There are people who claim to have been cured of bipolar disorder. This is a thing that happens, especially online. People have written to me claiming of a bipolar cure. Companies also claim to cure (or magically treat) bipolar disorder. (One, in fact, threatened to sue me for talking about my experience with their product.)
My opinion is the people who claim to have been cured of bipolar disorder are dangerous.
Hearing About Bipolar Cures
Here’s what to remember when you hear claims of bipolar cures.
Video Transcript
Today I want to talk about those who claim to be cured of bipolar disorder. These are the people who claim they had bipolar disorder, they did something magical, and now they’re cured. You’ll find these people all over YouTube talking about it; you’ll find people all over blogs talking about it; you may even find books about it.
But here’s what I can tell you: It’s not true. Science studies illnesses like bipolar disorder from every single angle, and what we know right now is that bipolar disorder is an incurable illness. If you have it, you will likely be dealing with it for the rest of your life.
I completely understand that is something that is really hard to accept, so when someone says they’ve cured bipolar disorder, it’s really seductive and you want to believe them. You want, so badly, to be cured, that you will believe some supplement can do it. But the fact of the matter is, this just isn’t true.
The treatments that we have for bipolar disorder are increasing every day and they represent the best we can do right now. There is no secret machine; there is no secret supplement; there is no secret anything that people are keeping from you that would cure your bipolar disorder.
Please don’t listen to these people.
Listen to science. Listen to evidence. That’s what is needed. We need to stand up together and say to those people: you’re very confused or you’re trying to sell me something.
Image by FDA graphic by Michael J. Ermarth (“Miracle Cure!” Health Fraud Scams) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Actually, it’s when you realize the doctors are full of sh_t and take your power back and do something different and find out you aren’t bipolar at all. It was just a convenient diagnosis to drug you and see the next patient.
I quit taking my meds two months ago and nothing happened. I think I might have been misdiagnosed or the disorder is bullshit to begin with. every other time I’ve been off meds I would start hallucinating immediately, but this time is different, I still keep suspecting that the CIA is watching me from time to time but that’s just a paranoid delusion that any healthy person could have, and the meds never helped that.
I personally have an issue with the blanket statement that there is no cure. Until everyone with BD in the world is evaluated I choose to keep an open mind and continue to search for something out there could possibly cure remission BD. Until I have the proof in my hand that everyone in the world has been interviewed I choose to keep an open mind.
I went off medication and embarked on a treatment of exercise, healthy eating, fish oil, and Vitamin D, because that’s what everyone told me would “cure” me. The weight that I’d gained from the Seroquel and Depakote I had been taking melted off. I was cured! I exercised more and more. I exercised twice a day, 2 hours each time. I was definitely cured! Everyone should do what I was doing, and they’d be cured! I restricted food to only 1400 calories a day while burning 600-800 during exercise, and started fainting from hunger. But I was cured! All I needed was to eat healthy and exercise! Until one day I was so manic, I became paranoid and delusional, and my husband ended up physically taking me down so I wouldn’t drive my car in a fit of manic anger. Back to the Seroquel. I may be 60 pounds overweight again, but I’m cured of ever thinking I will be cured.
I know we all react to medication differently. I wanted to share what I am taking if it helps anyone. I take 30 mg of Cymbalta in the am. I take 20 mg of Geodon at bedtime. The Geodon is a miracle for me. In the past I could become manic in a minute and the next 72 hours were hell for all involved. With the Geodon as soon as I feel the rage/anger/desire to make bad choices, etc… I take one 20 mg and within 15-30 minutes I was calm and back in control. During that time I am waiting for it to kick in I let my husband know what is going on and I remind myself how much damage and pain is caused by one of my episodes. I haven’t had an episode in 3 months, that is the longest I have gone. Talking to my husband when I am feeling that way is a major improvement because he would always regconize the signs of mania before I did and it always caused a fight. Since I started the Geodon I no longer feel like he is treating me like a child. I now see him as playing a major role in me not going to the dark side.
Thank you for your response and offering up Cushing as a possible diagnosis. That and many other alternatives have been explored. Besides a very late onset in my early 50’s and the diagnosis fits. It has been suggested that I had been hypomanic up to that point. When I compare my abilities, energy levels etc with my friends I was no more hypomanic then they were. That I don’t agree with sadly I do agree with the Bipolar 1 diagnosis. Btw, I love your community here.
