My Background

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 3^RD 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!!!