cry for help and wanders about link bipolarity-autism

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Dear people out there,

I was diagnosed as having aspergers about a year ago, after having finished university magna cum laude and facing major depression because of that. I did not understand how I had ended up in such a grim situation - the darkness of having the world and all that's familiar to you collapse - after having done everything I was supposed to do and meeting all the expectations set by the outside world. I had been haunted by serious mood-swings for years and left with the idea that something was terribly wrong inside my head. At that point I was intent on taking my own life, yet felt like I still owned it to myself to explore all that I could think of that might make things better for me. I felt I was but one step short of having reached that point: I was yet to find psychological assistance and see what that could do for someone like me. My psychologist made me visit a psychiatrist, who had me enter a psychiatric facility for a month. There test were done and the expectations of my psychiatrist were confirmed: I had aspergers. I have been taking several types of medication, antidepressants and antipsychotics. I have recently stopped taking them as I felt they took away my creativity and the highs (as well as lows) which had brought me this far in life. Besides, the drugs did not make the suicidal thoughts go away. I even went through a number of failed attempts (though the people around me don't know). Psychoanalysts amongst you will probably conclude from that that I didn't really want to die. Whatever else, I can assure you that I definitely didn't want to live. Drugs simply didn't work for me. As for therapy, I've had private counseling for over a year now, and I have to conclude that talking does very little for me. I im going to end that treatment tonight. I'm quite desperate by now. So little is left standing between me and the inevitable end.

Apart from all that, a question has been nagging me. Yesterday I've watched "The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive", by Stephen Fry, and was shocked to recognise so much of what the people in that documentary testified. I have been experiencing episodes that could be described as manic, having delusions of grandeur which made me totally unadressable (my MA-thesis promotor can confirm that), hardly sleeping and working fulltime for two weeks at a time and periods of serious depression, not being able to go out and simply having to say "hello" to people I've known for years, thinking I was the lowest of low things that walk this earth. The question I'm referring to here, is of course if there is a corelation between autism on the one hand and bipolarity on the other. Otherwise I might just have gotten the wrong diagnosis. I don't know. Perhaps this is just a cry for help to the world out there. Please don't leave me on my own here, because I am scared more than I can express.

I thank you for reading this,
and remain your humble servant,

Beampje

Life can be scary.

I'm trying to get used to the thought my life is over, but it's hard. Somehow I almost believe I'm half my age and I still have a life ahead of me but I don't. My depression and illness stole pretty much everything. These days I think I'm OK if I can just feel somewhat fair and do anything, but really... I have no life. I'll never do anything I want to. Still I go on day after day with the daily stuff, never to make any progress.

Sure... not what you wanted to hear right..? Maybe I should say something on a day when I'm more positive, I do have better days, but I guess I just live for living then, because no real progress ever happens. The things I plan on never come true. But I SOUND cheerier. And I wonder how on earth I could feel so bad.

Bleh.

I have found a med that makes me able to not just vegetate, and it did take me many tries. Tried more meds than I have fingers and toes. I don't believe in talk therapy, that just made me angry.

I experienced a period of several years of increasing bipolar/hypo-manic-depression/mood disorder from my early twenties until the year that I turned 29, when I found out quite by accident about the links between diet and mental health, and went on a preliminary "exclusion fast" as a test to see if it could possibly apply to me ... Bingo!! ! After four days of nothing but water and some apple, I woke up feeling as if I been living in a shopping mall, under an airport, next to a building site, over a motorway, ( without even realising it ), and suddenly, in the space of a night, ... the noise/din stopped. I cried, I felt such relief.

I had no support to begin with; it was before the internet and forums etc. Both other people and I used to think that I might be imagining things; there were still only a few books on the subject, ( one of them actually called "*Not* All in the Mind", by Richard Mackarness :lol ), and science on the subject was still in its infancy, ( whereas now there are hundreds of studies/papers looking at how diet and food intolerance affects mood and cognitive function ), ... and it *is* very hard to change the eating habits of a lifetime, so my progress was erratic, slow, frustrating, confused!

But, after several years of stop-start exclusion dieting I have now been gluten-free for almost three years, ( and I also cut out sucrose last October, because it seems to trigger anxiety ). I have not been manic since that first exclusion period, and the depression has gradually but surely evaporated the longer, and more consistently, that I have cut out gluten, ( it takes 5-7 days completely gluten-free to see the first effects, another 20-25 weeks to see the biggest positive results, and some benefits can still be kicking in up to a year or two later ).

PS. Finding out about aspergers and the autism spectrum three and a half years ago was like finding the last, big, piece of the puzzle; the problems that I had which could *not* be "cured" by changing my diet, and which had confused me so.
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