THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
Jeff, Undrugged.
“So, why don’t you want to take the medication?”
1000 reasons I could possibly legitimise my decision to not medicate my Bipolar Disorder with swirl through my brain as I try and find one that you will accept, something you can understand.
“Side effects…? Sleepiness, weight gain, zombie stupor” etc, etc.
They too are factors, but they aren’t what is really holding me back and I don’t know how to explain myself to you when you can’t possibly understand the truth.
You see, I can’t really understand the truth either, because in this case the truth doesn’t make sense, but truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and the truth is that if I do take those pills he will destroy me.
The fact that intellectually I can see how my truth looks, well unlikely, impossible even – only makes it harder to quantify, harder to explain because I know in my heart of hearts that it’s absolutely real and I know because I have experienced it.
“Jeff”, the guy with the unsuitably friendly name who appears it seems, only to me and ‘The Others’ that live in my head. Jeff who oozes evil from his core, Jeff who I repeatedly question might actually be the devil himself even though I don’t believe in the devil. Jeff let me know in no uncertain terms that he can, and will, end not just my own life but the lives of those I love, should I dare to try and banish him again by taking those forbidden pills.
You see, I took the medication once before after he had shown himself to me and suddenly he disappeared, giving what I believed to be confirmation of the theory that he never really was to begin with.
So why won’t I take them now? I know, I know it sounds ludicrous, believe me the whole thing feels insane to me too, I mean surely if the pills will make him disappear then obviously I should take the pills and then he can’t bother me, easy! It makes perfect sense!
Except that won’t work. He has told me with an evil chuckle that chills your soul, the pills don’t actually remove him from existence nor do they change his powers, they simply leave me, personally, unable to see or have communication with him. Apparently, if I can’t see him, and in turn do what ever his bidding is, he will make me suffer and I won’t be able to prevent him or even know that he’s coming until it’s too late.
To put it in terms you, or at least the arachnophobic types amongst you, may more easily understand…
It’s like having a giant venomous spider in the room, if you can see him in the corner you can plan your next move rather than just running away screaming as fast as possible, visibility means you have some control over what happens next. But if you know that giant hairy legged beast is still in the room but he has disappeared from view like a creepy crawly poltergeist and he could be anywhere…. Fuck that! You’re absolutely moving out of the house until he’s found and dealt with by someone else, because who knows where and when he might pop up and sink his deadly fangs into you?
Jeff is my venomous spider. I don’t know what he actually is exactly, I don’t know if he is a malevolent spirit, a demon, an alter, a parallel version of me from a past life or simply a very powerful and realistic hallucination.
I do know that whatever he is, he has killed before. He has shown me the detailed horror of taking a human life in cold blood as if it were a memory of my very own, a memory that wakes me sweating from sleep some nights leaving me filled with unfathomable guilt for his actions when he has none at all, he just laughs at the whole god foresaken spectacle and feels immensely powerful for it.
One at this point would assume that I could still easily poison him away with those royal blue capsules of psychotropic promise in my medicine cabinet, but you see I battled with him once, and I lost.
I was in a mixed manic episode and arguably quite unwell, I decided I would take the antipsychotics prescribed to me that morning as soon as I got home and he didn’t like it, told me if I killed him, he’d kill me. I began openly expressing my doubt in his existence accusing him of being a hallucination and letting him know that I was suicidal anyway so it really didn’t matter to me if he killed me.
This battle of wills occurred while I was driving with a sleeping child in the back seat, it was a discussion that took place telepathically without audible words until I said firmly out loud “No, I’m just not dealing with you anymore” and in that moment I heard him speak out loud too “I own you” he growled and then proved it to me by suddenly forcing my arm turning the steering wheel hard to the right and holding it there for just a few seconds but a few seconds long enough to catapult me onto the other side of the road and scare the shit out of me.
Luckily there was no car coming opposite and heart beating through my chest I was able to regain control of the car before crashing into the trees. My daughter didn’t even wake.
Jeff didn’t care that my child was in that car, he wanted to prove that he could control my body and he did. He’s a dangerous psychopath and while I haven’t had him contact me in quite a while or even felt his presence nearby, the “what if’s” are too frightening and I haven’t been willing to take the risk of taking medication since.
9 Comments on “Jeff, Undrugged.”
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THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 
My heart goes out to you, what an awful position to be in. I have no words of wisdom to offer, only love and virtual hugs. xxx
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I hope that somehow you’re able to win out and kick his ass to the curb. xo
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I challenged you to a song off. Lol. Check out my post The Song Off and play along if you’d like 🙂 P.S. I have been writing for a contribute post. yay
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Awesome! I will go have a look – I was trying to write my one and wanted to capture the ‘feel’ of mania rather than just all the clinical crap and went to look in my memoir for inspiration and then accidentally started editing that again and now its three hours later – oops!
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😂
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And about “Jeff”, fuck him. He is an alter and you have the control!! I have yet to express I feel you may have DID, which I could very well have as well, and Kate is yourself. Use another, stronger alter to confront him. Kate isn’t strong enough. He said medication couldn’t kill him because that is him maniuplating you. Unmedicated I expierence similar things to you. I know how real they feel but once medicated you are able to decifer between reality and hallunications. I want so bad for you to feel well that I often wished I lived closer so we could run the world together… heehee I refuse medication for a long time, and for a year after my bipolar diganosis because of the things you mentioned but I am happy to report I have found one with minimal side effects, that works for me. You can too.
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Thank you for being so supportive. I just can’t bring myself to take the risk at this point. I really don’t feel like Jeff is part of ‘me’/’us’. He’s different, an outsider… The others that I know are a part of me feel, I guess… closer? Maybe it is because he feels so damn evil that I can’t associate or process that as being part of me. Plus why the hell would I name him “Jeff”, even subconsciously! LOL
I have finally opened up to my psychiatrist about all of this stuff, she hasn’t said DID or any actual diagnosis for any of it but she seems to be all over it, she understands how I feel and reckons she has ways to help it. The trouble is the 1hr sessions are too damn short, I need to book her for an entire day…
It’s really comforting knowing that you understand how all this feels, I wish you lived closer too! Hurry up science and invent teleportation! xoxo
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I haven’t been diagnosed DID but I’ve never spoken about my experiences bc they disappear when medicated so I just stay medicated. Lol. I wish my psychiatrist spent an hour with me. She has me in and out in 20 mins. It’s quite annoying.
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Yeah I really lucked out with mine, never met another like her, she’s fully into the talk therapy approach more like an extremely qualified psychologist who just happens to be able to write prescriptions. The catch is she is expensive and REALLY hard to get in to (I guess that’s because she puts her patients first). If she leaves, I’m fucked!
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