I'm responding to your request,Hopealive1,

Evidence now indicates that foods play a far more important role in wide mood swings than was originally thought. Wheat, barley, rye, and possibly oats are in that category. It's anything with gluten in it which contains exorphins that act on the
opiate centers of the brain. The health hazards of that are too numerous to mention here.

The type diet you have now is not helping. With the new information about effects of wheat, it is possible to even develop dementia in a few documented cases, and schizophrenia responds positively to removing wheat in several cases. One woman
at Duke University hospital who had been schizophrenic for years was documented as having recovered completely with the removal of wheat from her diet.

Too often, untreated bipolar patients will try to self-medicate with alcohol, narcotics, or other drugs. Alcohol is a depressant and can make bipolar illness worse. Narcotics kill brain cells, period. Both are capable of causing permanent
brain damage. No research is available to my knowledge on the effects of marijuana,
but some will tell you that its ingredients are much more concentrated now and
that makes it more difficult to recover because withdrawal is difficult.

That's enough to hopefully convince you to get the psychotropic medications you need to establish a much clearer and content feeling tone and mental clarity.

Succinctly, my answer is yes, in my view, and from what I've understood from documents pertaining to bipolar illness, brain damage can occur from faulty efforts to self-medicate (and other conditions).