Yippee! I was just asking a few weeks back how to induce hypomania, and I thnk I’ve done it! I don’t know how, but I’m back to sleeping 2-3 hours a night, eating almost nothing, fabulous energy and confidence and enthusiasm. In a typical 22-hour day, I’m accomplishing more than I did in a week previously.
It has a few possible downsides, of course–supposedly I need to watch out for when I crash, because it’s supposed to be a hard crash (though the only other time I know I was hypomanic, it was pretty soft–when it was over, mostly I was just disappointed by how much time I was wasting sleeping and eating.) Also I tend to start a few more Pit threads than absolutely necessary.
No time to chat just now. Have to get back to my easel. Yesterday I painted from 1 AM to 8 AM without a break, was mildly annoyed by all this sunlight that interrupted me at around 6–had to move my easel a bit. Otherwise, terrific.
Yeah, it looks like fun the first few times until you start crashing harder and harder.
Everytime you put yourself through this, you are making it harder on yourself.
For your own sake : please get help!!
I have a few bipolar friends, and this does seem to be the case.
Also, since you’re self-aware now, and if you’re able to control yourself, don’t make any life-changing decisions while you’re hypomanic: particularly buying expensive things, quitting jobs, altering relationships. I’ve seen a few of my friends come a cropper that way.
Your brain chemistry is a pretty delicate thing and once it starts setting itself up for high and low periods it will definitely deteriorate.
And you don’t want to get to the point where you get psychotic for a month and spend the next 3 years under severe medication, with no highs at all anymore. (And no lows).
Trust me : I have seen this happen more than once.
pseud, hon – real manic stuff is scary as hell, at least for people on the outside. It is Not A Good Thing to be manic, it really isn’t – though a lot of people dig it because of the high and the amount they get done. Seriously, though, it’s not “normal” and the crash could get extremely ugly. Pls. do go ahead and do a little research on this.
twicks, daughter of a bipolar (“manic-depressive”) woman
From another daughter of a bipolar mom- I agree with twickster. Mania is scary as hell from the outside, and it can make you do all sorts of phenomenally stupid and destructive things.
Seriously, I’m seeing a therapist about every two weeks–at our last session, in fact, we spoke about the “Inducing Hypomania” thread (it’s a great therapeutic relationship, wherein we discuss messageboard behavior–seriously, I’ve been telling him that messageboard-monitoring would would be a great tool in closely examining behavior—he’s a behaviorist shrink, and very open to new ideas–and we’ve been trying to work that out. But I digress.) He seemed a little concerned about the sleep deprivation (I was getting more like four and a half hours a night last week, when our last session took place) but agreed that I seemed like myself, was using my extra energy in sensible ways, and seemed to be managing it okay. I think I’ll be all right until our next session next week, but thanks for the concern. Seriously.
The only peculiar thing I’ve been doing, and it strikes me as comical more than anything else, is that I’ve been cooking a lot as my food consumption goes down. The supermarket across the street has Perdue chicken on sale (79 cents a pound!) so I’ve bought an average of a chicken a day for the last week, and cooking and freezing chicken at an amazing rate, though I’m eating maybe a wing and a leg a day. Now I’ve got a chicken-packed fridge and freezer–thankfully, the sale ends tomorrow.
Also what I’ve noticed is a ton of willpower. I used to snack all day long, but the last week or two I’m going five, six hours straight without snacking (I make a cup of tea when I feel the need for a bit of mouth-amusement) and that used to take much more will power than I had. Now it’s easy. I just say, “Don’t do that” and I’m not doing it anymore. It’s like there was a button in my brain for “Super-Willpower” that just got switched on.
Oh, and I don’t think this was induced. I assume it’s a coincidence that I asked about inducing hypomania and then starting having hypomanic symptoms a few weeks later.