Questions about BP type I.

I can say that I was in a lot of denial over my diagnosis for many years because of the doctor that diagnosed me. I was hospitalized at a young age because I was suicidal, but once I was inpatient I started showing manic symptoms (smiling, giggling, feeling on top of the world), and the doctor sat with me for about 5 minutes and told me I was bipolar. I thought, “What an a—hole!” Then I proceeded to talk to everyone I could find, drank a ton of coffee, took a bunch of pills without even double checking what they prescribed me because I forgot, and fell asleep for 3 days. Turns out they gave me a high dose of haldol with trileptal. I was released about 3 days later after I came out of my comatose state, and lived in denial for a long time.

I didn’t take my meds regularly, I thought I felt good, I didn’t see what people, especially doctors noticed, because my symptoms were not severe, and I downplayed the severity. I rarely called out of work, I was able to save money, I wasn’t impulsive, or so I thought. The whole stigma surrounding BP was consuming me and all the research I had done (usually when I was up at 4 in the morning with no sleep and 65 tabs open with various things from cracking an unsolved cryptography puzzle to trying to study the genetic code of humans because I was “onto something”)

The past couple years is when I really started owning my BP. A comparison would be like an alcoholic. They could have a couple drinks every night, and never black out, have issues with their liver, go through withdrawals if they go a day without drinking, but if they’re an alcoholic, they have that addiction, that doesn’t make them any less an alcoholic because they don’t need detox, or they have a job and a family and it never got in the way of anything.

I also think, that, people get misdiagnosed all the time, so how do we know for sure? We can only know that we know nothing, or something along those lines from Tolstoy. So, yea, that’s my rant. I think it got a little weird, but hey! I’m bipolar!

/r/bipolar Thread