A Few Days in My Lives

I just returned from a refreshing camping trip to Lake Casitas. It's in Southern California and an easy drive from my house. They have over 400 campsites of all types in more than 10 separate campgrounds.

Friends

I was fortunate to spend time with quality friends. You know, the ones you could spend hours upon hours with talking, joking, and carrying on. The kind you hope stay in your life forever.

There were friends from the old guard and some newer. In all there were 11 people, four dogs, and four campsites that were all next to each other. We had a large buffer and plenty of camping, cooking, and recreating.

Great Campsite - Kingfisher #25

Friends and Bipolar

Most of them already knew of my bipolar disorder. A married couple I met once before did not know. When around good friends the subject of bipolar or mood states rarely come up. I'm fine with this. I'm also fine (most of the time) talking about my disorder. I just go with the flow on this topic.

My symptoms were mostly well behaved this weekend. I checked out early (10 pm) Friday night from fatigue and fairly heavy depression symptoms towards days end. After sleeping for 11 hours I got up and then took a three-hour nap Saturday afternoon. This made it so I wouldn't crap out early that night. So, besides seven hours with pretty bad symptoms the outing was mostly symptom free. This was not possible just three months ago!

Disordered Talk

I talked to Adrian, the husband of the couple I didn't know so well, about bipolar some. He's studying to become a nurse so he knew more about psychiatric disorders than the average person.

Talking with him was interesting and engaging. Turns out he knew some things mental, including the areas of Pharma, adverse effects (e.g., withdrawal effects) from psych meds, and even the beneficial effects from the cannabinoids in marijuana. I haven't had a conversation at that "level" in a long time.

Life

The take home point here is the extremely positive effect friends can have toward living a full life. The wonderful connection and personal interaction with close friends is refreshing, relaxing, and fun!

There was just one thing missing. I mean everything went really well for sure. But I could of used a little more cowbell. You see, I got camping fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell!