It is well known to almost all people with bipolar disorder, some experiencing it far more often than their (hypo)manic episodes and very often for much longer. While a hypomanic episode may last only a few days, depression can last for months. I discuss it in detail in a dedicated article. I have experienced it an incalculable number of times, notably due to the rapid-cycling nature of my bipolar disorder, and I present here the account of one of them.
Note: This article discusses bipolar depression, with descriptions of psychological suffering, isolation, and hospitalization.
If you are struggling, take care of yourself and seek support. See Help and support.
📋 TL;DR: My depressive episode
- Energy gone: excessive sleep ↔ total inertia.
- Pleasure extinguished, infinite sadness, inner emptiness.
- Tears absent but pain omnipresent.
- Overwhelming guilt, haunting dark thoughts.
- Isolation, addictions, inevitable hospitalization → fragile victory.
A bit of context
For practical reasons, the one I am about to recount did not follow my most recent mixed episode because it simply did not occur. I have not had a major depressive episode in three years. Bipolar disorder is a progressive illness. Whereas I was depressed half the year before I turned 26, it has simply stopped manifesting since then. What frightens me is the possibility that mania has merely taken over temporarily and that a severe depression may eventually come crashing down on me.
So I will recount my second longest depression, which did indeed follow a three-week mixed episode—three very long weeks. But the four months that followed were probably even longer.
It is worth noting that I am writing this article in a hypomanic state and that the stylistic exercise is very difficult. How do you write about a frozen, slow, and gloomy state when everything around you feels fine? My ideas are racing, but they are all oriented toward positive information. To manage to talk to you about depression, I have to go back in time and force my brain to slow down for a few dozen minutes (as that will be the time needed to write the article). Here, then, is my attempt on the subject.
The radical onset of my depression
In my internal terminal, here is what happens:
chaos.stop()
fatigue.amplifier()
sleep.increase(14h)
motorSlowing.reduce()
pleasure.loss(total)
sadness.start()
appetite.loss(progressive, 8kg)
concentration.loss()All of this corresponds almost exactly to the DSM-5 “checklist” criteria, which nonetheless require only 5 out of the 9 total criteria to diagnose depression in a bipolar patient. But in many patients, all of them are present. That is my case.
The signs of my depression
The first signs of an emerging depression for me are… all of the signs. My depressions do not occur at random. They follow my hypomanic or manic episodes. After a manic episode with psychosis, I naturally crashed. I flew too high, until I ran out of fuel and collapsed. The crash is violent. And brutal. I had been euphoric to the extreme for months. Now, I am sad—very sad.
After filling dozens of pages a day, I am now incapable of writing a single one.
The comfort of doing nothing
Unlike euphoric episodes, I can immediately tell that I am depressed. The signs do not lie. I wake up in my bed after 11 hours of sleep but I do not get out of bed. I am incapable of it. I do not want to. That’s the thing with depression: it is almost comfortable. You want to get out of it, but you do not want to do anything. So I wait, in my bed, doing nothing, for the hours to pass.
After 3 hours in bed, I finally decide to get up, but only to take refuge on my couch and vape. And do nothing. I could watch a movie or a series, but I no longer feel like it. The worst part is that it drives me crazy. What did I do to deserve this? Just a few days ago I was chaining episodes of Friends until I finished the series in less than a week. Today is a different story: I just want to stay there, staring at the wall, motionless. I think of nothing. I want nothing.
The feeling of infinite sadness
Well… I do want to cry. Yet no tears come. I feel so empty that I have become incapable of shedding a tear. Never mind—they will come later. I am used to the illness now. I also know that it will end, that it is only a cycle, but I do not believe it. I have lost the ability to imagine finding a stable life again. The illness has been devastating my life repeatedly for years now. This time, I am sure of it—it will not leave me alone. It cannot possibly end.
