Mania · 8:22am Jan 1st, 2023
Usually when I talk about being bipolar I talk about the depression, because that's the stuff that feels the worst. Makes me introspective, want to get thoughts out, just have things be understood. And usually it's the stuff I think is most useful to talk about for the sake of empathy for other people going through it.
I'm not sure I've ever talked about how much the mania fucking sucks though.
The worst part of mania is that it's great. It's fantastic. I spent all of December wanting to be dead, and now I hit a rebound and I feel invincible. I've been bouncing around my apartment like Tom Cruise on Oprah. Three days ago I was full agoraphobic, now I just want to go across the road just to buy an armful of Cheezels.
I want to eat my own bodyweight in deep fried cornflour saturated in freeze dried cheese product, yes
I'm grateful that it's usually predictable. I usually go manic for three weeks every March, at which point I'll write more in that month than I'll usually get down in the rest of the year combined. When I know it's going to happen I have a safe way to cordon the damage off into work. It's easy to close the barn door before the horse has bolted if he's as predictable as a Terry's Chocolate Orange for Christmas.
Other times though it just hits. And it's insidious, because mania never feels like mania in the moment. It just feels good. Like you've woken up right, you have a lot of energy, you're excited to do things - and it's obvious why, the things you want to do are all interesting. The people you're talking to are great company. It feels like a normal reaction to just having a really good day.
A week later, you're getting a blood test from a doctor that you hope bulk bills because you spent all your savings on, at best, shit you'd that was meant to stay on your wishlist for a reason. Better a $7,000 fighting-grade copy of Count Dooku's dueling lightsaber than losing your wallet and breaking a nine months sober streak.
I'm getting better with practice. Getting older isn't making it happen less for me, it's just giving me more experience to learn from. A part of that is really internalizing that most of what I feel is completely divorced from cause and effect. Shit that just breaks me one day is effortless two weeks later. I'm working backwards from how I'm already feeling and seeing things as causing those feelings, but how I was going to feel was predetermined.
it's actually broadly safer with depression, up to a point. Everything looks worse and harder than it is, but I can deal with that by trying harder or being more careful. With mania? It's like having a cheerleader inside your brain and no guardrails.
There are people who are born without being able to feel pain, and they usually die before their tenth birthday because they'll just bite their tongue off by accident or get third degree burns leaning on an electric stove they don't know is turned on. Mania does that to your emotions.
What's worse is that as much as you understand what it does to you, it doesn't give you much help over knowing the specific thing. You have to work out how to mistrust all thoughts that feel like that, and that means an overwhelming amount of false positives. Believing you can trust your own judgement is often the first and worst mistake you can make. So you have to develop systems to not trust your own judgement about anything I'll give some examples.
I love poker, and thank God I don't play for real money. When I'm manic I feel all the wins intensely but none of the losses. So I never feel like I'm losing even if I can see my chip count.The closer to bankrupt I get, the sweeter it's going to make that comeback. Intellectually I know I can lose, I just don't believe it. The only response to losing that makes sense is to double down and win harder, and what's worse is that my concentration feels incredible. It's bad enough when I go 12 straight hours on Poker Night at the Inventory, playing for cash would be pouring petrol on the fire. Some people don't realize they've been manic until they've lost all their money, because most of the time they really don't have a gambling problem. Or, worse, they don't realize being manic is the reason they're considering playing for money for the first time, because you need to make the mistake to learn from it.
... but when you know that you have to be paranoid about the idea of having fun being a red flag. I can't play Pokemon games anymore because I get too panicked by the idea I might have sunk hundreds of hours into them just because they feel like slot machines. I only start playing Rimworld these days if there's something I need to be awake for two days from when I open it.
You know that feeling of buying a book that looks interesting, even though you've got ten on your shelf that you really need to get around to that you haven't even started? But it's only $12 on Kindle, so you say "Oh, go on, I deserve a little treat". There is no amount of money that stops being "a little treat". When you're manic, it feels like that's what you have it for. What was the point of saving, otherwise? Some people start with realizing they really do need a new car, and once they've justified it as a thing they need, "all the money they have" becomes the budget. Myself? Crates of Mexican cola and jackets that make me look like a vampire, even though I live in an equatorial rainforest and it's only cold enough to wear them three days of the year.
... but when you know that you have to be paranoid about the idea of ever getting anything for yourself, ever. So many times I've thought I wasn't up to cooking for the night, but took so long working out whether it was okay to get delivery that I just gave up and went to bed hungry.
If you've stopped drinking, you feel like you've gotten so in control that you can trust yourself to have a few and be safe about it. It's been months. Drugs? It's never as fun as you remember anyway, but they're nice memories, you know? That's all. God, and a cigarette. When's the last time you wanted a cigarette? Normally hate the things, but sometimes you just get a craving. It's not weird that you want one now, after so long. Probably the reason, actually. So you know? Fuck it. Life's too short to not make it shorter.
