Part One: The Tale of Lamotrigine and The Kitty Cat of Depression.

The first lockdown and the death of dear friend, not to mention the hours of working from home, was unconsciously bearing a heavy weight on my mental wellbeing. Sometimes the working day could run into 12 hours of staring at a screen with endless Webex meetings, flicking the switch of hyper-extroversion sending my body’s energy bill soaring; only to retreat 3 metres away to stare at another screen until bed. Trips to the supermarket became exciting. Masks donned, it was Earth’s survival video game threatening apocalypse if we misstepped; the stakes were high. Only, we misjudged the height and scale; we couldn’t hit pause and start over. Once the lives are lost, they are lost. Faces were half covered indefinitely. You relied on the eyes and inward turning eyebrows of others to fight for survival over the last packet of bog roll. The taste of freedom became the crack cocaine of social interactions; even if this meant keeping a 2metre distance. The reason why this context is important, it’s sets the stage for what I knew could be coming if I didn’t address that nagging sense of doom.

A relapse.

Paul’s death was the penultimate tipping point and yet, something felt familiar. This was the first time I recognised a pattern. The erratic moods, irritability, insomnia and dizziness were all coming back, predictably. I had joy in nothing, sex, alcohol, video games; no form of entertainment sent the rush of endorphins flooding my brain promising elation. I felt angry all the time, frustrated and out of control. I was exhausted constantly and couldn’t explain why; always on the verge of tears. I was running on fumes at the helm of auto pilot colliding with a deep, dark, black hole of depression. It was the familiarity though that tugged at my intuition. “Just do something!” it screamed. “Just do something, even if you just talk to someone, anyone! Just do something” it begged, knees bloody digging into the gravel of despair.

I had stopped taking Depakote without my Dr.’s advice. Whilst taking it, it flatlined my mentality in depression. I was stably sad. All the time. This sadness was a constant feeling of hopelessness. I tried it for three months. When the suicidal thoughts came, I stopped taking them. I went cold turkey, the worst decision I’ve made and definitely in my top five. Auditory and visual hallucination came with a vengeance. Teasing apart reality from fiction became impossible. Eventually the swings of my bipolar returned. Melancholy enveloped me. Sinking into its soft velvet fur in a padded cell of despair. Her tail tickling my nose, soothing purring and claws poised. I anticipated the violent swipes, cutting my skin; I couldn’t wait to feel pain.

I’ve never felt so alive!

To feel again felt human, even if meant switching from anger to euphoria in less the 4 seconds. I was comfortable in this instability. I loved the chaos and I never wanted to be stable again. All of this though, bore a massive cost to the one thing that kept me alive: my relationships. Dealing with an unpredictable turbulent Aaron, was exhausting for those that cared about me. I was demolishing the foundation upon which I stood. My temperament, pushed, pulled, twisted, wrought dry the beating hearts of my nearest and dearest. Coercing them to evaluate their conditions of love finding the quickest escape route to protect their own mental state.

I was in debt; this couldn’t continue.

A call to a new psychiatrist, he reevaluated my Bipolar diagnosis. Instead of the mind-numbing-depression-stabilisation of Sodium Valporate. He dispensed a letter headed private prescription for an anti-epileptic: Lamotrigine.

Huh?

For reasons unknown, Lamotrigine works incredibly well for Bipolar. It’s another form of mood stabiliser for those on the spectrum. “Brilliant”, I thought sarcastically. Another zombie drug. When I thought about it deeply, if it helps to regulate the electrical impulsivity for epileptics, I started to understand how it could help to regulate the impulsivity of Bipolar. I needed to try it. I had weekly psychotherapy sessions to control my mood while I waited 5 months for my GP to give me the drugs. I stated taking them the beginning of June. At first, I was attacked by a tsunami of drowsiness. Sleeping sometimes up to 20 hours. I would wake up feeling hungover; the purple kush kind, just without the relaxation. In my waking hours, my moods were stable. Not happy, but not sad. I felt joy, but short and sharp before heading back to my baseline. Others were noticing a mood reliable Aaron.

I suppose this it’s desired effect and it’s no worse than Valporate. Right?

I spoke with my psychiatrist again, asking if I needed an anti-depressant, in the hope I would plateau a little higher than I was. “Aaron”, he said in a very strong northern Irish accent. “Give it another four weeks. Introducing an anti-depressant now would be detrimental to your brain chemistry’. I inhaled deep. Held my breath at chest bursting capacity, and exhaled long and deep until my stomach was sucked inwards.

At the fifth week, I felt great. The birds in trees and the sounds of my music through my headphones gave me goosebumps. I shuddered as it run up my spine flowed over my bald scalp, prickling the hair on my arms before reaching my finger tips. I was electrically charged, but in control. My concentration returned, sitting at the front of the class. A new student showed up too: calmness. Elation and depression debated intellectually, different to their normal missile launching war of destruction. Everybody, including melancholy and excitement worked in harmony.

The cat of depression was no longer the headmaster. Lamotrigine was head of faculty and refused to concede.