Hollywood is a lot like the rest of the world, though writ large for everyone to see.  Whatever actors and musicians and non-specified celebrities do pretty much mirrors what we “regular people” do in our own lives.  We all hide what we don’t want seen.  The average person hides medicines in a drawer when company comes, safe from the prying eyes of those who just must peek in the medicine cabinet.  You know you’ve done it.  Or we see a shrink in another town so nobody we know will see us going in or coming out.  Or we travel under pseudonyms and have or assistants fetch our prescriptions so TMZ doesn’t find out what we’re taking.  Or we just lie and keep secrets and hope certain things about ourselves never come up.  No matter who’s doing it, or how much money, power and influence they wield, it’s still subterfuge.  And it may be killing us.

Here’s what I think about poor Ms. Murphy.  She had diabetes, which is “documented”.  She suffered from some kind of body image issue, which is sadly de rigueur among young starlets.  She probably had bipolar disorder, according to the anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications in her possession.  I’m a little fuzzy on the rest of her condition…perhaps she had a heart problem, and/or an addiction to pain medication.  Or she had surgery and needed narcotics from a few different doctors so the tabloids wouldn’t report it as addition.  I would wager that Brittany needed some time on “the inside”, not drug rehab, but some kind of psychiatric facility.  Of course going to rehab is like going on vacation in LA, so much so that we watch people do it on TV shows.  But checking into a mental ward is verboten, just ask Mischa Barton, whose 5150 psych hold earlier this year was blamed on some bad dental work.  Uh-huh, blame it on the No-No-No-No-No-Novocain.

At this most wonderful time of the year, we should stop judging people, least of all those about whom we know so little.  We should also start fessing up about our own shortcomings, likely a source of our criticism of others.  Celebrities are easy targets because they seem so untouchable, so “perfect” that we have a hard time believing they could have real problems.  Stand back because I’m getting on my soapbox again.  Many people criticized Maia Campbell’s erratic behavior caught on tape this year.  Message boards said things like “she’s a crack whore” and called her terrible names.  The truth is, Campbell – like her late mother, author Bebe Moore Campbell – has bipolar disorder and was very much out of treatment this year when a sick-minded man exploited her condition on videotape and on the Internet.  The truth is also that Maia was on drugs, and she was selling her body to numb the pain of her own disease, or of her mother’s death, or whatever human emotion was so unbearable it needed to disappear, but quick.  Ready for some more truth:  you’ve been there too, where it hurts so badly you don’t think you can make it another second.  Fortunately, nobody was there with a camera, or a videotape, or a recorder poised to make money off your pain.

By the way, what secrets would we find in your medicine cabinet?

Many people noted that these are depressing times we live in – recession, unemployment – and people are seeking treatment for their emotional maladies. Perhaps. Others remarked that after 8 years of the Bush administration, it’s surprising that more people aren’t on psychotropic drugs! Point very well taken!

However the majority of the respondents blamed Big Pharma, doctors and Americans in general. Apparently marketing works, so now we can just walk into the physician’s office and demand Prozac or Zoloft (we always could) just because we saw the ads on TV. Apparently doctors are more scrip-happy than ever (probably they are, since insurance companies actually squeeze doctors as much as consumers. No wonder Obama wants to overhaul the health care system) and the dispense anti-depressants even when they’re not needed. Then there’s my favorite explanation: Americans have really high expectations, leaving us depressed and despondent when life isn’t easy, so we head for the pill bottle instead of pulling ourselves up by our pioneer bootstraps.  Here’s the link to the blog so you can see what I’m talking about:

http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/05/more-than-1-in-10-americans-on-antidepressants/

REALLY?!?!?!?

Brace yourselves, because I’m getting on my soapbox.  How about anti-depressant use is up because diagnosis of depression has increased.  Depression is not “the blues” or “I’m just feeling sad”.  It’s a disease, and one that can be fatal if left untreated.  Sometimes treatment means talk therapy.  Sometimes it means therapy and medication.  Sometimes it means therapy, medication and ECT.  What it doesn’t need is people dismissing it as something you can get over if you just try hard enough, pray hard enough, or wait for it to go away.  Then when you can’t just shake it off, you feel weak and stupid and – you guessed it – more depressed and completely misunderstood.   And every other mental disorder is like that:  a disease that has a treatment, even though its “all in your head.”  Nobody would ever make comments like this about cancer or diabetes or heart disease, and I’m outraged.

