My Background

Posted by on Oct 16, 2011 in Chris' Blog | 4 comments
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My father asked me to participate in an online blog, an ongoing discussion between him and me that we will post periodically on the internet.  In this blog, he has asked me to detail feelings, thoughts and experiences I have on my journey towards recovery, especially in regards to my treatment.   I am more than happy to participate in this discussion, and I can only hope that others who have struggled with bipolar, schizo-affective, or other mental disorders can experience hope and healing.

I am hopeful that our new doctor, one who specializes in difficult to treat cases, will be able to help me solve the riddle of my life- why I can’t seem to stay away from hospitals and psych wards for more than a few months at a time.   I was diagnosed manic depressive in 1998, my senior year in college, and from that date until only several months ago, I have been hospitalized over 20 times over the years for manic and depressive episodes, racking up huge medical bills for Medicare and taxpayers to handle.  This is not the life I want for myself.   For years I was in denial about my diagnosis, I thought it was all in my head, a spiritual battle that was going on between myself, God, and the devil.  It had nothing to do with any chemicals in my brain or body.

My religious proclivities get the better of me every time I had a manic or depressive episode- I frequently obsessed about Biblical issues, namely prophecy.  For reasons I am still trying to figure out, I became enthralled with one of those bible characters, namely a prophet named Elijah.   I believed Elijah was one of the two witnesses who would do all kinds of signs and wonders during the end times. I came to believe I would do great things and God had amazing experiences waiting for me, like healing the sick, bringing sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and even bringing back the dead.  It is sometimes difficult to determine how I came into these states of mind- sometimes it was because I stopped taking my medication, other times those mind states came into being despite taking my medication regularly.   But at any rate, no matter how wonderful I felt being Elijah, I always had a mess to clean up afterwards- after getting out of the hospital, and trying to pick up the pieces of my life.   As Elijah I was the miracle worker, bold, aggressive, in your face, sure of himself, singing out loud wherever he went.  This was my perception of myself during my “high” times.  But when I came out of these states, I always got mad at God, feeling he had mislead me to be someone I was not, feeling I had a syndrome I like to call AIS, or Altered Identity Syndrome.

It’s funny, the first time I believed I was God (another of my identities), I felt like I was the only person on the face of the earth who had thought such a thing about myself, but after all my hospitalizations, I’ve realized it is quite a bit more common than I ever would have imagined.   I’ve met several Lucifers, who actually believed they were good angels, and were completely distinct entities from Satan, who was truly the evil one.   I’ve met Jesuses. I’ve met Gods.   As a matter of fact the last time I was in the hospital I met an old woman who told me that she was Jesus, my wife, and also my daughter, and she told me she was going to bring a rocket ship that very evening that would pick me up and take me to the many Universes I had created (She kept calling me Dad, saying that I was God the Father).    And you know what?   I actually believed her for a while.  The thing I’ve learned about the mind, is that when there is a lot of stress on it, reality itself can be transformed, and things that you thought were wild, crazy, and impossible, seem like a very simple thing.

As a matter of fact, the whole time my dad was trying his best to help me get grounded in this life, the more I would fight to get him on a plane with me, the spiritual plane.   When my father wouldn’t play my spiritual game, in my mind I often thought him lost, destined to hell, and at worst, the Anti-Christ, and all I could do was pray for him.  I wanted to engage my dad in spiritual discussion, he wanted to engage me with physiological terms and notions that I didn’t really understand and didn’t care for.  For much of our lives my father and I have butted heads intellectually, and we still butt heads to this day, but I have a rising hope that this journey we are now on will be a much more positive one.   So while I am hopeful, I still have some concerns.

When you are a doctor and you are dealing with a patient who is currently experiencing physical pain, it is easy to determine whether a certain remedy is working.  But what about disorders of the mind?  Schizo-affective/Bipolar is really tricky in that it comes on very quickly, and a person might be fine for 3 or 4 months and then just snap.   How can the doctor possibly know that a physical remedy for my body and mind is helping or working at all?    I want to be able for him to help me, and I’m even open to the idea that food allergies, or toxins, or lack of certain nutrients might be partially responsible for my condition, but I do wonder about one thing. How will Dr Z. know I am being helped?  What test is there that can show that Bipolar Disorder has been healed?  There is none that I know of.   And how do I know that whatever I do differently will prevent me from going down this same road I have gone through so many times before.

