1. Heightened artistic ability. The only way to know if this is mania is to compare your artistic ability to when you are stable. I NEVER draw when stable. I can barely do stick figures. The picture below definitely shows the manic brain at work.
2. You have ideas for big projects that you would normally find impossible. Stable people clean their rooms. When we are manic, we design a new organizing system for our room, go to the store and buy all of the supplies and then stay up all night building something that gives us a lot of pleasure. Everyone who sees this thinks, “What the heck is going on here? I have never seen her build anything in her life!”
3. Everything is sexual. Songs sound sexy. Men AND women look attractive. We really notice how people look. “Here hair is so shiny, I have to touch it!” “Look at those lips, I wonder what it would be like to kiss them?” And of course, the story of one of my manic episodes where I saw a man in Starbucks who had obviously just played a football match (soccer game) and I had the thought: “I’m going to get down on my hands and knees and LICK HIS CALVES!”
In the past, I would have given in to all of this EUPHORIC mania and fueled it with sex, booze and rock and roll. Now, I just prevent it.
I am MUCH happier.
What about you? When was your first manic or hypomanic episode? What did you think say or do?
Julie
