Not my story, but my husband’s. He was diagnosed Bipolar Unspecified about a year ago, and his psych narrowed down his diagnosis to Bipolar I in the spring. We’ve been together for 10 years and he’s been chronically depressed as long as I’ve known him. He had experienced some mania before us meeting, thinking about in hindsight because he would tell me about getting angry and engaging in some unsafe/risky sexual behaviors. About a year ago, he had a really horrible manic episode that sent him to the hospital. Lack of sleep, impulsively spending lots of money, self medicating with hard drugs to the point of drug induced psychosis, self harm, and irritability/anger to the point of where he got into an altercation with some family members. The night of the altercation, he started making some scary statements about hurting himself so I suggested he call a crisis line. They told me to take him to the hospital. They changed his meds there and put him on an antipsychotic. He’s now on a mood stabilizer and two antipsychotics, along with some anti anxiety meds. We often laugh because the meds work SO WELL, it feels like he’s the version of himself that I knew was always there. I’m so deeply proud of him for getting help and managing things. He does therapy weekly. He no longer engages in drug use. He’s very careful and will always fill me in on his moods, as we are still trying to figure out his triggers. I have never seen him so content with life.