Diagnosis

They say it takes an average of 10 years to get diagnosed as bipolar. I was showing symptoms early in life, but was not diagnosed. I even asked to see a psychiatrist at age 16 but was told I was "a normal teenager".

At age 27, I decided that I needed to work through being an adult child of an alcoholic. I found and saw a specialist in this. As I recall, we didn't get very far, and I never went to any meetings with other "ACOA"s. There are definite traits to being an adult child of an alcoholic and I bought books about this a few years later and tried to work through this. I also bought books on "highly emotional people". I thought I was just full of emotions and "extra sensitive". Of course, I read only a few pages of each.

When I first started having more symptoms at age 33 or so, I saw a doctor that worked with my primary doctor. He thought I had PMDD: Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. My primary reviewed this and referred me to psychiatry. There, I was seen by a student psych. nurse who diagnosed me with "bipolar NOS". (Not Otherwise Specified.) (The diagnosis of PMDD was thrown out.) It took several months for them to finally give me the specific marker of "bipolar I". I remember being psychotic before my first appointments, but you don't just walk into an appointment and say, "Hi. I was psychotic 2 months ago. Give me drugs." I was put on Depakote and the rest, they say, is history.

I'm still ACOA, but the symptoms that I thought were because I'm ACOA, and emotional person can be attributed to being bipolar.