Bipolar Support Group

Part 1: The Manic Scott

By Scott Bennett

It all begins with a lucid dream I had…I was walking up to my high school’s football field as all of the school stood in the bleachers waiting for me but I had come up from behind to where the cheerleaders and dance team were. I remember one girl yelling, “Hey Scott!” from the bleachers and then another girl saying, “Look, smile!” A third girl had run up to me to take a picture of me with her camera. Before she did, I looked to my left and saw my girlfriend and she said hi to me very excitedly and my body filled with warm joy and excitement. It was a rush. Quickly I looked back to the camera and smiled. The flash blinded me for an instant and within that half a second I had realized that I was in fact dreaming. When I looked back to my girlfriend I realized she was actually now my ex-girlfriend. A dark wave of depression swarmed my insides. Once lucid I realized she had just broken up with me a few days before. At that moment I wished to die. And I did. My body, my soul started to fall down to the grass but fell through to an abyss of brief darkness to which I then woke up to my body feeling dead as I was sprawled out on my basement couch. This dream, I believe, is what induced my month-long episode of mania.

            The week before this dream I had been suffering greatly from depression. I had been very sick for almost a month with bronchitis and congestion. I eventually tested positive for mononucleosis after a painful trip to the ER resulted in a blood test. I had been in excruciating pain for days because of a severe sore throat. The pain was unbearable. I couldn’t sleep or eat. The pain had been radiating into my jaw and my tongue. I was absolutely miserable. When I told my girlfriend that I had mono her response to me via text was “…” Dot, dot, dot. It didn’t make her too happy with me I guess. She broke up with me 3 days later. What a bitch right? Yes, but I loved her and could not get over her. This was the main reason for my depression. I was lonely and ill. Distraught, I was on the verge of losing my sanity. I did soon thereafter.

            During this same week, my best friend of 12 years told me he was going to be sent away to a residential hospital for 4-5 months with contact only through letters. So, I lost my girlfriend, best friend, and physical health within one week. Mono of course made me miss school for a month so I also lost my chance for an advanced diploma. I was about to lose my future. These events caused me to lose everything I loved. I cherish all memories before this point because after these events I lost yet another item of mine, my mind.

            I might as well have been on acid for 30 days. I was hallucinating. I was hearing voices. My writings appear to be schizophrenic. I spent all my money in one week, an entire grand wasted. I could see TV in 3-D, I thought I could walk on water, I thought I could time travel, and I thought I would be able to fly. Very late in my episode I truly believed that I was the second coming of Jesus Christ and that I was going to save the world. These are some of the things at the top of my head that I remember doing. I don’t remember much. This might sound unrealistic but I assure you I believed these things 100%. I was convinced I was a super being, a super hero. I spent days upon days trying to time travel. It felt like being in a movie. It was like being high on life. I was manic. I know it’s hard to believe, but all of these things became my passions. I felt destined to acquire these abilities and my explanation for everything was that I was stuck in a dream. I woke up that day believing I was still in a lucid dream. And for the next 30 days I lived like it.

            The first thing I remember doing is taking 3-D glasses, a toilet paper roll, and my Ipod and getting high off staring at the rainbow that appeared when I looked through the 3-D eye tube I had made. I then lay on the ground for several hours staring at the ceiling light as I tried different combinations of going cross-eyed. I got high off going cross-eyed over 100 times. Even today going cross-eyed still fascinates me. At one point I was in a parking garage and when I went cross-eyed, I hallucinated a yellowish grass field around my car with a blue sky. Another significant hallucination I had was when I watched TV. I would see everything in 3-D. Even cartoons and pictures too on LCD screens. I remember going to the mall and being astounded that the weatherman was popping out of the screen as I walked by. One thing I tried to do many times was making water appear on my glasses using my eyes. I would also try to bend light and melt water bottles. I spent a lot of my time on my deck just staring into the sun and smoking cigarettes. I got very addicted to cigarettes during this time, a pack day and now I can’t quit.

            One day I went to school during my manic episode and I ended up writing a 25 page hand-written essay on why one equals zero, 1=0. I called this the equation of faith. I believed that numbers were all limits and that language was not capable of ever representing the concept of infinity properly. To me infinity is a belief, not a number. I believed that I had broken a barrier into the spiritual realm by proving 1=0. This was another explanation I gave to myself for why I was feeling these new feelings. I believed that I had crossed over.

