My Bipolar Diary

This is the Real Stuff !!


It's a journey of hope, despair, longing, annoyance, fear, winning, and sometimes just sheer tiredness. Read this if you think you are bipolar. Or if you have just been diagnosed and want to know what to expect. Or if you just want to see what someone else has gone through.

After I was diagnosed, I wrote down all my daily thoughts and feelings for six years, from 1997-2003, while I struggled to cope with being bipolar. It's goes from diagnosis to relative stability, and was a blog before blogs even existed.

The Diary is the soul of this website, and I've been told many times that there is nothing else like it on the web. You'll be surprised how similar the Diary is to your experience. The dates are old, but the problems of being bipolar don't change.

  1. Why I Went to a Psychiatrist in the First Place

  2. Taking Medication for the First Time

  3. Taking Medication, Take Two

  4. Stable and Reflective

  5. It’s OK to be Depressed

  6. Just When I Thought I was Stable

  7. Lives of Quiet Desperation

  8. A Day in the Life of a Manic Person

  9. Here I Start Again…again

  10. Been There, Done That, Got a T-shirt

  11. Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life for the Next Two Weeks

  12. Life is Boring

  13. OK, Maybe Not So Boring

  14. Trying to Stay on Medication

  15. No Motivation, Alas

  16. Love is a Healer

  17. Not Enough of a Healer

  18. Tales of Far Away

  19. No Sleep is a Bad Idea

  20. Crash and Burn

  21. Running on High Octane

  22. Cycling Downhill and Trying the Brakes

  23. Cycling Uphill and Trying the Brakes

  24. Today is ALWAYS the First Day of the Rest of My Life

  25. Being Normal

  26. Relationship Problems

  27. Planning One Week Ahead

  28. Depression and Prozac

  29. Being Stable Daily

  30. Breaking Up is…Confusing to Do

  31. How Do People Live with Normal Emotions

  32. Taking On a Race Or Not

  33. Losing My Identity

  34. Do I Want to Get Better?

This is the end of the first phase of the diary.


  1. The Price of Clubbing

  2. My Desk is Getting Clearer

  3. Starting Back Up....

  4. Bad News and Good News

  5. Experiment 15 Jul 12 (Day 1)

  6. Experiment 16 Jul 12 (Day 2)

  7. Experiment 17 and 18 Jul 12 (Days 3 and 4)

  8. 2013 and all that


The 2019 and forward stuff

  1. It Got Worse in my Forties, Fifties (new : 2 Sep 19)

  2. Circles and Circles


Since the Diary was written, I've become more knowledgeable about being bipolar, and about drugs, and mania, and depression episodes, and dealing with doctors. Check out the other sections of the website for more specific information.