The summer of 2023 begins with pneumonia. I was driving to Florida and couldn’t stop coughing so I went into the Brockville General Hospital. They did a series of tests and they told me it was pneumonia and gave me a prescription. I said to the doctor that I was going to drive home to…

After my surgeries and subsequent manic phase, I slipped into a depression again. This one would last for 3 long years. Prolonged depression, clinically known as Persistent Depressive Disorder (PDD) or dysthymia, is a chronic, low-grade mood disorder lasting for at least two years (one year in children). It is characterized by a persistent sad,…

In the latter part of 2015, the stomach pain became unbearable. I went to my doctor and he suggested that I go to the hospital. Of course, I resisited. But after a week of excruciating pain, I relented. The prognosis was a bowel obstruction and immediate surgery. Despite my fear of hospitals and operations, I…

As I mentioned in a previous blog, my father was amazingly supportive during my manic and depressive episodes. He never judged and understood that it was not me, it was an altered reality based on a mental illness. He co-signed for a house giving me the opportunity to get back on my feet after ruining…

It’s been 68 days since I was detained. Between prison and the hospital, my mind has traveled to many different places. From despair to hope, from fear to calm, from manic to real, and from sadness to happiness. In the next 24 hours, a judge will hopefully accept my psychiatrists report and grant me the…

After being prescribed Paxil for my depression, I vaulted into my first manic episode. Anti depressants can induce mania through a process called affective switching where a patient’s mood shifts from depression to an abnormally elevated state. Mania is a state of abnormally elevated energy, emotion, or irritability lasting at least a week, characterized by…

When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize thst you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandering a few feet off the path, that you will find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again,…

After my first bipolar episode, I was able to maintain a balance with the help of family, friends, doctors and medication. Unfortunately during my manic period, I left a successful radio career and joined a professional sports team as VP of Sales and Marketing. This proved to be an unwise decision and I had to…

Its a Friday afternoon and all went well in the words of my lawyer. I watched the judge say that I was not criminally responsible for the 3 charges against me based on being in a manic phase. The words seemed to come out of his mouth in slow motion as I relished and truly…

A rush of emotions came over me tonight.  A flashback to everything that has happened in my life. I sit alone in the hospital cafeteria and look around at the people who suffer from some form of mental illness from generalized anxiety disorder to schizophrenia to bipolar disorder. And then I start to think about…