I hear you! I've never been hospitalized either, though I've been threatened with it a couple of times, and I tend to believe I have only a minor case of BP. At one point last fall, I even got to thinking I was just going through an existential crisis and wasn't really bipolar at all. Then I look at my meds, which have been prescribed to me by a very conservative psychiatrist, and I know he wouldn't have put me on two APs if I didn't have a serious problem. Oh well.....