Personal Story
When I moved to Monterey County in 1992, I experienced a nervous episode or bipolar breakdown after moving here with my belongings in a U-Haul truck. The timing was not ideal, not at all. I was hospitalized at Natividad Medical Center and thanks to the intervention by Interim, I went from the hospital to a care facility in Salinas on Soledad Street. The world had stopped spinning and thanks to the hospitality of the Interim facility I was able to put myself back together emotionally so I could take the next step.
I’ve thought that the best way I coulid describe my dilemma at that time was that I had one foot on the boat and another on the dock, a predicament that requires movement one way or the other, quickly. I moved to Pacific Grove into the back apartment of a residence, enrolled and began attending Chapman Univesity in their masters program in counseling psychology.
Monterey County Behavioral Health provided me with group and individual support, case management services and psychiatric care for the management of my bipolar disorder. I maintained stability until I was almost ready to graduate in 1995 – the county helped me at that point as well as did Interim did in providing me housing at their Franklin Street facility in Monterey. I graduated in August of 1995.
Again, I went through a recovery process. It seems to be in my nature to go into crisis and then come back from it. My stepmother said that I reminded her of one of those clowns designed to be pushed over but that would always come back to standing up.
I went to work for Interim as a group facilitator at the Our Voices Community Room in Monterey on Pearl Street. I think one of the reasons I did well at that facility was that I had a dual role: I was the person responsible for the facility and when I led groups or became involved with the clients, they identified with me because I made it known that I was bipolar. Perhaps they felt it takes one to know one, but it worked well for a year.
David Howell was my supervisor during that time and he let me learn and do the group facilitation job with minimal supervision but more in the role of a coach. We worked well together and I was becoming a part of the Interim organization and liked the people in their system. Dave did give me good feedback and he suggested that I did not see the bigger picture of what the Interim system was about.
When I realized I had almost completed my trial work period with the Social Security Disability System, I resigned from Interim to preserve my disability status. Had I continued working there, my understanding was that I would lose my disability bene4fits while working on a part-time job that would not be enough to use to support myself, and additionally, none of the hours I worked for Interim counted towards my internship requirements as a marriage and family therapis intern.
Throughout my time here in Monterey, I have felt a curious type of split emotionally and mentally. By “split,” I mean that on the one hand I was a Monterrey County Behavioral Health client, and then on the other I was performing as an intern therapist. On one side I needed to be sick and on the other I needed to be well. The county health program and the appropriate medications helped me maintain my wellness from when I graduated in 1995 to 2001.
In 2001 I became seriously ill and required hospitalization. According to the Community Health Chief of Psychiatry, I had been medicated in a way to rely on an anti-epileptic medication primarily and on my lithium carbonate secondarily. When the hospital straightened that out, I once again became well. However, until such time as I became sick enough to require hospitalization, my counseling with Family Service Agency of Sallinas was affected negatively and I stopped seeing clients and chose to resign.
It was at t his point I decided to no longer continue as an intern and abandoned my goal of being a marriage and family therapist. Looking back, I think my bipolar disorder and the stressors of being a counselor were not a good fit with one another and it may well have been the best choice to make.
Angry at the county psychiatrist who had made the medication error, Dr. Christopher Kasparek, I chose to no longer work with the county doctor and went to a private psychiatrist instead. With the stressor of abandoning my career goal, I again developed bipolar disorder dysfunction. Interim came to my aid and provided me with temporary housing and then because the timing was right, I moved into a beautiful new apartment complex in Monterey they called Horizons.
To have my healthcare, I went to the Community Hospital Behavioral Health system for counseling and psychiatric management of my bipolar disorder. Life then was a period of good adjustment, to therapy, medications and new goals and schooling in computer repair and maintenance.
However, once again in 2005 and then continuing for an extended time, I was not well. I was frustrated, angry and medications did not seem to provide help. My stepmother passed away and left me a considerable inheritance and I received it and then went into an extreme episode. The money seemed to disappear in my confusion and I was confused and angry and then became delusional (apparently this is a facet of my diagnosis) and was evicted from the Horizon Apartments.
I tried to again find support in the Monterey County Behavioral Health Department. I was out of money, at my wits’ end, fired as a patient from Chomp and self-medicating with alcohol. However, while I qualified previously because I had both MediCal and Medicare, since I had left the system I could not go back to it. It was the law. I was living in my car, delusional, a practicing alcoholic and then went serioiusly into debt on my credit cards (35k). I was destitute and then became homeless.
I lived like a fugitive in the abandoned houses of Fort Ord, sneaking in after dark and living in one or two of the houses I had sort of homesteaded to be homes. I had my belongings in storage but not for long. I volunteered at Habitat for Humanity and in a delusion of generosity I gave them all of my power tools and equipment from 15 years as a contractor, down to the last hammer and nail.
I slept down at the beah, made a hideaway under a tree and would come back to it night after night. I’d get up in the mornings and go to AA meetings downtown, and I credit the friendship of those people that sustained me emotionally, certainly to the extent of helping me not to drink. I stayed briefly in the office and then at the home of a Monterey doctor but I found myself becoming despondent, seriously so, and I was hospitalized at Chomp for treatment and medication.
My temporary housing with the doctor had ended; he was willing to help me with my alcoholism but not in dealing with my mental illness. I wandered the streets and over to Salinas, stayed at the Victory Mission during the cold of winter.
IHELP provided me a way of shelter for 6-7 months. I enjoyed the camaraderie of other homeless men, good food once a day and learned to sleep on hard floors with only a 2″ foam pad underneath.
Interim again tried to help to get me into HUD housing but I was still too lost to pursue their helpful lead at the time. Central Coast Center for Independent Living helped me find the place where I now live, Sherwood Village Apartments, and I have been putting my life back together for a year and a half.
My 2006-2008 period was a time of delusional thinking, hallucinations and seriously poor judgment. Under the 5150 criteria, I was most certainly a hazard to myself and at times to others. However, I did not find myself hospitalized and helped with my recovery; I went it very much on my own, and did not do it well.
