Chapter 28 Bipolar Denver Attempt

Bipolar Disorder. Once called Manic Depression, now a catchall phrase for any out of the norm behavior. Forever immortalized in song by Jimi Hendrix, Bipolar was the driving creative force behind the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Wolff to Van Gogh and Frank Sinatra. Inspiring, yet volatile. To that I could relate. 

But what exactly was it?

My close friend Woody Hunt complained of his Bipolar  constantly, yet having watched his struggles from the front row, I couldn't isolate the disorder. But like clockwork, after ever bad blow out, Woody would be re-admitted to the psych ward and sedated with powerful medications, til his fever broke, allowing him to safely rejoin society.

Having visited him in the hospital, I knew that wasn't how even advanced alcoholism was treated. But I never made the deeper connection, always assuming his struggles were from not staying sober. Did I have it all backwards? Was it bipolar disorder that fueled his addiction? And was he was really just self-medicating all this time? And if so, did that mean I was too? 

Worse yet, what did that mean for my future, for the last time I saw Woody alive was in the hospital, where upon his release, he disappeared, eventually taking his life, washing up on the shores of Palos Verdes days later. I would deliver the eulogy to a packed throng at his funeral, unable to understand how he couldn't feel all the love for him in that room. But was the inability to feel the love of others a feature or a bug for those of us dually diagnosed? And if Woody's demise was a cautionary tale, why was I heeding it so little caution?

Now diagnosed, I began to search for answers. Seeking out a second opinion, I reached out to my close friend of many years Sandy, who worked in the research wing of UCLA's Psychology Department. Sandy knew my history of chemical dependency well, having watch me struggle for years. We met up one afternoon at my tennis club. Pulling her aside to pick her brain, I implored her to be ruthlessly honest with me as I asked her pointblank if she thought I had Bipolar Disorder. 

Sandy stepped back, as a look of incredulity spread across her face, before she busted out laughing... 

'Jesus Christ, of course you do. You're the poster child for it.'

Good God, no fair telling me. Sandy informed me she couldn't tell me, that she wasn't qualified to diagnose another about something so personal, but that she worked in the mental health field, surrounded everyday by patients in all sorts of mental disarray and that I definitely had Bipolar.

A crack in my case, I rushed to the internet. To WebMD, a great place to get some worrying done. Reading as much as I could, I had a near perfect score for all the symptoms, with vivid episodes for all.  Finally an answer for what had been driving my self-destructive behavior. Untreated and un-diagnosed Bipolar Disorder. 

As I continued to read though, my initial tears of joy soon gave way to a despondency. Treatment for bipolar disorder was still in its infant stages. Psychiatry knew little of what caused it and even less about preventing it, with any hope of curing it still decades away. What they did know was how to treat it, with a strong mixture of medications referred to as a cocktail, but only barely though, for Bipolar Disorder on average took ten years to diagnose with another five years from there to properly medicate. Five years??!! I didn't have five years. And that was the average. It could be more. It could be never. 

But Sandy knew where I could get help. She connected me to the UCLA Mood Disorders clinic, a shiny sprawling set of buildings where UCLA's south tennis courts used to lay. They did clinical trials there on all the latest cutting edge medicines. She recommended I enroll in a new trial beginning in the Fall  for a promising new drug named Zyprexa for the treatment of acute Bipolar Disorder. But Sandy's advice came with a strong caveat. If I wanted any chance for the medications to take hold and be effective, I had to stay sober for the duration.

Staying sober would be a tall task, but I had to at least try. What it mainly meant was no more concerts. Possibly ever. The idea of never feeling that way again was at first overwhelming, but now being dually diagnosed, I sensed the challenge before me was dire. I had to make this work; the quality of my life meant nothing if I didn't have one. So the weekend before the trial was to begin, I headed north for one final blow out tour with The String Cheese Incident. Three days carousing around Berkeley, Ca., I went at it hard, staying high on ecstasy and mushrooms all weekend. If this was to be my last waltz, I was going out on top.

Late in the evening after the third show, it was three in the morning of the last night, my emotions raw from an over the top weekend experience. I was sitting in a taxi cab in front of  where I was staying, the driver an older gentleman from India. Beautiful sitar music played over the radio. I asked him about the music and we got to talking. His English was a little rough. I tried to help him with his words. We began to share stories from our lives. He told me about his upbringing, how he and his wife came to America with nothing. Now they had a home and a family and a business. He rode a cab at nights to help pay for his daughter's private school. 

