Beatific Dreams
For Leonard Cohen
“I sang in my chains like the sea.” – Dylan Thomas
(Images provided by The Drifter)
Hello!
“The Drifter” writes this with a wickedly bad, early November Chicago head and lung cold which he contracted from his kids’ friends and the sneezing baby in their care while he was driving them to Urgent Care.
I didn’t enforce a mask policy and now I’m paying the price.
Symptoms include the usual coughing, sniffling, loss of appetite, stomach issues, and body aches.
But the worst part of a cold for me is always, always the horrible MALAISE and FATIGUE (and brain fog) that always comes with it.
Thinking slows down. Therefore writing, too, slows down. If I don’t write on a regular basis, I start to lose touch with it all. On the other hand, after a few days of not writing, the writing energy usually returns with a (very satisfying) vengeance.
The reason why the malaise and fatigue are always so horrible for me is because I have an advanced case of Bipolar One Disorder.
“Disorder” is a wonderful word for this sometimes magical, sometimes terrifying brain disease, because it causes so much constant disorder in the life of the sufferer.
But “bipolar,” while I like the term well enough, is not as vivid and telling as the older term: MANIC DEPRESSION.
Manic Depression can mean many things in many ways. One thing it means that most people are not aware of is that, for many of us who have this, the depression itself is often manic (sometimes called a mixed state).
Manic depression, where the word manic is an adjective describing the depression, is the “worst” kind. This is the kind that leads to the most suicides.
Another thing about us bipolar people is that we CANNOT STAND TALKING ON THE PHONE.
This is a very, very, very, very common symptom of bipolar disorder, so common that almost everyone who has bipolar also has an intense phobia of the phone.
Those who don’t have bipolar disorder are almost always hard-pressed to understand WHY bipolar people are terrified of talking on the phone.
There are many and many more reasons.
One reason is because the mind of a bipolar person has much trouble confining itself to the requirements of a conventional phone call, for example when dealing with a medical or insurance issue. Listening to the other person, or robot; following instructions; answering immediately; speaking clearly; being immersed in and surrounded by a generic world; all can cause intense Kafkaesque anxiety, general uneasiness, mental and emotional disruption, and even panic and terror in the average bipolar person.
And sixty percent of bipolar people are alcoholics, alcohol abusers, heavy drinkers, or former alcoholics, alcohol abusers, or heavy drinkers.
A single wrong phone call can cause a bipolar person to suddenly feel SUICIDAL.
It can cause a bipolar person to suddenly fall off the wagon, too.
Or if they don’t fall off the wagon, it can cause them to FLEE. To disappear. To vamoose. To vanish. Again. Without warning.
People who have to deal with this sort of behavior up close and personal tend to get very annoyed by it. Even when they themselves are suffering from some sort of bipolar disorder.
It appears utterly irrational (that is to say, at least half insane, or “just plain nuts”) to the “average,” non-bipolar, well-adjusted person.
A bipolar person has a lot of trouble following society’s rules, especially things like all the coordinated schedules, highly structured group activities, and rigidly organized social situations, all the boxes they make you check and recheck and check again.
Oftentimes, bipolar folks have so much trouble following society’s rigid rules that it is utterly impossible for them to do so at all.
This can really irritate and annoy misunderstanding bosses, employers, family members, friends, romantic partners, the public in general, and the unlucky ones who have to deal with the bipolar person on the phone.
People who have bipolar disorder often suffer from headaches, digestive issues and the shakes; they frequently feel battered by life to the point of total burnout and exhaustion; they are frequently astonished; frequently amazed; and frequently quite lost in flights of fancy that mask as being lost in space.
The author of this column will now, before he loses energy today, supply a round half dozen further symptoms of most bipolar people, in honor of Leonard Cohen, who himself suffered from bipolar disorder and always acted as an advocate for the mentally ill in various ways, from writing songs and poetry about it, to speaking openly about it, to performing free shows in mental wards throughout his career.
These six do not say it all. They only begin to say some of it.
One: frequent, intense, out-of-control arguments with other people, followed by various forms of emotional, mental, and hormonal collapse.
Two: wicked, truly wicked, Irritability coupled with uncontrollable Impulses, such as walking off the job or burning other bridges with unpredictable dramatic flair, later hauntingly regretted.
Three: feeling so thin-skinned that the smallest brush-off from someone else can give you a minor nervous breakdown or make you want to break out into tears, fits of rage, or both. Morbid sensitivity coupled with an extremely tender heart.
Four: intense difficulty being around other people while also needing to sometimes be around other people.
Five: the feeling of being watched by people (or spirits) even when they’re not there. Paranoia about being watched in general.
Six: regular, lifelong Insomnia coupled with inexplicably intense dreams (day dreams and night dreams), sometimes horrific; SOMETIMES BEATIFIC.
“Drifter” Concluding Note: Happy Death Day to Dylan Thomas, one of the most inspiring Manic-depressive Alcoholic Writers of the twentieth century. I say “Happy Death Day” because I don’t believe he’s really dead.
