Source: Bravo TV

Sometimes the power of a bad example is as powerful as a good example. I’m thinking of Kim Richards, one of the housewives on The Housewives of Beverly Hills.

My daughter got me hooked on that show when she came home from college on winter break.  There was a time – not too long ago – when that little intellectual dilettante in me would have dismissed such a show as a complete waste of time only to be watched by the mindless, vapid masses. Thankfully, I shut that little dilettante up and now I’m watching all the re-runs – thank you very much.

Watching Kim’s slow, self-destruction over this last season is good for me. I am, like Kim, am a single, somewhat middle-aged, mother whose child has grown up. We are both trying to keep our hair blonde and minimize our wrinkles. I am not going to pronounce Kim an alcoholic, but let’s just say there was a day – before I got sober 13 years ago – that I would have partied with Kim in a heartbeat.

Vacation.

I have been on vacation.  A vacation without cellphones, wifi or even my watch. The kind of vacation where time stands still and you forget what day it is. I slept until my body told me to wake up. I fell asleep when it got dark because at 39-degrees and 10,000 feet, up in the mountains where the mountain lions roam, there is not a lot to do after dark but talk, sleep and pray that the mountain lions and bears have full tummies.

I did not read a newspaper or listen to any news. I stopped to say “hello” to every dog that crossed my path and ate jerky. I stomped around in streams, up to my thighs in clean, cold water attempting to fly-fish.

I paid attention to my mood. Uptight at the airport – trying to figure out what I had forgotten. Negotiating for an upgrade on the rental car, trip to WalMart for camping supplies and provisions.

Finally, we fished.

Way back in the 1970′s, when I was a teenager, the only depression we knew about was the one in 1929 that made our parents and grandparents tightwads. Back then, teenagers with depression either hid it (like I did), self-medicated (like I did) or were loners – kids who did not fit in.

So when I heard a local couple who had lost their son to bipolar was underwriting Johns Hopkins’ ADAP program at local schools, I had to ask…”What if this had been around when I was in high school?”

The Adolescent Depression Awareness Program is brilliantly simple. It’s common sense at its finest. ADAP provides teachers with a curriculum to use on on how to teach their students about depression.“Through education we will increase awareness about depression and the need for evaluation and treatment.”

• Interactive lectures and discussions
• Video of teenagers describing their experiences with depression and bipolar disorder
• Homework and video assignments to reinforce key points
• Group interactive activities to teach the key message that depression is a common, treatable, medical illness.

This should not be controversial but teaching teens anything about their health can be absurdly controversial. Just say the word”condom” in in some parts of the country and you’re just asking for an inquisition by the PTA.

For many alcoholics, opposites do not attract.

This is especially true for dually-blessed alcoholics (those of use with another mental illness besides our alcoholism). Take me, for instance. I have alcoholism and hypomania (Bipolar Disorder II). Sometimes I have a lot of energy. A whole lot of energy. Throw a case of Corona and a few limes on that energy and you’ve got one really wound up gal.

The last thing I want to do is hang around someone who does not like Corona, limes and dancing on – not at – a bar. What good are you to me if you don’t skinny dip?  Why would you not want to pretend you don’t understand English when you try to sneak into a chi-chi private spa and the attendant asks for your room number? What do you mean you don’t want to:

A. go scuba diving.

B. jump out of an airplane.

C. ride a Harley.

D. join the Mile-High Club

I don’t want to be around people – especially men – who have OFF switches. They are no fun. Even after years of sobriety, therapy, medications and a membership in AARP, I still prefer people – especially men – with that live-on-the-razor’s-edge, laugh-in-the-face-of-death attitude.

I got mad the other day. Zero-to-sixty-in-a-second mad. I wasn’t in a rage, like the day I went to the junkyard with a metal baseball bat. But I was pissed and the guy sitting next to me, who just happened to be the guy who forgot to tell me something that he should have told me, took the brunt of it.

Luckily, we were in the midst of an important public meeting so I had to keep my voice down. But I have a whisper that will curl the hair on the back of your neck and that’s exactly what it did to this poor guy.

We had our little verbal tussle and then shut up but I could feel that manic anger still  oozing out of me.  And I could see him leaning away from me. I realized that even in silence my mania can shred your serenity. I forgot about the officials up on the dials and paid close attention to my feelings and energy and how it affected this guy.

On the one hand, manic energy is kind of cool. People pay attention to manic energy. It’s probably some primal part of our brain that can sense danger: “Even though that saber tooth tiger is not moving – just staring a hole in me, I can feel his energy and it is not warm and fuzzy. Back away from the tiger.”

Recovered alcoholics have two birthdays. Our belly-button birthday – the day we took our first breath – and our sober birthday – the day we took our last drink. We get presents for both.

I’m telling you this not because my sober birthday is coming up – August 27 is 13 years without a drink – but because we live a life divided. Our sobriety has given us a new life but it comes with price. Secrecy. Anonymity. I am speaking about the life we lead among our clan of fellow recovered alcoholics.

We have sayings – “Keep coming back it works if you work it” – and we have tokens of devotion – colored poker chips to denote lengths of sobriety. We have clubhouses and private meetings. But there are no dues for membership.

I am not knocking any of this. I love my sober life. I am telling you this because this is not always an easy way to live. Especially if you are a dual-diagnosed recovered alcoholic. For many of us, we have spent much of our lives either denying we had a problem, convincing ourselves that we could handle it, ignoring all of it and covering our tracks.

My brain and body aren’t listening to each other. I am 52-years-old but my brain still thinks I’m 21. Sometimes it thinks I’m still a kid. I’m in good shape but my body is decades ahead of my brain. For me, 50 is the new 10.

Throw a healthy dose of mania on this communication breakdown and you have some very, very sore muscles, pulled ligaments and swollen joints. I have no off-switch and I don’t know if I want one. The louder my brain shouts and less my body listens.

Bipolar is not funny. I know. I have Bipolar II. But sometimes, you just gotta lighten up and laugh at…bipolar disorder. People have gotten seriously ticked off at me for occasionally taking pot shots at bipolar disorder. But THIS is funny. It ran in The Onion 10 years ago and it still makes me chuckle…

NEW HAVEN, CT –In a diagnosis that helps explain the confusing and contradictory aspects of the cosmos that have baffled philosophers, theologians, and other students of the human condition  for millennia, God, creator of the universe and longtime deity to billions of followers, was found Monday to suffer from bipolar disorder.

Rev. Dr. J. Henry Jurgens, a practicing psychiatrist and doctor of divinity at Yale University Divinity School, announced the historic diagnosis at a press conference.

“I always knew there had to be some explanation,” Jurgens said.  “And, after several years of patient research and long sessions with God Almighty through the intercessionary medium of prayer, I was able to pinpoint the specific nature of His problem.”