I know that feeling well. I get to thinking I'm not bipolar after all, and/or that I'm just making it up. (Like you can fake mania.) Or simply that my providers have made things look more serious than they really are. Stinkin' thinkin', that is. And when my mind starts wandering in that direction, it's a sure sign that trouble is on the way.

So every so often, I'll stop taking the antipsychotics because I hate them, but it doesn't take too many days before I become agitated and irritable. Fortunately, I always get scared and go back on them before I flip into mania. I enjoy hypomania (and fooling with my meds is a guarantee that I'm in it), but don't actually want to get full-blown manic because that never ends well and I can do an incredible amount of damage in the meantime. I spent myself and my family into bankruptcy TWICE thanks to my champagne tastes (and a beer pocketbook). I also fly into intense rages, causing me to feel guilty once I come down and try to make up for all the horrific things I said and did during the manic spell. I've lost friends and even a couple of family members because of it.

That's what I try to remind myself of when I get too big for my britches and question my diagnosis, which really IS as bad as I've been told it is. Five different mental health professionals have diagnosed me as bipolar, four of whom classified it as bipolar 1. I know I should take it more seriously and stop all this nonsense, but when I'm hypo it's really, really hard.