... but when you know that you have to be paranoid about everything, even stuff you've never had a problem with, because you might one day. Just writing that is making me fiend for a cigarette, that one's obvious. The other, though, is that even though I love gin and kahlua, I only had alcoholic drinks three times in all of 2022, and two of them were bought for me. I've got a bottle of both my favourites in the cellar, and I've never had a drinking problem. Never thought I'd smoke, though, either.
Your bullshit detector goes away without you seeing it go. Your confidence is based on how you are the other 90% of the time, except now you feel extra confident because you're especially sharp and awake and focused. Most of the time this just ends with going on a Wikipedia rabbit hole and learning all about, I dunno, how the guy who invented leaded petrol is on the Wikipedia list of inventors killed by their own inventions for inventing a rope and pulley system to get him around his house after he got polio, and corpse marionetted himself. Or knowing that the first mainstream use of modern cement was when Isambard Kingdom Brunel recommended it to Joseph Bazalgette for the construction of the London sewers. Sometimes that ends with you going on InfoWars and making Alex Jones have to be the voice of reason when you start saying how much you love Hitler. At the start, they feel about the same.
... but knowing that makes you become extremely vulnerable to gaslighting. You can find people you absolutely trust to be your external sense of reality, someone you know will know the difference between when you just know more about something or when you're going a little too south by south West. You've got no defenses if they're wrong. At worst they can do basically anything to you and get you to believe it was for your own good.
So I feel great right now. Fantastic, honestly. Just incredible. I've been awake thirty hours but it feels like three, after this I'm going to be making mashed potatoes and gravy for the third time today, and I am absolutely blitzing my media backlog between going for runs.
In my very heart of hearts I know I am being too paranoid, too hard on myself, and that I need to just appreciate a good thing after a month of catastrophic lows. And that is terrifying, because that is how this works. I am only writing this post because I have caught enough red flags to notice what I am not seeing.
Of course, I mean it should be terrifying to you. I'm telling this like a ghost story. I can't even feel worried about it, because I feel fucking invincible.
It's true that I haven't heard too much about the manic part of manic-depression, so this was an interesting blog. Hope you get through this episode without too much money lost.
steady as she goes, sir. steady as she goes.
but apparently steady as she goes is like having the wheel adrift between ecstatic and depressed.
just be careful and maybe 2023 will be less of a crap shoot
also it is 4 am and i am suffering from insomnia yayyy
God this is fucking familiar. I got diagnosed a couple years ago and I’m still learning how to deal with it.
For me it’s projects. I come up with a fun idea to mess around with, just to see if I can do it, and then it becomes the only thing I can think about. I become convinced that this is the idea that’ll make me rich, or at least support me, and I work on it to the exclusion of anything else. Work, sleep, eating…
And then the depressive cycle comes along and I can’t bear to work on it anymore because reality hits. It’s ruined me a few times, now. It makes me afraid to start anything, which is miserable in and of itself.
Sorry for talking about myself in your comments. It’s just nice to feel like I can relate to someone, y’know?
Emotions go brrr
Struggling to think of anything meaningful to say. I've struggled with mental health and it fucking sucks. Bearing witness.
Yup, that's mania.
My method, which has become a deeply ingrained habit, is that I need to think of three really good reasons not to do, or buy something. I then need to come up with three responses to that, and argue against myself. If it's easy to argue against, then it wasn't a good enough original counter.
These internal arguments can take hours, or even days. Getting distracted by something else and not finishing them just means that the 'not getting it' side wins.
It's made me a bit of a miser, but it's better than the alternative.
I was actually planning on putting a bipolar character in a story in the near-ish future, so this is actually really helpful.
Not bipolar myself, just depressive; but I have a close friend who is, and I can see the same sort of patterns in him, especially when he stops taking his medication.
Thanks a lot for this level of introspection!
Sounds like some of our political and economic leaders ......
Man... I have no idea what to say except good luck! At least you are aware to some degree, that's more than a lot of folk.
I had a friend who was bipolar. He was a genius. Invented stuff, founded a company, made a bazillion dollars, then flew his private plane into a mountain because he thought (and I'm guessing here, but I knew him) "Of course I can fly through the Rockies at low altitude in the dark on instruments!" Killed himself and 3 of his friends.
I guess that's not helpful. It's just what I have to say. Also, don't get a pilot's license, Numbers.
5707525
One of the reasons I actually don't trust myself with a driver's license, deeply sorry for your loss and to hear that. But it's honestly a really great example of the thesis here. If you told most people someone crashed their plane during a bipolar swing, most people are going to assume the other direction. I really appreciate having such a powerful example for it.
I definitely vibe with a lot of this post, for better or for worse. I have definitely learned to check my judgement with certain trusted people for exactly that reason, sometimes you just can't tell if the idea is actually good or if you are advocating mixing ketchup and birthday cake.
Okay that last one made me gag so I think at this moment I can still trust my judgement.