Steps from crazy

Another website I love is Crazy Meds. These guys are really funny, and give you the rundown of each medication prescribed for crazy, what the side effects are, etc. This guy cracks me up. I always check out my meds here before I start taking them, just so I know what to expect. And it's always weight gain.

I just noticed today that he also has a twelve step link, which is "Walking Away from Mania in Twelve Easy Steps." Again, hilarious, but helpful. I'll give you some of it:

"Step 1: Come to accept that the bipolar diagnosis is correct and that in our manic periods we have made a right mess of things.

Step 2: Come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can and will restore us to sanity. Indeed. Pharmaceutical companies, psychiatric research, clinical studies, doctors and therapists getting together and exchanging notes on what works and what doesn't, potent molecules where 0.25mg of Risperdal can have so much impact on my life, those are all way more powerful than I am.

Step 3: Make a decision to turn our lives over to the care of medical science.

Step 4: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Dude, this is the decade of the blog. Aren't we all doing this already? Yeah, well dig a little deeper. Just how much of a jerk were you when manic? .... So meditate on all the sexual betrayals, the people you treated like dirt in your manic arrogance because you were king shit, and the lives made extra sucky by ruined credit histories."

Ahhh, yes. He also says don't dwell on this step when depressed, which would mean I'd never get around to it. But it is good to identify the times in my life where I was manic, and the people I've hurt during those episodes.

But how do I separate out what was mania, what was addiction, and where I'm just an asshole? What's my true character and what's the illness(es)?