Bipolar.
It's a life threatening illness that people don't dare talk about. Or maybe just I don't dare talk about it in regards to me... I have learned, it brings trouble and people will use it against you. But it needs to be talked about.
Elisa Lam.
You can read about her here: https://people.com/crime/what-to-know-about-elisa-lams-death-featured-in-netflixs-the-vanishing-at-the-cecil-hotel/
here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elisa_Lam
you can watch the mysterious elevator video of her here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rfLSVIA0L0
And the criticism of the Netflix documentary -that I agree with, although I am not so sure the criticism goes far enough- you can read here: https://www.cnet.com/news/netflixs-cecil-hotel-documentary-an-irresponsible-bloated-mess/
My husband was watching the Netflix documentary about Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel in LA and her mysterious disappearance and death that were never satisfactorily explained. After enduring some of the second episode I was bored with it and a bit annoyed in ways similar to those mentioned in the aforementioned article on cnet.com. So I did a little research on my own.
Apparently Elisa Lam had bipolar. That same life-threatening condition that I have and that I have learned is not safe to talk about since I will, more often than not, be discriminated against for it and/or treated differently in ways that tend to feed the negative side of normal human duality and the more abnormal duality of bipolar. This is a contributing factor to why so many people with bipolar stop taking medication. Something that the autopsy reports of Elisa Lam suggested she may have done. It is reported that trace amounts of the medications used to treat bipolar suggest that she was either "under-medicated" or had stopped taking her medication. The number of pills they found support that finding. So does her behavior.
So many interesting things to note about this girl and her story. Like the hotels location and connections to Skid Row and the drug culture that heavily infiltrated the area. Elisa Lam was decreasing her mind altering drugs when she was in the midst of heavy mind altering drug using demographic. Having been manic, I might suggest that the same highs that others needed drugs for, Elisa Lam may have been able to achieve by avoiding her drugs. I wonder how her location and associations there effected her decisions in regards to taking her mind-altering medications. Personally, when I have felt there is a comparison of me to a Skid-Row kind of crowd, I find I want to distance myself from any association with the my "mental illness" and any mind altering drug use, even though they are prescribed by a doctor.
Elisa Lam was only twenty-one and the documentary mentions that she had been acting a bit strange. Strange enough that it was making her roommates uncomfortable enough to have her moved to a different room. When we are in hypomanic ups sometimes it makes people uncomfortable. But there are also things that people love about it and in so doing they encourage it. Unfortunately, when authentic bipolar is the reason for it, those lovable attributes are too easily overlooked by the annoying and/or uncomfortable ones that people who live with you or who have closer associations are more inclined to notice. Those are the signs and symptoms that indicate you are becoming increasingly less stable and increasingly more vulnerable. Yet, just as it seems in Elisa Lam's case, people tend to ostracize and punish the vulnerable sick person more than they think to intervene and get them help.
The video.
There are so many comments and speculations about the video. It is commonly expressed that she was acting strange. But I don't see it that way. I see the creative playful or paranoid imagination seeping out of a person with bipolar. I speculate, in the video, she is in a more playful phase. Her body language, movements, etc. seem much more relaxed and playful then tense and scared. As we are watching the elevator video and listening to the speculating commentary on her hand movements and abnormal behavior, I see nothing particularly abnormal... But I also have bipolar, so what is not-so-abnormal to me can be seen as very abnormal to others and I will confess and explain, though I have behaved in similar ways and could see myself behaving very similar at age 21, I was not and am not all that likely to behave that way when I am appropriately medicated and stable. From what I see, though it is strange that the doors don't close Elisa Lam could easily be in a hypo-manic phase. It may have progressed to full-blown mania. Either way, I can easily see how she could end up in the water tank on top of the roof.
Here is what my manic comprehending mind would suggest:
The elevator was not working. Elisa opted to take the stairs. At some point, either for the purpose of getting to a different level, or just for the sake of having an exploratory adventure (which she was obvious attracted to or she would not have been in LA in the first place) she decides to take the fire-escape route. Why not go all the way to the roof? So up she goes. One report says certain areas were locked, which would be all the more exciting to explore; the locks presenting a puzzle and/or a mystery begging to be solved. Once on the roof, she sees the tanks and decides to check them out. One report says there was not a ladder, I do not know if that is accurate, but if there was not and I was in Elisa's some-level-of-manic shoes, I might wedge myself between two of the tanks and spider-crawl up to the top. Being in her shoes I might feel rather proud of my developing super powers and reveling in my height achieving victories might arouse my appetite for even more adventure.
The heavy lid that one report says was not on the tank when the man found Elisa Lam's body, may have already been off when she got to the top. but it did not need to be. At that point, assuming she is in the magical-manic-wonderland, she would have had added strength and removing that lid would have presented another exciting challenge. Super strength proven once again, there are several plausible manic minded rationales as to how or why she ended up in the water tank. I suggest three.
1. Elisa decided it would be fun and exciting to go for a swim and she dove in without thought on how to get back out. No need to think about that, she had super-powers. She'd figure it out. Or she already did but since I don't know the layout of the tank I cannot offer explanations to that one. ...Except, that maybe she tied her clothes together and then tied them to something on the exterior and her make-ship rope failed to hold when she tried to exit.
2. She was with someone else who dared or encouraged her to go in the tank and she did. It can be very easy to talk a manic or hypo-manic person into that. Then the other person could not help her out so they left dropped her clothes in and left.
3. This next scenario I am suggesting only a true manic-mind can fully understand: There has been some fascination with how her death is similar to a movie plot, Dark Water, and while it is possible foul play could have been involved and someone else was behind a plot mimic, it is also very possible she had seen the movie and in her manic mind the movie became her story and she became the movie. In this scenario, her demise was imminent without someone there to intervene.
4. It is possible she actually dropped something and tried to retrieve it. Once in, she removed her clothes to keep her from sinking. This is similar to the Dark Water plot mentioned in the previous, the difference being, it was truly unrelated. Or she saw something in the tank and dove in to find out what it was.
5. Depending on her level of psychosis there could have been some other form of a manic-manifestation that coaxed her into the tank.
When manic or even just hypo-manic, a person's rational thinking abilities are compromised. The level of mania, the level of psychosis, the amount of time they have been struggling with the imbalance, the experience, exposure, training, etc a person has with recognizing and handling those symptoms and the phases they can come in all can effect their reasoning. A girl of 21 who has only recently been diagnosed is at high risk. Especially if she has little prior knowledge of the illness and aspects of her upbringing, culture, and exposure unknowingly feed mania. There are a lot of things in our culture that feed mania in dangerous ways. Take all this into account and a bipolar 21 year old could very easily decide to take that fatal plunge.
Bipolar is a serious illness. It can be fatal. https://www.psychcongress.com/article/bipolar-disorder-deadly-disease-dangerous-comorbidities When I a read articles like this and find more information about physiological problems that have some "correlation" with bipolar I am not surprised by them. I feel so many of them. My heart has been my biggest concern lately and the endocrine system is clearly a mess.
This is where I a think the criticizing article does not take it's criticism far enough. It states, "It's irresponsible and dishonest, indulging conspiracy theories that put already vulnerable victims at further risk." (cnet.com article link) But this article fails to mention the bipolar and how people with it are extremely vulnerable, at high risk, and are often victims because of it. The documentary glossed over it. This article does not even mention it. This story could help bring awareness to this illness and the realities of it. It is very possible that the bipolar is exactly what killed Elisa Lam.
But people don't want to talk about that.
Prevention is worth a pound of cure, but prevention cannot happen without any discussion of it.
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