Wendy489

Hi, I too have Bipolar with Panic and Anxiety and I am also a ten years sober alcoholic. When I reached "rock bottom" in my drinking, went to AA, was presented with a solution, I grabbed it with both hands, worked my tail off and I haven't had a drink since Day One, ten a a half years ago. Not so Bipolar. I have also embraced everything that has been put in front of me to work on these illnesses, but no matter how hard I try, I keep relapsing. And I have best therapeutic team I have ever had right now. So it is just devastating and I wonder every day whether this is all just a silly dance and I destined to succeed at taking my own life (which like you, I made a serious attempt at last year and was in a coma for 5 days etc.) I genuinely don't want to waste the time of all these professionals - they could better spend their time on someone where there was hope.

I have lost everything due to these illnesses - my career job for which I had three tertiary qualifications, I lost my house as a result of losing my job (I had owned property, with a mortgage for 14 years and both my successful career and having a home of my own was so unlikely considering my upbringing).

And yes, no-one understands. I have lost all my family and friends, down to one or two now and they live 350km away). I even have a clinical psychologist in the family - my sister-in-law, and she was one of the people right on my case after I came out of the coma and psychosis to attack me for how much pain I had caused everyone else. I had to turn many family away as they were equally as destructive as his in their various ways.

It's truly awful to be shoved to the side of society because of illnesses I did nothing to bring on myself and about which I work at a 100% work rate.

I am so isolated and that is so destructive to my recovery and survival that it's time for me to change tack and start to learn to live with solitude, while still making efforts to rejoin society. The latter is so hard because I get things going in all manner of ways to spend time with people in meaningful activities, but I just keep relapsing. I'm such a hard worker on myself - all the clinicians agree, but it's all to no avail.

There's no point people telling me there is hope, keep going etc, because this is the reality oif my daily life. If I was a slack person and didn't really work on myself, I may have hope - because there would be so much more scope to extend myself and make efforts, but I have all my cards in play.

Wendy