I felt a blush of shame at my life of self-indulgence, my lack of commitment to anything more meaningful than a good time. But we sat in his cab in the middle of a cool night talking about life and family and America. As I was about to leave, he pulled out his wallet to show me pictures of his children. And we got back to talking. I could have stayed there all night, sharing a transcendent moment in a cab with a complete stranger, the types of meaningful encounters I failed at creating in my everyday world. Human connection at its deepest purest level, something I craved more than I knew. To have to say good bye to such magical moments. All in the name of stability.  

Still flying high from the long weekend, I worked my way back to Los Angeles. The next day, still firing on all cylinders, I arrived at the UCLA Mood Disorders clinic to begin a Bipolar Disorder study for the anti-mania medication Zyprexa. Upon arrival, I was whisked away to a room, where the clinic's assistants asked me dozens and dozens of questions, about my health and habits, with a strong emphasis on my moods. Without the first sliver of reflection or measure, I answered somewhat impulsively, eager to get to the medical part of the assessment to confirm my condition.

Questionnaire completed, they took me down the hall to another room where I met the study's primary Doctor. Looking over my answers, the Doctor's assessment was immediate and firm. Bipolar Disorder 1 in a highly manic state. I said hold on a minute, isn't there a blood test or ct scan or an MRI or anything remotely scientific? His answer was no, that diagnosing  Bipolar Disorder was purely subjective and observational.

The head researcher, sensing my discomfort with their assessment methods, tried to calm me. Sitting across from me, he began asking about my upbringing. I proceeded to tell him about my Father and his maniacal ways. How he built a tennis court by himself, how he built all the furniture in our house by himself, turning our garage in to a saw mill, how he built our first personal computer by hand, circuit by circuit, and how he also built motorcycles from scratch, buying all the parts, assembling the bikes in our garage with my brother one gear at a time. And I told him about the time in 1986 when Halley's comet flew by Earth and I came home to a ten foot telescope in our backyard with star charts strewn all around the living room and that the running joke between my brothers and I was if somebody broke a glass at dinner, within 24 hours there would be a glass blowing kit in the backyard with the Dad becoming obsessed with its composition 

To which the Doctor replied. This may not be that big a mystery at all..

Feeling more assured after our conversation, I signed all the requisite forms and waivers, agreeing to join the trial. The drug being studied was named Zyprexa, a blockbuster anti-psychotic medication from Eli Lilly that'd shown great promise treating schizophrenia. Now it was being tested for its efficacy with Bipolar Disorder, particularly in subduing episodes of mania.

Concerned about my hyper-activity, my Doctor also prescribed the benzodiazepine Ativan to calm me down some. Loaded up and ready to go, the combination of the two drugs hit me like an anvil. Calling my confidant Gayle that evening to tell her how it went, she was immediately horrified as I slurred and stammered my way through our conversation, saying this can't be the solution, its just more drugs, different drugs, legal drugs, another chemical solution for a person who shouldn't be taking chemicals. 

And she was not wrong. I felt terrible in every way, just hoping in time my body would adjust.

But the adjustment never came. A couple weeks in to the study, and I was already frustrated. Being heavily medicated felt awful, like being stoned on the strongest marijuana without any of the euphoria. Constantly famished, I would have eaten the steering wheel off my car. 

I called the study several times to complain. They implored me to be patient, to let my body adjust. But my mind had flat-lined. It felt dead, like the drone of a dial tone. Normally verbose and quite articulate, I struggled to string words together in conversation.

And the Zyprexa wasn't just mentally overwhelming. I felt constantly lethargic, my normal athletic coordination now fleeting. I felt like I was swimming in mud. Which was likely a non issue for someone who spent their productive lives in a chair. But I was a high performance tennis coach, who needed to be on in every way. But on was the last thing I was. I was off. Way off.  My once vibrant mind, my pride and joy, had been neutralized. Was this the point with bipolar medications, just drain the electricity right out of me?

I'd spent my life in the hands of psychology. Now I was  in the hands of psychiatry and I could sense the difference. Psychology cared about the quality of your life. Psychiatry cared about keeping you alive. The psychologists I'd sat with were specialists. Family counselors. Chemical dependency counselors. Sexual therapists. Child psychology. Trauma specialists. All experts in their own select fields, they were life enhancers, not life saving mood disorder saviors.

Studying up on Bipolar Disorder, I start realizing it had been active in me all my life. The racing mind, the crushing falls. The hyper-activity. The depressive states. The incessant need to self-medicate from such an early age, the growing grandiosity in my later years. I knew what I was doing wasn't normal; I had other people to compare my behavior to. But the deeply private workings of my inner mind, the racing thoughts, the crazy patterns, my thinking was all I knew. The warped workings of my not so beautiful mind. I knew of nothing to compare it with.

And the grandiosity. Nothing was ever enough. It wasn't enough to be great, I had to be special. It was never enough to achieve sobriety. I had to conquer it, create my own program with my own philosophy a cut above AA, which was only one of the greatest social movements of the 20th century. No, I had to fix it, make it better, inform it of its faults, for obviously I knew better.  

