STEPHEN FRY

I am not really sure how to explain this. My son with his bipolar/ADHD seems to wear his moods on his sleave. Is that just because of the added ADHD? For every mood or idea he does verbalize, is there another 10 he is not? Scary! There have been a few instances over the past few years when, or so it seemed that he all of the sudden grabbed a weapon (ie. grill fork, knife) and started making threats (we now keep knives and scissors locked in the garage). Then again, when he visits his dad he does not act out to this degree. My son says it is for fear of corporal punishment, which I don't use. But that tells me he is capable of making a choice.
Yesterday we were at a store and my son was looking at halloween costumes (his favorite holiday). I was in another section and he ran up behind me with a prop axe or something. His mood has been mixed as of late and sometimes when he does things like that I wonder if he does sometimes think of killing me.
I hope you got the jist of why I had these thoughts without me doing an actual comparison/contrast with certain instances pertaining to your book as to not spoil it for others.

The passage you included could not have rang more true. ADD has always felt like that to me. Having just been diagnosed myself just a few months ago I always thought I was lazy, indecisive, spontanious, easily bored, unmotivated, spoke before thinking.....I had no idea there was anything called executive functioning. So it sounds like with the bipolar by itself, people are goal oriented and don't have as much trouble controling impulses. By impulses I mean like smacking someone, throwing something...like a knee jerk reaction without thought to consequences.
My son voices alot of goals, big goals. But without executive functioning I don't know what. The bipolar meds help to some degree, but not at all for the ADHD. All of the traditional ADHD meds have horrible effects on bipolar. That is how we found out he is bipolar in the first place. I was scared shitless when I started on the Adderall that the same thing would happen to me that happened to my son, because of the genetic component of bipolar.
I am not feeling all that focused right now. I have been sitting here for over an hour. I wrote one thing and deleted it, now I have this. So what the hell, I am going to send it. I guess I have too much food for thought at the moment and need to process some more. You made sense. I am glad I explained, without explaining too much.

For me I put on my happy face for everyone, the anger came out in situations were I was more relaxed and let my guard down, thus exposing the anger/whatever else that was there.

Make sense?

KSx

Just to pick your brain a moment if I can. I took my son to have his blood levels checked the other day and he damn near passed out. He did in fact pass out when he got he last immunizations. So my first thought was, well I hope that means I don't have to worry about any cutting type self harm. He has talked about getting tattoos when he gets older and I joked that I did not see any in his future. He laughed.
Last night he said he heard about "vampires", not real ones but they drink each others blood with permission of course. I did not act shocked, just told him that was a good way to get diseases and pointed out that he cannot even stand getting blood draws.
He said he would not let anyone take and drink his, but when he gets a cut or something he sucks his own until he cannot get anymore and it is so good and really addicting.
Not sure if this is something to be worried about?
XXX

Thank you for the reasurance. He does bang his head at times, but so far that is about it, besides the verbal threats. Other times he will run off out of anger or just out of excitment and has almost gotten hit by a car a couple of times. Not because he was trying to, just because he was not paying attention.
Oh, I forgot, he used to pick the skin off his big toes until they get sore and sometimes bleed. That usually happens when he goes on visits to his dad's house. When he gets home I see that he has been picking, and then he stops after he has been back home a bit. A nervous thing perhaps?
Thank you for the reasurance again, and your insight. Most appreciated.
XXX