The Effects of my Environment on my Mood

You wouldn't believe the variety of moods I experience. Unless you've read my post on bipolar disorder, in which case you would. In either case, I'm going to elaborate a bit on what type of shit I go through.

Right now, I'm in a pretty good mood. I woke up relatively early, drank a bunch of coffee, and went to the gym. All of these activities seem to have had positive effects on my mood. In fact, the latter two are the most consistent mood elevators that I have in my metaphorical toolbox right now.

Recently, I've been waking up in a quite sour mood every day. The world feels cold and unfriendly in the morning, and my body feels like it's lined with lead and bricks and heavy shit like that. Even drinking a cup of coffee seems like it will take infinite effort, partially because of the act of filling up a cup and then taking sips, and partially because my depressive inertia will have to be broken when it inevitably brings me up to speed.

Fortunately, this morning was a bit better. I'm not entirely sure why, but I woke up before nine o'clock, and while I did go back to bed for a few hours, I didn't do so grumpily. But enough about today. Let's talk about why my mood cycles so much, and why the things that help do so.

The first thing that comes to mind, besides my natural mental state, is caffeine addiction. As I discussed in my post "Caffeine and Other Drugs", caffeine inhibits the function of adenosine, a neurotransmitter responsible for, among other things, limiting neural activity. My body may be reacting to this consistent inhibition by producing and releasing more adenosine to make up for the caffeine. Thus, before I've had my daily dose of coffee, my neural activity might be limited more than it would be without the influence of psychoactive drugs in my life.

Since I'm prone to rapid mood cycles anyway, I suspect that the caffeine withdrawal joins forces with natural depression and kicks my ass. The only solutions that I see to this problem are complete abstinence from caffeine, or a consistent regimen of several cups of coffee a day. Hmm, which shall I choose? I'll be right back, I need a refill on my coffee.

Yum, caffeine. Let's talk about the working out part. Aside from making me big and buff (hypothetically - not as much as I'd like, in practice) it seems to energize me and put me in a good mood. I wonder how exactly it does that?

Woah, I just learned some crazy shit. It turns out that aside from releasing endorphins (the body's natural painkillers), exercise releases anandamine, a neurotransmitter which hits the cannabinoid receptors in the brain and body. Yes, the same receptors that THC, the most active chemical in marijuana, hits. It undoubtedly has different effects on the brain than THC, but it is involved in mood and appetite control. So, in as few words as possible, it turns out that working out gets me a little bit stoned! No wonder it can be so addicting.

I don't use marijuana, for a variety of reasons (including the risk of getting kicked out of my house, and risk of extreme mood states, as discussed in my post "Bipolar"), but I have sure had some good times when I did use it. It's really interesting to me that exercise may reward the brain in the same way that THC does.

I'd really love to get properly addicted to exercise. It would be oh so nice to crave something healthy the way I crave cigarettes, coffee, and all of the drugs that I don't do anymore. I guess I'll just have to keep doing it as many times per week as I can bring myself to, and see what happens.

Well, that's all for now, folks. If you just learned as much as I did, and took as great an interest as I did, from my quick Wikipedia search, you oughtta come back tomorrow and see what I've got for you.

Bipolar

Q: What do you think of bipolar disorder?

A: It has its ups and downs.

Okay, it’s not really very funny… in fact, it’s not really even a joke. It’s just a question and a straightforward answer. But it’ll serve as well as anything else would as an introduction to this post.

I have bipolar disorder type 1. It can be great at times, and awful at others. At this particular moment, it’s pretty great; I’m on my tenth page of blog content in about six hours of on-and-off writing. That, I believe, is because I am currently in a hypomanic mood. Here are a few of the characteristics of hypomania:

-Mild euphoria
-Insomnia/less need for sleep
-High energy/hyperactivity
-Slightly grandiose thoughts
-Racing thoughts
-Increased or decreased sex drive

It has more characteristics than that, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately. Right now, I’m experiencing thoughts which come slightly more quickly than normal, grandiose thoughts, euphoria, and hyperactivity.

