No Alcohol at All

It started because of a weight loss diet and a dare. And now I fit in an old pair of favorite jeans and have noticed that I have been experiencing fewer down days.
Guinness with a pal or some Grey Goose and juice at a lounge was my usual way.
Champagne when I forgot how bad the hangover would be, and wine with any dinner except the kind that went with beer.
And when I felt depressed, Johnnie black.
Drop dead stupid drunk was a thing I left behind years ago; the silly college days, though I wouldn't be kidding anybody if I pretended that I didn't still get slammed once or twice a year.
The last time was at a Chemical Brothers concert in '07.
Anyway, alcohol and I parted ways a few months ago and while on a very blue beach recently I had a sip of the goose with some juice and had an immediate headache.
And cried for no reason that night.

I still love bars and lounges. Hell it's where the vampires socialized with me since I was fourteen, what else would I know?
It does still take some work for my friends to understand I'm not judging them or a buzzkill. That's a bit weird, there's always been an abstainer of something or other in whatever group I enjoyed. Unless there was some friction I did not assume they were a narc.

Now that summer is here, it might be different when I'm sitting in the beer garden, but I doubt it. Water is something I consume by the gallon, and have, forever.
It's fun getting my friends a round or a pitcher, there's extra cash for a bigger tip (take care of your servers! I cannot believe how ruthless people are towards individuals who live on tips), and instead of flab, there's Fab ; )

Level, Level, Don't Turn Into a Devil

Maybe it was the terror of my "incarceration."
A book about dealing with psychological disorders I once read stressed the importance of not dwelling on when the good times will end.
And so what is the point on ruminating as to why I am feeling well? It's probably just the meds.
For now I say, it feels good to have felt so good for so long.
It doesn't feel like mania, I'm sleeping and not irritable.
Will enjoy while it lasts...

Coming Out Of Hiding

Less than month after I last checked in, I had a nice stay at a torture chamber also known as the psych ward at a city hospital. They have a corrections facility on a separate floor. I just spent a night in their ER.
It lasted about twenty-four hours, and I was surrounded by criminals in their orange jumpsuits and hand and leg restraints, and corrections officers, with their barking voices and big guns.

The nightmares have just started to let up.

It is amazing what an illusion freedom is to a person with the label "mentally ill." We (I?) live in fear that at any moment, some oblivious, nefarious, or even well meaning person will get us locked up.
And once they take your shoelaces and you are behind that buzzing locked door, it's all over. You have no credibility. Juris Doctor? Yes, dear. CEO? What other delusions of grandeur do you have?
Life's thrown a lot of sharp turns my way; I'm not faint of heart. But sleeping next to a guy who had a gun pointed at him all night made me jumpy. The handcuffed middle-aged man with eyes made of ice kept asking the rookie cop who arrested him to loosen his handcuffs.
I prayed to a god I don't believe in: please god, please, get me out of here, and don't let this maniac manipulate this rookie into loosening his restraints, not until I'm gone at least.
Wish I could say it was the first time.
I can say it is likely to be the last.
You see, I pulled the trigger on myself. I knew I wasn't alright. I had hit my head (and ended up with a concussion). Because my brain matters to me, I called 911. When EMT showed up, they saw the psych meds on my dresser. It took them less than ten seconds to decide I was a head case.
I can't say what got me out of there in less than the usual seventy-two hours. Perhaps it was my promise to the night shrink that yes I was taking notes, that yes, I had been given the wrong meds, that yes, I did know what medical malpractice was, and my pleas to the day shrink that I had a great doctor and family just waiting to help me if only they'd let me out of the locked prison ward.
Maybe it was my friends on the force.
When you find yourself in a room with about thirty people, mental patients with police escorts, except for yourself, you start to contemplate some pretty desperate scenarios.
But I did learn something about myself during the course of this awful SNAFU.
Pushing my buttons is futile.
They tried so hard, in the end I got under their skin. I'm tricky that way.

And thanks to the life I have labored my ass off to have, I've been working remotely since I have been well enough to travel (concussions are painful, terrible things). ...most recently on this swath of island, almost five hours from NYC via Jet Blue.

Wriggling out of hiding is odd. Some friends I never hid from. Some "colleagues" don't know about my life altering event, just S28 doing her thing.
But I've been sitting on this too long.

And now that I've been home for two days and heading back out tomorrow, I thought I'd let the locals know why my place was surrounded by cops that day.

Nino always said, "Beware the Ides of March."
It happened on the third.

Insulation

Today is a tough one as a matter of form.
The wisest strategy I have found thus far is insulation. So I'm tucked away, attempting to not provoke chaos, by interacting with as few people as possible. It almost seems there is some irony in blogging about it, but no one ever posts comments on my pages so there isn't much in the way of interaction; almost.
The weather is mild where I find myself today and my mind travels on tips of toes to a place in time almost a decade behind us.
Was it cold that day? Was it sunny?

No recollection, but my friend tells me it was raining.

So tucked I stay.
This is the first post I'm publishing with the assistance of a Dell Mini. The keyboard and mouse are starting to feel normal, and I'm avoiding some image heavy webpages I was warned would crash it. (So far it has crashed once every day, yesterday at the saks.com site. Too many flashing images of red-heeled shoes!)
Six more weeks of winter minus one day, and in some kind of light I will try to stay...not feeling bad or strange, just sort of a foreboding remembered.

Live to Tell

Today is most certainly not about me. But I sure am glad I lived to tell the tale of this wonderful rejuvenation of the American ideal embodied in today's inauguration.
Good Luck President Obama!
You have made surviving bipolar disorder worth it. May the spirit of determination and the sense of critical reasoning that has taken you this far guide you in the difficult days ahead.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Well the naysayers thought this winter Bipolar would take me down for sure. Some were quietly rooting for it, actually. How dare I buck the odds and live large!
Certainly this disease is an absolute struggle every day, but negativity just makes me stronger.
And now I'm even stronger.
You get the idea, it is called mania. But that does not make my statements false.

And now, for an unrelated comment: What the fuck is up with Madoff's bail ruling? He is the very definition of a flight risk.

Attrition

Well, it feels like a while since I checked in, likely due to rapid cycling; laying as low as possible.
And reversing that with one post... oh, you quirky capricious brain! I would like to set you afire, but that involves damaging my head.
Hired a couple of morons (yes, you are complete imbeciles!) to do some writing and they took about five minutes to fall madly in lust and take their first week's pay for a romantic getaway.
Today I followed suit.
Fuck it, we all need a break sometimes...
See you all in a few, pokerramblings and the deuce page will have some interesting upcoming posts as a result of our odd and continuing travels and more details about the dizzying scenarios of the absurdly impulsive.