My name is Sint, 58 years old, male, Thai nationality, residing in Phuket, Thailand. I am having Bipolar Mental Disorder myself. I hope I can share my experience with other sufferers.

I will be pleased to exchange mails with sufferer, family, friend and parent, no age limit. I write fairly good English.

I must have BP when I was very young, perhaps around puberty period. Most likely it is genetic because my father who is now 92, also had the same symptoms when he was young. However I did not realize I had BP until I was 41. At that time, I found my mood swung widely and life was really miserable, very often I thought about suicide. I went to see a psychiatrist myself without advice and recommendation from anyone. The psychiatrist put me immediately into hospital for one week and started to treat me with Lithium and Rivotril (commercial name of a drug produced by Roche of Switzerland). The drugs helped me a lot. Unfortunately, after being discharged from hospital, I did not take Lithium and Rivotril regularly as instructed by the psychiatrist because I want to be "drug free". I started to read a lot of philosophy, both East and West, and Buddhism. I thought if I could conduct myself as a good person (with good morality), I would be able to function as a normal person without taking drugs. I studied the original Buddhism which, in many ways, is not a religion because in its teaching, there is no creator and divinity. Nature is a long process of evolution. Everything has a reason with a relevant result. This logical approach of Buddhism really appeal to me, even today. So during this long struggle period to be "drug free" and to be self independent on my own mind was a miserable and painful time. Only about 5 years ago, my psychiatrist finally convinced me that I must accept the fact when biochemistry changes in my brain, it could be so violent that there is no way that I could calm it down by meditation without drug, 

I am now taking Lithium and Rivotril regularly. But I still keep on reading Buddhism and philosophy as I find them complimenting to the drugs. My mood is quite constant now although from time to time, I still have mood swings but the degree is much smaller. I also use swimming in the sea every early morning (about 1/2 hours) and golfing in the afternoon or hiking as additional therapy. It works well for me.

In the beginning, my family could not understand psychiatric matters, because they thought I was normal. They thought I was depressed because I was having difficult business probelms . Only insane peoples go to see psychiatrist. Now they fully understand.

My email is: ourhome@loxinfo.co.th