Mental health & the Music Industry (VENT HERE!)

I committed to weekly meetings with my social worker who is a hell of a good guy. We are kind of friends because he helped me and my ex thru several hard situations (breakdown while i was self-employed, break-up with my ex that was more like a divorce after 14 yrs. of loving partnership, going thru all the disappointment when i was retired from my job mostly against my will...)....
There are several personal real-world problems that stacked up during the last years and especially this year, which might have lead to a deeper depression that i did not realize before this switch. This guy will coach me to get thru the worst so i hopefully get out of this better than i went into it...
Uh, you see, i am still a bit tooooo optimistic right now after my first cup of coffee, so mania is still there but just a bit dampened. But hopefully on a good way.
To everyone in strange situations and crazy states of mind - get help early. Can't stress this too much. If i had no clue whom to contact i maybe would be largely over the top already, creating a new business out of nothing, constituting a political party or telling everyone about how to achieve global peace and happiness...
(Not that these are bad things generally, but they are if they are founded on an ill state of mind...)

Oh, yes, Tony, i am a hell of a guy detecting my own mania.
I find myself running around after a long mostly lethargic and stoic episode, calling my bipolar friends, my mom, my social worker and my doctor.
Well - it was pretty obvious what was going on. In 27 years of dealing with this, i managed to know the timeframe in which I have to do something or i go out of control.
This is in my case the very short time of a few hours to 3 days maximum. A very short time frame for doing something about it. So there is no time to hesitate.
What bothers me more is the inability to detect depression. It may sound silly, but my depressions sneak in very slowly and can stay for long periods of time.
If i am learning as fast as i did in the past, i will be able detect my own depression in about, well, let's say 20 years. :-D
Ah, no. The magic word is prevention. Therefore a better medication in a whole must be found, adopted to the situation now and right before the switch and the depression that will follow like after every mania of hymomania or mixed episode i ever had.
The amount of my antidepressant, Elontril/Zyban will be doubled in the long term to find a better balance betweeen mania prevention and depression prevention, which is always also a second compromise to be found between life quality and reliability of the prophylaxe...
But yeah. Better meds have been found since the eighties for sure, quite alot. And maybe even more important - more alternatives to fit in a personal metabolism and symptomatic.
I already use 3rd generation meds like Seroquel Prolong and Zyban, which turned to be "less worse" than what i used before... As always, this is a very individual reaction as it is always one. One's best med ever is like poison for the next guy - with the same diagnosis...go figure. There is no "one fit's it all" like there actually often is for alot of physical illnesses....
Right now it's easy to stay positive. I am still on the upper end of acceptible. Which is...well...accdeptible but not back to normal at all. We now want to prevent overdozing to avoid pressing my right into the opposite again, the coming depression. So it's kind of antizyclic medication. Medicate for the moment with the upcoming directly following next episode already in mind. To be honest - this is mostly a trial&error game. No matter, how good you doc is. If he is honest, he might tell you this also, if you ask him.
Bipolar can be a bitch. I am already one of the lucky guys. Go figure.
Kurt Cobain was not. Hard to say, but it's simply the truth. Look thru, how many bipolar people you find in the 'club 27'. Actually most bipolar people i know tried to kill themselves at a certain point and i know quite alot. And i am one of them. Unfortunately, many succeed, because they really mean it. And again, i am one of the lucky guys who can deal with his suicidal tendencies, and on of the very few that got rid of them due to Seroquel, while normally the only med that makes a difference in this field is lithium.
OK.
So, guys, i am well, nothing to worry about yet. There are people in real life that look after me once in a while, and if Jimi Hendrix, the manic depressive, asks: Are you experienced? I can answer: I have the illness longer than you lived, so yes, man, and rest in peace, happiness and freedom from cycling up and down.

Uh, you see: so much text, i am quite hyperactive still. You don't have to read it, really. ;-)

Yeah keymod, agreed.

