85% dark chocolate is my friend. Chocolate is not a vice. It is actually exceedingly healthful, but even if it were health-neutral, if you like something, that is reason enough to eat it. Food is not poison, not a vice, and not an addictive substance - it is food, I.e. a source of sustenance and pleasure. Since bipolar impedes the hedonistic responses in the body during the depressive and mixed states, further depriving yourself of sources of simple pleasures would exacerbate the underlying deficiency of hedonism. In other words, your experiment has many costs associated with it that you are not considering.

Finally, the idea of a whole year of abstinence reminds me of how in olden days widows were supposed to grieve and mourn for a whole year, but then re-enter the marriage market. A year sound like a completely arbitrary but symbolically meaningful figure, which makes the whole idea sound even less scientific (it it weren't already) and rather ritualistic. If the deal is chemical, then the same expectations and guidelines should apply as with other chemical substances, in other words, if you do not see improvement in 6 to 8 weeks, 3 months max, then it is not working.