Often mental illness is seen as a common denominator to
bitter acts of mass murder. Mental illness for me didn’t degenerate into long
term insanity, violence, or make me join an extremist cult/religion; it led to Truth.
I never planned on being a Christian, so this story includes much of my
searching for spiritual truths in metaphysical, mystical places. Life in my
twenties included a dark journey through mental illness as I acted upon runaway
emotions. Leading up to that time I had no treatment for mental conditions, this
coarse and sour ordeal was so unexpected.
The Bible claims to be God’s very words, an unchanging
absolute Truth upon which all purposes of creation itself is explained to the
extent that God permits. I’ll admit it’s not very popular believing that the
Bible is absolute Truth; However, a claim like that needs to be studied,
explored, and tested prior to rejecting it by anyone on a quest for their own truth.
God has never asked our intellects to take a back seat while faith drives,
instead He invites us to be teachable, investigative, and full of faith. Upon believing
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ I found God’s grace, forgiveness, redemption, transformation,
adoption, and a plan for my life.
Therefore, I will be describing my spiritual journey from a
biblical view because I have read it, tested it, and found the Bible to be
Truth. It is a book that accounts for unseen things, spiritual and supernatural
things depicting them as a battlefield for the souls of mankind. I know
firsthand that the mind is a battleground where spiritual forces contend. Interestingly,
the Bible contains many accounts of demon possessed people. Our time and place
is certainly not any more holy than Bible times, so why have descriptors such
as demon-influenced vanished from our
society? Where have all the demoniacs gone? When did we eradicate demonic
influence?
At 24 years of age I was diagnosed Schizoaffective
(Schizophrenia and bipolar interacting together). Today my Bipolar 1 diagnosis
remains however the schizophrenia diagnosis was withdrawn because it was
confined to the psychotic episodes only. All Bipolar is a chemical imbalance in
the mind thought to be caused by both nature and nurture. I have a history of
mental illness in my family, perhaps suggesting an origin.
Disillusionment, Footholds, and Strongholds
My first psychotic crisis (or episode) came about through my
thought life without the influence of drugs or alcohol; I mentally created a
fake reality and stepped into that world passionately -like I had a discovered
what was really going on in this world around me- when really, I was losing
footing on reality. During this loss of control, my mind was working
frantically to keep on justifying the events as they unfolded: it all made
sense to me. But I was not in my control of my thoughts, and things were just
going way too fast. I couldn’t sleep or “turn the switch off.” I left reality
for the directives of my mind. I accepted a bombardment of conspiracy theories,
and ultimately, I knew it was all worth it because I was going be elevated as
god or, more accurately, the last reincarnation of the Buddha.
After three weeks of being in a locked mental ward, the heavy
antipsychotic meds and mood stabilizers started to kill off my imagination and
emotions. But I still had a persistent presence within me keeping the many
theories alive. For many days I was not in control of my words or actions.
My brother Olivier felt that there was a spiritual side to my psychotic
episode, not just a nervous breakdown or an episode of intense mania. He prayed
much and acted upon the some biblical directives. He, his wife and some others came
to the hospital to pray over me, read the Scriptures to me, asked me to repeat
some verses and left a Bible with me.
In light of the Bible, I have found that there are two
spiritual factors that contributed to my psychotic episode aside from the
mania. As a free-willed person I invited demonic influence into my life by
choosing to sin. I loved doing sins and giving into temptations, it was my
ticket to self-discovery. Bit by bit, as years went by, tendencies gave way to
more indulgence; I mocked God and created my own satirical religion. The destroyer
at work in the spirit world Satan, took note of me and the ethical ground I had
surrendered to sinful deeds: I became an opportunity. Ephesians 4:27 says “and
don’t give the Devil a foothold.” Some translations say “give no opportunity to
the Devil”. These footholds are outside
elements I chose to invite into my life, and because of their
qualities/consequences I gave Satan an increased opportunity to mess with me. My
media choices, likeminded friends always repeating the same folly together, and
over indulging my senses were footholds that gave great permission to demonic
exploitation. Footholds often lead to strongholds, the second key factor that
invited demonic influence into my life.