Even my tennis project. It was never enough to be the oldest player to win his first ATP point. I had to chronicle it. Write a book about it. Hire a film crew. Do something that had never been done before. And do it big. For it had to be beyond special or it didn't count. But to who did it not count? Who was I trying to impress. Myself? Or subconsciously my Dad again?

Trying to decode the workings of my bipolar mind. Looking back on my life, I'd gone all in on every hand yet I barely knew the rules of the game. Seated at the table of life, I played each hand as aggressively as I could, yet I couldn't see my cards. But I never let that deter me. I would lose my all my chips, buy back in, yet lose them even more dramatically the next time. Being all in, it was the only world I knew. But how much control did I really have over my play? For now my cards had been flipped over, for myself and all to see. I knew my hand now. But was I seated at the right table? I was 37 years old, I'd been living on the edge for almost 25 years. Was it too late to get back in the game and did I have enough chips left to mount a comeback?

A month in to the study, I was still feeling awful from the meds but I'd begun to settle down. Staying sober, I hit lots of AA meetings and for the first time in a while I was connecting again. So much so, I met a gal, a beautiful sober member of the program. Having had to give up my show going life, she was just what I needed, checking enough of the right boxes ( sober and attractive). I'd finally found something to keep me home at night. 

She had children, two vivacious young girls in a small house. At first, it was a lot, but we made it work. For a while at least. I assumed some responsibilities around the house, quasi step-dadding for the first time and it felt good. We started doing holidays together, putting up Xmas trees, going on skiing vacations. We went to meetings together and did yoga at the gym. From a distance, we looked downright healthy. But as with most relationships in early sobriety, we mistook intensity for intimacy,  moving in together way too fast. I can laugh about the insanity of our decision making now, but I dare you to show me any serious alcoholic in recovery without at least one crazy-ass relationship on their resume. 

One night at home, I explained to her the UCLA study and how the medication I was testing felt too strong and and overwhelming. She proceeded to ask me if I'd ever tried Klonopin. I responded I didn't even know what it was. She pulled out her prescription, explaining Klonopin was in the Benzo class, an anti-anxiety medication she took to take the edge of. The little green pills I'd seen her take in the evening. She then asked if I'd like to try one and I said sure. 

Later that evening, seated in the living room, I took my first klonopin. As I sat, I watched her girls do their nightly thing, fighting and screaming and running around with their Mom right in the middle of it. Voices were raised, tears were flowing, doors were slamming, yet this foreign feeling washed over me.  Surrounded by chaos, I felt oddly at ease. Glassy even, like the calmest of oceans. Taking note, I continued to watch the madness about me, activity that normally would have affected me, yet I sat in my chair on my Klonopin watching the world go by completely at peace.

 

Dumbfounded, I inquired further about what these little green pills were all about. She said they were the mildest of the Benzo class (Xanax, Valium, Ativan) and that she took them to help her sleep, but mostly to manage her chronic anxiety. Then it hit me. All these years and I never knew I suffered from anxiety. Didn't know the first thing about it, yet I'd been living with it every moment of every day.

I flashed back to my childhood years when we heard my Dad's car pull in the drive way. The announcement that bellowed throughout the house. Dad's home. Dad's home. And my brothers and I would all snap to attention, stopping everything we were doing and assume position. Everyone tense and still and quiet, waiting for the garage to close and for Dad to enter, not knowing when he walked in if we were going to get yelled at, tickled, spanked, or worse yet, completely ignored. What fertile soil for neuroses. A veritable breeding ground for anxiety. Walking on eggshells in ever imaginable way.  No wonder all the choking. No wonder all my meltdowns. No wonder the incessant need to self-medicate and my utter inability to manage the stress of any situation.  

The following day, I returned to UCLA for the study. I told my Doctor about the little green pills and that they calmed me down just the right amount. I then told him my feelings about the Zyprexa, that it might be too sedating for someone as active as myself. And the weight gain,  I couldn't stop eating on the stuff and I'd put on 20lbs and I feared that was just the first 20 pounds for there was no containing my appetite on the stuff. I asked my Doctor if it was possible to manage my Bipolar with just the Klonopin. He's said it was possible but that I'd need another more stabilizing medication over the long run and if I liked, he would refer me to the Harbor UCLA psychiatric system for continued evaluation. To which I thanked him and agreed.

Withdrawn from the UCLA study, I now entered the public health psychiatric system at Harbor UCLA hospital and it was grim. No shiny new buildings, nobody walking around with the glow. It was a mass congregation of very sick people, managed by a small army of obscenely overworked psychiatrists. 