Now, bipolar disorder is called a “disorder” for a reason. But boy, it sure can increase productivity when it wants to. I feel great, and I’m getting shit done. The thing is, I often have a LOT of trouble getting shit done. I also often have trouble feeling great. For these reasons, I have deliberately induced this state of hypomania by drinking some coffee.

The trick, in the case of hypomania, is to make sure that I don’t slip into a full-blown manic episode, or crash into a depressive episode. I have a few ways of going about this:

-Make sure that I sleep at least six hours every night
-Make sure that I eat at least three small meals every day
-Take my medications
-Stop drinking coffee, or taking other stimulants

On most occasions, these “extreme mood control techniques”, as I like to call them, work pretty well. (Okay, I lied. I don’t like to call them that. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever called them that. So sue me.)

However, on the occasions that they do not work, I am entirely likely to slip into mania or depression. If you have no experience with these states of mind, I suggest you keep it that way. You probably do, however; most people, as far as I know, experience depression at some point in their lives. Mania is a bit more rare.

Here are a few of the characteristics of my past manic episodes:

-Extreme insomnia
-Distorted thoughts or delusions
-Hallucinations
-Extremely grandiose thoughts, including delusions of grandeur
-Extreme euphoria or dysphoria
-Irritability

Now, this is a pretty potent combination of symptoms. Think about it: I could have delusions, and believe that someone did something wrong. I could be irritable, and get mad at them about it. I could believe that I am some sort of authority figure, and that I have the ability or permission to punish people. I could actually hurt someone.

I have come surprisingly close to hurting someone in the past. I ended up getting put on 5150 (a 72 hour hold for observation) when my father called the police in the middle of the night because I wouldn’t stop screaming at him, and because I thought I needed to “protect my” (then 12 year old) brother. I stayed hospitalized for eight days, and came out with several prescriptions, and a lot of rules about what I could and could not do.

I’ll go into more detail about that episode at a later time, because I really was insane to a fascinating degree. The point is, mania is bad, m’kay?

Depression, on the other hand, is just as bad. It is characterized by:

-Dysphoria
-Bleak outlook on life
-Fatigue/ncreased need for sleep
-Suicidal thoughts
-Distorted thoughts
-Increased or decreased appetite

Like all of my lists, this one is incomplete; not everyone who is depressed experiences these symptoms, and many people with depression experience unlisted symptoms. This is merely what happens to me when I get depressed.

In this case, it’s pretty easy to see where the danger lies. I could easily commit suicide in a bad depression. I’ll leave it at that, and move on.


There are many different perspectives on bipolar disorder out there. For more information, and an extensive personal experience with the disease, I recommend the book “An Unquiet Mind” by Kay Jameson, Ph.D. It is an excellent read, and she is an extremely intelligent (and slightly crazy) woman.

My Addiction

So what’s the deal with drug addiction? That shit sucks, man.

I’m a drug addict, personally. It sure does create a lot of havoc in my life. Not only can I not use psychoactive substances responsibly, which is a problem in and of itself, but there’s this stigma attached to drug addiction that can really be a downer.

I think I’m going to explain the disease of addiction, and how it is manifested in my behavior. Maybe you’ll learn something! (Like, for example, how crazy I am.)

Addiction is a psychological disorder. It is multifaceted, but its primary components seem to be lack of self-control, shortsightedness, and thought distortions; all brought on by any substance which changes the way one feels.

So what does that mean in the real world? I’ll give you an example:

A couple of years ago, I stayed at a friend’s uncle’s house for a weekend. She was in charge of house-sitting, which we interpreted as “getting loaded for seventy-two hours straight”. We brought a bag of marijuana, a fifth of vodka, and a few hits of LSD with us.

Now, my memory of the weekend is a bit hazy, so I can’t give you a play-by-play of how the entire weekend went; but I do remember quite a bit of it, so I’ll piece together the rest.

On the way there, I and one of my four acquaintances (we’ll call him “B”) took one hit of acid each. When we got to the house, we all immediately took a walk to go smoke a bowl of weed. Everybody got to his or her desired level of fucked-up for the moment, and we went back to the house to watch the movie “Tommy”.

