SS88
Satchel & Steve talk for 8 minutes at 8am.
SS88
Facing Hypomania
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Satch talks about his Hypomania and how he is dealing with it,
Dude, I got to talk to you every day because whatever we talked about yesterday is still on my mind today. And if I wait till tomorrow, I won't even know what it was I would needed to say. So what's on your mind? Well, I wanted to, we, we, we, you know, eight minutes isn't very long. And uh, I wanted to touch back on that whole uh tremor, the tremor thing. Yeah, go. Because I have this tremor and it could be my it could be my genetics, very likely, but it could also be this medicine. And uh I was just gonna talk about the medicine. So I I um I live my life avoiding any medicine. I mean, even to this day, I don't take aspirin, I don't take ibuprofen, I don't take, I just don't take anything. And it's not because I mean, mostly it's because I don't really get headaches or whatever, right? But also, like if I've got like a muscle that's hurting or I'm aching, I don't want to take something to mask it. I want to feel what I'm I want to feel it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01You know, and no, like let me, I'm not gonna overdo it. I'm not gonna I'm uh oh, I'm I'm all an achy. I'm gonna take something, I'm gonna go out and overdo it, and it's gonna get worse. So that makes sense. I just I I'm I don't I don't know that I'm anti-medicine per se, but I just have never been big on taking anything.
SPEAKER_00So anyway, when in my 50s are you a Christian scientist?
SPEAKER_01No, no, do they not take medicine?
SPEAKER_00I think I think they don't take medicine, but I think they also don't like go to the dentist.
SPEAKER_01Like I don't I think I go to the dentist. Okay. Yeah, I don't know anything about them. It but did I catch you at a bad time? What are you doing? I'm pacing on my back page. Pacing? No, I ain't good. It's all good. Okay, and um so uh uh but in my 50s, in my early 50s, I had kind of run into a wall, and it there's a lot of reasons why, which I don't have time to get into the whole thing, but basically I ran into this wall mentally and I was breaking down. I was kind of having a breakdown for a whole host of reasons, yeah, which you know may or may not you know matter in the root for the breakdown. And so I went for the first time to see a psychiatrist because I I've got to do something about this. Yep. And I start talking and I go in and then my doctor had recommended this psychiatrist, and she was an older woman, maybe in her 70s, let's say, okay, 60s or 70s, and I walk in, I start talking to her, and within three minutes, she had diagnosed me. Within the first five minutes, she had diagnosed me. Wow, which was weird because first of all, I had never seen a psychiatrist. Second of all, like I'm just talking to her, right? But I had what she was calling pressured speech, which I'd never had heard that term before. Never heard talking to her and explaining, explaining everything going on with me. And she said, and she realized right away, now this woman, she was good, like she's retired now. I can't see her anymore. I wish I could because she's so good. She said, I have hypomania, which I had never heard of. And basically, hang on.
SPEAKER_00What's compressed speech? Like you're skipping over that part.
SPEAKER_01Compressed speech is where you're talking, like you're talking, you're almost have more to say than you can even get out. You're trying to say more than you can even get out. You understand what I'm saying? Right. Like, I'm trying to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk really fast, and it's like pressured, like somebody's got a gun to my head, and they say, Tell me it keep talking as fast as you can, and as much as you can, and that's pressured speech. Your brain moves faster than your mouth. Your brain's moving faster than your mouth, but your mouth's moving pretty fast, and it's and it's and it's trying to, in my case, it's trying to catch up. So you have this pressured speech. I was explaining to her my problem that I I get going. I I get I I'm kind of I didn't use the word manic, but I mean I'm I basically I'm manic all the time. Like I'm going and going, going, going. I don't, it's not like this, you know. You've heard of um uh uh uh uh what what is it called? See, I I have the same problem you do, honestly, and and a lot of it's just age related, but it it's called manic depression, okay. Manic depression is when you're high and then you're low, and then you're high and then you're low, right? Okay, I was having manic depression without the depression, right? I was just going all the time, yeah, 14, 16 hours a day, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, never stopping. And I and that was working for me. But after a year of that, I kind of had crashed. And when I crashed, I went to her. She said, You have hypomania. And um, she uh said, I want you to try lithium, right? So I'm like, Cool, that's what they put in batteries. I love that, right?
SPEAKER_00Isn't that what they make batteries out of? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Maybe it's battery acid, right? Eat some batteries, and so I've probably told you this before. You probably heard this story before. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Huh? I don't think I have, but you have it's okay five minutes. You have three, you have two and a half minutes to tell me.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and and so I um so I I say, okay, lithium. She gives me a low dose, like they do. So the next day I go get my lithium. The next day I wake up two days later, right? I wake up and my mind is kind of blown because I've spent my entire life with anxiety. Yeah, I didn't know it was anxiety, I just knew that when I woke up, I had butterflies, right? Yeah in my stomach. I'm I'm like anxious. And what happens is I'm laying in bed, I'm anxious, anxious, anxious, anxious. I jump up. I don't even sometimes, you know, make coffee, you know, stretch, drink water, whatever. I walk I can put on my shoes, rock right out the door, and get into a project. That's the kind of mania. And when I got into a project, my anxiety went away. And what was happening was my anxiety was forcing me to my forcing me into mania because when I was doing things, I wasn't feeling the anxiety. But when I woke up that second day after taking lithium and I didn't have that feeling in my stomach, I said, Oh my god, this is what people, this is what it's like to wake up without anxiety. Because I kind of knew at that point, I was like, that was just anxiety I was feeling. I mean, I'm putting all this stuff together, and I wake up, and so the the I was just it just it ended up being, you know, over the next, it's been four or five years now, and I've tried it, I've actually tried other medicines as well because I I actually couldn't get my blood pressure down on the lithium, but that's another story. And so I take it, but the but the medicine, but I'm back on the lithium now, and it causes tremors. And so it's probably the lithium that causes it, but I'm actually, you know, but but anyway, I'm so I have a new psychiatrist now who's not very good. Like they don't, they just I don't know how to explain it. I don't want to talk about it, but I'll just say this. I mean, I don't mind talking about it. I don't have to, I mean, I gotta decide how much time I have to talk, but it was it's been it's it has been uh quite uh it it was a revolution for me to take medicine for my for my for my mania, right? For my hypomania, which I didn't even know how. It took me till I was in the 50s, and I wasn't well, and I was just like, I gotta do something. I actually did it for a while and then thought, oh, I feel so much better. This is great. I don't need the medicine anymore. I went off the medicine, and then I realized, oh, actually, that was really helpful. So I went back on medicine. But that that's the thing I wanted to get across. Just that uh that the that I the kind of the wonders of modern medicine when you have something going on with your brain chemistry, and then the medicine can kind of help my anxiety. It made me more self-aware, it made me a better husband, a better boss, a better father. It did all this stuff. It was a little late. I mean, it wasn't too late. I still got a wife and kids, but I mean, it was kind of like I wish I would have done it a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00Okay. All right, that was a good place to end. Hypomania. We'll we'll come back to this. My issue tomorrow. My issue tomorrow. Yeah, okay.
