Hello, my name is Evan and I have just joined this website today. I made this post to get some advice and opinions on my what I believe is to be bipolar but I have no clue if it is. So starting from the beginning, I have been deeply depressed since around 7th grade. I had a video game addiction and this really left me to become an outsider and socially awkward. I’ve been depressed ever since till about my junior year of high school. This is where things start to get weird: I was experiencing weird dreams, memories coming back from nowhere, feeling weird and strange sometimes. I feel like sometimes I was going insane. I also had panic attacks once a week. I got mad when I saw people that were happy and didn’t experience what I was going through. I had up and down moods, where sometimes I would get sad and other times I felt extremely happy, these moods would last hours to minutes. These are not so severe as bipolar mood swings where they would last days weeks or months. When I was depressed I would feel at my lowest point and when I was happy, I was just happy, I didn’t have the common symptoms of mania that people usually have. My sleep schedule was fine and I didn’t hallucinate or anything. I felt like I was the only person who has this issue and nothing could help me. I felt like isolating and sometimes I just asked myself is this real life. I felt sad about the past because I'm growing up. Our family has a really bad case of anxiety and we still struggle with it deeply. My family has no history of bipolar... “except” for my dad and I’ll explain why, his bipolar was brought up by smoking too much weed. I think (this is my opinion and yes, there is research on it, so it is proven) his bipolar was brought up by weed. There is a significant link between the use of cannabis and onset mania symptoms. His breakdown was met with full blown mania and was treated for mania. So for those of you saying “genetics plays an important role...” I don’t think that’s the case for me. I just want answers because I have been struggling 2 years with this mental illness, everything has been a struggle for me ever since then, I see my friends be successful and I’m just sitting here, contemplating life as it goes by. Please just help me. Thanks for your time and ALL opinions matter.