            To be mentally insane temporarily and then going back to normal is called the slip back into reality. This occurred when my psychologist and psychiatrist convinced me that I was not in a dream. I didn’t believe them for a while until one day it hit me. I then became depressed again for a week or so, but then back to hypomanic. This is when I was diagnosed bipolar. Within a year I had been diagnosed with anxiety disorders like panic disorder and OCD and then I was diagnosed ADHD. I am currently on 6 different prescribed medications yet I still have minor panic attacks every day and I struggle with ADHD constantly.

            Each medication I’ve tried or am on currently has been a drug experience for me. Zoloft was the first prescribed medication given to me for my anxiety problems. It took 2 weeks to kick in but I remember being at work when I felt a buzzing feel for no apparent reason. I felt it again the next day and that’s when I realized that I also felt more confident and relaxed. I became high on life for weeks following because of my new found level of happiness from the Zoloft. As I built a tolerance for it and got used to it my prescription went from 20 mg to 50 mg to 100 mg.  At that amount the drug started to have negative effects on me. I had mild to severe night sweats almost every night for 1-2 months. I also acquired anorexia nervosa which led to my losing 15 pounds and I puked in my backyard almost every night. I was skinny and unhealthy looking. After my doctors put me down to 75 mg of Zoloft I started to reverse the damage. I never gained the weight back because at that that time I was diagnosed with ADHD and was put on adderall. I was having major problems with sitting still for a long time. I was squirming all the time in my chair and everyone that’s had a class with me knows I bounce my legs during class from start to finish. My problem with my legs is now possibly a neurological movement disorder. By some it’s simply called “sewing machine legs.” So, they put me on 20 mg of adderall which later became 30 mg. I noticed the buzz the first days I tried it. It caused me to do my AP English homework for the first time in months and I would actually do my Spanish homework on adderall. Another medication I was on at that time is called amitriptyline. This medicine simply helped my physical condition. I had been diagnosed IBS, irritable bowl syndrome, and hyperhydrosis, excessive sweating, due to anxiety. This medicine helped in combination with Zoloft greatly. These are the prescriptions I had before I got mono.

            During my manic episode I was thoroughly convinced that I was going to win the lottery. At one point I decided that my wishes would come true after sleep. That’s the only reason why I slept except one time I stayed up for 72 hours. One day I woke up convinced I would finally win a certain lottery ticket for $2,500. I told my parents I was walking to the gas station. With me I brought my ipod, cigarettes, lighter, my cell, and my friend Greg’s cell phone because he had left it in my car before he was sent away. It was a clear sunny day and as I walked towards the gas station I said to myself “Let’s go on an adventure.”  I walked down Fairfax County parkway and as I went I thought I was seeing clues, signs. I followed the clues and eventually I thought that if I stared at the sun and rotated, I could control time. I also thought that I was a “shock” and that I could charge Greg’s dead phone’s battery. This is when my first auditory hallucination occurred that I remember. I called Greg’s voicemail and the voicemail lady started to talk to me, which is impossible. This happened again with my own voicemail later that day because I thought she was telling me how to time travel. Continuing on the journey I walked to an underpass tunnel where I tried to levitate, walk on water, and crawl into another dimension. Doing these things and believing that I had achieved them led me to believe that I would eventually become a superhero. That’s how crazy I was. Even though during this period I told myself that I was crazy, I still was completely oblivious to how crazy I really was.

            Time travel is not possible today, but while I was manic I truly believed that I was capable of it. I thought I needed time travel tools to do it. My tools were noise cancellation headphones, a non-working watch, 2 bracelets, an ipod, a timer, a bell, and a color-changing clock. I would go into my basement bathroom with these items, completely naked with sharpie drawn all over my body and try to time travel. I would shut off the lights and then turn on the fan and then I would set the timer to a specific number and then walk out the door hoping the world was frozen in time. I tried this repeatedly with my other time traveling methods. My other method was to change the time on my computer to the time of my choosing which would then change the world’s time. I repeatedly tried to stop time with this too and because I believed my computer’s clock was almighty, I accidentally kept my computer’s date to a day behind which left my memory of dates entirely disoriented. This is the reason why I forgot my Dad’s birthday on March 3^rd, a month after I first entered my manic episode, because I thought it was March 2^nd even though I had set my clock to one day behind an entire month prior to this. My actions affected my memory.

