Hopelessly devoted

In addition to the Bipolar Disorder and my hopeless devotion to my dogs and my orchids, I am also in recovery and am learning to become hopelessly devoted to that aspect of my life as well. Now, I haven't had a drink in five plus years, but I just started a recovery program for both alcohol and drugs recently. Recovery seems to be a full time job. There are meetings to attend, literature to read, service work to do, prayers to be said and phone calls to make. Add all of this to keeping up with the various needs of my orchids and taking care of the dogs and I keep pretty busy. I also have to keep up with my relationship with my partner of 12 years; any good relationship takes some tending for healthy growth. Then there's the monkey wrench of mental illness. During a recent hospitalization, a doctor reduced my anti-depressant by 2/3. This increased my depression immeasurably and when I left the hospital, it took a week to get enough medicine back in my system so that I felt human again. Why that doctor felt the need to mess with something that was actually working for me, I'll never know. What I do know is that with the depression came paranoia and auditory hallucinations and suicidal thoughts. I'm glad that is over and if I can keep my stress down, I should be able to avoid another occurence for several months. This should give me the much needed time to tend to my recovery, my relationship, my dogs and my orchids.