All of my life I have felt that something was wrong with me. I never was quite as happy as my friends. I can remember being as young as 10 and sitting in my bedroom crying uncontrollably. Life just never seemed to be ok.

As a teenager and into my early twenties, my life spiraled in and out of extreme highs and lows. I took to medicating myself with whatever I could get. Alcohol to cocaine to LSD, I tried to find the best way to forget about my life. I believed my problems were gone. I was in so much pain. I just wanted to hide from myself and those that cared about me. I thought I had to. That was what I had done all my life, so why should I stop?

In my late twenties, things came to a head. I couldn’t manage to get out of bed for days. All I could do was cry and think about dying. That was all I wanted. I thought death had to be better than my life was at that time. Then someone very close to me dragged me kicking, screaming and (of course) crying to my family doctor. He immediately diagnosed me with Clinical Depression and prescribed the first in a long, long line of medications. He suggested that I see a counselor and that too became a long line of different people trying to help me out of my so-called depression.

Every clinician that I saw came to the same conclusion: Depression. I continued to take many different antidepressants and they all seemed to work at first and then they would just seem to stop working. On more than one occasion, I became very discouraged and decided to stop counseling and medication. That was a very bad choice. My life was unbearable.

After a few years of this life in my own personal hell, I made a conscious decision to find a new doctor and therapist and try again. My life was just not working. I had had a child by then and I was having trouble taking care of myself, let alone a small child. I sought the advice of a close friend and she suggested a therapist she knew. I also found a new psychiatrist.

That was when things started getting better. I finally found a therapist and psychiatrist who properly diagnosed me after so many years. I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder. Once the diagnosis was made, it all made sense. There had been so many signs all through my life, but my previous clinicians had only seen me during the bad times. The high times had never been discussed. Every time I would be put on a new medication, it would throw me into a manic phase and I would quit going to therapy and decide to stop taking the meds.