I was transferred to a new psychiatrist named Dr Ho, a calm reassuring force of a man with an unflappable manner and a clever wit. He agreed that Zyprexa was too strong, getting me my own prescription for Klonopin but he said I would need a little more, putting me on a mood stabilizer medicine named Depakote that he felt had much promise. And with that, I walked out with a couple of fresh prescriptions and an appointment to see him again in a month. 

And for better or worse, the combination held, with me stabilizing on the new medications all the while thriving at work, sobriety, and home life, leaving me pondering the question why didn't they simply give me this combination at first? 

Ten to diagnose, five to medicate properly...

Behind on the former, ahead on the latter. I guess they know only a little. Depakote was an anti-convulsive seizure medication that through happenstance was found effective in treating Bipolar mania. Why it was Dr. Ho's medication of choice would forever be a mystery. But just like every tennis coach had their own style, so did psychiatrists. He started me on a small dose, slowly building up to his target dosage. And in spite of being pretty medicated, I thrived within the combination of home life, good sleep, no partying and proper medication. And for the first time in a long while, I was all in on the healthy life again. I was doing pretty well.

Somewhat stabilized, I continued to read up as much as I could. Bipolar. It was a mood disorder. Brain chemistry run amok. Serotonin and endorphins, too much, not enough. Theses chemicals circulated, they cycled. Sometimes too quickly, that was called rapid cycling. Like a roller coaster. Up you rise, down you crash and you can't get off. The Bipolar medications were designed to prevent too much of a ride. There was a downer for the ups, an upper for the downs. Raise the floor. Lower the ceiling, always with an eye to keeping the afflicted within range.

Yet I had questions. Everyone had moods. But when did normal mood swings become a disorder? Were their clear lines to cross? And how did addiction play in to all of this?  Now dually diagnosed, was my addiction a reaction to my bipolar or did my bipolar develop from all the years of addiction? I was so young when all my turmoil started, if I could only go back in time. Either way, my wires seemed hopelessly tangled. Treat one circuit, trigger another. Wakamole of the brain. One big puzzle with some important pieces missing, with others jammed in to all the wrong places.

I soon shared my tennis book project plans with Dr. Ho, who immediately counseled caution. He said that in all his years of practice, he'd rarely seen a patient with my history of instability succeed at such a challenging endeavor. He advised me to pause my ATP point book project and focus entirely on stabilizing. 

And I tried to heed his advice, but I simply couldn't. With time running short, I was too invested to pull back, instead taking a far more aggressive tack. In my twisted thinking, my recent Bipolar diagnosis only made my project's quest better. Could I manage both illnesses? Could I transcend addiction AND overcome mental illness, conquer them both through hyper-achievement, overpower them with accomplishments. Far greater men than myself had tried for centuries and failed terribly. Yet my grandiosity wouldn't hear of being cautious, my mania wouldn't allow me to stand down. Being dually diagnosed made my story better I would delude myself, for as I was about to discover, not only did it not make my story better, it was about to get dangerous. 

Late 2003. Broken up, moved out, living alone again, I plotted my next move. Staying the depakote klonopin course, late one evening I started feeling off, developing swelling on my lower left leg. Having had something similar a year before, I didn't panic. But this felt different. I was retaining fluids, at first on my shin, then all over. Suddenly I'd put on ten pounds, then fifteen, then twenty. I was having an adverse reaction to something. But what? Soon I couldn't button my pants nor tie my shoes, the swelling having spread throughout my body. I looked like the Pillsbury dough boy, carrying twenty-five pounds of water across my body, yet I had no idea why. Concerned, I hurried down to the ER. They ran a battery of tests, keeping me overnight for observation. Something wasn't right but they came up with nothing.

The following morning, I headed to Dr. Ho's office first thing to check about my medication. Sharing my predicament, he wasn't sure what to make of me, but as a precaution, he wanted me off of everything. But it wasn't that simple. I couldn't stop taking the klonopin cold turkey or I risked a seizure. He advised me to ween off and that it would take weeks. I tried to explain to him I didn't have weeks, that my body was short circuiting. He countered I needed to be super careful or I'd end up in even worse shape.

I returned home upset and unsure what to do. The medications were working. For the first time in my life I felt my mind at peace, but something with my body was seriously off. So against medical advice, I tried to go off the klonopin cold turkey. Within hours, I was crawling out of my skin, nearly blacking out. 

A few days in, my nervous system was a wreck, but I was toughing it out. About a week in, off everything, feeling borderline insane, the levee broke. I spent most of the evening in the bathroom. Ten pounds the first night. Another ten the second. The final 5 the last night. 

