In reply to Blizzard: Funnily enough I'm in a similar place at the moment. Also diagnosed with bipolar - I recently got DLA having not applied for it for many years although eligible. Tried and failed twice to get a degree, only making it as far as second year the first time. Things tend to start off well until the tedium, repetitiveness, stress and pressure get the better of me and I drop out (first one) or get ill (second one (twice)). I now have no assets or savings, no useful qualifications or work expirence and live off 90 quid a week with my mate in a 'I'll decorate your house if I don't have to give you any money' type deal. On the positive side I have no dept apart from student loans (which aren't loans at all, just a complicated tax bill) and one direct debit (10 pounds).
Like all the other times in my life where I've not had the burden of worrying about the future or locked into a boring routine I'm the happiest I've been. I guess other times would have been away from home on tour with the army or long travelling holidays. I worry about the morality of not working and living on benefits, I tell myself that most work is destructive, that unemployment is an unfortunate by-product of the capitalist system, that there's some other 30 year old dude with three kids and a mortgage down the road who needs it more (alas, my love life is a distant memory) and that I shouldn't feel obliged to do something I hate for 40 hrs a week as some kind of punishment for enjoying the ill luck to have been born! Despite all this I do feel guilty, I guess because everyone else has to do it and if I could 'cure' my bipolarism I wouldn't.
Since leaving the army I've worked at B&Q, Ellis Brigham, a factory making customised lorry bodies, pizza hut, many many building sites as a labourer, ran the least successful tiling business ever attempted (although it is still going, once or twice a year) and started 5 uni semesters (one foundation year, three first years and one second year). I know I couldn't have stuck at any of these jobs very long apart from maybe the lorry body one (which I got fired from) and am, apparently incapable of getting a degree.
So I now fill my time with my two restoration projects (the other being a vintage folding bike that'll probably be worth about 50 quid), grow my anti-psychotic medication under a HPS light, ride my bikes and go climbing when the weather's nice, argue and frighten folk with my shambolic over-amped rock band and scheme away on plans to eliminate future guilt (the latest being borrow 30 grand off my parents and become a property developer) once the first five year stint is over.