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Jason Hill's other than honorable discharge from the Navy was signed by PN1 J.W. Sarpy on March 16, 2000. He'd popped dirty on a random piss test upon the return of new recruits to Great Lakes in January. They were coming back from Christmas break. Jason had been a sailor for only eight months and seventeen days. At the Captain's Mast, the non-judicial disciplinary hearing where a commanding officer holds sway over a bunch a cases that he has to decide on, the soon-to-be ex-sailor acquitted himself well, mumbling something about "the Navy losing a sailor but the world gaining a better human being." The Captain praised him, lauding him for having been voted Division 317's Most Outstanding Recruit-only four months ago-nevertheless ruled that he had conducted himself to the detriment of the good character of the Armed Forces. I was 28.

If we are to accept as fact the findings of many experts, no less than 20.9 million American adults suffer from a mood disorder, and out of that number the ones who have bipolar disorder is much smaller. One out of four of them. And it's only two out of every hundred of us. Aye, there's the rub. Due to its rarity, it's a complete mystery to a lot of you but it means the world to me and millions like me. The median age for the onset of bipolar disorder is 30. Among those who have it, though, quite a few of them are very much younger than that.

I maintain it's an illness indeed. You are happy when you should be sad. You are depressed when you should be over the moon. When it's at it's worst, nothing can console you. Some say it's not an illness, just a lack of sticktoitiveness or an addiction to "drama." Bipolar disorder is an illness in which periods of a normal mood swing constantly back and forth between happy and elated feelings to extreme pessimism and despair.

In science, there is no argument about it. Researchers and scientists are discovering it tends to run in families. They are learning that it is a problem with the neurotransmitters in the brain and the lack of proper functioning. Many of those with bipolar disorder self-medicate. They love those periods of mania where everything is sunny and it looks like it's going to be a beautiful day. You feel like nothing can stop you from achieving whatever goal it is you have in your mind. You lose sleep. You exercise poor judgment and often spend money unwisely during these periods. Among males, addiction to online sex sites is not uncommon. You are easily irritable. Among adults, mania brings increased sexual drive. Worst of all, as the racing thoughts and unrealistic belief in one's abilities increases, you don't see that there is anything wrong. Sound judgment goes out the window.

I carry all of my pills in my wife's former nail case now, and sometimes let her dispense them to me, often going behind her back and taking more than the daily dosage in a desperate attempt to change the way I'm feeling. Now. As the recently late George Carlin said, "There's only the immediate future and the recent past." He wasn't talking about bipolar disorder, but it sounds pretty much like what the world feels like. "There is no now . . . no present," he said. Sometimes I look at my brief stint in the Navy as a failure. I really thought that was going to be the career for life for me. But then, every enterprise begins like that. That is, the ravages of the disease return and wreak havoc and you learn, over and over and over again, that ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE is not just a sign on the side of the road at a dangerous site. It's your life.

Learn more about this author, Jeffrey Jason Hill.
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