I’ve just finished watching two hours of video on youTube.com about bipolar disorder. To be honest, I watched the first hour-long episode yesterday and the second today. The star was the famous British comedian Stephen Fry who has bipolar. (Here’s the link to the beginning portion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXkmb5s8Igc) Those of you who’ve followed this blog for some time know what an achievement it is for me to sit and watch a television show, even if it is on the computer. You can search the archives for “I can’t watch TV” to read about my troubles in that arena.

The show aired five years ago, but I believe many of its ideas still ring true for today. It was autobiographical in many respects, and Fry talked about his own troubled past, which included being expelled from school, incarceration, and suicide attempts. He was finally diagnosed bipolar at the age of 37. I was 38 when I was diagnosed.

In the two episodes, Fry interviewed many people with bipolar and their families, experts in the field, psychiatrists, and therapists. Fry also points out that he has never taken medication for the disease. He meets other people who do take medication, some who have and have stopped, and others who take it at times and go off it at other times, and some like himself haven’t taken it at all. He and the other people not taking medication readily admitted to terrible depressions and exhilarating manias. It was frightening for me to watch that part actually.

It’s difficult to conceive of the seduction of the manias when the black depressions always follow. The reasoning is that it might be different this time, and it never ever is. In the middle of the mania, logical thought flies out the window. As one of the therapists interviewed said, there are no troubles in the whole world to the manic bipolar person.

I’ve been stable for a number of years now and have had no serious delusions for some time. The reason is plain and simple. My medications work. They do not numb me. They do not take away my personality. They do not disarm me.

On the contrary, they enliven me. I feel like I can accomplish daily tasks. When I’m depressed, I can’t even manage to brush my own teeth. When I’m manic, there’s no end to the glory that I can dream up for myself. Medication tempers those extremes and gives me a framework to live inside. It’s a comfortable range of emotions. I do not feel the black despair, and I’m spared the teetering highs.

I do not for the life of me understand the reluctance many bipolar people have to medication. I cannot comprehend the delusion that so many harbor about the drugs taking away one’s personality when there is so much experience to the contrary. The medication available in 2011 is so far advanced from what it was just a decade ago. It is light-years ahead of what was available 30 to 50 years ago.

I live with bipolar. I take medication. I’m not numb to life. No, I’m living it.