I've had Mental health issues as long as I can remember. I started cutting in third grade. I never wanted to live, I remember praying at night in elementary school, for God to take me in my sleep. I have been in treatment for my mental health forever. I also advocate for mental health, take crisis calls and educate others. I'm probably more familiar with mental health than any other topic.

I didn't know much about bipolar, just the basics, but something I definitely remember was my son's eyes. Since he was maybe age 8-10 when I noticed his pupils would get so big! If he had been a teenager with those eyes, I would have got him drug tested. I didn't know that your pupils can be a sign of your brain health. We found out at age 14, he had bipolar 1(the hardest one). Nobody had ever mentioned bipolar eyes to me until last year when I saw it on TikTok and was reminded of my son's eyes. When he graduated he was working in the emergency room, was in college, had so many friends, and he was very passionate about social issues. I had never really seen anything.I considered mentally ill, until he was 21. He knocked at my door really early in the morning, Said he didn't know where he'd been for 4 days. I'm not sure, but I think it was the first time I had seen him, or anyone manic. I was scared, how could he not remember 4 days! What had he done in those four days and did anyone get hurt?

I called his psychiatrist and then moved his things into my place. Like I said, I've always suffered from my mental health, been depressed, but when he moved in, his mental health scared me. I remember that first month he stayed in bed and cried the whole month. With BPD I'm up and down several times a day. So watching him be that low for that long, I was scared he was going to end it, but he didn't. He did however, without my knowledge, begin to self medicate. I tried to get him in mental health programs, but I was frustrated because he was an adult and would refuse things. He started asking me about what meds I had. "RED FLAG" I immediately said, " You can't take other people's medicine!" I knew if he asked me, then he asked others, and so many of the pills on the street are really fentanyl. The fake pills look identical to the pills that they are sold as. That's when I started getting Narcan and started passing it out in my community. I told him so many times. He bought a xanax from someone in Jan 2023, and never woke up. My kids were removed by my mother when he was 11 because I had a problem with xanax. I quit the day they were removed. They hated xanax because of that. How ironic, it was my drug of choice that killed my baby- the remorse.