It starts with feeling happy, and feeling God has a purpose for my life.  It grows into a desire to share God with others.   It grows further still into being even more bold with sharing God, like walking up to people I’ve never known before and engaging them in religious/spiritual conversation.   Add up the ante and now I’m skipping down the sidewalk singing praises for God, or walking down aisles in the grocery store, telling complete strangers that Jesus Loves them.  Now we’re starting to fire on all cylinders.  Next we are putting up the peace sign in the air, stopping traffic in the streets, declaring that the rapture is near, declaring that world peace is coming soon.  Now the officers come and rough me up a bit, and I end up in jail, where I start singing at the top of my lungs about the rapture and the end of the world, declaring myself to be Elijah, and I AM THE ONE WHO HAS BEEN SENT TO THIS EARTH TO PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE RETURN OF JESUS CHRIST.  JUST AS JOHN THE BAPTIST WAS SENT TO PREPARE THE WORLD FOR THE FIRST COMING OF JESUS CHRIST, NOW I, CHRISTOPHER DAVID MOYER, CHRIST BEARER, AND THE SON OF DAVID HAVE COME AS THE 3RD COMING OF ELIJAH, TO PREPARE ALL OF THE EARTH’S INHABITANTS. The next think you know I am seeing visions from within my jail cell. God is creating a light show where, incandescent bulbs I’ve never seen before start flickering and dancing.  I see rainbows.  I see visions of prophets outside my window.   CERTAINLY I AM ELIJAH, I THINK TO MYSELF.   HOW COULD I BE SEEING ALL THESE THINGS IF I AM NOT A PROPHET OF GOD?

And so it goes, and so it goes.    I’m tired of the same old story, pacing through my head over and over and over, the end of the world, the rapture, the tribulation, the return of Jesus Christ and the millennium.  Most people, even Christian church goers, don’t walk around with these ideas pulsating around in their brains.   Why does this happen to me?   Why am I so enthralled with these things?  I think it is because I don’t know where I am going in life, ever since I decided in college that Christ would most definitely return to the earth I never had a back up plan.   I have not been planning the typical life of an American male.  I have not sought a career, and I am now 36, and am beginning to feel my age.   Sometimes I think I could have a career within the church, but I can’t even stay consistent enough and level headed to reach even a low level of leadership within the church.  I have been so distracted by my visions and delusions and fantasy quests that my emotional maturity is much less than a 36 year old ought to have.   I make poor decisions, financial and emotional.

So, doctor, here I’ve laid out my emotional and spiritual struggles for all to see.   I know the labs are being done and we are going to see if we can’t get a handle on my emotional rollercoaster of a life.  Please help me get my life in order for more than 4 or 5 months at a time.   I would be very pleased if I could go the next 5 years without a single bipolar episode.   If I can go 5 years, I’m certain I could go 10, and if I could go 10, 20 certainly seems feasible.   What could I do with all that time, time not spent locked up in a pathetic facility waiting for a rocket ship to come and rescue me promised by some fruitcake who thinks she is the female version of Jesus?   I’m tired of the Altered Identity Syndrome.   I’m ready for a fresh start, and I don’t need any more interruptions.   If I had all my intellectual and emotional resources available for me in a profitable venture, I’m certain I could do quite well.   I have performed quite well in the past, on short ventures.   Now it’s time to perform well for a longer venture.  Say, THE REST OF MY LIFE!!!

4 Comments

  1. Hi Chris. Me and my mother have emailed your father (the anti-christ! lol j/k) a bit, awhile ago, because I have a similar condition. Wow, it is really hard for me even to read those paragraphs, because it can make me feel uneasy and remind me of things i dont want to remember.

    I guess the hardest struggle, is to force yourself to step away from organized religion. I dont know if you can do it, if you feel strong about it, but look you can say, “let me attempt to be an atheist” for a couple of weeks, or something to that affect.

    That is how I view the problem. I know everyone else around you including professionals will tell you it is a chemical imbalance or something like that. But I know what triggers problems, with me it is most religions, although no one believes it.

    For me, christianity and my native judaism was bad, but when I studied eastern Taoism, wow my mind virtually exploded and I lost all faculties of control.

