I'm new here, as my post count will reflect I'm here for Bipolar.

I googled and found this site because I needed a sort of private place to reflect on how I'm feeling and what I'm going through- a place to share and get support when I don't necessarily want to bounce things off my spouse or IRL friends.

A quick summary of my background:
In a depressive state when I was experiencing ever stronger suicide ideation, I mustered the strength to leave my house and went downtown to try to,"pick myself up by the bootstraps". What ended up happening instead is I ended up meeting some people and had a one night binge with cocaine. In retrospect I believe I was attempting to recapture hypomania, though it wasn't exactly the same and certainly not as pleasurable(i'm not paranoid and I don't clench my jaw when I'm naturally up). So, the experience was already a bust. Then, I had a random urinalysis- I am in the *military-and of course failed. I'll get more into those details later(for brevity's sake), the point right now is that afterwards I was diagnosed with Bipolar. Previously it was Severe/Major Depression, anxiety, and later PTSD. So, I do have a pretty long mental health history but it's only since this summer that I've been treated for Bipolar. I'm having a rough time of it, but at least I don't feel like I'm spinning my wheels anymore. I hope that I can have a safety net here, because being alone absolutely makes panic attacks come on faster/get to a dangerous point, and depression seems to feed on seconds. Feeding that and laying fetal in bed is probably not the answer. Sorry this wasn't actually brief. Anyways, good to be here.

*in no way do I hold any animosity toward the military and did my punishment with humility and a jump in my step.