Families & Mental Illness

This was sort of an interesting, accidental, discovery on my part. I was going through business bank statements from last year. I noticed that ATM charges, on SO's ATM card, to a liquor store directly correlate with when our relationship problems began, and just before his spending spree and his wanting to separate from me, happened. He had never drank before, in all the years of our relationship. So I can see, with this information, that alchohol was the trigger for all the negative stuff that started happeneing last year, after he had been the poster boy for how well bi-polar meds and counseling should work, for so long. This of course, also coincides with his parents moving to town, next to this liquor store, and him hanging out with a boyhood friend more, and wanting, I believe, to be able to do something "normal," like have a few beers with a friend. Unfortunately, much to the detriment of our relationship and my trust in him.

He quit drinking completly, a couple of months ago. He went to a seminar, came home and got rid of it all. Since then he seems to be turning things back around. When I confront him on the things he has been hiding, he seems to be owning up to them. However, my faith is eroded, and I am extremely cautious.  While I see no charges for steroids, alchohol or phone sex on his accounts anymore, part of me wonders if he is just better at hiding things. I wish I didn't feel this way, but I'm not the one who eroded the trust here in the first place.

Last night we were talking and he brought up alchohol and how it's addicting and he sees he needs to stay away from it, because he just wants it more, when he has it. I think he is coming to terms with the fact that he has an addictive personality. He said something like "It's that way with anything though, alchohol, cookies, anything." Yep, sugar is a big one for him. He'll suck oodles of sugar down and get just as grumpy and mad at someone for saying anything, as someone saying something about him drinking.

But it was interesting to see the correlation of the alchohol purchases and the decline in him, though of course he blamed everyhting on me. I hate to say, that in a way, it made me feel better. It does, but it doesen't. It does, in that there was an organic reason for his sudden mood change, and his lithium levels going off so suddenly. It doesen't, in that, he chose to take that path, and use me as a scapegoat, and our daughter by proxy. Then to add insult to injury, had his family and friends cheering him on in the direction he was going, and convincing him, I really was a controlling biatch, ruining his life and holding him back from true happiness. When they have just remained completly ignorant about his illness and not even remotely tried to learn about what he needs to be healthy and how to support that.

Last night he was saying that if he didn't have me and dd he would be depressed and he is happy with our lives. Last year we were the sum total reason for everything wrong in his world. I would like to believe the man who was talking to me last night, and not the one that was obviously under the influence of a mind altering substance, and a lot of negative outside influences last year. Unfortunately, I'm a bit like a head shy horse, I've been slapped in the face so many times I don't know if the hand being extended is going to offer comfort or pain any longer.

Chicken or egg? Chicken or egg?

Drinking is often a form of self-medication. It could have been just as easily the Lithium not working as it should & therefore he sought out self-medication. My DH could not stop drinking until he was put onto anti-anxiety meds. Then in 2 weeks he went from chronic to non-drinker.

As far as his family goes ... sometimes people with depression can be master manipulators to get people to say exactly what s/he needs them to say to receive confirmation they're behaving as expected. That means he could have easily been stretching the truth to his family, perhaps even warping it, so they would defend him & put you down. This would make him feel better about himself for treating you the way he did. This will leave this family a bit confused & not understanding who you are really.

I don't know what it is about the sugar ... but that one seems common to me for depression, bipolar & schizophrenia. Makes me wonder how dangerous the drug of sugar really is. Sugar is a classified drug, just a legal one. It makes sense why so many food companies add it to their food products, keeps people addicted to that product. Although, I think in a small degree our bodies need it & it's found naturally in all of our foods. So how could you actually make it illegal?

My husband will claim he's not hungry & skip dinner. Then while we're eating dinner he'll stand over the sink & stuff himself silly with cookies. Great influence over the kids :-) Luckily he has been doing much better sitting with us for dinner no matter what & I've been trying to teach him to hide his sugar intake better by letting him know how rude it is to do in front of his kids.

We've become 'shadow boxers.' We will swing & fight shadows. I get this from a song by Fiona Apple.

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Once my lover, now my friend.
What a cruel thing to pretend.
What a cunning way to condescend.
Once my lover, now my friend.

Oh, you creep up like the clouds.
And you set my soul to ease.
Then you let your love abound.
And you bring me to my knees.

Oh, its evil,babe,the way you let your grace enrapture me.
When, well, you know, Id be insane -
To ever let that dirty game recapture me.

You made me a shadowboxer, baby.
I wanna be ready for what you do.
I been swinging all around me.
cause I dont know when youre gonna make your move.

Oh, your gaze is dangerous.
And you fill your space so sweet.
If I let you get too close,
Youll set your spell on me.

So, darlin, I just wanna say.
Just in case I dont come through.
I was on to every play.
I just wanted you.

But, oh, its so evil, my love,
The way youve no reverence to my concern.
So, Ill be sure to stay wary of you, love,
To save the pain of once my flame and twice my burn.

You made me a shadowboxer, baby.
I wanna be ready for what you do.
I been swinging all around me.
cause I dont know when youre gonna make your move.

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Take care of yourself :-)

**When it all comes out in the wash, are we bipolar too?**

We are bipolar by proxy.

