This isn't directly in the bipolar category, but I think that people on this forum seem quite sharp about mental illness in general so this seems like the best place to post this. I am concerned about my declining functioning and mental health problems. I started off as a kid full of hope and promise, someone who was very studious yet very socially skilled. I had it all you could say. Then, in my adolescence the madness crept in and I did not even realize it. I began to hang with the wrong crowd, drink excessively, and act like a complete idiot. All the while, I had many bizarre ideas about the world and myself, some of which I believed with complete or near complete certainty. As time went on, my performance in school went downhill and although I had a mild case of ADHD all along, it began to seriously negatively impact on my life. In college, I began to hang with the wrong crowd and use hard drugs. Now, after I have gotten away from drugs and am attempting to return to being a studious and bright young adult, everything is falling apart in front of me and I sometimes feel powerless to stop my bizarre and often grandiose ideas. Today I thought somebody in my program at school was sent by a former friend to sabotage me. I feared that he had worldwide connections and would screw me over no matter where I went or what I did. I felt he was tracking me and that there was no escape. I have had ideas like this before for brief periods like I did today over the years and clung to them more so than today, but I have to say that today's insanity has made me wonder about my mental health a bit. I feel that I really want to get things together, but that's hard when you are essentially in a different mental place than 99% of the world. Most people with mental illnesses aren't "crazy", just have a problem psychologically. However, I fear that I may just be plain bonkers