VickiesPath: I'm kinda the opposite of you, twelvebars. I was living a life that was pure hell because I knew for thirty years that there was something not right with me but no one could tell me what it was.

I didn't explain everything in my first post because I didn't want to write a novel, but the last 10 years has been like this for me. I was hospitalized at 17 for several suicide attempts. When I look back, I was hypomanic/mixed and I believe this was directly related to me being given Prozac for depression. The pdoc in hospital said given my family history (dad has BPI) that my GP prescribing me Prozac was a big mistake. I was diagnosed then as having Major Depression as well as adjustment reaction disorder. I never had much faith in this.

I got out of hospital eventually and stopped taking the anti-depressants they gave me (something other then prozac) because they made me feel horrible. The next ten years of my life was a rocky path of on-again-off-again academic pursuits (I got everything from an A+ to an F at college, depending on my mood levels). The thing that I find gets really affected by my swings is my level of optimism and goal setting. I also went through hypomanic spells of booze/drug binges, doing impulsive and dangerous things, sexual indiscretions etc often followed by really bad lows. This has been going on steadily for a decade. When I said before I was chugging along fine, I was meaning a period of about 3 months. In general my whole adult life has been a struggle.

I feel like I finally know why now, and looking back it's suddenly become quite obvious to me why I always had such problems with drugs, alcohol, relationships, maintaining friendships, risk taking, not being to hang onto money etc.

Sorry I end up writing these huge posts, but I've found it fascinating reading this forum and discovering there's other people like me who've fought the same battles.