Is it possible to suddenly get psychotic symptoms?

This happened to me last summer. I was coming out of a deep depression where I was dissociated for weeks. After escaping that dark pit I started hearing voices, music, radio stuff in my head and I had a really hard time sleeping because of it, I was also seeing stuff like breathing walls, steam erupting from my hands, and hearing muffled talking everywhere. This was going on in varying intensity for about two weeks until I got put on risperdal. The risperdal made it all slowly go away over a couple months and I haven't had any of that stuff happen since. When I missed a dose it would come back, but nowadays I'm fine if I miss a few doses,

It was pretty mild stuff but it made me feel terrible and freaked out. Is this normal for bipolar I? It hasn't come back since I've been on that med so I'm thinking it was just a blip.

I've experienced, in the past, pretty much exactly what you described. I have bipolar type 1, as well. I am not sure how it is related to the illness. I assume it is somehow related. I believe having Tegretol XR (carbamazepine ER) helped me. I was also on other bipolar medications, including probably two antipsychotics (definitely Geodon, maybe also Navane). I don't know if my antipsychotics played a part in relieving those symptoms. Like you describe, if I missed a dose or two, sometimes minor recurrences happened. I haven't had such symptoms for a long time, though.