Strongholds devastate because they reside in the inner person. What are the inner lies that I
believed? What fermented into bitterness and caused me to surrender ground over
demons unknowingly? For example, from a very early age, I chose to be bitter
about my father dying in an avalanche. That fueled me to blame God for years,
and to hate the life He gave me. Another stronghold I had involved the concept
of being an artist, a writer. I wrote narratives that always contained themes
of being alone, antagonized, rebellious, and prideful. Much art stems from
those themes. On some level I was just working at my craft, being transparent
in my writings. But for me those themes took my spirit-life with them. This
misuse of my imagination became an all-access pass for Satan to claim more
ground and solidify his lies in my heart. My psychotic episodes seeded and
sprouted from the soil (or ground) I surrendered in pursuit for my own artistic
truth. I was deceived (as the Bible puts it) on a heart level.
Jesus said of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning,
and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he
lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of
lies.” (Jn 8:44) Like angels, Satan and his demon can take up residence in
people for varying amounts of time. Mark
5:2 refers to this as “having an unclean spirit”.
My first psychotic crisis cost me my job, my roommates, my
girlfriend. I moved back in with my mom and a year later experienced renewed
psychotic episodes while on anti-psychotics. This time strongholds of
hopelessness, meaninglessness, numbness, and alcoholism defined the next two
years. I found my way to the mental hospital two other times with further
delusions of complex religious grandeur elevating me. Somewhere between the
objective reality of this world and the subjective reality in my mind existed
an onslaught of emotional waves lapping at my perceived reality straining to
grasp actuality and exchanging it for something suitable with me in the center.
The most effective part of pharmaceutical intervention in my
demonic possessions was that the medicine pacified my emotions. The thoughts
are still there but the emotional passivity lets the thinking go by without
action. The spirit world still provoked the emotions to feel, but the medicine
helped me become despondent to provocations. I consider it a mercy that I
always took my medicine during these years and never felt like I didn’t need
it. I believe emotions are patterns that ferment behaviors into addictions and
emotions when given permission to lead a person can mislead greatly.
Unrecognizable
Real, lasting change—eternal change—came on November 10,
2006. Amid the fullness of this dark depression and hopelessness, my car was
stolen. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. This event made me cry
out in prayer, asking for the free gift of salvation only Jesus Christ gives.
To be clear, I cried out not the Jesus I made up in my head in the mental
hospital, but the historical resurrected Jesus Christ of the Bible. I believed
that Jesus Christ suffered for the things I had done. He was nailed to the
cross, died to take my sins away so that the God’s wrath would pass over me. Jesus’
resurrection pleased God and authenticated His sacrifice by fulfilling the
righteous requirements God demands.
This bold certainty of
forgiveness means that I am going to be with God for eternity, starting on that
day. Jesus gave me a perfect, loving, heavenly Father; I am an orphan no
longer. Added to all that is the Biblical certainty that God indwells me
through His Holy Spirit taking up residence in me -no longer can just any
spirit indwell me because God put a “No Vacancy” sign on my heart. I have the
Holy Spirit now. God has a plan for my life; I don’t have to force myself into
being an American success story for the sake of my own pride or comfort. God has
my best life underway.
I put my entire broken life on the table before God. I became
willing to quit whatever He asked no matter, because He was going to do the
quitting through me. By His grace, God was living through me as he enabled me
to follow and trust Him at His Word. I prayed for a steady conversion, because
I didn’t want to return to those dark days of psychotic episodes. I found that
placing my faith and love in Jesus ahead of doing things “my way” honored by
God. I could tell, because He lifted my worries and showed me a Truth I could
stand on. I started to trust the Bible, and soon found it to be more reliable
in good decision-making than even my best intentions. I asked the Spirit of God
to apply biblical truth to my life, especially when it meant uprooting those
strongholds!