I headed back to Dr. Ho with the news. He was concerned. He was afraid it was the depakote. He had done his homework. In the smallest of the small print, a one in a hundred thousand chance of contracting edema and it was looking like I was the unlucky one. He asked me to do a quick retest, to go back on the smallest of doses to see what happened. And I did. Within 48 hours, I started swelling up again. It was the depakote. 

The medicine that was saving me had now turned toxic. 

Five years on average to get properly medicated. 

Back to square one with my medications. Dr. Ho, sensing my dejection, put me on the anti-depressant Wellbutrin. Something to help elevate my mood, but more importantly, protect me against a depressive episode. Though it was easier to bring a person down with sedatives than it was to elevate them with anti-depressants, the Wellbutrin hit me promptly and hard, sending me flying into an instant manic episode.

Hopelessly manic, I instantly relapsed. But in the couple years I'd been away, the party scene had changed. Crystal Meth was now all the rage. Up for days getting high, I returned to Dr. Ho in a crazed manic state. Concerned, he put me on a high dose of the anti-psychotic medication Seroquel. Pure poison. But it did knock me on my ass, and a few walls too, as I could barely walk down the hallway of my house without assistance. But at least I finally came down and got some sleep.

Back to Dr. Ho the next week. My reactions to the medicines were quite extreme. He tried me on something milder, the anti-convulsant drug Lamictal. It did nothing. They then tried me on the mood stabilizer lithium, one of the first useful medications for treating bipolar disorder. But I clashed with it immediately. The whole sensation was gross, like being plugged in to a light socket with current running though my veins. My first week trying lithium, I was on the court working a normal day under the hot sun and my skin began to blister right before my eyes. Turned out sun exposure and lithium were a fatal mix. Great. I was a tennis pro in Southern California, so cancel the lithium.

Dr. Ho then tried me on one more anti-convulsant, the epilepsy medication Tegrotol. I could tell within an hour it was going to be a problem. I immediately felt dizzy. Unstable. Like instant vertigo. Trying to teach a lesson, I got hit in the face with a ball. Never saw it coming. Losing patience and hope, I just wanted to crawl up in a ball and die.

In Bipolar nomenclature, its called cocktailing. One medicine for the highs, another for the lows, and a stabilizer for the anxiety and a strong sedative to mitigate manic episodes. It was all nuts. I was a guinea pig for Big Pharma, yet all the while a high performance tennis coach to a stable of talented kids, with my hopes of getting back to my playing project still on the front burner of my mind. But it was becoming apparent nobody had any real idea what they were doing. It was all trial and error on my brain, with lots of error, my already frayed nerves getting increasingly raw.

Realizing psychiatric meds were not designed with active people in mind, in an act of impulsive rebellion, I quit all the medications once and for all. I had to figure out a way to live without drugs, legal or otherwise. But my system immediately short circuited, falling in to a depression the depths I'd never sunk before.

Bipolar Disorder Cycling, oscillating between states of extreme moods. Lengthy euphoric yet unsustainable stretches (manias) followed by equally lengthy stretches of bone-crushing melancholia (Depressions) Depressions by themselves were difficult enough. But the descent from euphoria to depression was hard to describe in words. It was free falling from nirvana. Like sky diving. But once the plummet began, how far would I fall? And would it be a soft landing or a crash one? For once the precipitous crash landing occurred, there was no arresting the decline.  

And this crash was brutal. I spent days in bed, staring at my bedroom wall unable to function. I'd broken through, a crash landing. The physicality of it, I felt it in every cell. How far had I fallen and how long was this going to last? I knew it would pass if I could hang in there, but in the back of my head I knew I was getting worse, not better. Was I ever going to stabilize, for this was no way to live. Frightened, I rode it out. I was off everything for a moment. And for that moment, my inside life stabilized just enough.

Feb 2004. Still off everything, I was hanging in there. Still trying to finish my tennis project, I entered another tournament, thinking maybe tennis could help structure my life again. I was 39, playing kids half my age, but I managed to scrape out a couple rounds. Next match, I was up against a flame throwing 20 year old 6'5 Euro-mutant bombing ball after ball down upon me. I was getting overpowered and outclassed, the writing on the wall now impossible to ignore. My time had passed in my beloved sport. Getting crushed, I kept fighting. Because tennis. I saved a bunch of match points but ended up losing another grueling 3 hour 3 setter, but I played a fantastic match, as good as my 39 year old messy self could play. 

At match's end, I was physically and mentally destroyed. Shaking hands at the net at age 39, losing still hurt as badly as it did when I was 12. And then the inevitable post-match cravings to get wasted returned. Could I calm my desire to get obliterated before I hit the road?   

The freeway was close, but the liquor stores were closer. Could I make home without giving in? Hurting and spent, I had little defense against the first drink. Fighting the desire to indulge, I reached my car right when a rough round of cramping ensued. Needing fluids badly, this was the worst of set ups. And as I buckled over in intense cramp-hell pain, an epiphany hit me like never before.  

