Even if he hadn't, there wasn't much you could do to alleviate bipolarity as late as 1967, the year I terminated him when he became part of the disease, not part of a cure I despaired of ever finding and really no longer cared if I ever found. I cannot begin to describe adequately the kind of life lived in this condition. I can only describe incidents. I have only once had a suicidal impulse. I have run up credit card debt, but not to the tune of five figures in an afternoon.
History is in some ways a great teacher in that it counsels the bipolar patient to expect despair.
I did not understand that the illness can cycle upward, that it can get worse. When I had a series of sexual extravagances in 1999, coupled with an attack of religious manias that led me to the must humiliating incident of my life, I realized something had gone impossibly wrong and that this was more than just mild cycling. I was, let us note, in a talk cure for over three years before that. It helped, but not enough. The therapist couldn't prescribe.