Marya Hornbacher - Madness - A Bipolar Life

Dr. Lentz has explained to me that I’m having the good kind of mania, a euphoric mania. Everything is beautiful, simply gorgeous, I am talking a blue streak and what I’m saying is nearly incomprehensible, seeing as I’m dashing through a thicket of random thoughts so quickly no one can follow (it’s called flight of ideas). I am grandiose, delusional, I’m flinging my body about; I am, to the casual observer, clearly possessed.

It would seem I’m a textbook case. Every symptom of mania I could have, I have, in force: the extreme, minute-to-minute mood swings, rapid speech, the grandiosity, the impulsivity, the delusions, the feeling of complete invincibility, and the absolute conviction that certain untrue things are true. I can hear my thoughts zipping and whistling through my head, and see them snap and sizzle in streaking red lines on a complex grid that was designed by God and given to me personally; I am a millionaire high-society lady and should be treated with the utmost respect due to my superior station; my car can fly. These and various other ideas flash through my head, passing as quickly as they arrive. What causes them? I’m guilty of every precipitating factor you can think of—no sleep, gallons of booze, not enough effort to stick with my medication, a complete inability to grasp the seriousness of my diagnosis—and, it turns out, I have a disorder that has gone untreated for too long. But from my perspective, a manic break is a fine, fine thing, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why everyone is so upset.

The staff of this hospital, at least, is experienced and trained (and did I mention that I like them very much?), so my batshit state is nothing new to them. I’m on Unit 47, where they put patients who aren’t capable of being responsible for themselves—the suicidal, the very manic or profoundly depressed, the schizophrenic during a severe episode of delusion, and the variously psychotic. They dose me with a powerful antipsychotic, probably Zyprexa. It’s a stopgap to get me down off the ceiling while, over the next few days, Dr. Lentz works on figuring out what kinds of meds and how much of them I’ll need long term. I don’t mind taking it, not at all—these people are lovely, absolutely lovely, and so nice! I’ll do whatever they say.

Dr. Lentz makes his rounds in the morning. He sits on a chair in the center of the room and I sit on the edge of the bed, bouncing up and down. I come in and out of the conversation. I stop bouncing and fall back on my bed. I sit up again. I fall back, sit up, and keep finding him still there, sitting on his chair. I leap to my feet and start striding in purposeful circles around him, studying him from all angles, walking in and out of the stream of light coming through the window.

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