I am bipolar type 1. 🎭 That is the most severe form of bipolar disorder. (Bipolar 2 can have very severe depression, but because it doesn’t have severe mania it doesn’t progress along the same course. Something like that.) I’ve been inpatient 18 times, and I’ve been discharged from the ER a few additional times as well.

Interestingly, I don’t have what most people would think of if you said “classic bipolar disorder”. I have mostly dysphoric manias (and sometimes euphoric hypomania), so no grandiose delusions or belief that I can see the flow of energy that connects all things. Just bugs that… may or may not be real. 🐜 But, the dysphoric mania type is actually sliiiiiightly more common than euphoric (feel-good) mania in real-world bipolar 1 people, according to one study¹. 

The main reason my bipolar is unusual is that it is so FAST. My psychiatrist describes it as “brittle” — a medical term often applied to highly unstable diabetes patients, where blood sugar skyrockets but then drops with intervention but then skyrockets again. It follows the same kind of course.

Usually, I think my cycle (including both mania, which almost always comes first for me, and then depression — most bipolar people have one type of episode almost always come first, but it’s a 50/50 split which one²) is 2 to 4 weeks long. If it’s a lot faster than that it’s considered a mixed episode.

I rarely ever have euthymic (normal mood) periods and I don’t have any asymptomatic periods. (I have persistent problems with memory and executive functioning and other stuff.) 

💊 Currently every day I take: lithium, Thorazine (chlorpromazine), Zyprexa (olanzapine), Valium (diazepam), and Adderall (amphetamine salts). 💊

What causes bipolar disorder?

A lot of research links bipolar disorder to various things:
a) circadian instability, sleep problems ⏰
b) inflammatory processes in the brain 🔥
c) epilepsy 📈 — they have a lot in common, and medications used to treat epilepsy are often used to treat bipolar disorder; I think you can think of bipolar as being similar to some kind of epileptogenic brain activity but on a more macro scale. Similarities to Temporal Lobe Epilepsy include age of onset and genetic cause among other things and they do have a very very high comorbidity rate.
d) genetics 🧬 — 97% of bipolar disorder is explained by genetic variance alone and it is more heritable than autism or schizophrenia (I believe it might be the most heritable psychiatric disorder in DSM-5)

Most people get bipolar disorders in their 20s, but I got it early. I had suicidal depression sometime before the age of 10 and had my first clear hypomanic episode when I was 16. My parents were anti-psychiatry, so I wasn’t in treatment until I went to college and I almost became an emancipated minor because I was still 17 and it was that serious 🙃

Unlike autism, which is a fairly new concept (although autistic people have almost certainly existed for thousands of years) bipolar disorder is a very old idea for a distinct illness that occurs in all cultures that I know of. Other English names for it have been “manic depression” (a term I actually prefer), “manic-depressive psychosis”, “circular insanity” 🔁, all referring to a highly organized and unusually patterned occurrence of severe disturbances in mood.

That’s actually what I study now in my PhD program! I’m looking for patterns in bipolar disorder. I’m very good at patterns 🧩

References

1.  Grant BF, Stinson FS, Hasin DS, et al. Prevalence, correlates, and comorbidity of bipolar I disorder and axis I and II disorders: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. J Clin Psychiatry. 2005;66(10):1205-1215. doi:10.4088/JCP.v66n1001

2. Koukopoulos A, Reginaldi D, Tondo L, Visioli C, Baldessarini RJ. Course sequences in bipolar disorder: Depressions preceding or following manias or hypomanias. J Affect Disord. 2013;151(1):105-110. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2013.05.059