I'd tell you -- if only I could remember what the hell I did!!!!!
I remember feeling a good dose of 'righteous indignation', but not why or what about.

Out of a four day period, I can only remember about a half hour.

I have to wait until the newspaper comes out and then I read all about it.

I kind of like that long drive and camping by yourself!!!
That sounds like it might be a really good way to go!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mn4vHDk9n4

For me mania is accompanied by psychosis.. i hear voices that condemn, i have racing thoughts, i don't sleep.. lots of energy... grandiosity.. do not make wise decisions.. totally off the rails... it's the reason I comply with medication.. it is not a good experience for me.. but everyone is different.. but this is just my experience. ((hugs)) polar

um, like being on cocaine but speedier..no sleep...a different person than your usual self.

Mind going 100 mph and getting nowhere at all.

Cocaine, meth, exstasy, and acid..... all at the same time.

I've gone on spending sprees, started businesses, walked around town for hours in the middle of the night, gotten rid of everything I own, shoplifted. Stuff like that. I've been extremely suicidal and unable to sleep for days, sensitive to noise and the presence of other people beyond belief - extreme irritability. I've also spent months in a blissful state of calm and peace with boundless energy and creativity. I've exploded at employers and sobbed in front of bank managers. I did not know any of this was out of the ordinary.

I forgot to mention alcohol and substance abuse, and risky sex.

Don't forget about hypomania which isn't quite mania.

actual mania is far more extreme than some of the examples above ie/ 'shoplifting' which 'may' be due to hypomania or could be acting or other things...


Mania is knowing you are Michael Jackson & telling all & sundry & becoming inflamed when people deny your 'truth' and speaking unintelligibly (because your mind is making such fast associations & jumping track that others cannot comprehend your speech 'word salad' & stripping naked (did you see video footage of Kony guy's breakdown- that may well have been a manic break)

Or believing the coca cola company is sending you secret messages & so muuuch more.

The many deeply bizarre & crazy things I've said & done when full blown manic would scare you- not because I'm a violent person but because people find people in manic states of extremity (& also schizophrenic ones) frightening & often find it hard to remember there'd a regular person beneath the 'strange' bout of brain sickness. & think that 'could never happen to me' I could 'never be that batshit crazy'

Truth.

I have had a fair few very long stints in acute psych wards over the years (first time as a teen in an adult acute psych ward) - as have many of my relatives.

Therefore, in my family over my lifetime & during those long stays in hosp. I have had many, many occasions to get to know & witness many extremes of mind:

florid mania,Mixed states, catatonic depression (the frozen movement type & other type), psychotic depression, various forms of schizophrenia ( a truly abject illness-so very horrible for those suffering it), horrendous depressions, extreme PTSD suffered by people who have endured unimaginable trauma (Tsunamis, War, Being gang raped then having throat slashed & being burnt & on & on)

Just saying when you've seen many manifestations of all these & particularly mania (& survived certain extreme states (including acute mania & psychosis) you know how real & how devastating it is & how terrible the toll can be.

rant over, I hope

I which I can forget what i do, it's like being caught in my own head, I have huge arguments with every one, whether you are in front of me or not, not sleeping for day's on end. I go hyper like an atomic bomb, destroying every thing in my path. I go beyond being angry.......... It is the devastation I leave behind that is hard to deal with after an episode.

I've never told anyone I was Michael Jackson.
Vanilla Ice maybe

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.


Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/19038.Kay_Redfield_Jamison