First of all Mimielam, welcome to Psych Central. You'll meet some great people here. On the specific topic of how long a mood stabilizer might take to help with a hypomanic state, I can't say, but maybe others here can. I've only started on mood stabilizers (lamotrigine) when I was very depressed, and I had to take an ad to get out of the depression.

I hope you can take a deep breath, make a list, and tackle one thing at a time. And please don't feel guilty. Your behavior is due to your illness. And feeling guilty about it is really your illness talking.

All the best,
Randy