For a certain number of people with bipolar disorder, there exists an often-overlooked complication that performs a vital role in perceiving their condition — anosognosia, a neurological abnormality that stems from damage to the brain, explicitly impairing a person’s capacity to accept their condition.

An ancient Greek word meaning to not know a disease, anosognosia is a symptom of severe mental illness that is the largest reason people living with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder flout medication and treatment. According to the Cleveland Clinic, anosognosia presents in 80% of dementia sufferers and 10-18% of one-sided stroke victims.

The specific knowledge that I gained was from edification along with living with bipolar-induced anosognosia that was attained with due diligence, enabling my discovery that the chief characteristics of bipolar disorder incorporate the four D’s that best describe what it’s like to live with bipolar, both to myself and the able-minded. The four D’s are defiance, distress, dysfunction and danger, the most salient D being defiance.

During my maturation there were a handful of improprieties, but despite memory impairments this indelible incident exemplifies my impetuous reality that is replete with self-defeat. This instance occurred at a high school basketball game before a crowd of my classmates and family.

After a referee called a foul on me, a paroxysm of anger erupted that fulminated via a polemic vituperation rife with invectives, reverberating throughout the mortified crowd. Concurrently, my brother compelled me to see a psychiatrist. I defiantly agreed, rationalizing it was merely my Irish temper, not a frenzy of anger. In retrospect, it was apparent that he contemptuously derived that my problem was a character flaw, an assumption that persists, and triggered the typical able-minded reaction of prejudicial family outcasting.

My visit to a psychiatrist led to seven years of overtime psychiatry teeming with laxity, culminating in the diagnosis of the outdated manic depression, currently known as bipolar disorder.

Subsequently, the distress over being unable to differentiate my disputatious disposition to bipolar exemplifies the need for competent psychotherapists to delineate insight, not prescriptions. My incredulous divisiveness and emotional impairments unleashed a torrent of tempestuous, disconnected thoughts and a palpable feeling of less than. I was influenced by social prejudice that reinforces the fallacy that bipolar is tantamount to melodramatic malingers. Consequently, I succumbed to the socially awkward inferiority complex which engulfed me, self-consciousness leading to self-imposed withdrawal from the world, compounding the distress after learning that rebuke was a mistake due to my social anxiety and deleterious repercussions caused by multifarious functional impairments.

According to the International Bipolar Foundation, people diagnosed with bipolar disorder are seven times more likely to develop substance abuse problems than the able-minded. My pain pill addiction started when employed as a corrections officer after I was injured in the line of duty. At first, the prescribed medication obviated the pain, leading me to inappropriately using them to get buzzed to alleviate the distress. However, the insidious nature of the prescriptions exacerbated my precarious comorbidities, leading to several hospitalizations — but I survived.

Following the damage and sorrow of multiple dysfunctions, I was demoralized and despondent, at an impasse. However, in the eleventh hour, the most impactful moment in my life — an enlightenment — was attained through introspection and “identifying” as bipolar. Four years ago, my reality changed when I changed my perspective and my foremost aspiration was to overcome all obstacles, supported by daily self-reflection and walking my sounding board, our dog Jayley.

I succeeded and promptly felt empowered, starting to sketch, and feeling the urge to write about my recovery. That is remarkable considering my surviving a surfeit of intermittent doses of powerful psychiatric medications, in effect a chemical lobotomy, leaving me unable to sign my name due to tardive dyskinesia.

I have survived the defiance of anosognosia, the dangers of drug abuse, the dysfunction of cardiovascular disease, the distress of ableism and the divisiveness of family outcasting for a purpose. I survived after enduring years of being forsaken by the able-minded. Satisfied, free from self-doubt, inspired by salvaging my personhood along with the rarity of my anosognosia’s aftermath has presented a clear pathway to being a functional member of society — my voice. I am a bipolar survivor. Mad power.

Bob Nagle is a 60-year resident of Northampton, bringing visibility to those living with bipolar and mental health stigmatization in our community.]]>