Forgot to say… maybe it counts as impulsive (but to me it felt more compulsive than impulsive) action that I had shopping addiction? I got rid of that too btw by simply making myself dampen my interest in the shopping. Less fun that way, true. :/
…I do want to add, I’m working on the depressive attitude with this extremely strong negativity. I’ve made progress in fixing my way of thinking about people and relationships and that’s been helping recently. But it’s been very hard work.
So anyway… I don’t know what kind of bipolar and depression can be cured and what kind can’t. I just described my own experiences. I still believe that I can get a lot more fixed about the depression. And tbh I do not want to go back to the positive but unrealistic thoughts and moods of the mania-hypomania episodes (when it would turn close to psychotic is when I would call it more mania btw, I did have impulsivity increase then in those cases but only in short bursts). I prefer the realistic approach. The episodes were just conserving sh**t for me, conserve the issues in my situation. If that makes sense.
For a couple of years I had a form of manic-hypomanic episodes, I couldn’t sleep, eat etc. It was milder than full-on mania I guess, I did not do impulsive actions much, but it was still a positive mood with racing thoughts. Then I took sarcosine after a couple years of suffering them and that made the frequency of them radically decrease. Afterwards, I did also pay attention to slowing down movements and eat to control some of the positive moods. Then I decided to get rid of the rest of the episodes 1.5 years later by simply making myself stop the positive-unrealistic thoughts. Result? I got incredibly strong negative emotions, emotional pain, crying etc. I still have this easily coming out but I no longer have the hypomanic thinking and I can sleep alright at night! Am I cured? Of the hypomanic attitude yes. Of depression? No.
Interesting, I was putting myself in the “remission” column until the side effects of one of the drugs I was taking became too much – unable to find words, memory, constipation. So on to to reducing the dosage of the drug…after a week of feeling really great (hello mania), now back to crushing depression. The next decision point is do I try a new drug. The most unfortunate part is life marches on and I don’t have the luxury of it stopping long enough to adjust. I am so very very tired…
Debbie ..
Hang in …we all have felt like where you seem to be ..
Please try to fing and keep hope in your heart..
Have you ever had CBT ..i had 12 sessions ladt year and for me it has been the biggest factor in keeping me stable..
Also i have a lovely cat..who adopted me ..pet therapy is also great …for keeping grounded..
The more tools we have and develop the better we can manage ..
Take care Debbie ..
Sending you my very best wishes
Beverley ?
Natasha,
I have asked this question to every doctor, therapist, etc… that I have met with and they all gave me a different answer. Shortly after turning 50 years old I woke up in a full blown manic attack. I read every characteristic of Bipolar and I never had any of them until that day. They all hit me at once. It took several years to get to the point where with 2 medications, 8-10 hours of sleep every night, eat right and take prescribed supplements no one would ever guess that I have Bipolar. I actually changed several doctors because they told me I was cured. I consider myself in “remission” but with that being said I remind myself every day that I do have Bipolar.
Tracy
May I suggest you have your cortisol levels checked. There are 3 or 4 tests. Could be Cushing’s disease. which can mimic in many ways Bipolar disorder. http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/26479256
What is even more startling is when Psychiatric practitioners diagnose someone with BIpolar and then 2 years later; the diagnosis changes to Recurring Major Depressive or something of the like. When asked why? The answer is typically “the medication” has prevented episodes of BIpolar and therefore; they are no longer considered as having BIpolar. **I freaking kid you not**
This is why I get peo’d with the psychiatric profession because regardless of how many studies are out there; there is still NO DEFINITIVE diagnostic tool to DEFINITIVELY diagnosis mental illness and more specifically.. the type. There is no CT scan, blood test, x-ray, etc. that definitively says “mental illness” and more definitively.. the type. It is still based on verbal and behavioral reporting by the patient, the law or the family to someone who has the DSM and psychiatrists differ, often with diagnoses, from the psychotherapists.. the psychologists.. and the psych nurse practitioners. All of which can diagnose.
So, someone “cured” may have been someone that took meds religiously and now no longer have episodes of mania or depression and therefore are more ‘stabilized” than cured… though the patient may feel that they are cured.
