Buzzes like a beautiful bumble be on a lovely flower in the summer.
The colors are so beautiful you want to take a picture of everything.
Your desire to be social goes through the roof.
People look so interesting and it’s very easy to say hi and start a conversation.
Sexual thoughts increase and you often act on them.
You want to buy nice clothes, or a car or a new dishwashe.
It feels like a good idea to buy all new furniture for your room.
It’s easy to clean your house.
You blow off work to go to a bar.
You buy a ticket to Vegas because it’s such a good deal!
You get mad when your friends and family tell you to calm down.
Alcohol tastes really good.
It’s very easy to write lists like this one and write books and get to all of your email while watching football all day Sunday.
Julie
I love mania. Well, up to a point. You know the point. The one that gets you into trouble. The small dot on the very fine line that you don’t even see as you step over it. There is nothing quite like the feeling of mania though. If you have never experienced it, you have missed out on something amazing. My husband helps me to monitor my mood and he says that he will always tell me when I am heading up…eventually…after he has reaped some of the benefits of having a happy wife for a little while (isn’t hypersexuality wonderful). Unfortunately things always head either too high or too low. In terms of mania/hypomania, and some of the things you talk about Julie, I say ‘make hay while the sun shines’. It is my reward for having bipolar disorder. Euthymia is extremely boring. It is a shame that I can’t live in the ‘slightly hypomanic’ stage forever. But what goes up must come down, and so I take my meds religiously and do what I can to have a healthy lifestyle. Relinquishing the delights of mania is the price I (unfortunately, but happily) pay for my sanity.
When I read your list of mania I feel like I got the easy kind of bipolar, for it doesn’t include most of those things. I do like the part of mania that is the total opposite of depression, to feel good about life once again, to feel like participating in things, to feel motivated and inspired. But since I have rapid cycling bipolar, I know it won’t last long at all and the longer I let it last, the worse the crash will be. It is a double edged sword. The constantly moving moods are exhausting and yet I am thankful too for the mania, for the break from feeling down. Your list however is honest and insightful and I appreciate the contribution that you have made to the bipolar world.
Yes, I can identify with almost all of your list. But I think I skip over the hypomania and go instantly into mania within a very short time (even minutes!) I get REALLY aggitated, irritable, angry, and anything but happy. I’m not depressed, I know all too well what that feels like. But I am so impulsive, it does get me in a lot of trouble. I wish there was at least one good thing about being Bipolar I, and hypomania sounds like it, but I wouldn’t even know what that type of happiness feels like. 🙁