That's a great question! In fact, I just posted on the ACOA- Adult Children Of Alcoholics- board here at PC. How much do things like having an alcoholic parent play into bipolar- especially delayed bipolar? It was my dad who was the alcoholic, so I don't know how that affected my mom when she was pregnant with me, but I do know I was 9 weeks early and my dad was in the Air Force. I've always been the way I am- that's just who I am, you know? But as far as bipolar symptoms, those showed up in my teenage years but nobody knew it. I was taken to a psychiatrist at 16 but he just said I was a "normal teenager". When I look back, the threads of my personality all weave together nicely throughout the years. Where the bipolar weaves into that is hard to tell, but there are definitely two entities separated- one is me and one is the bipolar me, woven very tightly as one.