It’s different for everyone. My manic episodes typically last 3 days at most. My depressive episodes, on the other hand, can last for months and they sort of have waves. I will be overall depressed for long periods of time with suicidal thoughts that would come and go, but I was still making it through the day. I think they call it “waking depression” sometimes. Then I have about 2-3 weeks of severe depression. During that time it progressively worsens until I hit a wall. Then for 2-3 days or as long as a week I will have extremely severe depression where I cannot leave my bed, talk to anyone, make it through the day sober, etc. This last period ends one of two ways. 1- a manic episode. 2- I fuck something up and realize I have to get my shit together, in which case this depression cycle repeats until I have a manic episode. However there were times when I was able to feel normal between episodes because the depression was mild enough for me to work around I just want to add that I’ve had a lot of success with the most recent medication I’ve been on and haven’t had any episodes, mania or depression, in quite some time. I also attribute a lot of that to the fact that I stopped smoking weed everyday, which was really hard at first but I felt so better even after the first week. If you’re a frequent smoker I would give it a try