Sleep.

I need it.

Someone suffering from Bipolar disorder will either swing into their Manic or Depressive poles due to triggers despite their taking medications and therapy. When a person enters a manic episode they will require very little to no sleep. As far as I understand it, no one is certain if disrupted sleeping patterns can cause a manic episode or if it is the manic episode causing the sleep disruption. My theory is that it is both.

It's 1:35 in the morning and I am currently going into day three with only 73 combined minutes of sleep. Luckily I am broke and therefore cannot go on my usual spending spree, or alcohol fueled rampages. But I am getting shit-hot good at the guitar...

A pretty acurate snippet.

This is from TherapyDoc in Chicago who's probably the most 'real' mental-health professional I have come across in some time. She seems cool, so read her blog at http://everyoneneedstherapy.blogspot.com

"But people who suffer from BPD have a helluva time trying to reign in their impulsivity, and the folks who try to love them, who want to help them, get worn out by the drama. The truth is, most people with this disorder are smart, and they can really be very funny.
Traditionally with people who have Borderline Personality Disorder, once they're flying, meaning angry, there's no stopping them. The anger is a manifestation of pain. If you can't see that, then there's no helping your spouse, your child, your friend, your mother, whoever it is who is unable to regulate emotion. When the plate needs shattering, it will shatter. When they need love, they'll find someone to sleep with. When a car needs to be keyed, it will be keyed.

When it's all over, it's 'What's for Dinner?' As if nothing happened." -THERAPYDOC

Anger is definitely the fallback outlet for me. Doors, walls, newspaper boxes, parking meters, the hood of my car, several phones hurled into walls or sidewalks, a package of Huggies diapers.... I used to think that as long as I was destroying something of my own what was the big problem? I'm venting, leave me be. But it is something larger. The anger, it consumes you. It's as if you momentarily drift off to some other place while your body is taken over by a caveman that knows only one thing, "Hulk SMASH!" And you feel so foolish afterwards, when people you know are staring in disbelief.

This is also usually how my frequent fist-fights have occurred. The anger comes out of nowhere. I think a normal person experiences anger in a slowly rising wave, with plenty of time to think and avoid the situation. But I have never been lucky enough to feel that way. With me it's simply an arbitrary level. One moment I am in the slightly annoyed range, and the next I am swinging fists, kicking things, trying to leave this pure, white-hot rage into whatever/whomever I am trying to break at the moment.

For this, I have my mother to thank. Nothing says 'love' like coffee cups and fists on a Saturday morning.

Birthday Chaos

My 34th birthday was a night to remember. As in, "Do Not Repeat!" There have been plenty of other birthdays that went either spiraling into the toilet or have remained great nights, but this one really went to the extremes of my behavior.

My birthday started rather benign. My birthday happens during the summer, so I was not in school, but was working full time at my job. This birthday however was on a friday, which meant that even though I would need to spend the day at work, I would have the next day off, and thus heavy drinking and free reign to get crazy! I had a roommate at the time. A woman who seriously had the hots for me (this created many situations during the 1.5 years we shared a townhouse). However, she was a very round, and very short lady who was about 10 years older than me. I came home from work and she had made a dinner for me which was very nice. Then we played a drinking game that I made up on the spot to coincide with Jeopardy. If you got an answer correct, the other person had to take a shot of the Jim Beam I had. Yeah...

I love Jeopardy. I watch it all the time and anyone who has ever been present during these times often says something along the lines of, "Dude, you should totally try out for the show." I once had a coworker in the company break-room during our lunch who actually accused me of watching a rerun.

Anyways, that game ended real quick after my roommate had hit her 5th shot in 10 minutes. She literally refused to continue playing. Not that it mattered. I had been shooting with her, so we were both getting pretty buzzed. I flipped off the TV and we headed to the bar.

It was made clear that it was my birthday to everyone there. As you can guess, the liquor came from everywhere. People were buying me beers, and lots of tequila (Patron Silver-yum!). Next thing you know, I am drunk off my ass, interupting people's conversations, and basically becoming an ass. It wasn't my fault, there were no hot girls present! Suddenly, through my drunken haze I realize that I am being hauled up to the stage to sing Bob Seger's "Night Moves", while my roommate and the serving girl are handing me what they say is more Patron. I down it and instantly my throat is on fire. They are laughing at me and I can distinctly hear, "It's Bacardi 151, fucker!" Cue the band playing and me desperately trying to keep from puking, and you get the worst rendition of "Night Moves" ever.

I couldn't even finish the song, mainly because I don't think I was even singing it anymore, but also because suddenly a HOT chick walked into the bar. I literally hopped off the stage mid-song and grabbed this girl who strangely was into me as well without either of us ever meeting before. She was a hot Mexican girl and it was just at that time that the bar was shutting down. My roommate and her friend are trying to get me to leave, and I am holding this hot girl for everything I am worth in resistance. I tell them, "She's coming home with me." She agrees.

