Not until I was 39, was I diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. I am now 50. At 39, I recognized the symptoms of mania in myself, euphoria, the feeling of being called by God to a particular church, to a particular path. The diagnostic criteria have changed over the years. For two decades, I had been diagnosed and treated as dysthymic, or pervasively and chronically depressed. I would tell my physicians that I was probably at the very least cyclothymic, experiencing a pattern of higher highs and lower lows than is the norm, that I was far more productive than most people, that I moved and thought faster, did more, exhausted myself, and burned out on a regular periodic basis.
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