I’m starting this blog to document my ups and downs with Bipolar 1 disorder. I think writing about it anonymously will be therapeutic for me. I’m currently trying to put my life back together from the big manic episode I had last year, but it’s still challenging. Last year’s episode lasted about 6 months, followed by a severe depression that was just as long. It had been over a decade since I have had a manic episode like that. I thought I was done having them. I felt like it wasn’t really my fault.

I wasn’t on medication for several months before the episode. The reason I wasn’t taking bipolar medication was not because I just decided not to take it; my psychiatrist at the time took me off it because she said I wasn’t bipolar. I was just following doctor’s orders! She thought I had been misdiagnosed before I met her. I remember having big manic episodes in the past, and asked if she had ever gotten my notes from previous doctors, and she said she could only go off of what she had seen. I think she was just lazy. She only saw me for about 15 minutes at a time, about four times a year. I really don’t think that’s enough time to really get to know me. I had seen her for over a decade and had actually become quite stable on the medication that I had been taking up until then. That’s probably why I didn’t seem to be bipolar, because the medication was working!

I could have gotten a second opinion, I guess, but I wanted to believe that I wasn’t bipolar. I argued with her at first, but gave in because of the stigma associated with bipolar disorder. I wanted to be free of that stigma. I didn’t want to be thought of as a person with a mental illness.

My psychiatrist said I wasn’t bipolar but only had depression. So when she took me off bipolar mood stabilizers, she put me on Prozac (or the generic form, fluoxetine) alone. However, it is well-known in the psychiatric world that SSRIs like Prozac can cause mania in bipolar patients when taken without other medications. I kinda think she is stupid, and not very good at her job.

That was the first thing that set the stage for mania. There were a bunch of other triggers in my personal life that contributed to the manic episode. I was putting in a lot of hours at a workplace that was stressful and toxic, where I felt unappreciated. I dreaded going there every day. My family relationships became very strained. I ran into someone from my past who assaulted me and triggered a bad manic episode many years ago. I thought I would be able to see him again and it wouldn’t be a big deal because that had been so long ago and I was over it, but I was wrong. And finally, I broke up with my boyfriend of 10 years during this time.

I ended up quitting that job. I ended up going to the hospital a few times. I ended up freaking out on some people. I’m embarrassed about that and I hope they can understand that I wasn’t well at the time. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do about that. I lost a few friends due to my manic episode, but afterwards, I gained some better ones. It took some time, therapy, and a med change but I’ve come along way since last year.