To my friends in Australia and OS. I send this message as a sober alcoholic and a Bipolar person with Panic and Anxiety Disorders, to contribute to me trying to keep my head on straight and concentrate on the core issues in my life of maintaining my long term sobriety and looking after my mental health.

Today in Australia has been one of the biggest days in Australian history - equal to any day in politics in the 200 years since European settlement.. We have had a routing of our elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd by his Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard. I am a member of the Australian Labor Party (comparable to the Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK), have been for many years and am very involved in politics both emotionally and also in the past actively in terms of working on political campaigns etc.

Two and a half years ago Mr Rudd swept Labor into Government, taking many seats from the Conservatives in a landslide victory. He has been a star perfomer. But in the last 6 months he has lost his Mojo to such an extrent that the Labor Party, Mr Rudd and Australian Electorate has been all at sea. Some major blunders have occured and he hasn't been able to address them, let alone the public's perception of them. While he did great things, including proactively taking on the GEC and keeping Australia out of the Recession/Depression like very few other Western Democracies, he has lost the confidence of the public. We have a General Election coming up before then end of the year and thus Labor has been in a shambles.

Cut a long story pretty long - LOL, Julia Gillard took him on, got the numbers and he conceded to her in the interests of the country - all on the last 15 hours or so, with no notice before this that there would be a challeng!!. This is the first female Prime Minister in the history of our country.

I am both so sad that Mr Rudd has come to this, but excited beyond belief that Miss Gillard has come to power - for obvious feminist reasons. She is a formiddable and astute politician - we now have hope of sorting out all the major issues at hand and also a chance for the election. She had her first Prime Ministerial address to the Press - she absolutely owned that statement and questions from the press - usually they are very unweildy and disrespectful of politicians, but I think they were as blindsided by all this as much as me and everyone else. She then went to the Governor General, who is also a very impressive woman and got sworn in and then she went to the Parliament for Question Time - those are things which form our Westminster form of Government which emerged from the UK form of Government. She is now our Prime Minister.

I've already called my psychologist because in terms of Bipolar, my mood is certainly elevated!! And Hypomania is a very bad state for me to be in. So I told her how I am limiting my media intake and other strategies, which is good. Any advice from you about how to stop the top of my head blowing off would be greatly appreciated!! lol