These matches were no longer good for me. The tennis project I chose to save myself these past few years was literally killing me. 

The energy exerted, the endorphins and adrenaline expended, the emotional roller coaster that was a close match, the hyper-anxiety of being on edge for so long. In my compromised state of body and mind, it was inconceivable to walk away from a tough loss with anything resembling emotional balance. I was regularly subjecting my already thrashed brain chemistry to even further thrashing. A hard wash cycle. To have any chance of living a healthy prosperous life, it wasn’t going to come from competitive tennis. I needed to stop playing, which meant giving up on achieving my book's goal and four years of grueling hard work. 

But my epiphany hit me even harder. Competitive tennis was no place for unhealthy people to get healthy. The tennis court only magnified whatever was wrong in the first place.

And these were the thoughts of an imploding depressed mind. My book project had become my whole existence, my dream, my goal, my ticket out of the work a day world I so loathed. It was also my distraction, my obsession, my protection, my raison d’etre, my answer to every question and  everything. If I my book project was alive, I didn’t have to answer the glaring questions about my rapidly stagnating life. 

But the message was now clear.  I couldn’t play anymore and I knew it and as thoughts of my last few years work being all for naught came rushing forth, I felt an overwhelming desire to drink myself blind.  And I got in my car, cramping and all, hitting the first liquor store I could find and I was off and running again.

Days later, I was still going hard, deep in the midst of a crystal meth binge, and though impossible to sleep on, I could still somewhat function on meth. Up in Hollywood partying around the clock, I finally made it home to hopefully settle down. But coming down from a meth run was the worst. Devastating, physically, mentally and emotionally. Now another depression set in at levels unimaginable. I had broken through again. Drained of all serotonin from my binging, how low would this depression go? 

 I knew coming down from meth was brutal but this was a whole other level. In no state to tough out another week long depression, I went back to Hollywood to score again.

Approaching a week without sleep, somehow I continued to show up for work to teach my lessons. But  delirium was setting in. I would be talking to my students, making a point about a certain tennis situation, then just trail off and start rambling about Astronomy or Politics or how vicious Mariano Zabaletta's forehand was. I'd snap out of it, awakening to looks of sheer horror on my young student's faces. Quick on my feet, I'd excuse myself, blaming my medications on my way off the court, hustling to the bathroom to do another line and salvage the day.

One more time, with my supply low, I couldn't do another depression. I was back up to Hollywood to restock and keep the party going. After a few weeks of cycling, the depressions really starting to hammer me hard. Incapacitated for days at a time, unable to answer the 500 pound phone. I had endured a few tough depressions before but the last one was unrelenting. 

My confidant Gayle began to worry. She wanted me to check into the Psych ward to ride out my detoxification in a safe place. I considered it, but had heard enough of psych wards to know they weren't places I wanted to end up. With crunch time approaching, I had to make a decision. What to do? Do I try one more time to get the help I needed? Do I go to my parents again and ask for help? I had to brake this cycle soon or I was heading for big trouble.

In my room over a week now, I was unable to work or do much of anything except cry and sleep. Hanging tough, my resolve waned. All I could think of was another round of hard narcotics. I tried some of my remaining medications, but nothing worked. My mind was a mess. I couldn’t stay sober and I couldn’t live high, and my depressions were taking me to darker and darker places. I hated where my life was at, and I hated even more my helplessness to change it. What I knew was I couldn’t continue on like I was living. And as I laid in my bed, my thoughts took a turn for the worst. I hated the world of recovery, I hated the work-a-day life, I hated being bipolar and all its dangerous swings, and I hated being an addict. All out of hope, my perspective on the future became seriously skewed. The only relief I could find was in getting high. Really high. 

And then I reached the final solution. I'd had enough, making the decision in March of 2004 at the age of 39 to take my life and put a final end to my madness.  

The dark depressive mind. The insanity of my inner voice. I was done. I couldn't do this anymore. I'd go out in a blaze of glory. I'd be doing everyone a favor. Just get it over with. I was never going to get sober. I was never going stabilize. I was too far gone to make it back. It was time to wrap this life up. 

And without telling a soul, I emptied my bank account, packed up my car and headed east toward Las Vegas with no intentions of ever coming home again

Splitting town. Me disappearing for a few days was not abnormal, at least at first. But when my circle learned I'd completely blown off my job and stiffed my landlord, they started to worry. Within a couple of days, my cell phone was ringing constantly. My boss, clients, landlord, therapist, psychiatrist, friends and my best friend Gayle, all leaving the same message. 