Robert Browning said, “Never say of me that I am dead.” What he really meant by that remains to be explored by everyone, whether they know it or not.
(Do it now before it’s too late…)
Saragun Springs 
Hello Drifter
Seems fitting that Cohen’s death day was 7 November. Mom was bipolar. It is a terrible thing, not as bad as being around an old drunk who thinks he is still young enough to fuck, but close.
In the right people it makes them gentler, like depression and Lincoln. Others reach for guns, and when the afflicted reach out they are met with skepticism.
I sometimes feel that illness, age and addiction are safeguards against the desire for immortality. And yet behind it all I sense a vague purpose.
Take care and stay away from diseased small children!
Leila
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Leila
I had forgotten that Leonard’s Happy Death Day was just the other day, but it’s great to hear about it now. The perfect literary synchronicity! Thanks for the heads-up about Dylan, too.
I am blessed because I live in the Chicago area, which has one of the best mental health systems on the entire planet. It isn’t great for most people but it’s better than almost everywhere else except for a few places.
Rush University has treated me in many ways that have made me much more likely to keep going on for a very long time, including pretty good, regular (and free) therapy and the drug Depakote, which softens my rage, and makes further episodes of suicidal depression much less likely.
Of course, you have to participate in your own treatment and do most of the work yourself. But that is exactly as it should be in any area of life. I decided to take control of things once two twins came around.
I sometimes think almost all writers, with their shifting moods, acute sensitivities, vivid imaginative lives, proclivities for addictions, and original solutions to things, have some form of bipolar.
It was recently renamed a “spectrum” disorder and the vast majority of people who have it are not formally diagnosed. Even if a writer doesn’t have it, they are more likely to understand it in most cases, much more likely.
Dale
PS
It’s always important to point out, too, that a person with a mental condition is “not” their condition. Their condition is one thing they have; just a single part of a vastly more complex personality.
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To All
Be sure to check out the essay by DWB on today’s Literally Stories–it will be up in three hours.
Leila
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Thank you, Leila!
I don’t know if Jerry Lee was ever formally treated for anything re: mental issues. But he spoke about his own depression, had substance abuse problems, and acted like a maniac on many, many and many an occasion.
Like the time he drove his car straight into Elvis’s front gate (on purpose) with a pistol in one hand and a bottle in the other.
It’s a perfect example of maniacal behavior.
Dale
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I hope you feel better soon and that the sniffy baby is also well. I worked for a man who was bi-polar and it was often very challenging. With all the sympathy you can muster it is still difficult not to feel aggrieved when you are shouted at an ridiculed unfairly. I hope he is okay but wouldn’t want to do that again. It seems to aflict many creative peolle. Is it a price that has to be paid for the gift of imagination? I wonder. dd.
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Diane
I still have the cold pretty bad but the baby (Jax) is over his, I hear. Thanks for the well-wishings.
Sorry you had to be berated by a maniac with bipolar.
I do believe that it is a price that needs to be paid for the imagination in many cases. The downside is a tormented life with unstable relationships and other issues; the upside is the beatific dreams that come with it.
It’s also worth noting that many super productive people have had this in some form. Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (and his whole family), Robert Burns, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Sylvia Plath being just a few examples.
Thank you again!
Dale
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May you recover from your chesty cold just as soon as humanly possible, Drifter.
And my thanks and congratulations for writing so honestly and knowledgably about living with bipolar disorder.
As a teenager (many, many years ago) I was fortunate to become a friend of a patient at Fulbourn Mental Hospital, outside Cambridge. He’d been transferred there from Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he’d been committed after being put on trial for setting fire to the altar cloth of one of the oldest and most beautiful churches in the UK. He was one of the gentlest, kindest, and most intelligent people I’ve ever met. His dearest dream was to help set-up a self-sufficient community in a beautiful valley in the Andean mountains of Columbia, a place he’d known well as a child. He taught me so much about mental illness and influenced much of my later life.
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Dear Mick
Thank you so much for the well-wishings, and for this wonderful story. It’s always great to hear from you and always a joy to see how your life is made up of stories, stories, and more stories. You are (obviously) a born story-teller in the fiction and nonfiction modes, and your places AND your characters are always vivid, true, memorable.
Dale
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When I grew up (and the age group in these conversations make the Drifter usually the “Baby”of the group), such things were plentiful but not discussed, even in families.
My brother has Aspergers, he has an IQ near 140 but cannot relate comfortably in communication. Especially when a child I knew somethin was up (he’s two years older) because he did something called “stimming” when excited (I am sure you have seen such). A harmless thing but weird, and since he went to regular school you can imagine the hell he went through.
My family had an abundance of common oddities and syndromes. I have my share (in fact I have spent most of my life certain that I am insane but good at maintaining a “normal” manner). But it was not until surprisingly late in life when I found out that these were not shameful secrets. Society made it that way. It is getting much better, but the damage caused was extraordinary.
