How I make being bipolar a positive thing.

There aren’t many positives about being bipolar… until you start looking at it differently.

For me it began with meat. I spent a lot of my life worrying about meat. I would get paranoid and stress about all the meat we eat. I would obsess about what it was doing to me in health terms and what being a part of the meat consuming society was doing to the planet. I also really like animals so all of this together had a great potential to play on my mind, feed my Mania and lead to period of being a bit crazy.

This is pretty common. So I decided to stop eating meat. It wasn’t that hard. It was something I didn’t like about myself, so I changed it.

I figured, rather than continue doing things that I don’t like or that can lead me to being unwell, just give it up.

It is a pretty simple idea- don’t do bad things- genius Dave you changed the world!

So it is not radical. Yet for me it became quite a radical solution.

We are the crazy. We are looking for the answer. We are the ones looking for the simple trick that will make all this worth while.

Like in the picture book about “Living with the Black Dog” we will have great ideas, passions uncontrollable. We will find the new thing that must be done to make every thing so much better!

And so I simply combined these two thing.

Like the very common Mania for shopping and buying stuff that will validate the bipolar. I made giving up bad things my crazy passion.

So the next thing I gave up was booze. Booze is fun, life enhancing, the gate keeper to happiness and our national pastime. All true, but to the depressive it is also death. It is a depressant we pour down our throats even though we know it increases the odds of half pissed attempts to give in and take those pills.

And the day after ? 1000 times worse. So I stopped. I haven’t drunk for 2 years and do you know what? It was easy. I don’t miss it at all.

But you have to feed your little manias. I need to keep the giving up alive.

Another problem I had was being lazy at work. I am not lazy by nature, but I work in a job where supervision is rare. We are expected to be self driven and self motivated.

The issue was this leaves plenty of chances to have a lazy day, to leave early, to come in late and so on. All of which happens a lot, and no one really minds.

Except I am bipolar. So I would worry. I would think my office has a camera fitted, that my co-workers are writing secret reports. Doing no work could become extremely hard work.

So I gave up taking it easy at work. It is just easier for me too work hard. I have even managed to convince others in my team that this is a much less stressful way to be. It is true and it works.

My next objective is to give up smoking. This is the Everest of giving up challenges. I believe I can do it though. I am bipolar for a start. So I am crazy and the crazy can do anything. I have made quitting my passion my Mania.

I have made quitting my super power. It wasn’t even that hard.