An open book and a steaming ceramic mug on a wood table, with a softly lit reading nook in the background.

Memoir · In Progress

Baseline

A Bipolar Life in Real Time

Thirty-five years of undiagnosed rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, and the AI-assisted self-discovery that finally named the pattern.

Status: Drafting in progress · Manuscript active

What it is

Baseline chronicles the journey from undiagnosed chaos to AI-assisted self-understanding. Melanie spent thirty-five years cycling through mania and depression before she had a name for what was happening — or the tools to track it in real time.

This isn't a tidy recovery narrative. There is no cure. The book is honest about what management actually looks like: not perfection, but catching symptoms early and correcting course. It pairs raw memoir with a practical roadmap for using AI tools to understand chronic mental illness.

If I'm both the problem and the solution, I have everything I need to heal. Not cure — heal. Learn to manage. Understand the pattern.

The arc

Age 17. First hypersexual episode — multiple encounters daily, risky behavior. When the relationship ends, she goes celibate overnight for six years. The first inexplicable switch between extremes. She doesn't know these are symptoms.
Age 26. After her first son is born, doctors diagnose postpartum depression and prescribe an SSRI. The drug triggers worse mania. The misdiagnosis costs years.
The Five Years (2002–2007). Homelessness in New York. A work injury opens the door to opioids. Sex traded for pills. She survives by accident more than design.
2009. Pregnant with her second son. Stops using narcotics — no rehab, no support, just stops. Sixteen years clean and counting.
2021–2023. Two years mostly missing from memory. Functional, but not present enough to record what happened. Dissociative amnesia during hypersexual episodes.
December 22, 2024. Fifth suicidal crisis. This time, AI-assisted real-time mood tracking changes the outcome. Crisis becomes data.
Four months later. Pattern recognition over thirty-five years of records. The rapid cycling. The hypersexuality as symptom, not identity. The medication failures. The thesis emerges.

What it offers a reader

Two things at once. First — unflinching memoir of the parts of mental illness no one talks about: losing custody to protect a child, trading sex for opioids, years lost to amnesia, five suicide attempts. Second — a working framework for how AI tools can hold the pattern your brain can't retain during episodes.

For readers living with chronic mental illness, this is a roadmap. For everyone else, it's a window into a reality the wellness industry can't reach.

Content note: The manuscript covers suicide, sexual assault, addiction, custody loss, and explicit symptoms of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. Written with intention, not for shock. Readers who need to step out, step out.