Living with Ultra Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder (Full Unedited Version)

I’ve decided to write a piece describing how I live with my type of bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric disorder marked by alternating episodes of mania and depression and was called manic-depressive illness in the past but this name has now been superseded. My particular type of bipolar disorder is called ‘ultra rapid cycling bipolar disorder’.

What makes it ‘ultra rapid cycling’ is the fact that my period of cycling between mania and depression is, by and large, every two weeks. I say ‘by and large’ as it depends on some external influences (stress for example) but on the whole, it’s fairly rhythmic.

For a person with bipolar, mood has a life of its own due to the fluctuating nature of the various chemicals in the brain.

The extremes of my mood (depressions / highs) are usually self-limiting – they usually only last a few days at most. However, it’s the frequency that can wear you down in the long-term. Obviously, cycling every two weeks means that you will around 25/26 episodes a year.

But it’s not as simple as a pure two week cycle – there can be a daily cycle at times. In the morning, I can have difficulty getting out of bed and can wake up with hangover type conditions despite the fact that I don’t drink alcohol. I can need a lot of water and sugar-based foods to get myself through this but it isn’t always available.

Other days, I have an episode of sort in the mid-morning / lunchtime even though I felt mostly ok in the waking period. This places me in a difficult position when it comes to work as I am expected to carry out my duties that day but I’m stuck in work with the full ravages of my condition. The onset can be fairly sudden.

But then, even on depressed days, I feel better in the evenings so much so that I sound perfectly normal again. This can pose difficulties in respect of attempting to communicate my problems to the world at large as primarily this happens in the evenings. Even mental health professionals comment that I ‘seem ok now’.

The rise of the mood in the evening can translate into difficulties in getting to sleep. I often have to take a sleeping tablet at times like this and when I’m particularly high, one isn’t enough. You also have to bear in mind that in general tablets don’t kick into effect instantly and it can take up to 30 minutes for medication to take full effect. This produces a lag effect and means that the overall sleep duration is cut. This is particularly so if I wake up early in the evening which I am prone to often at this time. Lack of sleep alone has a mood effect so it’s important to tackle this.

The medication themselves have side-effects but I must emphasise that I’m much happier with medication than I would be without it. The main side-effects for my tablets are drowsiness and increased appetite. The drowsiness can be a help in a lot of ways as it helps me to sleep at night. Sometimes, it can be difficult to get up and going in the morning but this certainly isn’t all of the time.

The increased appetite is more of an issue. I feel hungry to some degree all of the time. More correctly, I never really feel full enough. I’ve put on a bit of weight but with discipline, I’ve learnt to manage what I eat. With increased exercise in the future, I hope to reduce some of my excess weight but I intend to do this over time.


I hope this piece has provided you with somewhat of an insight into my condition. I appreciate that mental illness is difficult for a non-sufferer to fully understand but perhaps if everyone read and listened a bit more, some of the mystery will be removed.



PATRICK MERCER (Pseudonym)