On another board someone asked me "are you so afraid of being alone?" Which is hysterically laughable. Alone is peace. But these relationships are so much more complex than that. Am I afraid for my dd to be alone with him, without me as part of his life, monitoring his signs, symptoms, moods and behavior? You're darn right. Last year, when he was leaving us and he wanted to take dd to Foresthill bridge to fly paper airplanes off of it, for a fun activity, something he has never suggested, in her whole life, mere days after he had complained about "not wanting the responsibility of a child and partner," my intuition screamed "Nooooo!" With a "normal" parent I may not have thought twice. I wouldn't have insisted on accompanying them on hikes, along rain swollen creeks, etc. Instead, I had my guard up, because I had seen glimpses of the depression he was trying to mask, and I didn't want our dd to somehow become a victim, in the process. This is nothing about me "fearing being alone." This is about the fear instilled in me by a judge, when SO was just out of a mental hospital, when the judge told me "it's not illegal to be bipolar or even a complete a$$hole, if he manages his illness, he WILL get unsupervised visitation." So it behooves me and dd to make the best of this, that I can. If I struggle like this, an adult woman, with the help of a therapist, as an adult who HAS attended Al-anon and NAMI meetings, then why on earth would I put a little child into the situation, to cope with it on her own? I believe if something ever happened to him, I wouldn't be in another relationship, until dd was an adult or maybe even never. Being "alone" is so much less complicated.

I was talking to a woman who has bi-polar, but I think a much milder form ,and someone who learned to manage it many years ago. I was talking about how he will just decide something and expect the rest of the household to adapt and go along, with no regard for what we might be doing or have planned. Just an expectation that whatever direction his mind takes him, it takes us all. She said "that is NORMAL to him. That spontaneous changing of the mind and just going with it, is normal. He probably can't see why it bothers you and why you wouldn't simply go along." She did go on to explain she has been single most of her life, has no children, she has friends and is content with her life as it is (she's in her late 50's early 60's) but she never was able to maintain a relationship over the long term because, for the most part, men aren't as willing to go the extra mile that women are. They would just basically decide she was too high maintenece and move on.

I think you are right about them meaning what they say in the moment. I think this is what I find so frustrating. To him, he is past the things he said and did last year, because he has now changed his mind (for the moment.) It's past, it's done. Time to move on. It's a brand new day. So why can't I get over it, he thinks? Why can't I just add his name to the title of a peice of land I own, free and clear (and holding all the debt on the other peice of property, we live in, being left holding all financial responsibility for debt, and left in a position of having to buy him out or sell the other peice, if he decides, one day, I'm worthless again), when less than a year ago, he didn't give a crap if I lost everyhting I'd worked my whole life for, and me and dd ended up living in section 8 housing? I guess that is where it gets crazy for me. I feel like "Do you think I'm retarded or something? Do you think I was hit in the head with a rock?" and he's like "I made a mistake. I don't REALLY feel that way. I feel different now. Trust me." I keep thinking "Does he think I've lost my mind?" But he talks about having a poor memory and I think-how convenient. He can treat me and dd really badly, forget about it and then act like it never happened. Then treat me like I'm damaged, because I have trust issues and am not willing to hand over the keys to the kingdom, without him taking on some real commitment, (beyond his verbal promise) for paying for the kingdom. Man, I wish I could get away with cr@p like that. But I've never been able to get away with jack. I've always been left holding the proverbial bag.

Jan,

Honestly Jan, I think it has to do with knowing your limits. And a fear of being out there on your own. I feel like my H needs to have some sort of addiction too. So everyone he gives up something else in his life becomes stronger. And ... what is strange, I find he uses these addictions to define himself. He likes to brag about how much he can take. He thinks its funny to make the office's coffee into mud & drink it like it's water. Like some how he's cool..... so maybe this has to do with the frontal lobe not developing completely and it's the 'teen' expending itself?

Then again, when I was learning about sensory processing disorder (my son has & I'm thinking he got from me) and I saw an adult SPD test. So I took it & one of the questions was, 'do you smoke?' Strange, why would it ask that? So I started to do Internet searches on SPD and smoking. Turns out the nicotine dumbs down the SPD. There are actually studies being done on the benefits of nicotine & they use people with schizophrenia as their tests subjects because they are the ones who seem to benefit the most from nicotine.

Now, from everything we've learned we can only see the negative of nicotine. So we do not break down all of the components and look at them individually and see how/where they may actually help to the point where people will be willing to take the negative side effects to benefit something else in their brain/body.

I also believe many people who suffer from a mental illness often suffer ADHD. It's common knowledge caffeine does help with ADHD. So again, she may be willing to risk the side effects to dumb down the ADHD?

For some reason it does seem illegal drugs & sugar have some sort of correlation. I haven't spent time on that one. Alcohol made sense since it's pretty much all sugar, but other drugs I don't know. My H took drugs for a while earlier in our marriage (behind my back), but it was short-lived and didn't compare to the alcohol.

I know you've seen me bring this one up a lot on the anxiety board, but the oat extract is believed to help with drug addictions, ADHD & anxiety. Maybe you can get her to try some while she's sober. Maybe it will help her not need these other things so bad. I'm telling you, it was a huge help in my smoking cessation. Now whenever we're running low I'll stop taking to make sure my son has some before I go get more. During the summer we went about a month without it. My H was BEGGING me to get it, I kept thinking he meant for my DS's attention. Turned out, he was begging b/c he likes me better on it.

I think we get a lot of the higher vit-Bs in supplements, but for some reason the lower Bs (which oat milks has) are not added in. Perhaps if there is an imbalance Bs it causes nervous stress; sort of like depression when there is an imbalance of Omega-3s?

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Hottlipps,

Ditto again!

Peace