Small, that is so far out of my realm of understanding it's scary to me, I can barely empathize, i'm way too much of a wimp to think about, let alone attempt suicide, i'm like George Castanza swallowing the fly, "what can happen?!" Seriously, It's a dark side that is unimaginable, beside that I think the catholic guilt in me thinks i'd need to stay here and suffer the long haul! haha, but seriously, keep on top of that stuff and stay well, you're a good man, we need you on this planet 8)

A lot of people in the music business suffer from a big profile-neurosis..... and they do not take care to solve it.
You are not responsible for a sickness you are born with, but you take care.
Thats great, thats good.

If people say mean things to you, give them a finger or even two.
Thats what I do if it happens to me with my left leg handicap.

No human deserves to be treated like shit.
Beeing disabeld is even a very specal case, its very important to hang out with nice people.
BTW I stoped working with those people.....

Very, very well stated. Thank-you. And this thread is beautiful; thx to the OP for that too.

I used to try so hard to be liked, loved, accepted. The harder I tried, the less people cared. I gave up. I used to write "great music" and songs to try to get people to appreciate me. That never worked either. Then I kind of got to a place where I don't really give a sh*t about making music as an ego thing anymore, and even I feel sometimes like, "why bother." Maybe that's depression, I don't know, feels like it.

I guess I'm trying to say, it's important as artists to have a supportive audience. I can write "great music" as an exercise or mental masturbation, but ultimately my greatest pleasure is when others enjoy it with me.

I read once, "why did God make people." - Not because "he" was lonely - but because he wanted to share.

I totally agree with this idea, and I think it's what drives me. I could give a rat's @ss about recognition, but I do want to feel that what I create has value and brings joy and healing and goodness to others' lives.

This Sunday a local church is going to perform a choir piece I wrote many years ago. A lady there wants to publicly acknowledge me as the composer, etc, and I feel funny about it. I'd really rather just know that people enjoyed it and it meant something to them personally, rather than being on a stage and getting kudos.

Also, I finally realized something about others that had puzzled me my whole life. I used to write a song, and share it with someone. In my head, the sound was UNBELIEVABLE, over the top, amazeballs. The sounds themselves magnify in some mysterious way, and a note is more than just a note. A chord more than a chord, a phrase more than a phrase. ***IN MY HEAD!***

I could never understand why I would share such amazing music with others and they would typically respond with, "um, yeah, that's nice." Or better yet, "    ".

So I got to the place where I realized that myself, and likely many other music guys such as yourselves, probably have extra circuitry in the brain that magnifies and amplifies the experience of music much more deeply than others can experience it. So I quite literally "hear" and experience much more when I hear music than most (as do many of you I'm sure!).

I can't play music and do ANYTHING else. The music sucks all my attention, whether I want it to or not. I used to hear my buddies in high school tell me they would do their homework whilst listening to the radio. NOT ME! Again, it sucks all my attention, helplessly, away from whatever it is I'm doing.

When I was in my teens, I'll never forget waking up one night in the middle of the night and quite literally "hearing" instruments playing, very plainly and loudly, in my head. I knew it was only in my head, but I also knew it wasn't quite normal.

Anyway, y'all touched a nerve so this is my gift, my honest sharing with you too. Basically I'm a tortured soul, like many here, desperately trying to create a life that feels good. I just want peace gang. I find it vicariously through DIY sometimes lately.

Thanks for the chance to vent.

Mike

PS I'm def OCD. Dunno about bipolar but def have had a lot of terrible mood swings all my life. I did discover that foods can cause it. Case in point, chocolate is horrible for me. I've also read how many people are badly affected by the stuff. Still others rave about how great it is, that it's a mood lifter etc. Well, at least for some people, it depletes serotonin levels worse than prior to having it. This quite literally causes depression. And you can seriously get addicted to chocolate. Sometimes I have to have it every day. But when I avoid it for a few days, to a few weeks, my whole life feels smoother and I'm calmer. I don't even miss it. This is a reminder to stop eating it! Boo. Hiss. Carry on.

PPS I read a study wherein they took a bunch of the "worst" mental patients and fasted them on water for several days. Fully half of them returned to normalcy just by avoiding foods that were exacerbating their conditions. Something to think about, and look into.

Tony man you crack me up!! 1/2 hour adjusting a bypassed comp!! I only laugh so hard because I'm quite certain I would've spent an hour at it myself!!

@smallbutfine hope you are feeling better.