Thanks for each of your responses above. After that pdoc said I was bipolar, he declined to see me any more. He sent me a letter telling me that. (6 years of my time and money invested went down the drain. I had a good job and spent a lot on getting psych help beyond what insurance will pay for, not that any of it helped much.) A doctor can't just dump you without risking a charge of "patient abandonment." Because he knew I had an appointment scheduled with another pdoc, he was able to get away with cutting me off.

A subsequent pdoc told me that "bipolar disorder" was too heavy duty a diagnosis for me. He cited that I didn't have pressured speech. He suggested I might be "cyclothymic."

I'm aware of the "spectrum" paradigm. When I "get on a roll," as I call it, it can seem a lot like hypomania. I used to like feeling that way because I could get a lot done. People would ask me if I had taken extra vitamins. I could start a project and stay with it around the clock - like a marathon of effort that paid off. But I think lots of normal people do that from time to time. Now that I'm older, I get tired a lot easier - physically, but not mentally.

If you keep seeking help for recurring depression, they eventually throw everything in the book at you. I've been on every mood stabilizing drug you can think of: Depakote, lithium, Lamictal, Seroquel, Neurontin, benzos, etc, etc. None of them improved how I felt.

I've never had hypomania that lasted 2 weeks. Maybe 36 to 48 hours. And no one around me thought I was going through something that needed medical attention. Some have said I "over-think," or need to "slow down."

Thanks for that link. I'll check it out.

I take amitriptyline, which greatly reduced how long I stay in a depressed episode. I just take 50 mg each eve. Without it, I can't fall asleep normally. It really changed my life for the better. I've always been high-functioning. I just wish I was a lot less mentally agitated and mentally all over the place. At times I was put on Ritalin for depression. That mainly got my mind amped up, running in circles.

I guess I need to make a daily plan and just stick to it. I went to DBSA support groups. The meeting would break into 2 support groups - one for depressives and one for bipolars. The depressive group seemed so awfully subdued and low energy that I found them hard to relate to. So I tried the bipolar group. They seemed so ebullient and high-spirited that I felt out of place. I need more order in my life. I suppose there's no drug that will give me that . . . just better habits of living.