Dark thoughts are creeping in. No suicidal ideation in sight. Just dark thoughts. I should never have been born. I am a burden to others. Why do people like me when I am worth nothing? They would be better off without me anyway. Proof of it: I destroyed a deep friendship because of the episodes I was going through. Everyone should abandon me.
Guilt
I am nothing but a weight to them. Yet they keep supporting me and I do not understand why. I feel so guilty. It is hellish.
I wish everything would stop and that my illness would finally leave me in peace. During my manic episode, I once again stopped all my treatments. Everything is my fault: if I had done things properly, I would not be here today.
Now it is too late, the machine is in motion. They will never manage to stabilize me. Even if it is only a cycle, the very term implies that it will start again sooner or later. What is the point of continuing such futile efforts? I should give up and stop my treatments, and let the illness carry me away. No—I keep control, I do not intend to end my life, I just want all of this to stop.
My sensory sensitivities
The world has lost its colors. It seems duller, the trees less green, the lights less bright, the textures less rough or soft. I no longer listen to music because I see no point in it, or if I do, it is depressing music. It fits the overall mood well.
I feel so exhausted that I sleep and sleep again. After getting up, I go eat (if I manage to), then I settle onto the couch and stim a bit by rocking from left to right while waiting for something to happen. Or I simply go back to bed to vegetate while time passes. That is all I have to do: wait, and wait again.
Social isolation
I still keep seeing friends so I don’t rot away in my apartment, but I leave quickly. I only stay an hour or two, then I go back home. I isolate myself because I feel like nothing. I don’t have a girlfriend, but I imagine it would be the same if I did. Nothing and no one is enough to make me smile again. So I wait, and I wait again.
In fact, there is nothing else to do. The depression is not going to leave me, I have no suicidal urges, so there is nothing I can do except: do nothing. Hope that the illness occasionally gives me a few minutes of respite.
Giving in to addictions
I vape continuously to pass the time. The real problem is that, to feel better, I found in alcohol a semblance of a solution. After a certain number of beers, I feel better for a few hours. So I do it again, occasionally. Then every other day. Then every day. A gradual addiction sets in, but alcohol is the only thing that can still make me smile. So I continue. My circle no longer recognizes me; I do nothing but drink, which worsens my state. The idea of hospitalization is brought back to the table.
The psychiatric hospital as the only way out
Weeks go by and the depression does not lift. My circle wants me hospitalized. My psychiatrist does not want to put me on antidepressants for fear of triggering a manic relapse (antidepressants carry a risk of hypomanic/manic switch in people with bipolar disorder). He therefore recommends hospitalization. Out of resignation, I finally accept. I end up in the emergency department and spend five extremely long days there in hospital clothes, without pockets, equipped only with my phone, my charger, and my electronic cigarette.
After those five days, a bed becomes available in the psychiatric hospital in my area. Reluctantly—but now trapped—I am taken to the hospital, where I am quickly cared for. I am started on an antidepressant and my antipsychotic dosage is increased to prevent any manic switch.
Days pass, weeks pass, and I begin to perceive an improvement in my condition. After a month, I seem functional again. I have stopped sleeping 12 hours straight. Not fully stabilized yet, but with the manic risk avoided, I request discharge. I have had enough of the hours spent doing nothing and the often awful hospital food. My psychiatrist gives the green light.
Victory.
I am freed from four months of descent into hell.
📋 TL;DR: Depressive crash
- Bipolar depression is not simple sadness: it is a brutal collapse after months of euphoria.
- Everything slows down: extreme fatigue, endless sleep, impossible concentration.
- Pleasure disappears, colors fade, life loses its meaning.
- Dark thoughts settle in: guilt, worthlessness, the feeling of being a burden to others.
- We isolate ourselves, numb out through addictions, until hospitalization when nothing else works.
- Then, slowly, a fragile return to balance appears — not without the constant fear of another collapse.
Bipolar depression, often more severe than classic major depression, is not just sadness. It is a real erasure of the self that may require months and hospitalization to recover from.