Wes was 30 when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder following a psychotic episode that was traumatic but brought about a sense of clarity.
“I was in a long cycle where I would take antidepressants, which if you have bipolar can make you manic. I would start to feel better, feel a lot better. I would quit the medicine, feel really good for a little while, get reckless, get really depressed, and then repeat the cycle. And I did that for 15 plus years.”
In 2021, Wes broke the cycle and continued to take his medication. What began as happiness quickly turned into delusion and paranoia.
“The main plot line for me was that there was this big war that I started, that I was like the key figure to win the war.”
These delusions culminated in a traumatic episode in which Wes ran away from his family whilst they were at the hospital together. Terrified, Wes had ran home and hid from the police who his wife had called. Eventually he revealed himself to his dad:
“This was like the most important moment of it. He put his hands on me and he said, ‘you’re going to have to trust me like you’ve never trusted me before’. And I totally calmed down for a moment.”
After going to the hospital, Wes was diagnosed with bipolar disorder:
“It took like a couple of days of being on antipsychotics to kind of come back to reality. But then it all started to really make sense. And you know, it is pretty heavily devastating and crushing and embarrassing but I will say there was a little bit of a relief.”
Though he and his family had been through a traumatic time, it gave Wes a sense of understanding and optimism for the future:
“Everything kind of clicked and I became very accepting. I started really wanting stability, I’m married, I have a nine year old and it was one of those things where it was like ‘okay, now that we’ve got this figured out, if I can figure out the right medication, like I can be reliable 365 days a year’, as opposed to, you know, having these really high highs and low lows.”
“A lot of people get diagnosed with bipolar disorder and it’s very disheartening because they feel like ‘everything’s going to be hard, always. There’s nothing I can do to be fixed. I’m going to fail at everything’. It’s actually super manageable when properly medicated.”
“I just had the mindset of ‘we just got to keep trying’. We got to stick to it and figure out what’s gonna work best. I had unbelievable support from those around me.”
As a Christian, Wes takes comfort in the belief that God is looking after him, a belief that has helped him move forward:
“The most important thing is my faith that God has a perfect plan for me. Nothing that happens changes that. Everything has happened the way it was intended to. I don’t need to know the short-term answers. I don’t need to know why things happen because there’s somebody much smarter than me orchestrating them and it’s happening the way that it’s supposed to happen. I would say, you know, everything that’s happened has only ever strengthened it.”
“Life’s not fair, not fair to anybody, what happened was out of my control, but I can control now how I respond to it. It could be so much worse and I have so much to be thankful for outside of the hardships.”
