When I read the heading of this post, the words mental illness and addiction sort of mold together, like a candle, dripping wax into the same spot. Mental illness and addiction go hand in hand--those diagnosed with a mental illness have a much higher incidence of addiction, this is known in the psychiatric community as co-morbid illness. Fancy words to apply to the content of this post.

I could write a million posts (granted my hands might hurt, my head even more) on how frightening life, before being diagnosed with a mental illness, is.

First, let me pull out my Thesaurus (I have not done this for. . .a month? Two? Long overdue?) to define the word impulse and then we'll narrow it down a bit--a lot. We'll apply it to mental illness and shake the word up a bit.

In my last post The Experience of Depression: The Flip-Side of Mania I focused on both depression and, you guessed it, mania. I have a secret: I'm not feeling so great. I am clinically depressed.

The title of this post suggests that I am focusing exclusively on bipolar disorder and this might be true in content, but the symptoms and the experience described below are common within the spectrum of all chronic mental illness. It is a shared experience among those who are diagnosed--and not just with with bipolar disorder--highs and lows, in part, define mental illness.

I have an ulterior motive when writing this blog, rather, I need to vent a bit. I write about the importance of a healthy lifestyle within these blogs: food, diet, exercise, medication compliance, staying away from excess alcohol and even further away from drugs that are not prescribed to us. Far, far, far away, next country far! I mean these things. I practice what I preach. But I have not, as I recall, mentioned cigarettes. Nicotine addiction. The chemicals that live in them. I have not spoken about this because I pretended  that nearly a decade of smoking, now at the age of twenty-six, I had yet to quit. Well, four long days ago I quit. Cold turkey.

Stress is part of all of our lives, not just those of us who live with a mental illness, no, everyone with a heartbeat struggles with stress. Stress can be related to a positive experience, a new job, a new relationship or it can be largely negative. Sometimes, we cannot find reason for it and when you struggle with mental illness, these feelings can be frightening. So, let's explore the feelings, the experience, stress can have on our lives.

When you are first diagnosed with a mental illness, you are presented with the following information: you will probably have to take psychiatric medication for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life! That's tough to hear and to understand.

My physical health doesn't give me trouble as often as my mental illness. I spend a lot more time dodging mental bullets than a cold or flu. But sometimes we get sick. Physically sick. Sometimes, when everything is going well, we wake up feeling like we got hit by a semi.

First diagnosed with mental illness, many of of us feel a little--a lot--angry and confused. We might wonder what we did wrong to deserve a diagnosis that carries stigma and no absolute cure. Perhaps we feel we will never recover from mental illness, it will follow us through life, biting at our ankles like a dog we wouldn't mind kicking. And that's normal, that's human, there is not a person on this earth that---I will take the liberty to assume---does not have a hard time accepting the diagnosis. At first. All this aside, putting your mental illness, the diagnosis of it, in perspective is important. Stigma & Mental Illness Mental Illness carries stigma.