    It can be such a downer to think that you are a chosen one, or have a destiny of sorts, and then be rudely awakened by drugs and problems. I similarly thought I was the Jade Emporer. People channel Elijah all the time and he is a common ‘ascended master’ to look up to. But in your case it is probably better if you ‘ice’ it and step away from the ‘delusions’

    Also America is a really bad country to be ‘insane’ in. They have just about the worst system of psychiatry anywhere, besides maybe Russia. Unfortunately when you have a problem, it can become impossible to move due to various circumstances, and you are in effect locked-in to the “free” country of america, and unable to leave it of your own free will!

    Well all the best. talk later

    • I have to thank you for this post. I have a history of biploar disorder in my family and for the past couple of years have know, although undiagnosed, that I myself am suffering from this disorder.I have been trying a natural approach to dealing with it and am happy with the results. The main reason I have not been diagnosed is because I am afraid of losing the mania! It is nice that someone else understands that! I love everything about it. The energy, the optimism, feeling like you can accomplish anything, invincibility almost! Moving a hundred miles an hour!Thank you again for sharing your story!

      • Yuomna, I agree with you that being in a manic episode can be one of the most intense and amazing experiences you can have. However, for me there was a cost. A huge cost. Maybe you never had the experience of having to pick up the pieces after an episode, but I sure did. For nearly 12 years, about 2 times a year, I have had episodes where I quit jobs, went on spending sprees, stopped cars in the middle of the road and proclaimed world peace, leapt backwards off 2nd story tiers believing I would be “raptured” by God, preached with fire to patients in the psyche hospital, faced police brutality in jails as I sang constantly while in my cell, and many other things that made everything in life “stop”. After wards, I’d have to get new jobs, work off fines, do community service, spend time in courts to work off charges, and many other things. Be ware of the intoxicating effects of mania. They seem appealing at first but they can leave you on your back with your hands and feet in the air. Blessings.

    • Hello Clayton. This is Christopher Moyer. You wrote on my blog on Jan 25, 2012. I’m sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I’ve been preoccupied with other things besides my dad’s web page. But now that I see people are actually responding to my blog, I guess I’ll have to check back here more often. I am very sympathetic to you in your struggles with organized religion. I too have had struggles with organized religion, or rather, my perception of it. My ideas of being a prophet were certainly inspired by the Bible, but the problem was I didn’t understand the Bible enough. I made connections in my brain that were not there in real life, and I fooled myself into believing I was someone when I was not. I would reject other’s perceptions of me, and cling to this idea that I had this amazing power that the world needed to see. Of course a lot of that was part of the bipolar complex that comes along with being manic. The spiritual part was just the context with which I acted out my manic fantasies. I have not had a manic episode in over a year now, and not once in that time have I thought I was a special prophet from God, yet I still believe in Christ and the Bible. I understand you rejected the religions to find peace, and maybe that has brought you to some level of stability. But for me atheism is not a path road to peace. For me it is a pathway to meaninglessness and despair. If life and the universe is a cosmic accident, and everything is randomness and chaos, with no overarching plan or design, then there is little I can take from life. When I see something so breathtaking that it moves me to tears, I’ll always have this little voice that says to me- that is not designed. It’s just a random act of nature, which, too, comes from nothing, and eventually will return to nothing. I can’t live, or think like that. For as long as I can remember, when I have thought of life without God, or at least a supreme intelligent creator guiding the universe, it has lead me to thoughts of despair, because nothing makes sense in this universe unless there is a purpose to it all.
      Of course I agree with you that the psychiatrist label of “chemical imbalance” is about the most unhelpful term that can be applied to a mental patient. For me I have always known that there was a great deal of spirituality that was a cause for my problems, and that the turbulence that existed in my mind was so much more than just the chemical makeup of my brain.
      However, I can’t deny that meds have helped me. I have been taking them regularly for the past year, and this has been the first time in about 12 years that I have taken meds consistently for that long without going off them, or proclaiming that I had been “cured” by Jesus, only to find myself back in the crazy ward within one or two weeks. Perhaps the meds are the things which have helped me the most. Maybe it’s just that I’ve lost interest in being God’s prophet, or maybe it has to do with the fact that I recently married, and now I have real life issues to deal with, which force me to stay consistent and focused, without going off the brink on some religious delusion. There are so many factors involved, that I’m not certain what I owe the “mental” health to, but I’m just glad that I have it, and I’m not planning on changing anything soon, especially the meds. I hope you get this response, and if you do, I hope you write me back. I’d love to hear about some more of your experience. Take care Clayton, and God bless you (even if you don’t believe in Him). -Christopher Moyer

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