Things are great with me and my dear friend who's blogging about her own metamorphosis...

What a weekend! The Fourth was Fantastic... all because of my change, I have to say. To give you an idea as to how great I feel, I didn't touch a drop of alcohol during the big party at the Plaza in Albany for the fireworks. Usually, I'd be downing at least a few beers throughout the long celebration (we arrive at 2:00pm and don't get home till 2:00am!) In those situations, and being surrounded by heavy drinkers and drinking, I'd have been inclined to down a few myself in the past.
NOT THIS TIME! I'm feeling so terrific, thanks to Resveratrol and Christian's low Glutamate diet, that I don't NEED alcohol to eliminate my social anxiety because it's gone! I didn't need spirits to lift my spirits. I was sooo proud of myself. (P.S. - alcoholism runs in my family, too! I'm a mental illness smorgasbord!)
But not now!!
Okay, maybe a month from now things will sink back to my old illness ways, (of course I have to concede to that possibility) but right now, things are fantastic. And I seem to have resolved the sleepiness issue by cutting back on the Resveratrol by half. I improved further by, as I indicated earlier, changing my actual diet to include NO FOOD ADDITIVES of any kind - whole foods only!!!
Now I guess for me to be absolutely pure about it, I should eliminate all protein from my diet for a few days, like a fast, as Christian indicated. But I'm going to try to exercise some restraint from diving in again too fast as I usually do and just to start slowly (at least by my quick standards) cutting out the unnatural, added Glutamate. The natural Glutamate in my diet, will hopefully be taken care of by the Resveratrol. Gotta pace myself.
BUT THANK YOU CHRISTIAN! I really feel a difference. It's absolutely amazing because now I feel like I can actually see a source to my old misery. What I mean by that is this:
It was told to me by mental health professionals that I would always be afflicted with this condition. I agreed to that to a point. See, from what they knew, I would always be Schizo Affective Bipolar Disordered and be completely dependent on their best known remedies: Pharmaceutical Medications. As helpful and appreciative as I am to these drugs and this help, I knew that it was just "emotional Tylenol" at best. It didn't cure anything or heal anyone. It just mechanically filled in the bio chemical gaps that my own brain was producing. Well, for that, thank you modern medical technology.
But, ironically, the Modern Technology part of that title, now holds suspicions for me. I now see an accidental role by modern food technology in my condition in the first place. These newly scary additives in food that most of us Americans eat, may have a responsibility in my mental health. See, if I was genetically predisposed to be Schizo Affective Bipolar Disorder, it MAY be due to the fact that my mom ate all this synthesized and modified junk in her food before I was born. This could have damaged me genetically when I was being formed. (BY THE WAY, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT MOM!!) Then I grow up eating it as well and it begins accumulating in my system. When my body stops maturing physically at 24 or so and coupled with my own consumption of excess glutamate (I really think I was addicted to it's taste because looking back I've always craved ALL foods full of Glutamate and MSG!!), the predisposed genes mixed with the large volume of MSG eaten culminating into the mentally ill mess that I WAS.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It's just a layman's hypothesis based on my sudden health due to the changes made by my diet and my discovering Resveratrol's positive role in my own mental health. (As I mentioned in my recent post, Resveratrol seems to drop Glutamate levels in the brain and blood!)
This is ALL wonderful because, by changing my diet, I change the illness and take away it's ability to affect me. This "news" in of itself makes me happy. It's all theory, but the theory seems to be backed up by personal, anecdotal results.
So I continue to be having a great life...

and so is my friend from Grammar School who just had surgery for weight loss. She just came through to the other side of surgery a few days before and she's doing well! This is immensely important to me, not only because I was concerned for her and want her around as long as possible, but because her and I go way back. We were struggling kids with our own problems who bonded back in the day. I knew of her problems, she didn't know of mine, until just recently but we struggled together none-the-less.
And here it is, at the wonderful age of 35, we are both changing in the ways we both wanted and, interestingly, we're BOTH blogging about it, even before the other one knew that the other was blogging too!
Now, last week, I was at the school where we'd both gone, in the gym watching my 6th grade niece graduate on to 7th grade. Her class was singing "You lift me up" by Josh Grobin and I could not contain my tears. I was looking at her, all the while looking at me at her age. The struggles, the pain, the heart ache, that I felt everyday then, all came rushing back to me. My heart cried...but in triumph. Here I am 25 years later. I... we, Bec... survived it all. And now I "feel" the real me... and you will soon "see" the real you. We can live true to ourselves for the first time.
I can't believe it's taken this long to say it but I'm so thankful I can considering so many that can't... our lives ARE good. I tear up now, but they are beautiful tears pondering a beautiful moment in our personal history. I share it with you Bec. Thanks for being here with me. I love you.