In my late twenties, life was really good.
My bipolar was managed. My psychiatrist would have called it remission. I'd lost a lot of weight, I was super fit and riding all the time, and the business Lisa and I had built was flying. We were eating well, we were learning about natural supplements, and I felt fantastic.
We got confident. We got confident that I had the bipolar nailed.
So I told my psychiatrist, I'll call him Dr Hughes, that I wanted to come off my medicine. We didn't do it on a whim. We very carefully titrated down, bit by bit.
Six or eight weeks after I'd stopped, Dr Hughes rang to check in on me.
I told him how amazing I was doing. And I was. I had energy. I was clear. I was getting things done. I felt like the real me, the one the medicine had been dulling all those years.
He listened, and then he said, "Well, you're an outlier."
I'd beaten the odds. Most people with bipolar type 1 who come off their meds get sick again. Not me. I remember hanging up feeling proud. Like I'd proved something.
Two or three weeks later, I was sitting in Dr Hughes's office.
I don't remember all of that appointment. What I do remember is how fast it went. Dave's doing great. Dave's doing amazing. Then up, up, up into the stratosphere. By the time I was sitting across from him, I was very, very unwell.
He told me later it was the most severe illness he'd seen in twenty years. I elevate higher and faster than anybody he's ever met.
That's a strange thing to hear about yourself. Part of me still wants to be proud of it, the way I was proud of being an outlier. But there's nothing to be proud of. It just means that when I go, I go fast, and there's not much warning.
I want to be careful how I say the next bit, because I know people read stories like this and make decisions.
I'm not against anyone asking questions about their medication. I did it with my doctor, slowly, the right way. And it still went badly wrong. If you're thinking about changing your meds, please do it with your doctor, and tell the people who love you so they can watch for the signs with you.
The hardest part of this story isn't that I got sick. I'd been sick before. The hardest part is that I got sick while I was doing everything right. Eating well. Exercising. Praying. Working hard. Loving my family.
It didn't matter.
What happened next, where I ended up, and how I spent my next birthday, is something I'm still not over. I write about it in the book, and about the word I came up with for what God was doing in me through it.
If you're struggling right now, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency call 000.