To kill a bit of the suspense, I’ll tell you right now that the acid was bunk. Neither of us tripped on it, and we ate about five hits together by the end of the night. So that night we just got stoned and drunk and watched weird movies.

The next day, we looked at our supplies (a few crumbs of weed and about a quarter of the bottle) and decided that we needed moar drugz. I believe that I was the one who enforced this decision, as none of the other people involved are nearly as drug-crazy as I am.

So we went into Berkeley, the nearest city in which we were likely to find drugs, and hung out on Telegraph Ave looking to score. We came back with a box of nitrous oxide cartridges, a “cracker”, and a balloon.

Well, by the early evening, we had gone through all of the nitrous, booze, and pot. Everyone else was having a good time, but I was desperate for more intoxicants. Here’s where the story gets grimy:

The man who owned the house had been married, and his wife had recently died of some sort of cancer. Because cancer is a particularly uncomfortable disease, she had quite a stash of medications in the bathroom. I did a bit of exploring, and came across a bottle of 5mg Valium (diazepam) pills.

I had never done Valium before, but I had heard good things about it. First, I did a bit of research online. Then, I crushed and snorted two of the pills. A short time later, I either snorted or ate four more pills, giving me a total of six 5mg pills ingested, or 30mgs diazepam in my system.

It turns out that when you mix benzodiazepines (the category of drugs in which diazepam falls) and alcohol, you get really fucked up. As I understand it, this is because they both cause the release of the neurotransmitter GABA into some things called GABA-A receptors somewhere in the brain. I got wasted.

The rest of the night consists in my mind of little bits and pieces of memory and a lot of filled-in stories from friends. Apparently, I convinced a girl that we had to acquire more booze, and we walked ~2 miles in search. I loudly asked her if every single establishment we passed would sell me beer, including such places as a hardware store. When we eventually came across a 7-11, I hatched a quick plot to get beer.

You see, I was 18 at the time, and the drinking age in California is 21. So I waltzed into the 7-11 with a five dollar bill in hand, grabbed two 40 oz bottles of beer, ambled over to the counter, and slapped the five down in front of the cashier. I was intent on walking out of the store with the beer, having paid the cashier, without getting carded. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought of what to do if any other variables came into play.

The cashier informed me in an Indian or Middle Eastern accent (not that his accent is relevant) that he was not allowed to sell alcohol after midnight. Despite my confidence in my plan to illegally buy beer, I was struck dumb. I skulked back into the beer aisle and put the bottles back, then walked out empty-handed.

The rest of the night involved me ranting and raving about some song that I enjoyed at the time (I believe it was by the Flowbots), and describing line-for-line what it meant to me to this poor girl I was with. The next day, I bought more nitrous and stole more Valium. I ran out of both after about a week of using daily.


This recall may seem at first like a typical college adventure, but let’s look at it a little more closely.

Here are a few signs that something is wrong with me.

1. I took three substances at once the first night.
2. While everyone else was relatively satisfied with the idea of a night of light drinking and smoking, I needed more (the nitrous).
3. After taking three substances the second night (nitrous, weed, and alcohol), I was unsatisfied; I needed more.
4. I did not hesitate to steal medication from my friend’s uncle’s dead wife, and snort it on his (the uncle’s) kitchen table.
5. In doing this, I was fully aware that it would horrify my friends.
6. After adding a fourth substance to my intoxication, I was still not satisfied.

The point is, when a psychoactive substance is introduced to my system, all I can think of is ways and means to get more. I’m broken; I cannot think properly. I have drunk myself into sickness more times than I can count, gone into hospitals and institutions a total of four times in two years as a direct result of my drug use, gone psychotic as a result of my drug use, been arrested as a result of my drug use, and given up my home and family in order to use drugs. Until I ran out of money when homeless and friendless, I would not stop. Only when it was impossible for me to get high again did I enter a rehabilitation facility.

There are many ways of feeling good. There are ways which do not involve drugs that feel just as good as your average high, if not better. I know that, and I have experienced positive feelings from many activities without getting intoxicated. But somehow, I always go back to drugs.

