My wife has suffered from depression/bipolar2/general anxiety for 30+ years (she's 45).
In the last 5 years or so, she had also developed minor alcohol use disorder (3-4 glasses of wine per night).
About 2 months ago she quit drinking.
Since then, she's changed dramatically in 2 ways....
1--her mood has gone from heavily depressed with mild anxiety to high anxiety with full blown paranoia. She's not having panic attacks (she did before, occasionally). But she's completely obsessed with her conspiracy theories to the point of staring out into space a lot (burning the oatmeal, not hearing her name when called, etc)
2--She's so much more patient and nicer and empathetic. No more wild-animal meltdowns and vicious anger and bitter resentment.
Can anybody tell me what's going on? Overall, I think it's a positive development, but her paranoia is starting to get to the point that I'm worried. She used to act emotionally irrational, but not say too many irrational things. Now she's the opposite-saying extremely irrational things, but mostly acting normal.