I am still visited with seasons of mania, but the footholds/strongholds
are not as numerous, and each manic thought is met by the Holy. My composure
and countenance is different. I praise God for taking my psychotic episodes
away. The sleepless conspiring and delusions of grandeur are out of me. I am a
vapor, a blade of grass, always in need of humility. Time with God in His Word,
in thanksgiving, and in prayer. God’s Sprit even tells me to calm down at
times. I’m not in control, God is. I’m not out of control either, thanks to
Jesus the Rock.
In the early days of my new life as a Christ follower, my
habit of self-medicating with alcohol still held sway. That stronghold was a
tight clamp that I didn’t want to get rid of. I thought it was stronger than
me. So night after night I would show up in the liquor store and view the
selections. No longer was I shopping alone; every time I would have God’s
Spirit nudging me with the thought that in Jesus, I was a new creation, and
that the old self was gone. In times of temptation, He constantly reminded me
that I could talk to God about the temptation rather than just give in to sin.
Healing from Bipolar 1
I take responsibility for my past insanity and fully accept
that demons exploited the mental territory I opened to them. The spirit world
fought many battles in my brain, it’s a rich mercy to state that Jesus won and
established me in my right mind once again.
My pastor in Chicago put me in touch with a young
Psychiatrist who was a professing believer in Jesus. He was cautious to affirm
my understandings but admitted that there was a spiritual component to some
cases of mental illness. I saw him for years for medication management. He
rarely charged me for a session and we always prayed together before our
meetings. God used this man to speak into my disease, to help me understand
that my mental illness was not purely spiritual either.
In addition to the meds, he gave me tools to fight my
chemical-manic imbalance. He told me that the effects of Bipolar are magnified
when certain choices are made: not taking medication, sleeping less than 8
hours a day, using addictive substances. He suggested that if I could keep
those three things under control, the mania would recur less, and it would be
easier to deal with.
Next, the doctor and I identified triggers—or “red flags”—of
my persona when in a period of mania. He also identified people close to me
that needed to monitor my bipolar, people who could recognize those times when
I was acting out. These carefully considered tools represented a far deeper
investment in me than any of the past psych docs had provided. I was grateful
for such grace. God used my time with my psychiatrist to equip me for the road
ahead.
As God regenerated me, I wanted believe that Jesus had more
freedom, that He had healing for me, a miraculous renewal. I talked with my
psychiatrist about how God could heal me altogether from Bipolar and finally
stop taking Lithium. His response was straight forward as he opened up the
Bible. We talked about how Jesus many times just spoke “be healed” and people
were healed supernaturally on the spot (Matthew 8). The doctor did not dismiss
my faith, but he was clear to offer me other Bible passages too like when God
did use things to heal. I was forced to think of my Lithium as that bronze
snake God told Moses to make so that those who looked to it were healed from
the plague (Numbers 21). We also studied King Hezekiah’s illness that was going
to kill him; after appealing to God, the Lord didn’t just heal the king, but
rather instructed him to use a poultice of pressed figs on his wound (2 Kings
20). This insight from the Scriptures gradually, gently changed my mind about
healing from Bipolar as I accepted that I could be on Lithium for the rest of
my life. By the Spirit’s encouraging, I have been loyal in taking my meds,
sleeping 8 hours, staying away from addictive substances, noticing red flags,
and allowing my wife to monitor my mood.
4 years ago, I returned to Colorado. My new medication manager
was shocked that I had been stable for close to ten years. What surprised her
even more was that the level of Lithium in my blood was not enough to make the
drug effective for Bipolar treatment given my weight. I had been taking an
ineffective amount of lithium for an uncertain amount of time. She gave me the
choice of increasing the dose or weening off the drug completely and be closely
monitored while doing so. It is to the glory of God that I tell you: it has
been a year and half since I last took Lithium. I want to testify that it is
Christ in me that has brought such grace, regeneration to those afflictions once
so completely consuming.
I’m still a sinner, but now with a Savior. I have found that
God’s faithfulness in upholding His Word has transformed my past spiritual
strongholds of lies, replacing them with pillars of Truth. As the book of
Colossians says, “He (God) has rescued us (believers in Jesus) from the domain
of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. We
have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, in Him.”(Col 1:13-14)
