I don't think you are in denial but I have this vision with all these balloons. Each with a different symptom and a bunch of buckets below. So now I see you grabbing the balloons and trying to stuff them in the appropriate bucket. But sometimes the same symptom belongs in multiple buckets and often they float out. Very hard to keep them in the buckets without something holding them down. A DSM maybe?

The point I'm making is they are labels that grow and change every couple of years. There are meds that are used for bipolar but I can't think of any that are used exclusively for bipolar. They only treat symptoms anyway. So what symptoms are you most interested in controlling through meds?

One thing I can caution about antidepressants is they can cause mood switching. Your hypomania may have been caused by the ad's. Some people will tell you that's a "sign" but that is just illogical, IMO. That's why I stress looking more at symptoms and what really matters to control right now vs what changes in your lifestyle you can make to help long term.

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I have not yet read everything in this thread, so excuse me if I repeat things.

My T and I discussed the possibility of me having bipolar disorder at one point (I have severe depression and anxiety and my father had bipolar II). We eventually decided that it was the PTSD and ADHD symptoms that were mimicking aspects of bipolar. But in the process, we had to sort through symptoms and what they may mean.

Bipolar I symptoms include:
- severe depression (possibly with psychosis)
- rapid changes in mood (going from severely depressed to manic within days)
- mania
- fast talking
- extreme anxiety
- restlessness
- extreme creativity
- psychosis or paranoia
- mental confusion due to thoughts moving too fast in your head
- feeling like you don't need sleep
- feeling like you can't stop talking
- flight of ideas
- starting many projects at once
- grandiose thoughts or inflated self-esteem
- increased libido
- dangerous or risky behavior
- high impulsiveness, possibly creating many long-term difficulties (lots of debt due to shopping, getting physically hurt due to risks, gambling debt, etc...)
- mixed mania, which can appear in two ways: 1) being both depressed and manic at the same time (such as being very restless and energized yet severely depressed) or 2) extreme anxiety and paranoia mixed with depression (the flight of ideas and high energy mixed with the negative thoughts of depression)

Bipolar II symptoms include:
- milder forms of above
- no psychosis
- no mixed mania (or if present, it is the "anxious" version with no paranoia)
- an ability to "reign" the symptoms in
- feeling like you are on top of the world or will be successful in everything you do
- inflated self-esteem without "super human" characteristics
- rapid changes in mood
- needing less sleep
- increased creativity
- feeling very happy or "light"
- having a lot of energy and feeling like you could go on forever
- increased libido
- feeling extremely lucky
- risk-taking behaviors, but not so much that you are out of control
- very "bubbly"