I was diagnosed in autumn last year! I'm a 33 year old male and also dual diagnosis...a fucking mess tbh actually.
I've suffered depression since the age of about eleven when I also started self-harming, a number of suicide attempts along the way, intrusive suicidal ideation on a pretty much daily basis for the last seven years, crack and meth induced paranoid delusional breakdowns with auditory and visual hallucinations (only after stimulant abuse though), diagnosed ADD (the last index I was put on I scored in the range normally associated with head injuries, anxiety (which is what leads to the intrusive suicidal ideation), and if I'm honest I believe I suffer bipolar. I'm also dependent on opiates at the moment.
It was during an assessment for bipolar that I was diagnosed with BPD, and whilst I do think my symptoms fit that description and I identify with a lot of the common experiences from sufferers, I do believe I go through noticeable periods of mania where I engage in obsessive and off key behaviour. I don't just mean a little of key I mean I cam round from one last year and I had bought 10k doses of flualprazolam powder, a barrel of inert pharmaceutical bulking agent and a fucking pill pressing machine. I have no intentions of starting to knock out thousands of counterfeit bars and live the life of selling them, I had not long ago resigned as Executive Chef of one of London's most famous hotels. I don't do things like that when I'm in a non-manic phase, and I often don't even get out of bed. They explicitly did not diagnose bipolar saying my periods of mania were too short (maybe only a fortnight sometimes), but I did a little bit of reading and rapid cycling bipolar is strongly correlated with substance abuse so that behaqviour should serve as evidence for, not against, that diagnosis.
The NHS 'service' has been a total joke, trying to get any help other than anti-psychotic drugs is fucking impossible. I've just been given a quetiapine script and no information about how to get any therapy. I only even managed to get an assessment after ringing the crisis line all day for four days repeatedly telling them that I had made two recent (last couple of weeks) half-hearted suicide attempts and was wanting to do it properly and couldn't stop thinking about it and needed help because I didn't trust myself. They tried to give me an appointment for ten weeks time, and after a lot of arguing and me trying to convey to them that this wasn't the sort of thing that could wait for ten weeks because there was a distinct chance I wouldn't make it to that ten week appointment, it took me telling them I was coming to the psychiatric clinic to cut myself and bleed out in the waiting room to force them to take me seriously before they gave me an emergency appointment.
I could go on for pages with the bullshit they've put me through but I'll try not to be too much of a negative nancy! On the plus side I do feel the BPD diagnosis rings true and I'm startin a search to try and find a support group in London as this is all new to me, I barely understand my diagnosis (which consisted of being handed a training leaflet for student doctors about emotionally unstable personality disorder and being told to read it, with no other words whatsoever). so I have a lot of learning to deal and I'm sure there must be a group somewhere in London that can help me with some of sufferer's common problems.
