For the psychiatrically inclined folks on the board

[Julio Riddols]

I'm beginning to get worried about a friend of mine. I will post a few of her face book rants here and let you guys be the judge, but I think she needs to be committed. As far as I know she has several medications she takes, but I will have to dig up what they are and report that later.. For now, this:

(Also note that these are just a small sampling of the huge amount of crazy shit she has posted for the last 12 hours or so.)

I'm taking my friend to Monday night football game and I want to go but I won't be all paranoid like the scenes I saw Wayne enterprise .. Things happen for a reason .. I work at movie theater , I learn from others never met then I go to real people that I thought be like movies or novellas and I cry myself to sleep for like hmm as long as I wake up and I love myself more and Go be super hero hey DONT do that to emotions ! And feelings .. I don't know call me superhero wtf is karmic payback & yin yang and keep being confused
---
Xmarks the spot I went to comicon but as Harley Quinn .. Batman is not panning out as a valid story for super hero to me what he care about football ... Now back to the future .. What he care about football Methos not Duncan
---
I'm suppose to whip you to test your awareness but not touch you .. Wax on wax off .. Wake up , find solutions , so that I don't hear another Bourne identity scenario is brewing .. Where's my birth certificate and my money for passport .. I trusted I get it like in July .. That's not efficiency in what I'm suppose to trust not drop me like a phone for the new phone .. Drop your world and then ...... Finish what you start if you mean it , talk to me and prove it to me if you want tell me I need take something ... I'm not taking BS name that something like the meds I trigger ... For like how u going so easily give horse tranquil to some broad that has mental condition but it can be she needs face her facts, needs time to develop not solution here revenge, jealousy, umm dumb shit that don't stand no test of time ! Please feed me better BS
---
Dmx gets near google like heck NO , doesn't know that his name stands for Dog and for controller of energy .. BS I have faith .. X I listen , I saw u wearing my lions jersey .. Ok why? Plz don't disapoint me , I know you won't woof !
---
You start telling me your old and this at like 24 I would have a ruler n hit you over head or asked u want me to punch you like are u for reals ? .. Then you start posting throwbacks of only 4 years and call anything the good ol days ... What concept of reality kinda functioning society are we making ,. Confusion definition to me Is the facing shadow, the ego & the soul and like ok I learned 2 ways maybe more and then time doesn't pan out .. They are still going ! Generations because we have sages : dream or goal in life is to ensure ushering a new generation , I was an Usher at a movie theater ... When people threw up at paranormal activity , was odd ... Emotions are my drive and I don't want em messed with ever , mine or others , so I raise awareness if I can , however I can


I'm truly worried for her and hoping she doesn't go out in public in this state. I have a friend who lives in Arizona trying to check up on her now, but damn.. She seems like a lost cause for living a normal life at this point.

[Sun Tzu]

Are each of those a copy/paste facebook status update?

[Julio Riddols]

Yep.

And there are roughly 30 of them which make no amount of sense. Her frightening most recent update seems to indicate that the cops, fire dept and mental health people came by and told her to take her meds..

"The cops just left , the mental health just left , the fire dept just left and I don't know 7 people came to make sure I'm ok but tell me take meds .. Still no"

The "Still no" part worries me.

[Passacaglia]

Can you call her?

[panerd]

Does she always speak broken english or is this part of going over the edge?

[Julio Riddols]

She has always been a little odd, a little scatterbrained in the time that I knew her best.. This was 6 or 7 years ago, before I moved from Arizona. I lived with her and her husband who was one of my best friends.

I can recall one time before, I saw her facebook updates getting crazy and eventually they stopped and like 2 days later she posted something about how she had just slept like 30 hours or something.. I guess she had been up for several days having a manic episode because she hadn't taken her pills.. Now it appears the same thing is happening, but on a much larger scale.

Edit: I can't call her personally, because I don't have her number, but I am in touch with her ex husband and another good friend who live in the area. We're going to keep monitoring things. Might have to try and get in touch with her brother and tell him to just go pick her up and take her somewhere.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

is she manic? does she type really really fast?

[Julio Riddols]

An example of something she posted in August:

There's a difference in humor .. I like witty people , not funny people .. The difference is one has real wisdom and honesty the other stupid and immature .. It's a matter of taste and knowing the difference .. Wit is it !

