I want out

Richard

What exactly make a person 'bi-polar' or 'manic-depressive' or whatever term you're comfortable with that describes what you experience is, at best, poorly understood by science to date.  However, a look at history shows that many (probably most) of the people who have made great contributions to society suffered from an affliction like your's.  Winston Churchill sufferred from bouts of severe depression, yet what an amazing orator, writer, and thinker!

I saw a pamphlet (obviously written by a psychiatrist) about bi-polar, and the cover of the pamphlet featured a picture of Herr Ludwig von Beethoven.  The inside cover featured a quote of a psychiatrist saying 'If [Beethoven] had not been saddled with his illness, what greater things might he have accomplished??"

I'll tell you what exactly greater things, ZIP!  It's the illness that drives us to create, to write, to express, and to love, and to savor the good in life, because we, above all, know how fleeting and temporary nature of happiness and elation like noone else can. That's my opinion.  If Beethoven had spent his life on high doses of anti-psychotics, I sincerely doubt there would have ever been a 5th Symphony or a Moonlight Sonata.

I'm not so much trying to badmouth medications and treatments as I am trying to illustrate that there are bittersweet advantages to suffering through what we suffer through.  It's never quite totally sweet, unfortunately, and more often than not, we feel the suffering far more severely and for longer terms than we see the upswing.  Such is life, I'm afraid.  I can sympathize with your message.  However, I wouldn't change a thing about who I am - after struggling with Manic-Depression for decades.

When someone wants support I tend to read a post very carefully. If somebody wanted to know what their condition is/means OR wants to say I feel rubbish and hate this condition OR someone wants to know what to do I answer in relation to the context of the original post. I don't do huggy, lovey stuff to strangers like in reality. If I know you and trust you I'll be kind.

Anyway besides this, I understand too and I hope you feel less rubbish and defeated soon. 

"...because we, above all, know how fleeting and temporary the nature of happiness and elation can be like noone else can. "

I'll append by saying that while psychological trauma in childhood (or physical brain trauma, which has similar effects) may turn out to contribute to the illness, the miniscule slice of understanding that science has worked so hard to extract to this point suggests that what we suffer from is purely a brain or neurological condition.  It's noone's fault, and it is exactly what it is.

The silver lining to the cloud is that we are able to experience many things the average, run-on-of-mill bloke never gets to.  Euphoric mania, and hypomania, for instance.  I don't care for dealing with the aftermath of either, but while you're there, it's a pretty incredible feeling.  I'm just being honest.  Lying awake at 3:00AM with my thoughts dancing around the room in 3 dimensional, full color abstractions, able to solve any problem (I think) in a few miliiseconds?!  It's cool!  I think if there were a pill you could take to experience that feeling for four hours and then come back to normal it would sell like hotcakes.  Again, I don't mean to underscore how dangerous and destructive it is, but I'm being honest about how good it feels to be in those states.  It's like a higher state of consciousness.  I look forward to what is discovered in the next 20 years about all that, and learning 'why?".  I've had some very memorable hypomanias, and as horrible as my major episodes were, 'what a ride!'.

Bipolar is an opportunity and not an excuse! Please love your bipolar as if you control and manage it well, you will succeed in your life.

The bipolar is my friend since 1993! I have suffered at the beginning but then I understood it and now I know how to deal with it. At the end of the day you have to live with it.

Finally I want to share this with all of you. The opportunity that I see in bipolar disorder is that there is a very thin line separates geniusy - creativity and mania. If you have an excellent experienced psychiatrist, he/she will know how to keep this creativity going without pushing it back to manic-depression e.g. using risperdal as the only way to manage the mania without giving a chance to some physiological treatment.