[Dos3512]

What is bipolar? I am newly diagnosed and am not entirely sre what bipolar is.

[BlackPup]

I can't post links cos I'm using my phone but look under the conditions tab at the top of the page and BP is under common disorders. It's basically where you have high moods as well as low moods and is usually treated with mood stabilizing drugs. Welcome to BP!!!!

didn't your Pdoc explain it to you? Ha, neither did mine at first.

my onset was when I was nine. Depression happened first. Depression and a LOT of anger. This set me apart from all the other kids. As I became the outcast, my depression got worse. It was debilitating. Then I got this, screw the world attitude and it became like it was me against them and I started to feel better. Then it became like a constant adrenaline rush and I started taking off from home and drugs started happening and I was completely out of control. Then adrenaline rush, per say, got so intense that I would go walking around at night in the roads looking for trouble, looking for something new, looking. I would get myself into so much trouble, fights, whatever. I craved new and I craved trouble. Then, as the adrenaline wore off, I would isolate myself as the depression came back. I would be nowhere to be found. I just wanted to die. I even tried it once when I was fifteen. didn't work, stupid kid that thought I could bleed out from cutting my wrists with broken glass. Ended up walking around like bloody zombie after lol.

The depression would fade a little and I could start to function. Start to get back into school and things would improve a little, then I would either fall back into a depression, or the adrenaline feeling would start again. Sometimes I would hyperfocus on school work. impress the hell out of everyone, including myself. But it would get too intense and I would get the rage again. anger, rage. ugh. my performance would never last, and I would be too embarrassed to continue going to the classes I just did so good in.

Then the depression would come again.
Then the other.

As a young adult... I would inject methamphetamines as a lifestyle. daily. Did that for four years straight. After I got arrested and put through our 'drug court' program.. I graduated that and lived a life of indifference. I would stay angry. Bitter. F the world attitude. I had no regard for personal safety and I could not care less about myself.

Then I fell in love with a girl. I suddenly cared about everything again. But it was like I was just a kid again on the inside, not an adult. I tried for 12 years to control what was happening with me for her. We have two kids together and every episode I tried and tried and broke my heart when I would become someone else. I broke my heart a hundred times cuz of this.

Now I am not a different person. I don't isolate in depression and I don't rage with adrenaline. But I would without my meds so please take them seriously.

Sorry for the long answer... but to me that is what Bipolar Disorder is.

[hamster-bamster]

Dan, what a touching story about Karen!

hope i gave enough examples to explain it

[BipolaRNurse]

A friend of mine who is also bipolar puts it this way: Having bipolar disorder is like seeing the world and everything in it as poetry---the highs, the lows, the wonder, the pain, the sheer intensity of it all........some of it overwhelming, but much of it worthwhile.

For me, it means also that sometimes colors and sounds are too bright and loud; and the darkness is so black I can't see my hand in front of my face, let alone find a way out. It means I can taste words and hear feelings, like the snap of a violin string when my heart breaks. It also means that I sometimes view my life metaphorically as a Ferris wheel, all lights and color and soaring into the night skies before coming back down to earth.