I have a good friend who is bipolar and she talks to me a lot about it. (I guess I am her gay friend even though I am not gay). Bipolar is wide swings. When they swing to the good, it is awesome. When they swing to the bad, it is terrible. The meds force them into the middle. That’s good except they miss that swing to the good. So they go off the meds thinking “I’ll swing good but if I swing bad, I’ll go back on the meds”. But they swing bad, go into their dirty hole and don’t take the meds.
Toss in alcohol messing with the mind while they try to medicate. They all seem to drift over to either alcohol or marijuana and think these will help in some fashion.