Hi, I’m Anon Ymous and I’m an alcoholic, just kidding,

I’m bipolar

Once known as Manic-Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder is characterized by the up (mania) and down (depression) mood swings its victims have.

What is Bipolar Disorder?

Several chromosomes and genes have been linked to the development of Bipolar Disorder.

An abnormally fast biological clock

Oversecretion of cortisol, a stress hormone

High activity in parts of the brain dealing with emotion and movement

Low activity in parts of the brain dealing with concentration, judgment, etc.

High stress environments

Causes

Dramatic and unpredictable mood swings

Mania: Excessive happiness, optimism, restlessness, energy, and excitement, and a tendency to make grand, unattainable plans

Depression: Sadness, anxiety, irritability, thoughts of death and suicide

Symptoms

At least one manic episode in entire life; manic episode meaning a period of abnormally and disruptively elevated mood and behavior.

Bipolar Type 1

Similar to type 1, type 2 is also characterized by the up and down of mania and depression. The mania, however, never reaches its full, crazed potential, and the mood tends to cycle between the two (mania and depression) over time.

Bipolar Type 2

People with this type will experience four or more episodes of mania or depression within one year. Roughly 10% to 20% of people with Bipolar Disorder have this type.

Rapid Cycling Type

With Mixed Bipolar Disorder, one will experience mania and depression simultaneously or in rapid sequence.

Mixed Bipolar Type

People with the Cyclothymic type have much milder symptoms than full blown bipolar disorder.

Cyclothymia Type

Medications include anything from typical antidepressant drugs to Lithium.

To keep the disorder from becoming potentially harmful to the victim and his or her surroundings, therapy is also necessary.

Treatments

Honestly, having bipolar disorder is awful. One moment I’ll be perfectly normal, the next I’ll be bouncing off the walls. A couple weeks later, I’ll be irritable for no reason at all or depressed to the point where I can’t drag myself out of bed. But it’s not necessarily like I’m always one or the other, I can have normal moods and behavior just like everyone else.

My Experience with Bipolar Disorder

Sometimes the mood swings get so bad that it just isn’t safe for me to go to work. I don’t have very many friends because not many people can handle my long stretches of depression or my hyperactive mania.

My Social life, or lack thereof

After finding out I had bipolar disorder, I had to make a couple of changes to the way I lived. First of all, I had to keep my environment low stress. The more stress I had, the more mood swings I would alternate through. I also had to start going to a therapist to work through just about every episode. So now I’m a medicated yoga junkie.

Adjusting

High School is when my mood swings got really serious. I would spend one month bouncing off the walls and the next month sitting by myself. Bipolar disorder made it a practically impossible feat to fit in with everyone else, so I ended up pretty lonely. Of course, there were the couple that would always stick with me, but my disorder limited my social abilities. I’ve learned to control my behavior to an extent by now, but I still find some of my behavior just completely uncontrollable.

The hardest thing

When I was first told that I had Bipolar Disorder, I didn’t really care. I didn’t understand the fact that this disorder would be taking over the way I lived. Within a couple of months, however, the crippling effects of my mood swings finally dawned on me. I would spend my entire life awaiting my next drop into depression and spring into mania. I would have to work around my episodes, live around my episodes. And there was hardly any way to truly control where my behavior would run.

Finding Out

Watching myself switch from Euphoria to emotionally numbing depression became a daily activity . With each situation came a new a cycle of the mania-depression roller coaster ride. But soon enough, as I began to understand the different aspects of the disorder, I learned how to lead a relatively normal life.

Embracing It

When I started out with my bipolar lifestyle, I had a million and one medications thrown at me, one on top of the other. And I not only had to take about 50 different horse pills a day, I had to sit through their side effects as well. I was trembling and throwing up for the first two weeks after my diagnosis.

Most overwhelming thing

Being Bipolar will momentarily hold me back from doing a lot of things I want to do, but it by no means makes anything impossible. I have to leave work every now and then due to my mood swings, but I was still able to become a journalist like I had always wanted. I also have a fiancée whom I love and have dated for three years now.

Life Now

Yes, I still have episodes, Jack, my fiancée, will still find me less than put together on the floor of my apartment after work, stress will still occasionally unhinge my mind, and I still catch myself sometimes thinking abnormally happy or depressing thoughts. I do have bipolar disorder, but it hasn’t kept me from living my life the way I feel it should be.

Life Now Still…