            On the computer I would see my music Myspace for “Safe Bet”  glow and because my nickname in the band was “The Preacher” I thought it was fate that I seemed to be having some type of religious experience. That’s how it felt. I came to the conclusion that all humans are the sons or daughters of God and that we all possess potential capabilities that are limited due to our inhibitions. I now doubt all beliefs I have; I question the reality of it all after having this episode.

During my episode, my inhibitions were released and I experienced natural intense euphoria. It was like being high all day everyday. I was in a good mood, I was energetic, and I was happy. This was unlike me considering this began only 1 week after a break up that left me intensely depressed. I had become confident, I felt completely over my ex-girlfriend. I didn’t know why I felt so good or why I was seeing TV in 3D.  I questioned it, but only to myself. It drove me to insanity, as I went through spirals of theories. Sometimes I knew I was acting strange but I didn’t care. I thought I was right. I thought I was Jesus.

            To relate to someone with bipolar disorder, you have to have done some type of mind-altering drug. Imagine that bipolar disorder is like having an unwanted drug in your system. It intensifies emotions on both sides which can lead to manic episodes and depressive episodes but does bring out creativity. Bipolar disorder is known commonly but actual manic episodes are unexplained and remain a mystery to the general public. If you’re “normal” then you can be grateful and by normal I mean someone that doesn’t need daily medications. I am drugged up by 6 different medications for my mental illness. That’s how much it takes for me to feel almost normal. I’ve only been treated for under a year for my mental problems so I grew up in what I considered a cruel world. I constantly struggled with stabilizing my emotions my entire life, but I never knew what to do. I had to admit I had mental problems, and tell my parents to take me to a psychologist. This has helped me a lot and I have conquered many problems over the last year. But, the year’s worth of therapy didn’t prepare me for the manic episode and afterwards.

            The slip into reality is when someone in a manic episode finally accepts that they had one. They go from feeling like Jesus to feeling like a dud. I got incredibly depressed because I was so disappointed in myself. I thought my dreams were going to come true. I thought I had special powers. I was a maniac.

Here is a quick bio that my Mom had to write for my appointment at the neurologist.

Scott was diagnosed with anxiety in the summer of 2008. Our primary care physician, Dr. Long, prescribed Zoloft, beginning with a low dose. Scott had some improvement. Scott had adverse reactions as higher doses were given including sweating. Scott still felt anxious and expressed feelings of going crazy and Dr. Long recommended Dr. Arons. When beginning psychiatric treatment with Dr. Arons in December of 2008, he was given a diagnosis of ADHD and Adderall was prescribed. In January 2009 Scott was diagnosed with mononucleosis. A few days later his girlfriend broke up with him and his close friend, Greg, went into Graydon Manor to treat depression and addiction. These experiences were traumatic. Scott then experienced manic and hypomanic episodes for about a 4 week period during February. Initially he was treated with Zyprexa. In March he was taken of Zyprexa and Abilify was introduced and then Lithium. During his manic episode Zoloft was discontinued. After the mania, Scott was prescribed again Zoloft starting in low doses and then increasing to the current 75 mg daily dose. Zoloft was reintroduced about the end of March. He is currently not manic or hypomanic. As his mother and observer of his day to day activities, I think he is still suffering from depression. He sleeps frequently during the day. He is o a reduced school day schedule and is taking 2 high school classes in order to graduate. It is difficult for him to focus on activities (except playing music, his passion). Focusing on school activities is very difficult. Reading a literary novel which holds no interest, impossible. He can no longer even enjoy the pastime of watching TV and sleeps instead. Attendance is sporadic at school for various health reasons, tired, not feeling well, nauseous, etc.

Part 2: 1=0

Before writing Part 2, I showed Part 1 around to classmates, friends, and family. I also went to 2 of the main bipolar support websites and posted my story and got comments and responses. Everyone complimented me on these writings and I was very happy to hear that but I feel the need to explore my thoughts on more of my manic episode, I mean… it was 30 days. I’ll try to remember as much as I possibly can. I went back and gathered my crazy writings from my episode and I found some disturbing ones. In a random notebook I found on a random page the words

“I, Scott Andrew Bennett, know how I died because I killed myself with my mind. Now that I know 2 eyes = 1. I am Everything Where. Um, Circles and Squares. iTunes=Music Music=IAMMUSIC.”

I don’t know what I was thinking.

If you think that’s weird then this next paragraph will be VERY weird. Its my summary of why 1=0 that I typed up during my manic episode.

