delivered cookies and chocolate milk, along with a couple of books. Eve didn’t have much time to read them, but she truly indulged when she did. She’d read in a big puffy red chair in the lobby and swing her legs over the armrest. “Tat was my chair,” she said. “Everyone knew not to sit there, because that was my chair.” “I don’t want to get [too] religious and


spiritual, but the books really helped me see that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Eve said. “[At Timberline], there weren’t too many role models, so those books gave me that [confidence] that I would be alright. I realized I would look back on this in a couple of years and see that I survived a mental hospital and that I’m okay.” Te friendships she made during therapy


sessions and meals helped Eve through her time at the institution, but Timberline doesn’t permit friendship once patients are released. “When you’re in therapy, you talk about things that you don’t want people out- side of that room knowing,” Eve said. “Tey are scared that if we hang out with each other, and we start to not like each other, we’ll tell the world that person’s secrets.” To avoid the strict rules that prevented


friendships, Eve and her friends found cre- ative ways to exchange contact information. Te girls put phone numbers in their bras be- cause none of the nurses would check there. Friendships were helpful towards recovery and stabilization, but the relationships oc- casionally became awkward. “It was really hard because you want to be supportive of other people but you don’t want to give


them advice and tell them how to fix their problems,” Eve said. “Obviously if you’re in there, you have problems of your own. You can’t really give advice when you’re in that kind of position.” Sometimes friends weren’t doing as well


as they appeared to be. One of Eve’s friends from therapy seemed to have made amaz- ing progress and was released. The next day, though, Eve and others looked out the window to see four police officers bringing her in with handcuffs. Seing such reversal made Eve realize something about her own recovery. “She seemed to be doing so great,” Eve


said. “Tat’s when it hit me that this doesn’t look easy, but this is even harder than I think it is. It takes a lot of effort to deal with.”


she lived at home and came back to Tim- berline as an out-patient with group sessions during the day. As Eve graduated from daytime therapy,


A


she’d learned how to better cope with being bipolar. Tough her medications had been stabilized, they weren’t permanently set. “I changed medication a lot,” she said. “It was really hard to find the right cocktail because they have a lot of side effects, like dizziness.” Because of some of the side effects of Eve’s


medications, she has what’s called a 504 plan, which explains her situation and the side effects of her medications to teachers. As Eve tells her teachers, “If you see me falling


fter spending nearly two weeks at Timberline, Eve was released. After leaving the residential phase,


asleep in class, it’s probably because I’m on a new medication, and I can’t stay awake.” Mania and depression occur less frequent-


ly for Eve now. She has had one depressive episode and two manic ones since she began taking lithium several months ago. But things began improving right after


she left Timberline. “I feel like at some point, I just woke up,” she said. “I was in this weird zombie-like state beforehand. My thoughts had been chopped up to just little fragments. I don’t know how to describe it other than that I just woke up, because that’s really what it felt like. I didn’t really realize it was happening until it [did]. I was alive and free.” Her parents and friends also say that it’s as if she has awoken from a deep sleep and they have the old Eve back. Before her diagnosis, Eve saw mental


illness as something that tore people apart. Now that she lives with bipolar, though, she recognizes some distinct benefits. Today, her mania is less severe, and Eve says she’s almost “addicted to it.” When she goes into what her family calls a “bubble of mania,” she now goes into overdrive – but in a good way. “I become one of those really driven people that gets everything done,” she said. Tough it would never have come at a


convenient time, Eve appreciates that she was diagnosed sooner rather than later. “I’m glad that I started showing symptoms before I was off at college, on my own, where I didn’t have parents to care for me,” she said. “I’m


glad that it happened when it did.” n *Names changed for confidentiality purposes


NEURON – the neuron’s synaptic vesicles – the white circles – release the neurotransmitter


NEUROTRANSMITTER – after its release, the neurotransmitter travels to the next neuron’s receptor site


the neuron


SYNAPSE – the gap between one neuron and the next receptor site


RECEPTOR SITE – from the receptor site, the neurotransmitter continues its journey through the neural pathway


DECEMBER 2011 • CARPE DIEM


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