Thursday, May 06, 2021

It’s because of these drugs I do

wikipedia: creeping me out since 2001

Watching Netflix’s “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” and checking out Wikipedia.As you do when you’re home alone.

We all know the story of Elisa Lam - and if you don’t, where the fuck were you back in 2013 when the security camera footage went viral? But, there’s always more to the story than the creepy elevator video or the random way she died…

Like she was bipolar.

Buckle up, kids. Shit’s about to get real.

I’ve watched the video more times than I care to admit and I always thought she was fucked up on… something.

It never once occurred to me that she might have been out of her mind due to mania.

Which, well, my history *might* suggest an occasion or two where, um, things that should have been in my head actually weren’t.

At this point, I need to post a disclaimer:

WHEN I WAS FIRST DIAGNOSED, MY MEDS WERE NOT BALANCED CORRECTLY AND THEY FUCKED ME UP MORE THAN I ALREADY WAS. I AM NOT PROUD OF - NOR DO I LIKE TO REMEMBER / DISCUSS - THIS ROUGH PERIOD OF MY LIFE.

You’ve been warned. OK?

So. Yeah.

That.

The list of prescription drugs she was taking caught my eye because I have taken all four of those. I’m currently taking two of them in combination.

But.

The Wellbutrin… holy mother of fucking FUCK.

I swear when I wasn’t tasting fucking COLOURS, I was bouncing back and forth between severe depressions and… well, Guinness record breaking manic phases.

I hit both extremes so quickly and so consistently over a few weeks that I couldn’t function.

I didn’t know which way was up half the time.

And have I mentioned?

I COULD TASTE COLOURS!

It took forever to figure out what was going on and it turned out that the Wellbutrin was making me manic. Except, when you’re already manic, shit goes sideways real fucking quick.

(As it turned out, I can’t take anything marketed as an “anti-depressant” because they trigger the mania. I can thank the Wellbutrin for pointing out that particular quirk in my biology.)

So… enough about me.

Watching the video and realising that she was bipolar was like reliving the Wellbutrin days.

I would never go as far as to call it a psychotic break, because I (thankfully) don’t know what something that severe is like, but I can tell you that there were points where I might have been hallucinating and I might have acted kind of, sort of, similar to the way she did.

Thankfully, my Wellbutrin days are far, far, far behind me and I’ve not had that particular experience again… but watching her… yeah. I can totally see the mania in her actions.

Although… the odd thing is that she seems to have stopped taking her meds, or at least was weaning herself off of them.

Which, yeah, if you’re fucked up enough and you stop taking the things that make you less fucked up then, that’s a totally valid reason for her behaviour as well.

Will we ever know what really happened? Probably not.

In all honesty, I’m not sure I want to know… because if it was mania induced, well… I don’t know how I could process that.