A Personal Account of Living with Bipolar Disorder

Amy  [00:00:00]:
We're here with Sally alter today. And, Sally, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Sally [00:00:05]:
Well, thank you very much for having me. First start, Amy?

Amy  [00:00:08]:
Oh, definitely.

Sally [00:00:09]:
It's really nice. I'm 76 and a widow and I come from London originally. I've done a lot of travelling all over the world, lived in four countries.

Amy  [00:00:22]:
That's amazing. What made you choose to settle here?

Sally [00:00:26]:
Well, my husband and I did rving for six years, all around the country. We lived in an rv and we came through where I live now, Kerrville, and we decided we liked it, so we stopped here.

Amy  [00:00:38]:
Tell me about what interests you or what got you involved in the mental health arena.

Sally [00:00:42]:
Well, I have bipolar disorder and I've had it since I was 15, so it's been my life, you know, it's just. I would say I ruined my life because I had so many problems with it.

Amy  [00:00:54]:
Yeah, I did, too. I was diagnosed in my thirties.

Sally [00:00:58]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:00:59]:
Yeah.

Sally [00:01:00]:
It makes a big difference, doesn't it? Oh, yeah.

Amy  [00:01:02]:
It was devastating. And for a while, I didn't think I was ever going to come out of one of the depressions. So, yeah, it's rough. So you're also an author and you've written on this subject?

Sally [00:01:16]:
Yes, I've written four books on it. I've had enough of bipolar now. Four books is enough.

Amy  [00:01:21]:
That's my first book, how to live with bipolar.

Sally [00:01:24]:
That's my bestseller. Everybody seems to like that. This is my latest book, the one with overcome challenges. Yes. It's all my three books put together in a condensed format. It's like a mini workbook. It's got checklists and questions and things.

Amy  [00:01:41]:
And then you've written a new book.

Sally [00:01:43]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:01:44]:
Tell me about that. Shards of glass. Right. That's got some mental health issues in it as well.

Sally [00:01:49]:
Yes, it does. At the very end, but there's a lot of little clues on the way.

Amy  [00:01:57]:
It has quite a twist at the end.

Sally [00:02:00]:
The end is a twist. A big twist.

Amy  [00:02:03]:
Yes.

Sally [00:02:04]:
Yeah.

Amy  [00:02:05]:
I loved it.

Sally [00:02:07]:
It's a novella. I didn't write a novel. It's 30,000 words. You have to 40,000 for a novel.

Amy  [00:02:15]:
Oh, I didn't know that.

Sally [00:02:16]:
I was a bit short. Yeah. But it's about a man called Richard, who's from England, and he goes to live in France. He lives in Cairns, in the south of France, on the south coast, and he meets a woman called Louise, who's from Paris. He was at his friend's house and he bumped into her and he immediately got smitten by her and he did everything he could to get to know her, but she was very. She led him a merry dance. It took him a long time to get to know her, but then when he did, he discovered that he became obsessed with her, in fact. And when he did, he found out she had a very dark, secretive past and she was not willing to share it with him.

Amy  [00:03:01]:
So that's intriguing. I have to say. The shards of glass was an incredible book. I read it in, like, a day and was just like, this is so good, I can't put it down.

Sally [00:03:13]:
Oh, very good. I like that.

Amy  [00:03:15]:
Yeah, that was so.

Sally [00:03:17]:
That's fiction.

Amy  [00:03:18]:
Yes. But I was gonna ask you where you came up with the storyline. Was any of that from your life or was that all fiction?

Sally [00:03:27]:
It's all fiction.

Amy  [00:03:29]:
All fiction.

Sally [00:03:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. I was trying my hand at fiction. You know, I've never done it before.

Amy  [00:03:34]:
Well, it's really good.

Sally [00:03:36]:
Yeah.

Amy  [00:03:36]:
I was going to actually, if you don't mind, I was going to read a piece of it where the main character is actually describing what's going on in her mind after she's been in that depression.

Sally [00:03:52]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:03:54]:
And she says her name's Louise, and she says she heard Louise. The familiar voice suddenly called to me. Louise, you must get up now. I gasped. I knew Richard was out, so it couldn't be him calling to me. Who was it? The mel voice was coming from somewhere, but I couldn't tell where. Was it in my head? Louise, get up, the voice said firmly, and I immediately sat up and slipped out of bed. I put on my robe over my nightdress, slid my feet into my slippers and slowly made my way into the dining room.

