Repost: Mania and how it is for me.

When a person says to you “I’m depressed” or “I have depression”, most people have at least a vague understanding of what that means. You may not be able to accurately assess exactly what negative thoughts are occupying them, and you may not instantly recognise the intensity of their depression, but you will probably have at least some frame of reference for what depression is.



This is not the case with mania. When presented with a person who describes their mental state as “manic”, most people have only a vague idea of what is referred to. While part of this difference in awareness can be attributed to the fact that depression is a more common symptom than mania, or to the fact that education campaigns about depression and its symptoms are simply more frequent, I believe responsibility also lies with the fact that manic episodes are different for everyone who has them.



The “classic” impression of a manic episode is the one which lies directly opposite depression in every way: high and happy, giggling and giddy, full of soaring if irrational optimism and overwhelmingly positive thoughts. Sounds fun, right? Unfortunately, it’s not sustainable, and almost always leads to a crash… and it’s not until you crash that you finally realise that your flight of mania was completely devoid of rationality, common sense, and the instinct of self-preservation so integral to living a normal life.



In amonst the hundred of manic episodes I have had in my life, only a handful have been this type of episode. They are certainly addictive, and I can understand why people who have them regularly often succumb to the temptation to ditch their meds and fly once more. As a general rule, however, my manic episodes differ wildly to this model.



When I start climbing the mountain of mania, I often don’t notice that I’m acting or thinking in an unusual fashion. My energy levels are higher than usual, but I’m agitated and irritable rather than bubbly. It becomes much easier to piss me off, and I become very critical of both myself and others. My thoughts start to race, and my body tenses up. I often also find myself getting extremely horny and craving various kinky practices. Most significantly in terms of how my symptoms impact others, I begin to lose my capacity for empathy. Other people’s feelings, thoughts and perspectives begin to seem irrelevant. If they occur to me at all, they are swiftly dismissed as unimportant. All of this is accompanied by a slowly increasing sense of invulnerability, both physical and mental. My health and welfare slips from my mind, and I have a certainty I can’t pin down that my stance on any topic is entirely correct and entirely justified.



As I climb higher, other people’s feelings cease to exist entirely. I can no longer comprehend the idea of other people having feelings at all, much less caring about them. I stop being able to read body language and facial expressions, and it takes me longer to tell people apart. Eventually, when I hit the absolute heights of mania, it becomes difficult to even tell the difference between people and other objects. The world outside my head is simply a collection of stimuli, some of it flying past without me noticing, some of it enhanced and magnified. This enhanced stimuli, whether it is a sound, a colour, a taste… it is amazingly powerful and beautiful in a way I cannot describe. At this stage, I cannot carry on a conversation, but a glance at a sunset will have me on my knees crying its sheer beauty. I cannot pay attention to the lyrics of a song, but a certain phrase in a piece of music will speak to me on levels I didn’t know I had. Throughout all of this, however, bubbles an undercurrent of rage, of jealousy, of high energy negative emotion. I feel powerful, superior, like I am the center of the universe and controller of all things, and anything that dissatisfies me brings down a fury appropriate to the wrath of a god. I will rage and scream and smash things, threaten violence and ramifications, and the focus of this anger can be myself or the world in general.



Usually by this stage I haven’t slept or eaten for three or four days, and am well on my way to crazy sandwich board lady status. It’s a terrifying place to be, but again, strangely addictive. That anger, however destructive, is such a pure feeling. It’s like human emotion with the filters stripped away, undiluted and untranslated.



I know it’s awful, I know it’s terrifying, but I also know I don’t want to come down.