I'll add my few words to the other folks who are wishing you well, especially those who, like you, like me, are bipolar. Having been on this roller coaster for nearly 30 years now, having been misdiagnosed, suicidal, ashamed, angry, alternately despondent and grandiose, isolated and promiscuous, cautious and a spendthrift, I empathized with the feelings you expressed. But I haven't felt those extremes for years now, and life is better. It took a good psychiatrist (I agree with the poster who advised you to get the best psychiatrist you can, preferably from a research hospital) and lots of experimentation with different medications to find an effective combination to tame the chemical imbalance. It took a lot of time to stop feeling ashamed and to fully accept myself with the disease. I still talk to my therapist about the fact that I don't really know who "I" am anymore -- without the meds, I was buffetted by the mood swings, but on the meds, there is something subtle that changes, that is lost. But the loss is worth what is gained, I think - the ability to wake up each day and feel reasonably sure of yourself, reasonably safe from being ambushed by your feelings.

Another poster stated concern about your suicidal feelings. A pact with yourself is good, and may be enough to give you the time to more fully accept the diagnosis. But if these feelings are making your life hell now, find someone to talk to (and keep looking if you don't connect with the first therapist you talk to, etc). Give yourself all the support you can...

(by the way, being bipolar doesn't have to prevent you from doing intellectual work that gives you satisfaction - I was afraid medication would make me dumb, so I postponed going on lithium until several years after I finished my Ph.D. I wish I hadn't - since going on it, I've been much happier, published plenty and eventually became a full professor)

Maybe try to find other people who have bipolar -- this can be incredibly healing -- they will know what you are going through. You may not have your writing at this time (I am a writer and went through this same diagnosis and lost some time because the treatment slowed my thinking) -- if you don't have your writing, what else is there? This is a good time to find out. What's it like to experience the world with the intelligences you have, that the meds don't hinder -- like the ability to feel love, and empathy, the ability to feel the wind, and the sun. Your husband's love -- you could find new ways to notice who he is, at this time.

You actually have here an opportunity to rediscover the world -- it is like being born again -- because with your diagnosis in hand, you have the opportunity to begin to heal in a new way.

Peace,

anonymous

You have a serious illness. Its similar to having cancer or some other life-threatening disease. So, deal with this like a serious illness. You need to find the best medical help you can. You need a doctor that will either find a way to cure your disease or at least reduce its symptoms so that life can be livable.

My advice is to find a good research hospital with psychiatric clinical staff. Go see someone who specializes in bipolar disorder. Dont go anywhere but a research hospital. All doctors are not equal and the best doctors practice at these hospitals. Psychiatrists are medical doctors that know about all of the medications and their side effects. They will try various medicines, adjusting doses, etc until they find something that works. Be patient. Stick with it. Don't give up.

Don't rely only on a psychologist or "therapist". They are not trained in any aspect of medicine. They do not understand the biological basis for your disease or how or why the medications do or don't work. Talk therapy has its place, but you need stronger medicine.

If you did not have a fierce but kind will, instead of calling out to Cary, you would be dead long years ago when you fought your drinking or dead this year when you fought your diagnosis. Alcoholism may seem a much easier horse to break, but bipolarity has something addiction does not: a free spirit, like a wild mustang, which can give depth and meaning to your work and even your life, if you let it.

Yes, but that’s the block, isn’t it? Acceptance of the you who you are. Accomplishments – being published, being long married, being a mother of grand children & grandchildren, being sober for 15 – fifteen – years – they can all fall away and become like shed skin on your bedsheet, withered, dry, and invisible.

But these are external waterwings, and thus are so easily punctured (by loss of prestige, loved ones leaving, relapsing into the lushlife), and so you flail and drown; your own body fat – the meat of who you are – is what you need to trust to keep you afloat. When you are finally dying, it will only be you. What you have accomplished is at end irrelevant, because it will be the utterly unique and irreplaceable being you have been in your time to be alive that is going from the world, and as with every person’s death it is always a tragedy to lose such a singularity. Can’t you see that in yourself? Can’t you respect that about yourself? Even if it’s just for 5 minutes a week…until it gets easier as time builds, to be yourself. Think of all the time you can have until you die. It will be so hard to live that many times you can’t think of anything other than wanting it to stop! stop! stop! and so sweet to live that many times you can’t think of anything other than wanting more! more! more!

If you write words and value words, maybe also you value those you read. Comfort – ‘surcease of sorrow’ – can be found in strangers’ wise, accepting, aware, compassionate words: Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperment by Kay Redfield Jamison; The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton; Anger by Thich Nhat Hanh; Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly; even seemingly pseudo-psychological pap like The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron.

But maybe other people’s words aren’t what you need to hear right now – even mine – but maybe it’s your own that will rescue you. Anger, bitterness, doubt, self-hatred, despair are never the mother that healing words are born from, so it might be difficult for you to speak right now, even to yourself. But everything you are that brought you away from the bottle and towards this person you are right here – the flawed, scared, hurting, wonderful, precious person you are – will, if you can honor it, carry you away toward the time when it's truly your time to leave.