Amy  [00:04:36]:
The house was empty and felt strange without Richard and the baby there. The floor seemed to be at an angle and I couldn't walk straight. Was the floor slanted? I wondered. Looking down, I saw nothing, but it felt weird. I thought I would fall off the floor. The world spun around and around inside my head. As I hung onto the dining chair, I couldn't tell whether I was standing still or lying down. Then I noticed something odd.

Amy  [00:05:06]:
What once was a chair now looked all crooked and bent out of shape. I watched as the other chairs bent and became a brilliant shade of orange. I was standing in the middle of a mass of orange colored furniture. Then there was the noise. I didn't recognize it at first, but then I realized it was a choir singing. Hundreds of female voices were singing loudly inside my head. I listened intently. That was fascinating, I thought.

Amy  [00:05:36]:
It's so interesting to see inside someone's head and to hear what they're thinking and what they are visualizing as they go through that.

Sally [00:05:46]:
That was psychosis.

Amy  [00:05:48]:
Yes.

Sally [00:05:48]:
Yeah. Which you can get if you have bipolar one.

Amy  [00:05:52]:
Yes.

Sally [00:05:53]:
Not everybody has it, but you can get it.

Amy  [00:05:56]:
Yes. Luckily, I have not. Can you tell us a little bit about the difference between bipolar one and bipolar two?

Sally [00:06:03]:
Yes. Bipolar one is much harder to live with. Bipolar two, you're just feeling pretty good and you can get to work and you can do, you know, run your life, which is good. But when you've got bipolar one, it gets out of control very quickly and you have mania, not hypomania. Hypomania is where you can live and you can do all the things you'd like to do, but mania is where you're running out of control. Yes, yes. And everything's going mad, and then you can get psychosis and then that's like what I described that Louise experienced.

Amy  [00:06:46]:
Wow. Have you been through something similar to that many times?

Sally [00:06:50]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:06:51]:
Wow.

Sally [00:06:52]:
Yeah.

Amy  [00:06:52]:
Well, it's just fascinating. I highly recommend it to anyone. It's on Amazon and it's called shards of glass. It's by Sally Aldridge. And you also have how many books on bipolar four?

Sally [00:07:06]:
Books on bipolar four.

Amy  [00:07:09]:
And you have eight books total, though, right?

Sally [00:07:11]:
I have one book on loneliness and a book on poetry, my poems. And I'm writing another one now. I've nearly finished it. It's called abandoned.

Amy  [00:07:23]:
Oh, is it a fiction again?

Sally [00:07:25]:
Yes, I'm having great fun with it.

Amy  [00:07:28]:
Is it the follow up to shards of glass?

Sally [00:07:31]:
No, I was going to do that, but I was taken by this other idea, so I thought, I'll do that first.

Amy  [00:07:39]:
Well, I am going to have to read that, so please let me know when it comes out.

Sally [00:07:44]:
Okay, I will. I'll tell you a little bit about it, if you like.

Amy  [00:07:47]:
Oh, please. Yes.

Sally [00:07:50]:
It's about a girl is sitting in a car. She's being driven by a man, and she doesn't know who the man is. And the man leans over her and he says, get out. And she says, I'm not getting out here. I don't know where I am. You know, it's in the middle of nowhere. I'm not getting out. And he says, yes, you are.

Sally [00:08:11]:
And he opens the car door and pushes her out.

Amy  [00:08:14]:
Oh, my gosh.

Sally [00:08:15]:
It's in the middle of nowhere. You know, there's nothing. No houses, no people, no nothing. And she has to make her way. And she's got no money and no phone, and she lives her memory. She forgets everything. She forgets who she is and even her name. She can't remember anything or where she lived or anything.

Amy  [00:08:36]:
How horrible that would be to be out in the middle of nowhere and not even know who you are, let alone how to get anywhere.

Sally [00:08:42]:
Yes. Yeah.

Amy  [00:08:44]:
Oh, I can't wait.

Sally [00:08:45]:
I know. I've had a lot of fun with that one.

Amy  [00:08:47]:
And that's called abandon.

Sally [00:08:49]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:08:50]:
Yeah, that sounds good, huh?

Sally [00:08:54]:
I've almost finished it now.

Amy  [00:08:56]:
Okay. How long is it?

