Before I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, I was diagnosed with depression and put on an antidepressant. Doctors need to be careful when prescribing antidepressants to people with Bipolar Disorder because many antidepressants can cause mania in patients with Bipolar Disorder. I recently unearthed some of my poetry from my first-ever truly manic days. (Ever since then, I have had several manic episodes. I think the antidepressant rewired my brain.)
Over the next few weeks, I will publish it stanza by stanza.
Facing my Demons
I sit in a tomb
dark, except for a flickering red glow.
Eerie screams of tortured souls
slither up from the catacombs.
The despair of the lost potentiates my own.
But they’re not really there.
All in my head.
My friends outside push and heave at the tombstone.
They want to save me.
But they can’t. Because they’re not really there.
All in my head. Shall I go down?
Hibernator's Library 
I find it interesting how we rely so heavily on medications. The first sign of trouble, and we are given a medication, even if it isn’t for the right diagnosis. I look forward to reading more of your writing.
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Well, in this case, I’d been depressed for years. It was nit the first sign of trouble. In defense of meds, I do actually find my bipolar disorder much more easily manageable with meds than without. I agree that some doctors over-prescribe them…especially opioids. And many people misuse them.
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I didn’t mean to imply that medicines are not useful and needed, more so that doctors (like you said) over prescribe them.
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This is very powerful. I sank into very dark and deep depths when I suffered from post-partum and your writing reminds me a lot of how a felt. Thank you for sharing it!
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Yeah, I was rapid cycling between depression and mania when I wrote these poems, so I was full of energy to write, but had a lot of dark thoughts. It went on for quite a while – I think there are 26 of them in all. Now I look back and just say “wow.”
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