‘Come home…please come home.... we’ll get you the help you need ...but you have to come home first..."

Having made my decision, I tried not to listen to the voice mails for they would only ruin my plan. But I knew word was out  I was missing. Restocked with everything I would need for a good weeks bender, I said good-bye to Los Angeles, the city that was my home. As I began my drive, from the obscenely overcrowded city to the barrenness of the endless desert, images flashed before me. The people and places that made up my life, people and places I knew I would never see again. And though it was all painful, I tried to stay as high as I could so the sadness would only penetrate so far.

And as I started the long winding drive through the darkened desert, my eyes frequently watered. I hated the pain I was going to cause, but I hated the pain I was in even more. Life would go on for my loved ones, slightly diminished for a while, but as life does, it would go on. And as I drove through the night, the details of my final moments still undecided, the lights of Las Vegas appeared in the distance, Sin City, where I would act out my final solution.

But Las Vegas was sloppy. I was lucky to not get robbed, mugged or worse. I stayed there for several days, the city's seediness doing little for my state of mind. By now, I'd begun to answer my phone, having conversations with a variety of friends. I'd concocted a ridiculous story of how I needed to get out of Los Angeles for a fresh start and that I was interviewing for tennis jobs all across the western United States. I doubt anyone was buying it, but as the days passed and I continued to get farther and farther from LA and my life, their voicemails took on an added earnestness.. 

“Please come home...You don’t have to do this...We’ll get you the help you need...Please turn around and come home...please...please ..please"

They were catching on to my condition and my ultimate plan. With my paranoia from the crystal meth growing by the day, I continued to lie about my exact whereabouts. Back on the open road, driving around aimlessly, the long drive gave me time to reflect. I needed to be 100% committed. But I also needed the drugs to mute the sadness of never seeing my loved ones again and the pain I was to cause them. 

It was only a year ago I delivered the eulogy at a large funeral for my friend Woody. He also struggled mightily being dually afflicted with bipolar and alcoholism, before giving up, eventually taking his own life. I remembered standing at the dais delivering my speech to a thousand of his loved ones, stating ‘if Woody could just be standing next to me and look out and feel all the love in this room for him, I think he would have chosen a different path”

Yet here I was, not looking out at a large crowd, but listening to call after call of friends begging me to come home with that same care and love. Yet I just couldn’t feel it. My own internal world so selfishly skewed by depressions and drugs that I saw no possible way forward. I just wanted it over. All the struggles and dysfunction. And I would rationalize that my loved ones knew my battles, they knew I'd been suffering  a long time now. But even acknowledging that, they weren’t about to stand around and let me take my life. So the calls kept coming as I tried to get as far away as possible, to make the task of returning and salvaging my busted life mere folly.  When I finally reached Denver, I pulled up my stakes and settled in. I was getting tired. The final moments of my final spree were now upon me. I would soon turn off my phone and go underground, to prepare myself mentally for the final moments of my life.

The mind races in its final moments. I thought about my funeral. I'd been to many in my years in recovery. Saw what losing to addiction did to families. Watched parents destroyed, staring down in disbelief at their deceased child. How did we lose him? What could we have done differently? I'm sure my parents would experience the same grief, yet my pain was a total eclipse, blocking out all the love and everything good and redeeming about my life. I couldn't feel it. I was no longer a human being. I was a human done. The vice of depression tightening about me.  My ability to escape its final grip receding with every moment.

And all the problems of my life reduced to one. To continue or not.

The final surrender. The ultimate tank.  And you really do look back on your life. It becomes a slide show. A scrap book. Random visions, like a blurry old Polaroid, the edges frayed, the image fading,  Like my life. Recall hallucinations. Yet the memories are real. But they're not, for its memory. Its like watching a documentary of your life. Intriguing. Trying to connect the dots, decode the patterns, the causes, the effects. 

Was I mislead or did I just get lost?

I began to tire. I was losing my grasp of the moment, of my life, yet my memory still active. One last hope for some nostalgia, yet I'm stuck in melancholy. Visions appear, like on old 8 mm film, they're jumpy, speedy, cutting out, jumping back in, then static, the signal lost...

It returns. More images. Yet there's no chronology. No ordering principle. Just flashes from sorted memory. Why this, not that? More questions I could not answer.  And now the end was near. I've crossed over, darkness unfathomable. I'm now powerless to alter my course, a ball rolling down hill, picking up speed. They'll be no soft landing this time or medications to save me. There are no more guard rails. I'm squarely in the danger zone. It was going to take divine intervention from here.

Nearing my final moments. The struggle of life. The constant anxiety. Not unlike a tennis match. Sometimes people quit. Just like there's a tanking spectrum, so there is in life too. People give up, in all various forms. Not because they don't want to win, far from it. But the stress. It needs to end. The human body/mind/soul can only deal with extreme states in short bursts. But something carried us along. The survival instinct. Its deep. Its ingrained. Part of our primordial goo. 