They try desperately to get me to not bring her home. They tell her to leave, and she says she can drive. So of course I immediately tell the roommate, "I'm leaving with her. She's going to drive me home." Of course the fact that I literally live next door to the bar and can walk to my door faster than we can drive doesn't matter to me. I'm on a mission.

We head out to her truck, a big Ford 250, and I hop in. We drive out of the parking lot and turn right into my own parking lot. Of course, she's hammered as well and when it comes time for her to park, she tries to pull the truck into a tight spot and has to back up a little to straighten the truck. Next thing I know, we're going 10mph and slamming into 'something' behind us so hard that my head hits the headrest. She quickly parks the truck, and by the time I am opening my door I have forgotten that she hit something. We head into the house where my roommate and her friend have been waiting. Saying nothing, I grab two beers and my random hookup and I head upstairs.

It doesn't take us long to be fully naked and going at it on the bed. I'm beginning to think that something isn't quite right with the situation, but can't be sure. I start thinking that we sure seem to be moving a lot. I really started to feel the bed moving about the room with our activity...until I realized that that was just a serious case of the spins coming on. Who gets the spins while humping? Apparently this guy does.

So here I am, humping away while she's under me asking me to tell her I love her (seriously), and next thing you know, I am puking my guts out on my carpet next to my bed while not missing a beat. I mean, I am going at her like a champ, and she is still trying to get me to tell her I love her, all the while I am throwing up so much that you'd think I still had the food from the day before in my stomach! And then it happens. The puking finally takes control of my body as I start to heave. She starts screaming as vomit hits her chest and arm. She pushes me away, which only helped me in that I was trying to get off her anyway! I head out onto my balcony, stark-assed naked, and furiously vomit off the balcony.

She's in my room, telling me to finish so I can get back in bed, and all I am thinking is that this girl is robbing me. She is taking my shit and is going to steal my things while stabbing me because I am too busy throwing up to do anything about it. An idea comes to me and I am moving through the room to the hall. I head down the stairs calling for my roommate. Of course, I think the fact I was dry-heaving probably made her and her friend come see what was happening. I'm naked, contorting with heaving, all the while yelling for her to get that thieving whore out of my house before she steals all of my shit!

The rest of the night is a blackout from that point on. I am told that my roommate had to tell the girl to get dressed and get out while I was busy vomiting off the lower balcony. Apparently the girl wanted to say goodbye to me, which my roommate unceremoniously informed her was not happening. While she was getting the girl out of the house, I apparently was ready to sleep. I guess in my drunken state I was still able to think clear enough to know that my room and bed were not a place for sleeping that night, because I am told I curled up, still naked, across my roommate's pillows. All attempts to get me to leave her room were met with me speaking in gibberish. Needless to say, the hangover was phenomenal the next afternoon.

Oh, and the hot chick that backed into my neighbor's car? The one that wanted me to tell her I loved her right before I started sharing my poor decisions with her? She came into the bar about three weeks later, and my roommate pointed her out to me. I had ZERO memory of her, only that a 'her' had been there that night. Yeah...she stands 5'11 and weighs a good 200lbs. They call her 'The Amazon'. I hate drunk me sometimes.

Happy frikkin 34th.

Everyone clap for the moron

I figured I would start with an event that happened about 5 years back. Just so its clear I am not proud of the vast majority of my actions, I thought I would start with an event that had a bad ending to show that often my antics lead to embarrassing results.

The (first) time I got “the clap”.

I went out drinking and, as is my usual routine, got completely hammered drunk. First, you need to understand that when I am hammered, it is not like the common stereotypical drunkard who shuffles about, slurring his words until he finds a comfortable-slightly comfortable-uncomfortable-oh hell a cold, wet slab of concrete has been known to provide a napping area for a drunk to fall down and sleep. No, when I am hammered it is similar to unlocking the door and letting the crazy relative out to endanger the public for a few hours until someone hits him with a tranquilizer gun and drags him back into his basement hideaway. It is not a jest that my friends enjoy, and yet fear, my getting drunk. It is guaranteed that something interesting will occur that night.

I went to the only happening place on a Tuesday in Chico, and as I got drunk, I began to flirt with a short dark-haired girl who was clearly ahead of me in the drinking race. She was one of those encounters where the girl is so drunk she does not actually speak. She just dances, drinks, and makes out to the point that you realize you do not actually need to speak because she does not care who you are, only that she will be getting some that night. Her friends realize it too, and while the two of you have convinced yourselves that you will be F-ing each other’s brains out at the end of the night, they have made other plans. Suddenly, it was closing time, and they whisked her away without even so much as a salutary goodbye.

