Do You Buy This?

Posted on February 21, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder Stigma

I joined DBSA because it didn’t have the language of Twelve Step Programs bulging from every seam of every book they put out to sell in the back. I’m not against Twelve Step Programs: I just get annoyed when people think they cure all things and try to pressure me out of using my medications. Recently, a couple of gems came out of my sack of experiences: First, a 12-Stepper showed up at a DBSA party bearing white flags. “You need to surrender to your disease.”

Uh….

Along similar lines was a simple-minded rewriting of the First Step: We realized that we were powerless over our bipolar disorder….

So you won’t take your meds because compliance is futile?

A loud burp and excuse me is in order, I think. Under no circumstances should I surrender to my disease. This disease castrates and decapitates, depending on your mood. Depressed, I deny my life. Manic, I risk it. Must I list what it has done to me and to others?

I am not powerless over my disease. Though I do not doubt that I will experience mania and depression, I do not stop being myself. I own my disorder. If it gets out of hand, I shall manage it as best I can with what I have.

A Twelve Stepper might reply that I don’t “get the real meaning” behind the instant adages. Maybe I don’t, but could you write it more clearly? If I don’t get it, other people won’t interpret it right either. Composing in esoteric language serves mislead people into dangerous misapplications. Sufferers of organic brain dysfunctions can’t afford these bewilderments inside their confusions.

Both phrases were uttered by noncompliants, obviously seeking an out for the rigor of taking your meds and braving the side effects. The phrases are out of keeping with the spirit of the Twelve Steps which emphasize accountability and courage to change. You don’t surrender to your alcoholism. You surrender to your higher power. Can you feel the blasphemy in “Surrender to your disease”?

Among us those who wish to defy all boundaries for the grab onto words as if they were contractual loopholes. How ironic and sad that Twelve Step maxims get twisted in such a way as to encourage the strange addiction of grandiose moods.

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This is a peeve: I am sick and tired of people who talk about how depressed people make them feel depressed. What happens, I think, is that they expect their unhappy or fatigued friend to be the life of the party and that friend cannot comply. So they get mad and when they get mad, they get fatigued. Whose fault is that?