Shenandoah Drake

My name is Shenandoah Drake I am a Pre Vet student at the University of Utah. I was diagnosed with bipolar about a year and a half ago. Bipolar is a brain disorder that causes extreme mood swings that range from mania to depression. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that my bipolar started to kick in. The only problem was we didn't know that I had bipolar; my parents thought I was just going through some rebellious teenage stage. I went through 3 major episodes before we figured out what was wrong.

I have manic bipolar which caused me to stay up for days on end; I thought I could do anything in the world, and I had extremely bad judgment which got me in to a ton of trouble. It took going through Juvenile Detention (D.T.) 3 times before a probation officer had someone from Utah Youth Village spend sometime with me who recognized my symptoms and told my parents that I needed to go to the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Hospital.

Once there I was diagnosed and put on mood stabilizers. I was reluctant at first to take the medications but when my mood was stable I could keep my life stable. I want to stress to find the strength to get help it will help you get your life back! It's hard to admit that you have a problem but the sooner you do the sooner you can get help and the sooner you can get your life back. A problem that people who have to take meds (medications) run into is they start taking them and they feel better to the point where they think they don't need to take them anymore. So they stop taking them and guess what, they start having episodes again and their life gets turned upside down until it gets so bad that they look at suicide as a way out. And then if they're lucky they get help again but for some it's too late. I hope I have helped touched lives like this program was able to. I am Shenandoah Drake and this is my story.