So, here I am at my routine post-drinking diner on a Tuesday night. I am so drunk that I am at my best/worst: boisterous; swaggering; and cocky. I am horny as hell from the make-out session in the bar with the drunk chick that went nowhere, and I am looking for something to erase what feels like impending doom (that is the feeling I get every time a night is nearing its end). I’m bouncing from table to table, flirting with the female customers (single or not), and the waitresses, including the one that I hooked up with regularly who is still kinky and full of her own issues (more on her another time). The potential for a fight was growing as quite a few of the girls had guys sitting with them who were none too happy about my apparent lack of caring. My f-buddy waitress was quite busy redirecting me, or dissolving things before they got out of hand!

Suddenly, I had to piss. I mean, one of those, “If I don’t piss RIGHT NOW I will piss my own pants” urgent moments. This is where the night suddenly went into the familiar “how the hell did I get myself into this situation” moments. I am about fifty feet from the restroom. An UNOCCUPIED restroom! Instead, I confidently stride out into the front grass area of the diner and start pissing near a tree while standing between the parking lot and the street! I had to walk nearly fifty yards to do this! I am thinking to myself while I am taking what was surely turning into one of the most relieving pisses in my life that I probably could have used the restroom inside. Its then that I become aware that some guy is standing only twenty feet from me, glaring. For some reason I realize he is not glaring at me because I am pissing in the diner’s front grass, but for some other reason.

That is when the girl pissing behind the tree (obviously drunk since she was only ‘behind’ the tree if you were standing on the diner side…otherwise she was more exposed to the street than I was!) begins laughing and finishes and walks near me towards what I assumed (correctly) was her boyfriend. She was hot! Of course, my understanding of hot changes as the level of alcohol rises in my system, but I still remember her being a dirty 8 (which means she was probably about a 4…). She’s suddenly looking right at me as I am standing there with my business out, I’d finished pissing and apparently felt it was entirely appropriate to remain au natural, and says, “do you want to party with us?”

Party, did you just say ‘Party’? In my head I am thinking, this is normal and not crazy at all. Smiling and looking right at her I say with a tone that sounds like she just won the lottery, “Of course I do.” Somehow we manage to introduce ourselves (for the life of me I cannot remember their names). She’s got dirty blond hair that’s clearly given up on remaining in the style she’d put it in earlier, a furry type of jacket that I remember reminded me of an old dirty dog’s hair. She is very thin, more on that later, and just looks like the kind of girl that I needed at that moment. He has a shaved head, with a goatee, and completely looks like a meth-head skinhead. Of course, the majority of my friends looked like that so I thought nothing of it (at the time my head was also shaved but I never viewed myself as fitting that profile). Somehow, we have managed to make it into a cab headed for my place.

Now, at this time I was a cab driver myself, furthermore, I was an owner of my own car, and I knew the other owners in town. Yes, this means that I was in a cab with a couple, all of us quite vocal about what was going to transpire at my place, being driven by a guy named Dave who was actually quite familiar with my antics. I would be sure to hear about this later (and I did).

We get to my place and instantly we are drinking beer and whiskey, and they are asking me if I want to party. This makes me slightly annoyed. Uh...yeah. We would not be here unless I did. Right? Of course, this is the night that I learn that when someone asks you if you want to party at 3am odds are they are not inviting you to Chuck E. Cheese’s. I politely decline when they produce crystal meth and a pipe. With no pause they begin to smoke the meth while I blithely sit there watching. They finish, and within minutes, Skinhead Tweaker and I are undressing his girlfriend while she is busying herself with ‘us’.

Things go from 0-150mph in the space of a minute and we are in my bedroom. Instantly my mind yells out, CONDOM, and I reach over and grab a handful from my bedside table. I toss one to Skinhead Tweaker and tell him, “Use a condom man.” He does. That is me, always looking out for others. Of course, I do not use any condoms that night (because I am an idiot). We get to business and hours later, I am done. Spent and ready to crash. The sun has long since come up and I am ready to have these people leave my home. After getting them to leave, which involved calling Dave back to get these tweakers out of my place so I can go to sleep; I hit the sack and pass out for nearly the full day.

Less than a week later, I wake up from sleeping, and feel like something is going on in my boxers. I go into the bathroom, feeling like I am already pissing (strange right?), and when I go to piss I realize that I have a mess in my boxers, and I can clearly see where it’s coming from. A trip to the health clinic that morning confirms I have gonorrhea, and I get a shot in my ass-cheek from a nurse who looks rather disappointed in me for the fact that I had condoms and did not use them. Worst part (there is something worse?) is that they tell me I need to let my partners know so they can be tested. One common characteristic of my partners is that they usually are not people I can contact after the fact. Yeah, nothing really tops the look on that health clinic worker’s face…almost.

Moral of this story? It is not enough to realize that you get crazy and take steps for precaution. You must also follow through with those steps. People with no impulse control (myself at times) will likely NEVER follow through...therefore it is better to just realize you have problems and avoid situations that require you to control your impulses. Anything else will likely result in embarrassment.