It bugs me that there is no statute of limitations on exhibited behavior for diagnosis. I was in a session with my t yesterday and she was asking me questions about childhood through teens. This is 40+ years ago. In my teens I indulged a lot of my impulses, engaged in a lot of risky behavior (much of it criminal in nature, but not violent) and did a *lot* of drugs. She is scribbling furiously. Same thing happened with pdoc when she asked similar "way back" questions.

In the recent past, I feel like I am barely if even type 2. I am not kidding myself into thinking I am magically cured (BTDT). When I have stopped meds, people noticed and not in a good way. I go into the tank, but I can always make myself grind stuff out even if I am not enjoying life. And even when I couldn't feel much worse about my life, I still have the instinct to protect it; no SH or SI with one exception when I was very young and in a lot of trouble. I took something that I thought would poison me. That I was wrong is beside the point. So okay, yes that happened. But I was an adolescent. So "have you ever" gets checked as if I was thinking about it last week.

On the mania end of the spectrum, I have not completely lost touch with reality except with drugs involved way back in the day. Admittedly, the drugs in question should not have had as profound an effect and the incidents stand out in my mind because it freaked my friends out when I was tripping and they had more moderate euphoria (the expected high). But still it was a very long time ago and there were drugs involved. But scribble, scribble, scribble "hmmm"...

Recent manic episodes have been much milder. I have delusions sometimes, the most common being that I can cure any illness in my body with my mind and if I can keep from dying from other than natural causes then I will be immortal. But I know that no one will believe me and it usually doesn't last very long. Sometimes I see auras even though I don't believe in them or don't believe that what is being detected is meaningful. Kinda odd, that one.

I do still get impulses that would shock a lot of people or at least they would say so. I wonder how widespread odd urges that are never indulged are. Anyway, I get urges having to do with destruction/vandalism, theft and sneaking around naked. I have not indulged any of them in decades, but I indulged all of them as a teen. Scribble, scribble, scribble...

I doubt I am alone in this. Maybe we don't get cured, but it seems like we should get some credit for getting somewhat better.

While I am ranting, stigma sucks. I can reveal all this here with some reasonable expectation of anonymity and I can tell t and pdoc. But I don't dare tell anyone else all of it; not even people very close to me.