Why I Went to a
Psychiatrist in the First Place

And finally one day in May I just did not return for two weeks. I almost did not return at all.

I usually tell people I don't know what I do when I disappear and then reassure them that I did not do anything stupid. The fact is that I can remember everything I do when I disappear, but it is an odd sort of memory. Even immediately after it happens, it feels as if it happened a long time ago. I remember it as an old home movie faded with time and with tears and other imperfections in the scenes. It takes quite a bit of effort to pull what has happened to the forefront and answer any questions of the these times.

Also, I remember these memories suffused with anxiety or terror to a level that has to be experienced to be believed. Or if not, they come with a emptiness I have felt like what we consider to that of an animal, without thought, just instinct for food and comfort and sleep. During these periods intelligence cannot be used in a manner that makes sense, it is grabbed and made a slave to instinct.

So I don't try to remember or explain to anyone. One does not describe the antechamber of the court of madness to anyone.

I reentered the real world when I crashed my car at about four o'clock one morning. I had managed to skid off the road, jump clear over a ditch, miss a piece of iron that would have ripped out the underside of my car (and probably me), run over four saplings and stick the front of the car about four feet off the ground on a fifth. I came away completely unhurt.

Even then I was at the stage of walking away from the wreck and continuing my disappearance. Fortunately, or unfortunately, a good samaritan had been driving behind me. To my great annoyance at that time, he insisted on helping me disentangle my car and then calling someone to help me. He may have saved my life because I have never been sure what would have happened if I had walked away from the wreck.

My father came to collect me.

In all the favours that my parents have ever given to me, I don't think any have ever matched the one they bestowed in not questioning me in what had happened over the two weeks I had been missing. I suppose they had their ideas or their worries but they never tried to verify any. They just accepted me back and wrapped their wings around me to protect me from the next few weeks.

I tried to continue my work. But my depression was too profound. About ten days after my return and trying to do basic work in office, and not really succeeding, I handed in my resignation and left my Board of Directors trying to understand what happened. And then I did nothing for many months.

Actually shortly afterwards I started to see a therapist who had been recommended by a close friend. I was jobless and I knew that something was wrong that needed to be fixed. But I still didn't feel anything important had happened. Like all previous memories, this one had faded into relative insignificance very quickly. So once the anxiety was off me and I felt less stressed I started questioning to myself the need to do any of this.

Nevertheless I enjoyed (and do enjoy) therapy very much. My psych and I met twice a week and after the usual first sessions in which nothing productive happened (I was defensive and uncomfortable), I started to admit that perhaps I was having problems. Over the course of a few months I began to feel that I was getting somewhere. The therapy did make it easier to handle the changes in mood. However, the mood swings did not stop, and as I continued to take on additional projects in my hypomanic periods the stress started to build again.

I suspect that I would have given myself another breakdown and scared everyone again if I had not gone on vacation in November.

My vacations are my relief valves. I go on them, visit friends and come back refreshed to take on the world. Only this time it did not work out. Instead of my usual energised self, I found myself unable to enjoy spending time with my friends or indeed just doing the basics of coordinating my travel schedule. When my friends weren't with me I was very close to being a zombie, unable to decide what to do or go to see. I was in Toronto, but I don't think I saw or enjoyed much of it at all.

I had promised very close friends in Miami I would visit them after Toronto on the way home, but was I was so apathetic and full of anxiety about talking with people that I was unable to make the simple call to tell them when I would be arriving. Needless to say they were both annoyed by my basic discourtesy and when I did arrive in Miami was told off by them both for it.

You can always say you gave up a job because it was too stressful. Or that your memory loss is "just one of those things." Or that you and your lover broke up for real or stupid reasons. Or that things are sliding because you are overworked or tired. But I had a difficult time explaining to myself why I was treating friends I valued so much so cavalierly.

Changing ones life doesn't happen all at once; it happens piece by piece. Nevertheless, if there was a single point I would point to and say - "There, that was when I admitted I was ill" - it was at the realisation that I could lose real friends if I didn't fix myself. And in retrospect, I realised that I had been depressed for my entire vacation.

When I returned to Trinidad, I asked my therapist to recommend a psychiatrist so I could be prescribed antidepressants. Four months ago I would never had considered this, but the time spent in therapy had acclimated me to the concept. I still didn't think I suffered from depression or manic depression, but I did think I needed something to tide me through.

The psychologist spent far less time than I expected. I was asked questions about myself, which I could readily answer since I had mostly discussed them in therapy already. I was given a list of questions on mania and depression to answer which clearly showed I was both, but not to any severe degree. What was also abundantly clear was that I moved from one state to the other quite rapidly. And in what I thought was an extraordinarily short period of time I was diagnosed as Bipolar II, possibly Cyclothymic.

I have never been satisfied with that initial diagnosis, even though it seems to have been borne out. I have always felt that if I was going to be told that I was going to be crazy for the rest of my life it should certainly take more than one hour. And it should certainly be a more, well, technical process than chatting pleasantly with a very nice guy. I don't think I have ever forgiven him for my diagnosis, and it probably was the major factor in eventually changing to another psychiatrist. Bearers of bad news often do get executed.

I was prescribed Tegretol because I had already tried it (experimented with it, that is) and it seemed to work.

The next page describes my not so easy experiences under medication, and my struggles to come to terms with being manic depressive.