Currently trying to dig up the post she made a while back about her meds.

[NorvTurnerOverdrive]

she reminds of a couple people i know. mania has peaks and valleys. committing someone is an act of desperation, no? as in she's beyond the help of meds and counseling.

[cadmus2166]

My wife is bipolar and went through hyper-manic cycles for awhile before she was correctly diagnosed. She would write a lot, although not as non-sensical at what I am reading from your friend. Also, when she was in these hyper-manic states, pretty much everything in her life was extremely chaotic. She was very indecisive, often contradicted things she had just done or said almost immediately, and had trouble functioning normally. She is now medicated properly and does much better.

If your friend isn't taking her meds, I am not surprised that she is acting peculiar. She probably is having some sort of manic or hyper-manic cycle. Many bipolar people actually enjoy the mania, because even though in reality their lives aren't functioning the way they are supposed to, they feel like they have tons of energy and often especially creative.

The problem with saying she needs to be committed, is that unless she appears to be a threat to herself or others, it is unlikely to happen. Not taking her meds would not likely be enough, unless she actually had someone who had power of attorney over her. Unless you have knowledge of self-harm or her harming someone else, about the best thing you can do is check up on her as best you can while getting her other family/friends to do the same.

[Izulde]

She's just being post-postmodern.

[Sun Tzu]

Originally Posted by cadmus2166

The problem with saying she needs to be committed, is that unless she appears to be a threat to herself or others, it is unlikely to happen.

Indeed, unfortunately it often takes an act that everyone knows is coming, but actually has to happen, before they'll take someone. The best you can do in dire situations like these is minimize the potential danger they can do when/if that act eventually occurs.

[Julio Riddols]

Originally Posted by cadmus2166

My wife is bipolar and went through hyper-manic cycles for awhile before she was correctly diagnosed. She would write a lot, although not as non-sensical at what I am reading from your friend. Also, when she was in these hyper-manic states, pretty much everything in her life was extremely chaotic. She was very indecisive, often contradicted things she had just done or said almost immediately, and had trouble functioning normally. She is now medicated properly and does much better.

If your friend isn't taking her meds, I am not surprised that she is acting peculiar. She probably is having some sort of manic or hyper-manic cycle. Many bipolar people actually enjoy the mania, because even though in reality their lives aren't functioning the way they are supposed to, they feel like they have tons of energy and often especially creative.

The problem with saying she needs to be committed, is that unless she appears to be a threat to herself or others, it is unlikely to happen. Not taking her meds would not likely be enough, unless she actually had someone who had power of attorney over her. Unless you have knowledge of self-harm or her harming someone else, about the best thing you can do is check up on her as best you can while getting her other family/friends to do the same.

Thanks for the advice.. She doesn't currently seem to be a risk of harm to herself, but I know she is refusing to take her meds.. You may be right that she is enjoying this. She's posted about 10 more status updates since my original post, and counting. I want to be amused by it, but its sad. She is someone you would look at and think you're looking at a very attractive girl with a great personality.. But knowing her would make the thought of yourself being crazy a very fearsome thing to consider.

[cadmus2166]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

Thanks for the advice.. She doesn't currently seem to be a risk of harm to herself, but I know she is refusing to take her meds.. You may be right that she is enjoying this. She's posted about 10 more status updates since my original post, and counting. I want to be amused by it, but its sad. She is someone you would look at and think you're looking at a very attractive girl with a great personality.. But knowing her would make the thought of yourself being crazy a very fearsome thing to consider.

Sure thing. I'm certainly glad that she at least doesn't appear to be at-risk of harming herself. I will say that as she appears to be in a manic cycle currently, this is usually the case. The danger of self-harm tends to come at the other end of the spectrum, when they are in a depressive cycle. Definitely keep checking on her and having friends and family do the same.

As far as the meds go, it is pretty common for people with bipolar disorder to stop taking meds for awhile. If she isn't on the right combination of meds that work for her, they may actually make her feel worse. This happened to my wife in the early stages after she was diagnosed, and she had some pretty awful reactions and side effects from different medications before they found the right meds that balanced her out without making her feel awful in the process.

