Hi everyone, first post.

I was recently given a preliminary diagnosis of rapid cycling BPII. Over a month ago I was chugging along just fine, setting heaps of goals, doing lots of exercise, telling everyone how wonderful life is, feeling gr-gr-great! Then quite quickly I just sunk into the blackest of lows, having lots of intrusive suicidal thoughts and feeling incredibly angry all the time, not knowing whether to smash something to pieces or cry.. or both. Some family and friends noticed the rapid change and were concerned enough to ask me to speak to someone. I did and they immediately got me to see a psychiatrist in the 'crisis team'. He said something about a preliminary diagnosis of BPII with rapid cycling (my mother was there and gave a description of my regular cycles between feeling really happy and positive and then suddenly negative and gloomy). They put my on sodium valproate (I think it's depakote? in other countries).

It's only a prelim diagnosis but after reading other stories on these boards and researching it, it suddenly seems to make a lot of sense to me. This has also lead to a lot of grief and still struggling to accept that this is really happening to me. I stopped drinking (also a recovering alcoholic & drug addict) about 9 months ago and shortly after I went into a prolonged 'high' followed by this terrible crash. It's horrible sitting around over the holidays wondering what's going to happen next and avoiding people because I feel 'broken' or 'defective' in some way.

Anyway, just thought I'd stop lurking and say hi and share my story.