Definitely good to know! Thanks! 😁

hey, me too!! my mania was always short lived though, and the most i got from it was not sleeping and power-cleaning the house. they put me on Wellbutrin first, which made my mania out of control, then i got on Celexa and it's worked really well. i've only had 2 dose increases in since starting it 18 years ago.

I refuse to be prescribed Wellbutrin. I've known 2 people who were on it, one of them twice over 2 decades apart. One is my brother, who tried to leave the mortal coil in both 3rd grade and also at 30yo. The other is a friend prescribed the highest dosage who told me specifically when he planned to also leave earth. I tried so many things, I even asked a mutual friend to look out for signs around that time. Nothing we did helped. I'm sure it helps people.... But I've only seen and heard of people having worse symptoms with the drug than without.

@Allison A I'm also bipolar 2! I'm 37 and was only diagnosed this year. @Daevarajan while it's true that many people cycle between depression and mania, there are a lot of people with bipolar who also experience something called a "mixed episode", where you have high-energy (manic) symptoms WITH low-energy (depressive) symptoms. I was diagnosed like a decade ago with "anxiety and depression". It turned out that the anxiety was hypomania (like mania lite) and the depression was... well, depression lol Bipolar disorder, as you can imagine, is difficult to diagnose and there are a lot more of us than people think! (part 1/2)

(part 2/2) But I also thought when I got diagnosed that it meant that people went into terrible, violent rages, because I had a cousin who had it and did that (tbf he also had substance abuse problems, so that definitely had something to do with it). So I'm often hesitant to tell people who aren't already good friends of mine that I have it, even though I was one of those "pleasure to have in class" kinds of people who never got in trouble in their entire lives. So yes, sometimes it can lead to violent outbursts, but it doesn't always. Just like alcoholism CAN lead to drunk driving, but it doesn't always.

It felt like I wrote this... Down to only being diagnosed this year. I've been trying to mention it to more people as time goes on so they can see that I'm mostly normal enough most of the time despite it. It's not like it's my job to personally end the stigma, but I remind myself of that every time I decide to tell someone else because bipolar has an unfair reputation even just due to the name.