So many times.

Picking which episode was bottom is tough.

With my depression, for example, each episode is the saddest day of my life.

“how can each one be sadder than the previous?”

Hell if I know, they just are.

With anxiety though, picking bottom is easy.

Last summer I was driving with my mom going 3 states away for a family gathering. About half way there something hit me, like all of a sudden I just became real panicked. I’d never had a panic attack before, but I knew I wasn’t driving any further that day. We turned around and called my wife who was at home. She made an appointment for that afternoon with my primary care doctor.

They had been treating me for mental health issues for decades. That day they asked me a couple questions and changed my diagnosis to Bipolar type two. Google it. There are some similarities with anxiety for sure. I didn’t know what it was really other than what they told me real quick. It wouldn’t have mattered, I was desperate, I would have tried anything. Anyways, they put me on a type two medication.

After a few weeks of adjusting to the medication, I was sitting down working, again I write code for a living, and all of a sudden I lost all knowledge of how to write code. I was staring at the code I had just written a few minutes earlier. I had no idea what it meant. I ran out to my wife in the other room, I work from home.

“Hon, I don’t know what just happened, but I can’t remember how to write code.”

I didn’t forget anything about my life, my family, my house. I remembered everything except what I do for a living.

You think you know panic? Meet my panic.

I spent the next two months out of work on disability because I couldn’t remember what I did for a living.

Horrible can’t even begin to describe it.

I lived in a dark basement on a couch for the next two months straight. I maybe was upstairs for a total of a week of that time.

The anxiety was insane. I would rock back and forth, pace back and forth, thrash my body back and forth. I tried everything to get the devil out of my mind. Nothing destructive, no self harm or tearing up the house. But everything else.

Sobbing almost every day. Thinking my world was ending around me.

Now this is where my anxiety goes nuts, keep up, here we go.

“I’m going to lose my job.” I’d think. “If I lose my job, there’s zero doubt in my mind that I’m going to lose my house. I’ve already lost my house, it only makes sense that I’m going to lose my car next, followed by all of my possessions. Once I’ve lost everything then my wife is going to leave me. She’ll definitely take the kids. I’ll be all alone, then I’ll be homeless, no doubt. At that point I’m probably going to become an addict. Then I’ll die out on the streets. Alone. That’s how my story’s going to end”

Literally. Those were my thoughts for 2 months straight. Looping, over and over and over. From the second I woke up until the second I fell asleep. I hated being awake. I’d try to sleep in late, sleep as much as I could during the day so that I could finally fall asleep at night.

You can image how that worked. I couldn’t sleep for shit at night. I’d sleep for a couple hours then up at 3 am. Pacing, crying, screaming, thrashing. In the dark basement. Alone. As my wife slept upstairs.

Two, maybe three hours of sleep, daily for two months. Horrible doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Got so bad my wife took me to the ER to try to get me some help. They basically gave me a script and sent me on my way.

The county mental health crisis team was even called to the house at one point. They did literally nothing and then left.

It’s so sad how there are so few resources out there for people like me.

Even thinking back on it now, where I’m in a much better place, is wild. I can’t believe the suffering I endured. On a couch. In a dark cool basement. Alone.

I say alone because that’s how it felt. I had a great support team the entire time. My wife was by my side every second of the day.

She was my North Star, still is.

Thankfully my oldest child was away at college and my youngest was living with a friend so they didn’t have to see most of it.

“Did you ever lose hope?”

That was honestly the scariest part for me. I was so close to losing the hope of ever getting better. I can only imagine a place where all hope is gone. It would be a very dark place. I’m glad I didn’t get there, not sure what would have happened.

Get a therapist. Talk to them. Please. There is always hope, I’m proof of it. I lived through hell and made it out.

As for what actually happened, my new therapist thinks I had a bipolar manic episode triggered by the medication my PCP put me on. Go figure.

If I had one piece of advice born from this disaster, it would be to speak with a psychiatrist and their therapist about mental health issues.

My new team made one simple tweak my PCP never tried and I’m living in a much better world now. I still have anxiety and depression here and there but they are far better than they were.

There’s always hope. Say it out loud.