Bipolar disorder and other mental issues || Acharya Prashant, at Kedarnath (2019)
Question: Two years back I got diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. After being under medication for eight months, I realised that I am very much dependent on it. So I skipped the medicines and found a very stupid alternative, which was smoking weed. And then I got dependent on that too. Eventually I started to get away from that too.
Is there any way possible to get out of bipolar disorder? Or do I just need to ignore that and live a normal life, because it does affect my work life and my personal life?
Acharya Prashant: What do you call as ‘bipolar disorder’ ?
Questioner: According to the doctor, or according to me?
Acharya Prashant: According to you.
Questioner: On one hand I have bifurcated views on everything, and most of the time I lose the will to do something. On the other hand, I feel confident enough to win the world. Sometimes I feel that I am nobody, and sometimes I feel that I am on top of the world. There is too much of desire for sex, and there are few other things involved. That’s what I feel.
Acharya Prashant: Is this not the case with almost everybody in general. The degree of the disorder might vary. But is this disorder fundamentally not present in everybody? Inconsistency of views, instability of opinions, fluctuating identities, swinging perceptions of the self, is it not something that happens with everybody?
Your case might be a more pronounced one, a more exaggerated one, but what you are experiencing is the basic constitution of the mind – it lives in dualities, knows only dualities; that is what you call as the ‘poles’. Sitting on one pole you feel attracted to the other, there is always something else that is beckoning, there is always an alternative, there is always something more important, there is always an error, there is always a need to correct, there is always a need to change and become something or somebody else.
And if that is the basic constitution of the mind, then won’t it be great to firstly understand the mind itself – the working of the mind, its urges, its actions, its motives, its processes; it’s beginning and its end?
Is there an end to the bipolarity that the mind lives in, without going into the One that is not polar at all? The world is full of poles and dualities, the mind lives in dualities. And all that is just too much upon the mind. Won’t it be good to venture into the non-dual? Won’t it be good to understand what this duality is really all about?
I am not sure whether physical medications can do that. It doesn’t seem like a problem with the physical brain. Were there a problem with the physical brain, which is the physical body, then probably a physical treatment would have worked. Is the problem really to do with some cell or some tissue that has gone wrong? Or is it something else?
Maybe what you are experiencing is almost necessary part of being alive, and hence every living being experiences that. We said, “Almost necessary,” therefore not compulsory, therefore it is possible to breakout of that necessity. It is possible to be free of that polarity.
There has to be determination to go into the route of the swings, desires and urges. There has to determination to be free and well. There has to be a resolve to understand. There has to be a resolve to take the right medication.
And it is quite possible that the right medication need not be a pill.