It is not logical. It is not reasonable. I’ve got a broken thinker, and I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life. It is only with an AMAZING support group, books, meetings, and a lot of psychological conditioning that I am clean now. And I’m not even convinced that I’ll be clean forever. Despite the inevitable arrests, hospitalizations, homelessness, and death that will come of drug use, I’m probably going to go back to using.

So if you know someone who has a drug problem, don’t talk down to him, ignore him, judge him, hate him. Just get him some help.

Spirituality

I am not a religious person in the most traditional sense. I do not believe in any supernatural being, much less an all-powerful god. I do, however, believe in what I like to call “the god concept”. Here’s how it goes:
Somewhere in human evolution, I would guess between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, we evolved a tendency to believe in supernatural beings. I believe that our intelligence and curiosity posed a number of different problems in our day-to-day lives.

It just isn’t practical for a caveman to sit around for an hour every morning wondering where the Sun comes from. He’s got more important things to be doing, like hunting and fucking hot cavewomen and not getting eaten by tigers. But if a person is intelligent and curious enough to wonder where the Sun comes from every morning, he’s going to do it for a while.

At roughly the same time as humanity evolved the intellect that it has today, I believe that it evolved an increased capability to project its own personality onto the world around it. This would be useful in a number of ways; for example, it would allow a person to predict how game would behave while hunting, because he could think (in some way – he probably wouldn’t think in English) “if I were a deer, and I saw a caveman running at me with a spear, I would run the opposite direction.” Once he thinks this, he can tell his buddy to go hide in a bush on the opposite side of the deer from where he is himself.

Well, at some point, I believe that these two phenomena (the excessive curiosity and the persona-projecting ability) crossed paths. I believe that the latter was the evolved solution to the former. Here’s how I think it went down:

A cavedude (or cavechick) possessed the necessary neural structure to project his persona onto the world around him. He also stared at the sun a lot, wondering where it came from. Not only did this burn the fuck out of his eyes, it also took precious time out of his day. When he had a kid, the “project your persona onto the world” gene and the “wonder what the fuck is up with the sun and shit” gene bumped into each other when his nutsack was making the sperm, and mixed together. His kid projected a hypothetical image of itself onto the sun, and decided that the sun was actually some sort of person who just happened to enjoy running laps around the sky.

When the kid grew up, he didn’t have to stare at the sun and wonder, because he knew what was up with it. Now, you might point out that he was wrong. Here’s the beauty of it: it doesn’t matter! All that matters is that he could spend that extra hour every day hunting food and mating with cavechicks and feeding the food to his offspring, so he had more kids than everyone else did. If all of those kids had the same believe-that-the-sun-is-actually-a-dude-who-likes-running-laps-around-the-sky gene that he did, they would, in turn, have more kids. In several generations, everyone would be believing the crazy idea.

The truth is, people today and in history blame gods for a lot more phenomena than just the rising and setting of the Sun, but my explanation was a gross (disgusting) oversimplification of the theory.

So that’s how I think religious beliefs came to be. Now let’s look at what they do for us.

When I was in high school, I used to try my hardest to ensnare religious people into arguments about their faith. I decided that there was no god, after a brief stint with Christianity, and I wanted to make everyone think the same way that I did. Since then, I’ve changed my mind a bit.

Belief in higher powers does a lot for people. It helps them get over sad events and come out of deep depressions, it inspires them to help others, it gives them ways to manipulate others into giving them money (that’s my cynical 16-year-old-self talking), and it helps them accomplish feats that they do not believe themselves to be capable of.

I know many people who fight the disease of addiction with religious beliefs. They can’t think their way out of addiction, so they think they’re not capable of not taking drugs. But they do believe in higher powers, or gods, or whatever you want to call them. So they turn their lives over to their higher powers, and ask them (the higher powers – I realize that there are a lot of pronouns floating around here, so I’ll try to be clear) to take control of their lives and help them not do drugs. And it works!

Now, let’s ask ourselves: Why could that be? I can think of two possible answers. One is that there are actually a bunch of higher powers out there, controlling these peoples’ lives and making them not do drugs. The other is that the belief itself gives them the strength to not do drugs. I don’t know about you, but I think that the second one sounds a bit more reasonable.

