around the tag line: “Drop inches from your waistline, while only partially losing your mind!”
    Anyhow, back to my original train of thought: my diet consisted mainly of my childhood favorites. I didn’t even know they still sold most of them in stores.
    While these may totally seem off the wall (probably because they are) they are a big part of who I am, and I think I forgot about them in the process of growing up and kind of lost who I was. This makes it difficult for me to call BMD a disease or illness when I think it’s played a big part in helping me find myself again. Even if that person is a theme- park junky with an addiction to 1950s-era cartoons who yearns for the taste of Ecto Cooler out of the tin can; basically a big kid.
     
    Session
    JP: I think bipolar disorder is a mental illness where the nerve cells in the brain fail to transmit signals. And although a single cause of bipolar disorder cannot be determined, some chemicals in the brain, particularly neurotransmitters, appear at different levels in patients, compared with those without the disorder. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals responsible for exchanging information about specific functions within the brain, such as memory processing and operating the senses. In patients with bipolar disorder, levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps manage pleasure, are usually at levels higher than in non-patients during a manic episode, and lower during depressive episodes. This isn’t necessarily a confirmation that dopamine is the cause, but medications can be prescribed that help regulate these levels, which in turn helps regulate psychotic behaviors associated with bipolar disorder.
    DT: Well, I think calling bipolar disorder a disease or illness can also imply that someone with the disorder is weak, vulnerable or inferior due to our society’s associations with those words, “disease” and “illness.” I am far from weak, vulnerable or inferior. I am bipolar, which is a mood disorder; is that so hard to say?
    JP: No, but to be honest Derek I’m not really seeing how that reasoning is adding up to how bipolar disorder is not illness either. And there are a lot of people fighting out there that would disagree with you.
    DT: This is how I fight the stigmas I feel in my life and is by no way the only way to fight and I understand that we all fight differently. Maybe in the future