Leila
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Leila
I too have a family history riddled with various kinds of mental and emotional issues. All the way back to my one grandmother who lived on a farm in Michigan. Everyone was nuts, but no one would say so. Until someone else got carted off to the mental ward. And even then, stigma, trauma, silence. My grandmother rose above it all on her own and lived up above it with her beautiful spirituality and imagination. She was what Wordsworth called a “silent poet.” A poet who didn’t say so (usually).
Now that I have my own kids, sometimes when I see the sudden uprisings of crazy temper tantrums, or the sudden inexplicable plunges into silence and sadness, I know these things are definitely passed down through the blood.
The good news for my daughters is that they also have my grandmother’s imagination and spirituality.
And more good news for them is the MASSIVE IMPROVEMENTS society has made in being able to de-stigmatize, and understand, some of these things a little better.
As this society causes more and more forms of mental and emotional illness, it also rises to the occasion in treatments and openness about it.
The yin and yang, like all of life!
Dale
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A piece to be sent as a link to any number of people, mental health forums, groups etc. Gets to the bones of the matter – unnervingly – & healthily – so. Life as lived on a tightrope – & all the while affecting a stroll. Your listings alone resound, their eloquence utterly without frills. This essay does indeed “begin to say some of it.” Required reading.
Geraint
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Thank you, Geraint!
I’ve spent a lot of years studying this topic and the intention here was to translate or transform some of the drier medical language into the more poetic literary language. The exact same facts, told in a different manner. I had hoped that in doing this I could add a bit of depth to the topic. Depression, mania, and substance abuse have all been poetic long before Charles Baudelaire himself (following Poe) made them all explicitly so. Thanks for letting me know this worked. It was a column/essay I had some reservations about initially, probably because admitting this stuff about yourself is still frowned upon by the population at large even though things have gotten much, much better in that regard.
Thanks again!
Dale
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Hi Drifter
I think the first time I heard of this disorder was when I was probably high or drunk listening to Jim Hendrix, “Manic Depression.” I may have heard it before but it really resonated with Hendrix.
The details you write about are very enlightening. Like the phone phobia. The way you describe that is as you say Kafkaesque. That’s a great way to relay this condition and one of its variants. I could hear the paranoia in the dead silence that comes in the void of conversation.
I saw a good movie called “Mr. Jones” starring Richard Gere that seemed realistic about Bipolar. The severe highs and lows.
Once in a psych class they showed a movie about this guy wearing a bright red T shirt on the manic side and he was quite enthusiastic about life. He was utterly and crazily happy and refused medications. Then it showed him in jail but he was still riding high! It made me wonder if this guy had some secret to a better way to live.
I like how you pointed out this crushing sensitivity and not wanting to be around people, but needing them. The lack of conformity to this bureaucratic society. That is all geared for gain and wrings freedom and God out like people are dirty wash clothes.
Great essay, wonderfully written!
Hope you feel better with the cold.
Snowbound,
Christopher
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Hi Christopher
Ah yes, I remember the days of being high or drunk (or both) and blasting “Manic Depression” by Jimi! All know how great he was on guitar, but he doesn’t get enough credit as a lyricist. He was one of the best as a lyricist, too; a poet, really. He wrote his lyrics by hand on things like cocktail napkins, usually.
It’s funny that he’s so almost-universally known as a guitarist, but few know what a great writer he was. He carried around a book that had Bob Dylan lyrics in it, and he was influenced by Dylan as a writer, but not in an obvious or too-overt way. Like many musicians, Jimi was also a great reader as well. He loved devouring science fiction.
I think the essence of Manic Depression really is that the moods go overboard and are too hard to control. Anyone who has or has had trouble controlling their moods is bipolar-friendly, if not actually on the bipolar spectrum and undiagnosed. The key moods that get out of control include anger, on one side, and joy, on the other.
Cycling between those two can be a wild ride that one wouldn’t give up for the world if one could. On the other hand, it can get to where one needs treatment. I’m betting that that guy in the red shirt you talked about came down eventually one way or another! It is true that manic people are drawn to bright colors and depressed people prefer wearing black (and manic depressive people like both depending on the day).
The movie AT ETERNITY’S GATE does a great job showing Vincent Van Gogh’s bipolar nature. It also does a great job showing society’s reaction/s.
Thanks as always, hope you’re keeping warm in Indiana but now I hear it’s supposed to be 70 degrees F again soon! Climate change and global warming are causing the weather to be more and more bipolar by the day. Soon the tidal waves will come and wash away all the evil like in Noah’s flood.
Dale
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DWB
I like Hendrix voice for sure, and it is a shame he doesn’t get more credit. I like when he sings, “Aw shucks–Foxy lady.”
Hi voice is haunting in “The Watch Tower.” That song reminds me of medieval castles.
Yes, I just recently read about how Dylan was a major influence. Dylan gets around.
First time I heard “Purple Haze,” drinking underage in a basement bar called the Des Keller.
AT ETERNITY’S GATE I think I’ve seen this if its the one with Kirk Douglas.
Cool description about the weather being bipolar.
Sun shiny and warm today–didn’t happen much in the old days in November.
Christopher
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