I'm a long-time bipolar (with many in the family) and most of my "recovery" came about when I started to face my thoughts and emotions head on. I used TM (meditation) to help me get to that point. For about a month in my late twenties, I would sit on the floor of my living room with all of the lights shut off for about three hours a night. The point was to allow whatever happened in my head to happen and just watch.

It was rough at first. Eventually I learned my feelings and thoughts quite well. I started to make the distinction between happiness and a manic state a little while later. It actually got pretty dang obvious lol. The best way that I can explain it is that happiness was deep in my mind, brought about by events and circumstances in reality. The manic state was just some loose feeling in my body...like an unconnected energy zipping around. Once I learned to recognize them, I sort of just ignored them. Eventually they started to taper off.

Here's the kicker...I'm fully conscious of how I used to "feel" throughout the first half of my life. Compared to then, I feel like an unemotional rock that hardly feels anything lol. But that's just by comparison. What I feel now is the gentle push and pull of stable emotional responses rather than racing rollercoaster of whatever shot my way.

BTW, I did take Gabapentin a long time ago. It gave me the scariest night terrors I've ever experienced!