Employment has pimped me out to lithium. Like many wack jobs, I have renounced full-blown insanity in favor of keeping a job. This month, I will pass the one year mark at Albertson's. If you call $6.40 a jackpot, the decision to stay medicated has paid off.
Since 2000, I have had 12 jobs aside from dealing blackjack and temporary construction jobs. Seven of these jobs lasted six weeks or less. All tolled, I have spent more than half of my last six years unemployed. I have resorted to living with family in a nauseating suburb, stealing food, selling plasma and peddling personal belongings on the street; including antipsychotic pills. The only checks I've ever written were hot.
The pursuit of a natural high greater than that given by cocaine and whiskey is worth pissing away years of one's life and brain cells. Bipolar mania is an immensely exquisite experience that transcends anything in a sane lifestyle. Mental and physical rushes of pure euphoria surge from the brain to the fingertips, creating a "brain orgasm," as I call it. Grandiose thinking is another treat. I once thought I could fly. Briefly, I thought I was God. In any such instance, I was convinced of my prowess as a writer, superhuman genius and mesmerizing physical appearance. I was also prone to uncontrollable, hysterical laughter. This sounds similar to the cliche laugh of evil television and movie characters and was accompanied by euphoria. I was also endowed with limitless energy.
These symptoms along with bizarre visuals enveloped me in a maelstrom. I was detached from a pathetic reality that would never compare to my alternate version. I was high as a goddamn kite and proud of it. Under pressure from my mother, I agreed to see a psychiatrist in June 2003. I renounced the unbridled joy of mania in favor of junior college. The medicated life didn't last long, I went off the pills shortly thereafter and became increasingly psychotic. For the next two years, I was consistently off and on medication.
My unmedicated exploits at a 2004 job include; beating a fry station timer with my shoe, screaming at customers, running laps around the store, frightening grill cooks with humorous rampages and throwing food items. It was all in good fun, nobody got dismembered. Cashiering in 2003, the only two shifts in which my work satisfied my general manager were attributable to mood swings. The boss took issue with my failure to smile adequately. On Saturday, I was laughing and smiling with customers in an unusual manner. I scribbled down my only poem in 30 seconds while working. On Sunday, I was laughing to mask some mild depression. I nearly cried in front of one customer.
I lost the sweetest job I've had to an unmedicated spree of bourbon guzzling. I enjoyed my job as a third shift waiter. I was pulling down $400 a week and for once my near future looked bright. The GM was so impressed with the quality of my work that she didn't fire me when I showed up late and fairly drunk. She fired me five days later when I came in three hours late. I spent my last penny on a pack of smokes, walked in and gave her my apron. The previous night, my alarm clock had done some unknown thing to offend me. I bashed it into unrecognizable slivers with the heel of a wing tip.
My year long unemployment streak that ended last October did something to convince me of the need for crazy pills. I lost my apartment after sponging off of my roommate. Despair set in months after living with family in a secluded suburb that offers few job opportunities. I went off my pills, drank when I scrounged the money and huffed spray paint. Gorging on caffeine pills offered mediocre recreation. I stayed in a bedroom and set to writing a book about my employment experiences. I saw little or no hope of finding work and dwelled on the dismal prospect of government assistance.
I have been medicated without voluntary interruption for 13 months. The motivation to discard life's finest reward has come from the belief that the job I have kept for too long is my last chance. Getting fired would prove that I am unfit to sustain minimum wage employment and therefore the biggest failure that I can think of. Being a shiftless loser does wear thin.
As agonizing as unemployment is, mental stability is a rip off. Medicated life is painfully one dimensional. It offers little satisfaction and is quite tedious. I have unsuccessfully tried to simulate mania. An entire fifth of 80 proof never does the trick. Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" does vividly remind me of the feeling. At the end of the day, I settle for some writing and a goblet of wine. I don't know when I'll go off my meds again, but I know there will always be a next time.