The Roving Psychologist

Well, hilarious article anyway, and informative! Thank you Dr. Gartner, and Charlie Sheen, for bringing attention to this often overlooked and under diagnosed disorder. It is so unfortunate that patients who "suffer" from episodes of hypomania often do not get the attention or care that they should, even though they don't believe they need it, and I suppose it doesn't cause as much trouble for them as mania would. Anyway, very entertaining!

Doesn't this look more like full-blown mania than hypomania? He may be winning, but I think it'd he hard to say that he's in a functional state right now.

think of the quantum theory this way. You have kids doing a survey about cereal boxes and most of them don't think about the one way mirror. I was one of those kids. I kept looking at that one way mirror and it was hard to concentrate on the cereal boxes. Also, try measuring an electron when you can't see it. You will affect that electron when you measure it. Similar with Charlie he reacts to the media attention and someone diagnoses him with what this blog is about.

some people just don't like being watched

is he obsessed with women like on his show?

maybe he was just making a show out of it for the media. it has to get a little annoying when they're interested in every part of your life.

Also you said:

"To cure his drug addiction, unlike normal mortals, he needed no help, no AA, no meds,"

The vast majority of addicts quit on they're own and it's a myth that brain addiction is a disease that's just used by the government to support the war on drugs.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you-cure-yourself-o...

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Why have people forgotten that this is what drugs do? Time and time again people look at drug addicts with these behaviors and diagnose them bipolar. Not just the media, doctors do it as well. When I grew up, the FACT that drugs caused these problems was common sense. It was not a genetic brain disease, it was called drug use. Downers made people psychotic and lazy. Uppers made people manic and crazy. That's what they did.

Was Charlie Sheen like this BEFORE he was "banging 7 gram rocks" ??? I doubt it. So why are we even talking about bipolar disorder or hypomania? Is that truly what bipolar disorder is? Robert Whitaker somewhat makes that case in his newest book that drug induced mania - both from illicit drugs and pharma drugs - are fueling the "bipolar boom" but nobody is seeing it as that. Bipolar is continuing to be viewed and regarded as some pathological brain disease when in fact it is not. You show me a bipolar patient without a history of drug use and I will show you a liar. Truly organic cases just plain don't exist when pharma drugs like adderall and ssri's are included.

Why have people forgotten that this is what drugs do? Time and time again people look at drug addicts with these behaviors and diagnose them bipolar. Not just the media, doctors do it as well. When I grew up, the FACT that drugs caused these problems was common sense. It was not a genetic brain disease, it was called drug use. Downers made people psychotic and lazy. Uppers made people manic and crazy. That's what they did.

Was Charlie Sheen like this BEFORE he was "banging 7 gram rocks" ??? I doubt it. So why are we even talking about bipolar disorder or hypomania? Is that truly what bipolar disorder is? Robert Whitaker somewhat makes that case in his newest book that drug induced mania - both from illicit drugs and pharma drugs - are fueling the "bipolar boom" but nobody is seeing it as that. Bipolar is continuing to be viewed and regarded as some pathological brain disease when in fact it is not. You show me a bipolar patient without a history of drug use and I will show you a liar. Truly organic cases just plain don't exist when pharma drugs like adderall and ssri's are included.

I came here thinking I have hypomania and I guess I don't. Maybe I have hypohypomania. I don't think I have special powers or anything, I think I'm just very passionate. Sometimes my passion is so great that my brain kind of blows a fuse and forces me to get distracted (kind of its defense mechanism against very strong feelings). For example: I'll find out I'm a finalist in a video contest and that at this moment probably thousands of people are viewing my work. I get filled with anxiety and the very next thing I do is pull up Google and search for the first strange (and usually extremely vulgar) thing that comes into my mind.