Sorry, hun, I am an academic researcher, and I still haven't it out. It is just the nature of our illness.

If you could tell me a bit about your high and lows, I could share some insight.

Well my highs are perfect. Everything lines up with the next, things work out perfectly, and my mind feels so fast. It feels good. And when I am down I feel sluggish mentally, useless, awkward, nothing lines up and etc...

Well, it looks that you could have bipolar 2, look the criteria up in the DSM-IV-TR, which should be online, and see what you think.

Yea, i mean I know I have bipolar, I admit I couldn't remember which one it was, I used to go to a doctor. But he had me on three different medicines that made me so utterly "zombified" that it was horrible. Nothing was good, nothing was bad, everything was grey, and when I had brought that to his attention his solution was more pills. So I quit them all, and since then I manage it the best I can. But with the sudden drops it is literally like turning a light switch off.

You have a chemical imbalance in your brain.

For mentally healthy people, the chemicals in their brains allow them to mainly feel emotions in response to what's going on around them and happening to them.
(Everyone is a little bit at the mercy of their brain chems, though. People feel a little blue for no real reason or get up on the wrong side of the bed. But mainly, there's a logical cause for their feelings.)

For us, the chemical imbalance makes it much more likely that the emotions we feel are not only in response to what's happening, but also just well up from within us and are not always 'appropriate' for the situation.

That's why you can crash in spite of having things to be happy about.

Look at how different some people act when they dump alcohol into their systems.
Well, our brains our having chemicals dumped on them from within!!!
Sometimes, we get the 'happy' chemicals -- and sometimes, we get the 'not so happy' ones!!!

As much as it seems like the best outcome would be to feel the 'happy' ones all the time, the truth really lies somewhere in between, LOL!!!
It's that stable, middle ground that is the best place for us to be. Closest to 'normal', anyway.

I think we crash because we are feeling so well we don't notice ourselves slipping.

A chemical imbalance sounds really viable, this is something that really has my interest now. Why chemicals (granted they are to blame) suddenly drop or rise. What causes them to react the way they do? And how to control or partly control them.

I wish treatment for it worked as easily as people think that treatment for Diabetes does!!

(I say 'people think' because my mother has Diabetes and actually, treatment in her case doesn't go all that well.)

But still, I wish you could test a drop of blood and it would show how your chemicals were off and then you could take something that would balance it out to just the right mix!!!

It's rough when what you have wrong affects the brain, which is, of course, the brains of the whole outfit, LOLOL!!!!

Our brain determines so much!!! DEFINES us so very much!!! Runs the show, in most ways!!

You can have different chronic diseases that 'come and go' (worsen or go into remission) and doctors don't always know why they do what they do when they do it.

Hormones probably play a significant part.
Look how stress can really push you out of relative stability.

You can 'control' your Bipolar Disorder -- but only to a very limited degree and not every time you try, in my opinion.

I have some success in controlling my behavior -- but even if I'm 'being good' on the outside, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm feeling the same way on the inside.

My Pdoc and family might be happy with the way I'm acting -- but inside I might be a terrible mess.

(If you figure out a solution to all this, promise me you'll tell me all about it!!!!!)