But I simply was all out of try. I couldn't stay sober and I couldn't live high and I wasn't willing to do more. To rob or steal or hurt another just so I could carry on. There was still some dignity in my demise. But I was out of fight, with nothing left to give. I could no longer  see another outcome than defeat. As the chess player tips over his King. The boxer's corner throws in the towel. When the pain of continuing so exceeds the benefit

Decision made. Staying high, blocking out all the people in my life. I'm pretty far gone. I'm getting there. I'm close. I turn off my phone. I prepare for my final moments. I don't want to feel anything. Because if I felt their feelings, I might turn back. I just want to overdose on everything. Feel no pain. Lie down with darkness.

I visualized my parents standing over my casket. How did we lose him?

We had no idea...

((INSERT AMBULANCE REPORT))

There was a blur to the last hours. Ambulance and Police reports and hospital logs fill in the hazy details. They are haunting. They found me beneath my car, parked behind a lesbian bar in downtown Denver. 

Don't ask. I have no idea...

I was found underneath my running car unresponsive, with empty liquor and pill bottles strewn about, with hoses for asphyxiation surrounding my limp body. My only memory was a flash, from a hospital bed in the ICU. I came to briefly to a bevy of doctors working feverishly upon me, pushing down upon my chest, inserting tubes down my throat. I was coding. I was being intubated. Yet it was a flash. I was unresponsive. Yet still alive.  

Days later I came to. This time I was on a gurney, my limbs in restraints. There would be no walking the halls of this hospital. I was under high security and even heavier supervision, being transported up several floors to a secured wing in the Psych ward, ((get name of hospital)) to be held on a 72 hour hold for observation.

Once admitted, I was assigned a case counselor. I attempted to tell my story, but it didn't go well. I was getting called out. I made a serious attempt on my life. I got instantly defensive, defiant, combative. I was snappy, argumentative. It got me nowhere. I was immediately reprimanded and disciplined, sent to my room, interview to be continued later. If I ever wanted to get out of this place, I was going to need an attitude adjustment and fast.

In my room, I looked across to see my roommate being tended to. He was a shell of a man. Young, bearded, he was likely 30 yet he looked 60. His vitals were poor. The attending nurses were imploring him to get up, to eat his food, to bathe and take better care of himself. Basically to rally. But there would be no rally. He looked right through them, ignoring them while rolling over. He had no fight left, he seemed to have lost his will to live. I could relate, but I also couldn't

I had the will, just not the skill. But his appearance didn't sit right with me. He was done. Finished. He wasn't here for a tune-up. This wasn't rehab where you could leave any time you want. This was a locked down psych ward, for those a danger to ourselves and others, incapable of living in the world.

I walked out to the main room. It was busy and bustling. There was a TV, but unlike the scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this one was on. Seated in the TV room, I was surrounded by other patients, people in various states of crazed disarray. A younger patient circled through the room, asking me if I could see him. Another approached me. Leaning in, he whispered to me... Are you with the Agency?

This was Bipolar Disorder at its extremes. People highly manic, detached from reality. The hospital would eventually bring them down. They had drugs for this. But it became clear to me within moments of being there I needed to get the fuck out of there and quick

For better or worse, through all my struggles, I did clean up quickly. Reading the room, I figured out what it was going to take to get out. I again went to my stock answer. I blamed the medications,  eliciting immediate sympathy from the staff. Within a day, my lucidity returned. I was able to converse in recovery terms, sprouting rhyme and verse of how willing I was and how I understood what had happened to me and what needed to be done. 

My need to get out of there magnifying. Yet I needed to be there too. I was not one of them. But I was. I just cleaned up better. Yet I couldn't walk out of there on my own accord. I needed to be released. It was all so eye opening. These people were quite ill. But their afflictions appeared permanent. Mine were of a temporary insanity brought on by a deep pervasive addiction to narcotics, an addiction I was losing to badly, making any chance of stability nearly impossible An entirely different affliction, but no less insane

 By now they'd reached my confidants. Gayle was coming to get me out. Alex my therapist was ready for me upon my return. My friend Bobby would fly to Denver to retrieve my car. A detective friend of mine had been sent to Denver, posting Missing Persons reports for me. I was lost, yet now I was found. 

Amazing grace saved a wretch like me...

Gayle arrived. They released me to her. It had been a harrowing experience for all involved. But I survived it. Detoxed now, clean from all drugs and medication for almost a week, it was a start. But I was returning home to all the same problems I just got tired of dealing with. 

Nothing had changed. Just what was I supposed to do now?