Sally [00:08:58]:
It's very short. It's a novella.

Amy  [00:09:01]:
I love those. I love when I can read them in one day and just engulf it.

Sally [00:09:06]:
Absolutely.

Amy  [00:09:07]:
But then I'm always sad when it's over. So tell me, what led you to write? Is it something that's therapeutic for you? Have you always written?

Sally [00:09:20]:
Well, I've written for Quora for five years. No, four years now. Do you know Quora? It's an online website and it's questions and answers. They've got millions and millions of people on there, written on there. For four years, I've written 5000 answers.

Amy  [00:09:36]:
So people write in and ask you things about your books or they ask you general questions.

Sally [00:09:41]:
General questions. Everything's divided into topics. So I've written 800 answers on bipolar disorder.

Amy  [00:09:50]:
What do you think is the most popular question that you've been asked on bipolar?

Sally [00:09:55]:
Oh, so many questions. And they repeat because everybody, you know, not everybody reads all the questions, but it's amazing how you get such a variety. I think the last one I wrote was more interesting. It said, let me think. How does bipolar disorder affect your life? That was a really good one.

Amy  [00:10:17]:
That is a good one. How does it affect your life?

Sally [00:10:20]:
Oh, as I said, it affects it in every possible way. When your bipolar starts, when you're in your teens or early twenties and people think it's hormones at first, so it gets mixed up with that. But when you get a true diagnosis, it can take ten years to get a diagnosis. Yeah, that's quite common. It happened to me. Yeah. So when you first get bipolar and say you're in college, then you can't do the work, you're very depressed or you're manic, and people drop out of college all the time, so that's one thing. And then when they go to work, that's another thing that people either feel sorry for you or they ignore you.

Sally [00:11:11]:
It's very difficult to live with. Then you get married, you have the same problems. And every relationship, every friendship, you lose all your friends. It's terrible. They don't understand and they don't want to understand. It happens all the time. Yeah.

Amy  [00:11:30]:
I actually found that it's very hard to keep friends because when I'm depressed, I isolate and don't want to talk to anybody. And when I'm manic, I want to talk way too much.

Sally [00:11:46]:
Exactly, that's right, yeah. And you start with that, then. Yeah. People, they think you're crazy, so it's very difficult.

Amy  [00:11:59]:
Have you held a lot of jobs?

Sally [00:12:01]:
Oh, yeah. I don't know how many? At least twelve, maybe more.

Amy  [00:12:07]:
Okay. That's not too bad.

Sally [00:12:09]:
But I did nursing for eleven years.

Amy  [00:12:11]:
Wow. At the same place or different places?

Sally [00:12:14]:
No, different places in Scotland and London and Cornwall.

Amy  [00:12:18]:
Wow.

Sally [00:12:19]:
Yes. I was well for eleven years.

Amy  [00:12:22]:
That's incredible.

Sally [00:12:23]:
Yeah, that was good. I took lithium and that's why I was well.

Amy  [00:12:27]:
Okay. And did it just stop working?

Sally [00:12:30]:
Yes. At menopause? Yes. You never know.

Amy  [00:12:33]:
Yeah. So when you were first diagnosed younger, what led you to the diagnosis?

Sally [00:12:39]:
Well, I was 15 when my mother died and I got a manic episode right then, there and then. And nobody knew what mania was in those days because I'm talking like 50, 60 years ago, so nobody knew what it was. But I was very ill and then I went into depression and had depression for at least five years, maybe more. And when I was married, and then I got a diagnosis and been on medication ever since.

Amy  [00:13:11]:
Was it a relief to get the diagnosis or was it upsetting?

Sally [00:13:15]:
Well, I diagnosed myself because I found a book called Mood Swings. And I read the book and it was exactly what I was experiencing. So I went to the doctor and I said, I read this book and I think I've got bipolar. It was manic depression in those days.

Amy  [00:13:35]:
And just imagine now, people probably read your book and go, this sounds like me.

Sally [00:13:39]:
Probably. I never thought of that.

Amy  [00:13:42]:
Yeah. That's incredible.

Sally [00:13:44]:
Yeah.

Amy  [00:13:45]:
Okay. And what would you say to someone who is just finding out that they have bipolar disorder now?

Sally [00:13:54]:
Well, I think there's several things you need to think about. First of all, you must take your medication. That's very important. People say to me, oh, I can manage without medication. And they. They do for a short time.