Tracey’s gettin’ upset!  Unlike the armchair psychopharmacological specialists on the CNN blog, I actually know what I’m talking about here.  It’s confessional time, kids.  I went to Yale.  I have a masters degree.  I’m relatively successful, career-wise.  I’m smart.  I’m funny.  I’m beautiful.  I’m incredibly modest.  And I’m also bipolar.  Clinically not casually, like when people say things like “I’m really manic-depressive with my cleaning.  Some days I have to clean everything.  Other days I just don’t care”.  (Yep, that’s a quote, and a not-at-all valid way to describe your cleaning habits.)  What “bipolar” means is some screwy stuff with how your brain is wired, and you process things differently than people with good circuitry, and that wiring makes you feel different: really “high” some days, and really “low” others.  When you feel different, you act different.  When you act different, sometimes you do stupid shit that you wouldn’t ordinarily do.  Like getting drunk on St. Patty’s Day and bringing home some Marine whose name you’ll never remember.  Or perhaps you stay in bed all day and cry, or sleep, and beat yourself up about all the ways you’re worthless.  Or you go to work and can’t understand anything because the part of your brain that concentrates just isn’t working.  And you get angry because if you can’t do your job, you really are worthless, so you cuss out a few coworkers, the boss, even the head of HR.  You didn’t really mean to do it, but it just kind of happened, and you’ll sit at your desk and cry about it for the rest of the day.

For those of you who think it’s weakness, run through that list of things in your head while you’re looking for a job and trying to graduate from business school.  Or when you’re writing some 20-page English paper right after your mother died.    Or when you’re writing a blog that’s simultaneously witty, funny and heartwrenching.  Oh yeah, and do it all without telling anyone, not even your family, what you’re going through because you’re embarrassed, you think it’s your fault for not trying hard enough, you don’t want them to think you’re just too sensitive, or you just need to go to church, or you should get a boyfriend and that will make you happy.  Then tell me that if someone told you there was a reason for the way you felt,  that you could try something to make it a little easier, that you wouldn’t try it.  I’ll give you that answer:  fuck, yeah, you’d try it.

My road to bipolar disorder (and antidepressants and mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety meds) was through workaholism, church, smoking, overeating, a GP who prescribed Paxil that I never got filled, therapy, “oh, you have low-level depression”, Zoloft, more therapy, out-patient therapy, a little Xanax, moving a few times, short-term disability, some other drugs that didn’t do shit, lots of crying, hospitalization (thanks to the people who visited me and brought me goodies!) and, FINALLY, a very useful medication cocktail and doctors that I like and can work with (that would be 3 of them, and they actually talk to each other…who knew?)  I’m doing really well, not an emotionless zombie in spite of the massive dose of meds I take every day, laughing and crying when its appropriate, like a “normal” person.  But I’m gonna keep taking them as long as I feel this good.  And contrary to popular belief on Jack Cafferty’s blog, it’s actually more expensive to pay for my meds than for all the doctors (Stay tuned for a blog about my experiences with the insurance company.)

If anyone had any idea how angry I get when people dismiss mental illness, they’d run and hide from me and then they’d educate themselves and donate some money somewhere.  You should do that too.  The latter, not the former.  The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has a campaign they call “Stigma Busters”.  It’s designed to help people understand that mental illness and taking medication isn’t “weakness” or “laziness” or anything else that it isn’t.  Stigma keeps people quiet, keeps them embarrassed, and almost kept me from writing this because what if a potential employer sees my blog?  I’ll never get a job.  And everyone will know and they’ll look at me different and treat me all weird.  And I’ll never have another date again, because who wants to date someone with bipolar disorder?  Perhaps I’ll have to worry about all that.  Perhaps I won’t.  But I’m more worried that many other people are suffering RIGHT NOW and they can get the help they need.  One of those people was a good friend of mine, and now she’s gone, so I’m doing this for you Valerie.

Look at the PSA below, donate to NAMI, link to this blog post and pass it around to other people you know so they can learn something and, hopefully, laugh a little.  And don’t treat me any differently, unless its to applaud my courage or my writing skill, or offer me a book deal.  I love that stuff!

FYI, the bug guy hit on me while I was writing this blog.  It appears that my romantic record remains intact!

Educate yourself: http://www.nami.org

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT5LKShjA7Q]

If you’re on Facebook, donate to my Cause, Fight the Stigma of Mental Illness: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/57339/15471722?m=1b2abeb2