I love to drink, but I've been taking it easy since starting new meds. And I was starting to get worried about how much I was drinking.

Occasionally I've kept the drunk on for the better part of the day when depressed as a way out of it, not that it works that way (makes me more depressed the next day.) But yeah, when hypomanic, I drink a lot - maybe a bottle and a half of wine in an evening, without any help. I also don't really feel it quite as much. It's as though my tolerance to alcohol magically doubles when my brain goes haywire.

The alcohol-mood swing correlation is pretty strong for me. I've been a teetotaller for big chunks of time in the past when my moods were pretty much stable - just didn't feel any need/desire for alcohol. I've also made a straight-up trade of alcohol for pot in the past; the latter is far less dangerous for me. The big problems started to arise when I started mixing drugs, alcohol, and mood swings. But even I could see that was a problem, so that's when I went to get help.