“English is just a sub-circle of language and so is math So, I can literally communicate logical to you to so that you believe faith is a circle, nonlinear. Logic is linear therefore it can be traveled along the circle of faith. Your faith is a value.  Meanings through place holding values can be represented by x. If x=1, which “1” is a finite value (1 represents the word “finite”), then if it were to be proven that x=0 then everything would have an infinite value. You need to loosen your grasp loose on your own human's potential concept of what an exact value really is and what infinity really is. If you think of everything as a circle, then you can substitute the meaning of infinity into logic in English by efficient communication. I tell you now that the equation of faith is 1=0. But think of the "=" as the "?" and then simplify that once more to the dot of the question mark. because a question is English for infinity. An answer is simply another question. Therefore logic within English is solved and answers are concluded by thinking in circles, which is why the faith equation is “1=0” because 1 doesn’t equal zero to you. It didn't make sense to me either until I traveled around the circle of logic.  I know I reached the answer because I grasped the concept of infinity. Which is faith and faith is the translation of human evolving logic. It is a math.”

This brings me to a huge point in my manic episode. When I felt that I had discovered that 1=0, that’s when my universe was shattered and I started to do all the crazy things. That’s when I knew something was out of the ordinary with this feeling I had been having for the past few days. That’s when I realized something was VERY different. I didn’t know it. But I was a full blown maniac. I had lost it. But, at the time. I thought I had won it! I thought that 1 did equal 0 and I thought that I had crossed over to the spiritual realm. That’s what led to me believing that I would soon have special powers for example, I tried to walk by moonlight 3 miles on the side of west ox road and turn into a dog by manipulating my shadow with my thoughts.

This is only a summary of the 25 page hand written 1=0 that I have in my journals. Remember, I had written 25 pages of hand written material in about 6-8 hours strait thinking that I had just proved 1=0 which I thought meant I had proved that I was infact dreaming still. At that point I said to myself, Scott, everything is making you feel good why are you still afraid? And I said, I don’t know. And then I said Scott, you don’t have to be afraid anymore.

This is what a manic episode feels like. Everyone thinks manic episodes are scary or dreadful. They are a blast. It’s like waking up one day and saying, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want to do today for 30 days. What people need to understand is just one word.

Inhibition, an inhibition is a feeling of fear or embarrassment that stops one from behaving naturally. Inhibition can also be defined as the process of stopping or retarding a chemical reaction.

When I said to myself, don’t be afraid anymore? I then realized that this was going to take time to lose my fears and by fears. I mean all fears. I was trying so hard to lose my fears that I wanted to bend gravity by flying. This is called releasing your inhibitions. Your body releases it’s inhibitions and you feel immense euphoria. Euphoria in my manic episode was something that I chased. I would solve things. I could make any 2 things an equation in my head and try to solve for them. I would come up with a reason for everything.

Only Bipolar people ever think that they are actually Jesus. It is actually common. But, I got to actually feel like Jesus. Wow! That felt amazing, let me tell you… I named my second album of Safe Bet, “The Second Coming” because I thought I was the second coming of Jesus. The reason why I believed that I was Jesus Christ was because one day on my Safe Bet Myspace it started to glow and shine and when I looked at it for some reason I thought that “The Preacher” (my nickname in the band) meant something religious. I thought I was then having a religious experience. So I then thought I was Jesus when I felt that I had successfully walked on water for 2 seconds. I figured I would have to learn. But, I never told anyone that I thought I was Jesus. It wasn’t until my friend Tommy Cook at the time said to me that he believed that I was Jesus Christ and that he was Saint Thomas. And the weird part is. He actually believed it. And so did about 6 people. Why? For about 2 weeks all of my friends had been puzzles by me making predictions. I would basically tell the future in weird ways. I’ve done things like guessing the first song on my ipod shuffle infront of Tommy Cook, the song was 1976 by RJD2. Ill never forget that. One day, I told my friend Ziad the instance I saw him, hey dude you’ve been bored for about 2 weeks and just picked up an old hobby. His response? “Yeah dude, Ive been bored so I picked up guitar again” Coincidence? That same day I was at my friends house Taylor Creighton and he was playing guitar and I said, you’ve been bored all week so you picked up guitar. And he was like yeah how did you know? I said a similar thing to Taylor Thomas the day before. I said, Taylor you’ve been so bored recently and so agitated and it stops you from playing guitar. I was right. This is one of the many bizarre things Taylor Thomas and I had happen during my manic episode. My other friend Martin Lee had witnessed what I had said to Ziad and had already been puzzled by me. There was a good deal of confusion and I had started it. I asked Ziad later what he thought about the incident, he said “It was pretty interesting. It didn’t really freak me out but it was fascinating. It was like, how did he just know that?”