Hope this helps. I'm no expert, but between what my wife has gone through, sitting in with her often at her psychiatrist, and doing a lot of research on my own, I have learned a lot over the past several years. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions or just need another perspective on things.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

An example of something she posted in August:

There's a difference in humor .. I like witty people , not funny people .. The difference is one has real wisdom and honesty the other stupid and immature .. It's a matter of taste and knowing the difference .. Wit is it !

Currently trying to dig up the post she made a while back about her meds.

Actually this post makes sense.

[Julio Riddols]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Actually this post makes sense.

Yeah, that was my point. She functions pretty damn normally when she's taking her meds. This is how she was when I knew her, before she needed to take anything. Silly, opinionated, somewhat odd, but normal.

[Julio Riddols]

In her post about the meds, which I haven't been able to find, it was a picture of a Ziploc baggy with 5 or 6 bottles of pills in it. The 2 with labels I could read were hard core psych meds, so I assume the rest were for similar purposes. Up until she posted that, I had no idea that she had needed them.

[PilotMan]

Just thank God that you weren't born having to live like this on a regular basis.

[Julio Riddols]

I do every day. Perhaps more than any other fear, I fear the potential that I may one day lose my mind.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Hypermanic seems like a pretty fair guess at what's going on, based on those posts (and assuming she isn't under the influence of some heavy psychotropic drugs or something).

Her brain is working at high speed, faster than she can process the thoughts into a coherent fashion.

And I'm probably adding nothing useful here, several folks have covered this pretty well already IMO.

[Toddzilla]

IMO judging a persons mental state based on facebook is crazy (see what I did there?)

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

Thanks for the advice.. She doesn't currently seem to be a risk of harm to herself, but I know she is refusing to take her meds.. You may be right that she is enjoying this. She's posted about 10 more status updates since my original post, and counting. I want to be amused by it, but its sad. She is someone you would look at and think you're looking at a very attractive girl with a great personality.. But knowing her would make the thought of yourself being crazy a very fearsome thing to consider.

My wife is also bipolar and has been committed twice because of extreme manic and ultimately psychotic behavior. The problem with not taking her meds is she is only going to get worse. As the brain gets more and more sleep deprived, the psychosis gets worse. Unfortunately there isn't a mechanism to force someone to take their meds or get them in-patient medical care before they get really really bad, but it sounds like that is where it is heading.

Her friends should take her to an intake facility where her mental health can be judged and a determination can be made on hospitalization. Do whatever they can to get her there - trick her, lie, bribe, whatever.

My advice for the people close to her is to (1) make sure she is safe and (2) document everything she does that is potentially dangerous so when it comes time to determine if she needs to be involuntarily committed, they'll have evidence.

[Julio Riddols]

A friend of hers apparently managed to get her to take a lamictal and she must have fallen asleep around 11 PM last night. This morning her first post in 12 hours was to thank everyone for helping her and watching out for her.

I know judging a persons mental state by facebook posts is kinda hard usually, but in this case, she was posting non stop from thursday afternoon til about 11 PM last night, just getting progressively more and more out of whack. We're talking an average of a post every 15 minutes or so for 36 hours. you could literally see her mind progressively getting more and more off track. It was like something you'd see in a modern psychological thriller about a conspiracy theorist obsessed with commercials and brainwashing.

Guess we can have a little chuckle about it now, but as the day wore on yesterday it was hard to fathom how the human mind can just simply rebel against someone to such a degree.

[cadmus2166]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

A friend of hers apparently managed to get her to take a lamictal and she must have fallen asleep around 11 PM last night. This morning her first post in 12 hours was to thank everyone for helping her and watching out for her.

I know judging a persons mental state by facebook posts is kinda hard usually, but in this case, she was posting non stop from thursday afternoon til about 11 PM last night, just getting progressively more and more out of whack. We're talking an average of a post every 15 minutes or so for 36 hours. you could literally see her mind progressively getting more and more off track. It was like something you'd see in a modern psychological thriller about a conspiracy theorist obsessed with commercials and brainwashing.

Guess we can have a little chuckle about it now, but as the day wore on yesterday it was hard to fathom how the human mind can just simply rebel against someone to such a degree.

Glad somebody was able to convince her to take her meds at least once. Hopefully she just needed a bit of a push to do so and will resume her meds as normal. I would still have friends and family keep an eye on her a bit for the time being.