Bipolar II disorder: Another Chicagoan's story

Like Jesse Jackson Jr., Harlan Didrickson has the illness and has had weight-loss surgery

August 26, 2012|By Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune reporter
(Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune)

Harlan Didrickson was a model of middle-class stability.

He lived with his partner of more than two decades in a handsome Victorian on a leafy North Side street. He worked as manager of executive and administrative services for a high-powered architectural firm, where he made hospitality and travel arrangements for large meetings and oversaw budgets that ran into millions of dollars.

He was not the kind of person who would go to lunch with friends and come home having spent $4,500 on a puppy and a month of obedience training.

Or who would get up at 2 a.m., go to Dunkin' Donuts, then drive to Indiana and back, snacking on Munchkins.

But that's who he became.

Four years ago, his life was upended by bipolar II disorder, the same illness recently diagnosed in U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

This is not Jackson's story. People with the disorder — nearly 6 million in the U.S. — have unique experiences with the illness, which cycles between moods of manic energy and deep depression.

"The symptoms of bipolar disorder can be very different from one person compared to another," said Dr. John Zajecka, a psychiatrist with Rush University Medical Center who specializes in mood disorders.

Manic states leave some people euphoric, others irritable. "There are people who can function their whole lives in these hypomanic states," though they may lose marriages, jobs and money, Zajecka said.

Depression, too, can appear in a variety of ways. Some sufferers stay in either mania or depression for decades; others cycle between them many times a day. And people respond differently to treatment.

But Didrickson's struggle provides one look at how bipolar II disorder and its treatment can affect a life.

And he does have one key factor in common with Jackson. Like the congressman, Didrickson, 54, had weight-loss surgery before being diagnosed with bipolar. He had a gastric bypass procedure; Jackson had a duodenal switch.

It became a serious complication in his treatment. The weight-loss procedure, which causes the body to absorb fewer calories, prevented him from absorbing the full dose of his antidepressant medication.

Didrickson's illness began when he started feeling extremely stressed at work. He considered himself skilled at his job but felt beleaguered by office politics.

"I felt as though I was fighting a lot of fights on different fronts in my life, and that I didn't have the wherewithal, the energy," he said. "I was profoundly unhappy."

He changed jobs, twice. He still felt miserable. And he also felt trapped, having to do work he now found unbearably stressful.

More than 60 percent of people with bipolar engage in substance abuse as they try to self-medicate their inner pain. Didrickson was among them. At night he would wash down some hydrocodone, an opiate he had been prescribed for a back injury, with beer. He would stay up till 4 a.m. watching TV, then take Ambien to fall asleep.

"At 6 o'clock I woke up, got dressed and went to work. I was probably still high," he said. "Then somewhere around noon, I would crash. I would go to the men's bathroom, go sit on the toilet and fall asleep."

His partner, Nick Harkin, a publicist with an entertainment and lifestyle marketing firm, had no idea how deeply troubled Didrickson had become.

But then Didrickson didn't show up on time for a planned out-of-town getaway. When he arrived the next day, he was morose, secretive and exhausted. "It was a very abrupt shift," Harkin said. "It was quite obvious that something was very seriously wrong."

Didrickson was thinking of ending their relationship, he told Harkin. And he wanted to move to California's Death Valley. He wanted to start a new life.

"I was falling apart," Didrickson said. "It was this desperate: 'I will do anything to get out from under this pressure.' It was like having a heart attack, and if you don't get out from under it, it will kill you."

Back home, he called a friend who had once been his therapist. She asked if he was suicidal.

"I was, like, 'Of course I am. I think about it all the time,'" he said. "'It's the only comfort I have.'"

She told him to see a psychiatrist. He did, and was told he had depression — a common initial diagnosis for people with bipolar, who generally seek treatment during a depressed phase of the illness.

The antidepressant the doctor prescribed didn't work. Didrickson developed memory problems, to the point where he forgot how to do simple tasks like using a phone.

"I could not take a shower, because I couldn't recall the sequence of activities ... turning on the water, stepping into the spray, getting wet, washing," he said.

He lost 40 pounds and neglected bathing and grooming. And yet there were also times when Didrickson felt powerful, energetic, nearly like a superhero. He could do anything he wanted, no matter how dangerous or destructive, with no consequences.