11. Manic Sap Rising

10. Manic Sap Rising

What I note here as a confession in this prosaic journal, I would not share with my psychiatrist. He knows some of the general symptomology I've experienced over the past five years that he’s been treating me. I don't tell him all the details of my life at every appointment. I could, but we don't have time. Med management appointments may be as short as 15 minutes. If we get me started talking, I need 45 minutes before my doctor’s next patient. He seldom schedules me for the time I might need.

Details now would only frighten him. After three years of relative stability, part of what I did isn't who I am now. I take meds. BFD!

I quit giving too precise descriptions of my manic expeditions. People over-react. It’s something that happened in my past. Whatever is left causes only my own haunted images. I have many years worth of haunting images,

My last social worker "began my case study" by discussing my history with my new caseworker. The way the conversation was described to me, I could just imagine the two of them sitting across a coffee table full of files, and my counselors saying "Oh, my God. You've got to watch her social behavior.". In a very bipolar way, it didn't seem proper to me. It felt like a bad counselor game of "Oh, I've got the best story. You can't top this one."

Most patient members of that counseling plus organization were those who function on a low level. Most lived in the community area in small individual apartments and depended on each other and the staff for their daily routine. Bipolar disorder is that severe for far too many, and more at a young age than you would probably think. If God had to grant me a neurological abnormality, I'm glad He didn't make mine any worse than it is.

The new counselor was totally shocked by the fact that I had stayed out all night on the East Side of Mexican Dallas shooting heroin with some gang dudes that were really serious about their knives. I think she was easily shocked, but I did tell a fascinating story. It made an impression I hadn't anticipated. It was something that happened one night--not like it's something you'd brand on a cow. By telling my "tale" without notes, I felt "branded" in a way, by professionals who should pass on factual basics rather than most unexpected situations.

Nothing terrible happened--though in hindsight I could have easily been one of those unidentified female bodies found hither and yon in pieces, to be identified later--too much later to be of help to the living. When I play risky, I go for it 100%. I have been fortunate in my bipolar expeditions. I know God watches over me when I don't do such a good job.

It was a cool night out, and certainly more exciting than the reading I'd planned earlier. Things ended up okay. I started out too drunk to be scared about what I was doing. I made sure of that before I left the apartment. It was a cool bipolar adventurous night, and dangerous by definition.

I wanted drugs. Pot wasn't enough. I like coke and speed--which is the worst possible devilment a manic could dip into, much less go diving into head first, without looking. I was aching for a social night to be better. I lost my fear of needles in the 1980s, shooting methamphetamine.

So I dressed to kill and went cruising down the back alleys of the "Little Mexico" apartment complexes, and drove very slowly across the parking lots of several cantinas. There wasn't much action at all.

My hair was long and dark, my clothes were tight and short, and I was primed to get what I wanted, some kind of drug. Street drugs do affect bipolar emotions, but the rebound effect of not having any the next day could be enough to set a bipolar person up for a psychiatric hospital stay. Bipolar disorder and street drugs are a bad mix, and will certainly lead to additional mental distress in the long run.

Bipolars know we shouldn't do drugs, but some bipolars do sometimes. It's never a good idea in the long run or the short run. But it is the short run of feeling better that's in the person's head when they decide to self-medicate with street drugs. Sometimes, a bipolar will believe any altered state is better than the one they are stuck in.

I'm not sure if I'm trying to explain or pull the "poor me, I have a diagnosed hereditary mental disorder."

I knew enough broken Spanish to ask if a guy had drugs, or could get them. In some neighborhoods, you don't have to know very much Spanish to get by at any kind of drug shopping. I was drunk enough to roll my rs. I thoughtso. Anyhow I knew enough Tex-Mex. And I had enough whiskey in me that I didn't really care.

I was out on a hunting and gathering mission--like the explorers of old. I dressed appropriately for the hunt--only a little bare skin.

The first large gathering of beer drinkers I saw in an apartment complex parking lot, I drove into and parked. I walked out of my car, holding my wine cooler in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.

"!Hola! Tiene amigos con mota?" I asked, feeling particularly tall and Anglo as I approached a group of four or five Spanish-speaking men.

All the men were short of stature, and very brown from working in the sun. They looked at each other, then looked down to the ground and away from eye contact with me. Nobody said anything for what seemed like an eternity, then one brave drunken wobbly soul tried his English on me.

"No, senora. Only cervesa here. We just drinking the beer," said the man with a twinkle in his eye.

"OK. Gracias." I turned in my pretty black tight assed jeans and walked to the car as fast as I could. I was extremely outnumbered, and I wasn't going to change their minds. Then I remembered a part that I was supposed to say first. I forgot to say, first, that I wasn't a policeman. It's expected if you don't know the people or come to buy drugs without a reference.

Start the engine, pull away, and try again. There was no traffic, so I drove slowly down the street with street lights and big trees keeping the sidewalk dark.

There was nobody on the street, and there was nobody hanging out in the parking lots like the local Hispanics usually do on the weekends. It must have been 11:00 pm by then. I was still drinking whiskey out of a cup from home, cruising around looking for drugs, and I thought I was being careful. That must have been the 99th thing on my mind by then. I had one thing on my mind--score.

I spied a sole hombre with a quart of beer sitting in the parking lot of a closed corner store, but a well-lit street corner. I pulled my Cougar into the parking lot and rolled down the window.

"Why are you sitting here drinking all alone? Do you have friends to make a party? Necessita coca. Audarse, por favor?"

He was standing next to the Cougar by then, and he said he knew a man in the next block with cocaine.

I told him to get in the car. I drove down the block, made a right, and pulled into a ghetto-looking apartment complex.

Before we got out of the car he said, "You had better be with me. If they think you are not with a man, something might happen."

I felt drunkenly grateful for his conscientious gentlemanly behavior under the circumstances. I had picked up a Jesus on the street corner. What a blessing!

Jesus knocked on the old wooden door, after we walked down the dimly lit walkway with lots of overgrown brush, with a practiced entry code. I heard a noise, several clicks, and a very small Mexican dude opened the door.

Jesus said something I didn't quite catch all of, but I did hear the word "cocaine" in Spanish. The short man stepped aside, and we entered a dark one-room apartment that was barely lit. Only the stove light burned in the kitchen, revealing a huge pile of dirty dishes.

Jesus and I sat on the sofa. Another man slept on a single bed, right next to us. Jesus put his arm around my shoulders, and I felt a little more comfortable.

The liquor was beginning to wear off. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

Three or four guys seemed to be messing around in the kitchen. I tried not to pay attention, but soon everyone in the room was in the kitchen watching. There were cooking over the stove with a spoon. I couldn’t see past them to exactly what was happening. From what I’d heard, they were cooking drugs over the stove. There were several syringes.

"Losing My Religion" by REM


Oh life, it's bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep a view
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I'm choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt, lost and blinded fool, fool.
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up

Consider this
Consider this, the hint of the century
Consider this, the slip
That brought me to my knees, failed
What if all these fantasies come
Flailing around
Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep a view
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try
That was just a dream, dream.

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