One of my best friends, Tommy Cook, and I had a memorable day exactly 7 into my manic episode. He was the first friend I had seen in 7 days and I had just had 7 days of mania and was at the point I thought I was going to turn into a werewolf that night. I had all of my writings in a bag that ironically says Music=Life in it and a yellow notebook with a spiral drawn on it.

Tommy was the first one to see my writings. He saw this and many other things including my time travel tools. That day, I was wearing my 2 bracelets, non-working watch, and at that point I had a new off colored rainbow hat. It had special meaning to me because at one point I had connected my hat to a song called Sherbert Head by Boards of Canada. So, I thought it was special. I took him to subway bought him anything he wanted because I had just announced that we were not only going to win the lottery but that I could melt plastic with my eyes. I held my drivers license to the ceiling light and tried to focus my eyes so that a laser would form which I could then melt tiny holes. I tried and failed, but of course I thought I had succeeded.

Part 3: The Yellow Book

This is the first page of my yellow book, this displays how my thoughts were working at the time.

                   What made me think this…I wrote this because I wanted to find the answer to a question that I had. I am thrilled to find that after writing the question as the title. I had solved a problem. Or should I saw “I had solved the problem” This is more accurate because I had answered the question. And then I had to stop and figure this next thing out…on a separate sheet of paper. Im back haha, I realized that....stopping is relief. Stop making yourself so sad. We are being so mean to ourselves that we make TV shows that set up Online Predators. Its Sad. Sadness is the sight before happiness. If you start to become sad. You feel sad mentally and physicall’y Revelaing what makes you sad is the circles of life I just NOW realized. Dictate your mindset to the right pace by seeing the “good” of everything. Setting your mind set to bipolar mode, but feeling unipolar is the goal hear. Because physical actions are the reactions of thinking happy thoughts. If your sad… then you can logically think happy. Therefore feel happy. Think of your happiest times and you’ll control your fate. Im sure you can think of a good one. Go do that again! Why not? I didn’t know what my first thought was but now I do. I wanted to never be suicidal ever. And I just logically proved why not to. I can get this to just a few words. Don’t kill yourself. Life is the evolution. Don’t end evolution. I’m writing a book to myself. No one else will read this. Imagine a time. I am having visions. I can create the future. I was born with creativity. I will see the future. I already know the future? I think in 3 Dimensions. At some point I need to type a double circle book. I understand the meaning of color.

This next part is an excerpt on my early manic writings of my argument that 1=0, my main theory at the time of being manic. This was my foundation argument for existence. I wanted to prove that 1=0 to prove that the concept of infinity cannot be mathematically grasped. This was taken from my hand written paper I called the Human Manifesto.

“.” is a circle. “O” is a circle. A filled in O is a dot. A dot is an open circle because you can believe that there could be an opening within a point that the human eye cannot see. Understanding that a full circle could actually be open is the shape of faith. Mathematically, faith is expressed as 1=0. Your religion is where you set your limit on faith. Christianity is limited faith. It equals “one”; unlimited faith is when you set your faith to zero. Atheism is “zero”. It is unlimited. If a person’s faith is set at one then they are given a value of one. If you see how 1=0 in circles then every number other than “zero” is a subcategory, a limit. That makes Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all are subcategories of Atheism. Being atheist is to believe that 1=0 because they have faith in the God of atheism, “non-absolute zero.” This is circular theory applied to faith, but, there are circles inside of everything. A person asks questions like “why?” because they want a “one solution”. To Christians, Christianity = 1. That is their answer. Atheists are the ones who always asking a question. The differences between the physical and mental levels are the war going on in every human’s mind. We try to relate the 2. It is how we see things. Separate from other animals, humans are capable of waging war and signing peace treaties. So, the question of the physical level is the “What?” and the mental level question is “But what if?” It is a circle. A human’s mentality is a growing circle. Nirvana is when a human grows their circle enough to attain peace while alive. This is mental-aging. Aging of the human mind is growth within humanity. This growth leads to maturity and your mental-age is measurement of your own maturity. Being ignorant is being unaware of the “zero” in maturity. This is being “immaturely ignorant.” Not wanting to be ignorant is having faith in 1=0. This is the mathematical representation of Faith. To have faith is the result of mental-aging.