Keeping The Piggy Bank Full

I don’t have a particularly exciting story that got me here.  I didn’t drink until I was in college but started drinking heavily in my late 20’s.  Until then, I was what could be called a social drinker who on the outside was a responsible drinker.  But that was not the case. You see, I have bipolar disorder, diagnosed when I was 19.  From a biochemical perspective, alcohol is a mood-altering depressant.  Most people have what I think of as a mood thermostat.  Some people are set with a generally happy mood, some a bit blue, and circumstances can drive folks up or down.  But, they have a biochemical ability to return to normalcy.  I don’t have that.  I have to take pills to have that.  And drinking is like pouring gasoline on a fire when you’re manic-depressive—my mood is jacked up enough as it is.  I drank to escape the pain of being locked up in mental institutions, which in turn led to more hospitalizations.  In my homegroup, we read “How it Works” where it says, “There are those too who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest”.  That means something very special to me.