Amy  [00:14:08]:
That's.

Sally [00:14:09]:
I call it a med holiday when things are going so well. But then before you know it, you've got another episode and so you're back on the medication, only this time you need stronger medication or you go to hospital, you know, you're much worse off. So you do need medication, and I think you need therapy as well. If you can afford it, you need to have therapy along with the medication, and then you need to live a healthy life. Like, the most important thing is getting enough sleep. So that's sometimes a challenge for people. When you're depressed, as you know, you get either insomnia or hypersomnia, and you can't stop sleeping. I usually sleep for about 12 hours or 16 hours sometimes.

Sally [00:14:57]:
How about you?

Amy  [00:14:58]:
Yes, I do, too. I get hypersomnia really bad.

Sally [00:15:01]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:15:03]:
I haven't had it in a while. I've had insomnia lately, but I have had these episodes where all I can do is sleep up for a couple hours and then I go back to sleep.

Sally [00:15:13]:
Yes, that's. That's depression. All right. Manic, you can't sleep at all.

Amy  [00:15:19]:
Exactly the opposite.

Sally [00:15:21]:
Yeah. And you've got loads of energy.

Amy  [00:15:23]:
What would you tell someone who's living with a person with bipolar if they think someone is manic? Should they say something or do something?

Sally [00:15:34]:
It's very, very difficult for somebody with a manic person, it's very, very difficult because they don't know they've got mania. They don't understand it, and they certainly don't think they're ill because they feel so. Well, you know. Right. It's wonderful having mania. You feel like, as you know, king of the castle.

Amy  [00:15:55]:
Yes. And you feel like everything is possible and you can do it.

Sally [00:15:59]:
All right. It's really good feeling. Unless you got dysphoric mania and then you very angry with everything. I don't know what you've had, but that's quite common.

Amy  [00:16:09]:
I haven't had that, thankfully.

Sally [00:16:11]:
Oh, good.

Amy  [00:16:12]:
Have you had that?

Sally [00:16:13]:
Oh, yes. Many times. Yeah. Going to rages and. That's terrible.

Amy  [00:16:19]:
Wow. Yeah. I have had some anger, but I. And some, like, uh, aggressiveness.

Sally [00:16:25]:
Yeah.

Amy  [00:16:25]:
But they changed my meds and that kind of went away. It wasn't, uh. It wasn't what I would call long lasting.

Sally [00:16:32]:
Oh, that's good.

Amy  [00:16:34]:
Yeah.

Sally [00:16:34]:
Yeah. That was lucky.

Amy  [00:16:36]:
Yeah, I think so. And what kind of experience have you had with the stigma of bipolar disorder? Have you ran into that?

Sally [00:16:46]:
Yes, many times. What has happened? Like, well, people just avoid you, mostly. They just run away. All those friends you thought you had. Yeah. You have friends.

Amy  [00:16:58]:
That's hurtful.

Sally [00:16:59]:
Yes, it is. It's very hurtful.

Amy  [00:17:02]:
Is that what led you to write the book on loneliness?

Sally [00:17:05]:
Yes. Although, no, not completely, because my husband died, and I was very lucky for that. Yeah. He committed suicide, so I had a bad time with it.

Amy  [00:17:15]:
Did he have some mental health issues or.

Sally [00:17:19]:
I don't know. I kept saying to him, you must be depressed, and he used to say, no, you know, you can't help somebody that doesn't want to be helped.

Amy  [00:17:28]:
That is so true. Yeah. I'm so sorry.

Sally [00:17:32]:
That was a very difficult situation.

Amy  [00:17:36]:
I can imagine. Can you talk about what it's like to get triggers, or are there triggers? Why do people swing from one mood to another?

Sally [00:17:50]:
Well, if they don't look after themselves, it's easy to swing into another mood, but often it's not planned. Even if you do have triggers, they don't. What am I saying? They affect you, but you can't tell what's going to happen next. So you get episodes all the time, either monthly or weekly or even every day, and some people get every hour.

Amy  [00:18:19]:
What do you do to kind of help with your bipolar disorder?

Sally [00:18:24]:
Well, I've been ill all my life. As I said, it's been a trial. Had a period as well, from 25 to 47. I wasn't too bad, but then menopause struck and all the hormones went crazy. I couldn't get settled for 20 years after that.

