A Fine Madness--the Mental Illness Posts

Over my 300+ posts, I have often written of my own mental illness. It is now called a Bi-polar Condition. It used to be called Manic Depression. I just think of it as a fire in the brain. What is it like? When you are unmedicated, it is like trying to sail a boat in a gale. On medication it is like driving a different company car every day, with slightly different locations for the controls and the dials everytime you step behind the wheel, and with a subtly different pattern of responsiveness on the road.

[Full list of posts below the fold]

I write about my mental illness to combat what we mental health clients call "the stigma", the nameless fear and horror projected on us by the outside world. We are not moral lepers. We are not lazy loafers. We are not, by and large, dangerous to the ordinary people around us.

We are simply mentally ill, usually under incredibly strong psychotropic medication, and struggling for what is known as Recovery. This is the capacity to play a functional role in ordinary society. Recovery is never a given. It must be worked for, and your strength must be husbanded to sustain it. Recovery is also not a "cure" and relapse into non-functionality is an ever present possibility. Relapses have triggers, which you must learn to avoid.

Below are the links, updated periodically, to my mental illness posts. They are a testimony to the fact that you don't come out of mental illness by the same door you went in. When you encounter us, please try to remember this about us, if nothing else.

The Whispering Of The Darkness Gets Louder.

A Whisper Of The Darkness

So Why Did Downtown Columbus Smell Like A Box Of Fresh Doughnuts?

My Enemy, The Stigma

Under The Gun Of The Mind

This July Was A Very Long Time Ago

And Now For Something Completely Different

Everything Ordinary in the World Began to Strike Me as Screamingly Funny

The Encounter with True Silence

The Characters In My Travels

The Reality of Mental Illness And The War Against The Poor