Coping with Bi-Polar WAW

[CountingCrows]

Agreed. The behavior is merely the symptom of the disease, but the disease is no excuse for the behavior.

Despite years of medicines, I still don't believe that they do much for the disease. They do help with some of the symptoms, particularly the anxiety and depression, but seem to do nothing for the manic episodes. A big part of it is probably not even the disease, but rather her inability to "grow up" and "act like a responsible adult", which she is particularly struggling with as she turned 36 and is looking back at what she has(n't) done with her life.

I take partial blame for this, as I've enabled her to get away with it for so many years. I am nearly 9 years older than her, so I've always gone out of my way to not try and be a "father" to her. In doing this, I've probably swung the other direction too far and provided to little direction/restrictions/guidelines that might have forced her to be more responsible throughout our R.

The dope smoking could be argued from both sides. Outside of the lack of motivation that it sometimes causes, I would much rather her interact her meds with pot than with something like alcohol, which she rarely uses. It does seem to have an anti-anxiety effect on her. I'd personally like to see her kick EVERYTHING and go clean for a bit, just to see just what her symptoms would be after all these years. I'm sure that's not going to happen, but I have to wonder what she'd be like "clean-slate". She wasn't on any meds (other than pot) when I met her. The meds didn't start until she started having crippling anxiety attacks a few years into our R.

The selling of the meds is something I'm not happy about either. It's not that she doesn't take them as prescribed, but rather that most of her prescriptions are "Take 1-2 a day" or "As needed". She has found that she can make it on the minimum of these drugs, and ends up with some extra (not a lot) at the end of each month.

I'd like to believe that the right combination of prescription drugs, taken as prescribed, would somehow resolve all the symptoms of her BP nature. I just haven't seen anything that seems to do that...and believe me, she's tried just about everything available throughout the years.

Thanks to everyone giving me their thoughts. I'm using this forum as journal/venting/cry for help as much as anything. I really don't expect anyone to have concrete answers for our problems, but it's good to hear others' opinions/thoughts. I'm looking into getting myself a C, but this helps right now, as I don't really have anyone that I can talk to that doesn't have some type of bias (parents, family, friends, etc.), particularly if they heard all the details that I've presented here in this anonymous environment.