It could be that they were totally misdiagnosed; which happens way too often. In the 90’s, Bipolar was the blanket diagnosis for everything.
Or it could be, as some have mentioned; the episodes were when the patient was much younger – was treated – and hasn’t had a reoccurence in say 5 years.
Is there a “cure” for Bipolar? No.
Are there periods of long stabilization? Yes.
Is there misdiagnosis of BIpolar? All the time.
Could someone have Bipolar and then after a few years of meds, come up with a totally new diagnosis? Apparently so.
I’m trying to think of a nice way to say that the psychiatric profession has a serious quality assurance issue…
Miracles happen! :) :) :) :)
Miracles happen! :)
Of course misdiagnosis can happen too. In this case an individual who takes a magic potion could have never had an episode of mania again but only because they never had one in the first place!
Thanks for the blog/video. There’s so many gimmicks and misinformation out there. It makes me angry when people try to make money off of vulnerable people.
That said, there is room for discussion about the degree to which someone can get better. The word “cure” implies that one can go from having an illness one moment to not having the illness the next moment. As you point out, there is nothing in the world today that can do that (unfortunately). Of course medication works miracles for some but not for others. I do know people who received treatment within a week of their first episode of mania and report that 5 years later are doing very very well with no episodes of depression or mania.
There are others (me) that had many episodes of depression and hypomania with no treatment and eventually reached mania and started treatment. I’m told the reason i’m the way I am despite treatment is because I went so long without treatment. So the person who received treatment right away at a younger age is closer to “cured” than me but of course not cured. My doctor says that the sooner the treatment, the better the outcome.
I don’t like people trying to sell cures but I also think we ought to emphasize that some people to get better, alot better.
Thanks for your writing!
Given the criteria refer to “current or past” episode with nothing to say it has to be recent, a cure is a pretty neat trick. Maybe a time machine involved?
More seriously, some (few) people do have one or two brief episodes when they’re younger, and no more afterwards, even without needing medication in later years. We’d call them lucky. But if those same people took magic beans after their episodes it would seem to them that the magic beans “cured” them. There’s no parallel universe where they also didn’t take the magic beans and still never had another episode.
More common is the person misdiagnosed as bipolar, usually based on one episode long ago that in fact didn’t come close to qualifying as hypomania. Seen that one several times. Given the diagnosis tends to “stick” (I’ve rarely seen anyone use the “in partial/full remission” specifier for ≥ 2mo. symptom free) and is usually based on someone else in the past diagnosed, it has consequences on all kinds of medical treatment.
100% agree! It would be the equivalent of a person born without a thumb suddenly curing themselves by growing a thumb because of ‘solution xyz’. There are just some things that structurally, biologically, we aren’t capable of changing. It’s sometimes easy to forget that because BP shows up in our thoughts, emotions… things that aren’t visibly tangible… that BP has its origin in our physical structure, albeit super itty-bitty, teeny-tiny cells, their components, and such.
While we may not yet be able to alter our structure, we can still aim for managing our BP. Some people luck out and find a stability right after diagnosis, others struggle for what feels like an eternity and find they must accept the aim of less instability over stability. It’s frustrating to have those vague parameters; when other disorders, illnesses, diseases have clear lines it’s easy to assume every health matter would follow suit, but it doesn’t. And that sucks. For people with BP, MS, IBS, MD… it’s just that for a lot of those diseases you can see a physical expression and our BP experience is internal. Just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t always with us.
Nice blog you have here. I’ve recently delved into researching my mental maladies and although I wish you didn’t suffer, misery always loves company. :) I’m late to the party, being middle-aged…but at some point you realize there’s something seriously wrong and you can’t just “man up, and tough it out.” Thanks for your posts, and good luck to you.
Ah, the snake oil sellers …
I have met quite a few people with Cushing’s disease or syndrome that were misdiagnosed and were labeled bipolar. Just a thought. Just because one is diagnosed BP doesnt mean they have it.
Ah, the snake oil sellers …
Good point. Some may think that they have been cured when infact they never had BP in the first place.
I have cured my diagnose paraniod schizofrenia according to the dsm3 they now call it schizoaffective disorder(dsm4-TR) with biiplar disorder (dsm5) :)… so my best guess is that im moving forward however in snail pace :(, howbout U Mrs Tract???