Hitting the Wall

Last night and today, I did something that we (those with bipolar disorder) lovingly refer to as hitting the wall.  It comes from the feeling it produces within your body and psyche.  Basically, it happens after you’ve been manic or hypo-manic for a week or two, depending on how high you get.  This past time I went about 10 days on 4 hours, maybe 5 hours of sleep a night.  So how exactly did I hit the wall?  Well, Tuesday night I slept for 9 hours straight which resulted in my body craving even more of it.  Last night, I slept for 12 straight hours, unbelievable right?  As you may or may not be aware of, your body will only deal with 4 or 5 hours for so long. 

Sometimes, maybe I should say often, parents experience this with a newborn.  They go how many nights without sleep due to having a new baby?  I have no idea how they do this without eventually hitting the wall.  Maybe they do hit the wall, just in different ways as a coworker suggested to me today.  He said they hit the wall in stress and anger sometimes coming out unexpectedly.

Right now I want to shine a light into what hypomania and eventually mania looks and feels like.  I told a coworker yesterday that I had hit the wall that previous night and what that entailed.  I said, “You couldn’t really tell that I was pretty manic there for about a week?  Seriously?”  She replied that she thought that’s how I always was since she didn’t know me at all. 

Experiencing any form of mania is a bit similar to taking a stimulant I would imagine.  You’re constantly up, so to speak.  You can’t turn your mind off to save your life.  You’re incredibly creative all of a sudden.  Your mind feels like it’s opening up for the first time ever or at least since your last bout of mania.  It is really an addictive feeling that is hard to admit to due to not wanting to get help.  At first you lie to yourself and say you’re just finally getting back to the real you.  In time, though, that no longer holds true as you try your best to look at it objectively. 

When you average one or maybe two blog entries a week and then suddenly you jump up to 31 blog entries in a week, you might be experiencing mania.  When you suddenly have an unhealthy desire to become famous, you might be experiencing a bit of mania.  When you laugh at practically anything, even for someone who is known for laughing all the time when he’s stable, you might be experiencing mania.  Man, maybe I should give these to Jeff Foxworthy, huh?  Ah, there it is again, the unhealthy desire for fame.