Amy  [00:18:42]:
Well, one of the things that I found about bipolar disorder and medication is, unfortunately, you can be on the right regimen and it's going great. And then all of a sudden, like you said, some. Just some little triggers, and suddenly that medication that was helping no longer works.

Sally [00:18:59]:
Absolutely, yeah.

Amy  [00:19:00]:
So you have to go back to step one and talk to your psychiatrist or your PCP and just, like, start from scratch.

Sally [00:19:07]:
They brought out a new drug called Vraylar. Have you heard of that?

Amy  [00:19:11]:
Yes.

Sally [00:19:11]:
And they put me on that. And from day one, I've been well.

Amy  [00:19:15]:
Oh, that is wonderful.

Sally [00:19:17]:
I've had three years of being well. I can't believe it.

Amy  [00:19:21]:
Isn't that awesome? Yeah. I've been on the same medication regimen for about two years now, and I'm doing really well. I got cancer in 2022.

Sally [00:19:32]:
Oh, dear.

Amy  [00:19:34]:
Yeah. Thyroid cancer. So I was a little worried how getting radioactive iodine and having my thyroid removed would affect my medication. But I actually feel better now than I felt in years. So, yeah, I've got a lot more energy.

Sally [00:19:47]:
That's great.

Amy  [00:19:48]:
Do you find vraylar zaps your energy at all?

Sally [00:19:52]:
No, nothing.

Amy  [00:19:53]:
I've been 100% well, and that is amazing.

Sally [00:19:57]:
It is amazing. Yeah.

Amy  [00:19:59]:
Yeah. I'm really happy for you.

Sally [00:20:00]:
So that's why I'm having a good period and I can write.

Amy  [00:20:03]:
Yeah. That's wonderful. Do you already have plans to do something more in the future?

Sally [00:20:09]:
I've got two other books that are mostly written. That's. They're non fiction.

Amy  [00:20:14]:
Do you have three books you're working on at the same time period?

Sally [00:20:18]:
Yes. Books in two years.

Amy  [00:20:20]:
Wow. That's incredible. Have you always been an avid book reader?

Sally [00:20:24]:
No, I'm not.

Amy  [00:20:26]:
What got you into writing?

Sally [00:20:27]:
I'm very guilty about that. I'm a writer, but I'm not a reader.

Amy  [00:20:32]:
That's interesting. No audiobooks either?

Sally [00:20:35]:
No. Just can't get into it. Nonfiction now and then.

Amy  [00:20:39]:
Oh, nonfiction. Yeah.

Sally [00:20:40]:
Yeah.

Amy  [00:20:41]:
I'm a big self help book, audiobook girl, so I listen to a lot of self help books.

Sally [00:20:47]:
Yes. I'd like to do some audiobooks, but they're very expensive.

Amy  [00:20:50]:
They are. But they're very popular, too.

Sally [00:20:54]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Amy  [00:20:55]:
Tell me your website's name so that people can find you.

Sally [00:20:58]:
It's just Sally alter.com.

Amy  [00:21:01]:
Great. Sally Alter. And that's a l t e R?

Sally [00:21:04]:
Yes.

Amy  [00:21:05]:
And then they can go on your website and they can actually get a couple different items. Would you talk about that a little bit?

Sally [00:21:11]:
Yes. There's one for bipolar. It's a bipolar checklist, so you can go through all your symptoms and see if you've got bipolar. And the other one is a short story called one Summer. It's a freebie.

Amy  [00:21:25]:
You can't beat that for free. Is there anything that you'd like our listeners to know? Is there anything that's helped you through the years or anything that somebody's maybe going through a rough time you would recommend?

Sally [00:21:37]:
Well, I would say one thing. Don't ever give up. Always be hopeful. As I told you, my life changed completely, so you never know. I started writing at 73, so never give up on that either.

Amy  [00:21:52]:
I went back to graduate school at 53, so I agree. You're never too old. You just got to decide you want it and go for it.

Sally [00:22:00]:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Amy  [00:22:01]:
All right. All right. Wonderful. It was great talking to you, Sally. I enjoy getting to know you.

Sally [00:22:07]:
Lovely. I'm pleased to be on.

Amy  [00:22:09]:
I look forward to getting your newsletters. Thank you very much. You have a great evening.

Sally [00:22:13]:
You, too. Bye.

Amy  [00:22:14]:
All right. Bye.