Um... well, when I was younger my mood cycles had a very seasonal pattern and I didn't experience mania until I went to college, so I just assumed that I was getting burnt out because I was taking on more than I could handle. Which wasn't untrue, it was just that I was disregarding and downplaying all the other things going on.

I'd had a bad experience with a counselor when I was diagnosed with depression at 14, so it took a lot of coaxing from friends to get me to go to a doctor. He referred me to a pdoc, I got a script for an antidepressant, it put me into a mixed state and I tried - and thankfully failed - to commit suicide. I was dx'd with bipolar I in the hospital. So... about ten years and a single misdiagnosis, could have been worse.

I think what touched off the episode that ended in my diagnosis was just stress from overloading myself at school while hypomanic the previous semester. I took on my senior recital (which is roughly equal in workload and outside preparation to an undergraduate thesis if you've ever done one), I was in the opera program, I was the guest artist in a friend's graduate recital for her MFA, I was taking something like 22 credit hours, and I had final exams on top of all that. Stress has always been one of my big triggers.

I'd rather not list all the stuff I've done while manic. Some of it is personal.