Yet however genuinely dreadful these moods and memories have been, they have always been offset by the elation and vitality of others; and whenever a mild and gentlish wave of brilliant and bubbling manic enthusiasm comes over me, I am transported by its exuberance—as surely as one is transported by a pungent scent into a world of profound

My family and friends expected that I would welcome being “normal,” be appreciative of lithium, and take in stride having normal energy and sleep. But if you have had stars at your feet and the rings of planets through your hands, are used to sleeping only four or five hours a night and now sleep eight, are used to staying up all night for days and

When manic, or mildly so, I would write a paper in a day, ideas would flow, I would design new studies, catch up on my patient charts and correspondence, and chip away at the mindless mounds of bureaucratic paperwork that defined the job of a clinic director. Like everything else in my life, the grim was usually set off by the grand; the grand, in

The milder manias have a way of promising—and, for a very brief while, delivering—springs in the winter and epochal vitalities.

Although I always think of myself as a manic-depressive, my official DSM-IV diagnosis is “bipolar I disorder; recurrent; severe with psychotic features; full interepisode recovery” (one of the many DSM-IV diagnostic criteria I have “fulfilled” along the way, and a personal favorite, is an “excessive involvement in pleasurable activities”).

W e are all, as Byron put it, differently organized. We each move within the restraints of our temperament and live up only partially to its possibilities.

These comings and goings, this grace and godlessness, have become such a part of my life that the wild colors and sounds now have become less strange and less strong; and the blacks and grays that inevitably follow are, likewise, less dark and frightening.

for example, a depressed brain will show up in cold, brain-inactive deep blues, dark purples, and hunter greens; the same brain when hypomanic, however, is lit up like a Christmas tree, with vivid patches of bright reds and yellows and oranges. Never has the color and structure of science so completely captured the cold inward deadness of

positive features of mania and cyclothymia,