I think that belief in a god unlocks new capabilities in humans. It allows us to live better lives. “But Brandon”, you’re probably thinking, “who are you to say whose life is ‘better’ and whose isn’t?” When I refer to “better” lives, I do not mean to pass judgment. I simply mean that these people live lives which allow for more survivin’ and reproducin’ than the lives of us heathen atheists.

Now, you know that I am an addict. You might be wondering if I am sad that I am an atheist, because I can’t use the power of theism to help me with my addiction. If that’s the case, then you are wrong. All I need to do is find a power greater than myself which I can turn my life over to, and allow it to make my decisions for me. I haven’t found one yet, but I’m lookin’.

That’s enough about spirituality for now.

Caffeine and Other Drugs

Let’s look into why caffeine makes me so productive, shall we?

Well, I did a bit of research (Wikipedia, Lol) and it turns out that the primary mechanism of psychoactivity due to caffeine is the antagonization of adenosine, which is a neurotransmitter associated with, among other things, controlling (limiting) neural activity. There’s also some connection between one of the adenosine receptors and dopamine, but Wiki doesn’t know what exactly it does. This is just a wild guess, but I’d say adenosine inhibits dopamine function. This would mean that caffeine increases dopamine action, which would explain why I’m always so fucking happy when I drink a lot of coffee.

There is also some shit goin’ on with epinephrine when you take caffeine. Apparently one of the metabolites of caffeine somehow increases epinephrine action, which is just another reason why I get all speedy when I’m whacked out on coffee.

Wow! Antagonization of adenosine, agonization of dopamine, and moar epinephrine? If there is a god, he sure did a good job on Coffee. I wonder if it’s merely a coincidence that the brain reacts this way to caffeine, or if maybe it’s something more?

It sounds crazy (because it is), but what if humans evolved to be as sensitive as we are to some psychoactives because it was useful for us to be able to control our state of mind?

I guess that doesn’t make much sense, because other mammals (and at least one lizard) are also affected by psychoactives; I’m aware of a large body of anecdotal evidence suggesting that dogs and cats can get stoned, and I’ve seen it happen with my friend’s bearded dragon.

Then again, caffeine is poisonous to some mammals other than ourselves (i.e. dogs), yet it makes us more functional in some respects. I’m probably just crazy, so please for the love of Gzus do not quote me on this ridiculous hypothesis. I’m going to shut up about it now and get back to how great coffee is.

Isn’t coffee just fucking dandy? I wouldn’t be able to blog without it. I guess that’s partially because I take so many drugs to inhibit my dopamine and epinephrine function that I need a little boost to be able to think like a normal person. But it would appear that 28 ounces of coffee give me a bit more than a normal person’s dopamine and epinephrine action, because I’m fucking WIRED right now.

I realize that I just claimed that my meds inhibit epinephrine action, but I don’t actually know if that’s true. Let’s find out, shall we?

So it turns out that one of my meds, Divalproax, agonizes GABA receptors. I don’t know too much about GABA, but I do know that it is one of the main “downer” neurotransmitters. As such, divalproax can be used as an anti-seizure med or a mood stabilizer. However, Wikipedia did not say anything about interactions between GABA and epinephrine. I’m going to look up the rest of my meds and see if any of them do affect epinephrine.

Citalopram, my anti-depressant, doesn’t have shit to do with epinephrine or norepinephrine. It’s a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, so all it does is increases serotonin action. Maybe that has something to do with epinephrine, but I doubt it.

I guess it’s possible that melatonin, which is produced after serotonin is released, inhibits epinephrine function in order to make you sleepy, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch.

I know that Strattera, my ADHD med, is a selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and norepinephrine is a speedy neurotransmitter like epinephrine… but it never makes me feel “up”. In fact, I don’t really notice it at all.

It doesn’t appear that Abilify, my antipsychotic, has anything to do with epinephrine or norepinephrine function. Well, that covers all of my meds… I guess it’s just the GABA agonism by means of divalproax that makes me so drowsy. That was kind of fun to explore!