Managing bipolar disorder meant facing the truth: Feeling ‘up’ wasn’t the same as feeling well.
My wife recognized it. My friends warned me about it. My psychiatrist was concerned about it.
But I didn’t do anything about it, because “it” was me — the happy-go-lucky, hypomanic me who I hadn’t seen in a long time.
I wanted to catch up. I wanted to feed off that creativity. I missed the guy and his grandiosity; he’d always been the life of the party.
There was just one thing: I never knew how long he — I mean I — was going to stay. And it always ended badly.
Hypomania on the Job
Years ago, “he” showed up right as I started freelancing at an understaffed digital ad agency. From the moment I walked in the door and pulled out my laptop, my colleagues threw me into a meeting and handed me a big project due by the end of the day.
Before I even had a chance to get started, they assigned me two more projects due the following morning.
There have been many times in my life with bipolar when I would’ve panicked and run out of the building, no matter how much money they were paying me. But at this agency, I let myself get sucked into their advertising vortex so quickly that I didn’t even have time to worry — or sleep.
I just kept taking on more and more projects, accepting whatever they piled on. And, oddly enough, as busy as I was, I was having fun. A lot of fun.
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I felt like my old self again. I was funny. I was really loud. And I talked faster and thought faster than anyone around me. Not to mention, my creative energy was surging.
Recognizing the Warning Signs of Hypomania
After about two months of running wired, I was in the kitchen at home and my wife approached me. She got close.
“Look at me,” she said.
I shied away and said, “What? Leave me alone.”
“Bruce, look at me,” she said. “You have ‘crazy’ eyes.”
“Stop, I’m fine,” I replied.
“Well, I’m watching you anyway.”
Soon after, I met my friend Evan at a coffee shop. “Bruce, you can’t keep working all day, then staying up all night, then going right back to work. You need rest.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I haven’t felt this great in years.”
He looked at me, dead serious. “Bruce, I’ve been with you in the emergency room before. Just remember, you can’t stay high forever. Call your doctor.”
He meant well, but I wasn’t taking medication anymore, so I was avoiding my appointments. But my doctor must’ve sensed something was wrong. One afternoon, while I was standing by the printer at work, I received a call from my grandma-type psychiatrist.
She spoke in a soft, yet stern, voice: “Bruce, I was concerned about your behavior at your last appointment, and now your medication levels have come back low,” she said. “I want you to increase your dosage.”
“Yeah, but I’m fine,” I said. “I feel great now.”
“Bruce, your medication needs to be adjusted — I hate to say so — or else.”
“I feel great,” I told her, laughing.
“No, Bruce, you don’t feel great. It’s your bipolar.”
“Okay, I have to go back to work now. Bye.”
The Shift From Productivity to Brain Fog
As it turned out, my doctor was right. Just like that, I started feeling overwhelmed by everything. I was making errors at work. I had trouble focusing, and my mind was racing all over the place. I went from juggling five projects to struggling to follow through on just one.
And then I missed a deadline.
My creative director called me into her office and shut the door. She said executives in the agency were coming to her, concerned about whether they could count on me. They said I seemed frazzled — that I was all over the place.
I just sat there, fiddling with a pen.
Returning to the Real Me
Fortunately, my boss gave me a free pass. She told me to slow down and focus, but I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed and anxious, and I started feeling depressed.
That’s when my wife said, “Now do you believe me about your ‘crazy’ eyes?”
So, I promised her I’d call my psychiatrist — and I did. We made some changes to my meds, and, after a few days, I was starting to feel like me again. The real me.
I’ve realized that the “life of the party” version of me was a liability. The real me — the one who can look my wife in the eye and actually finish a project — is the one I want to be. Stability didn’t kill my creativity; it just gave me a foundation to finally use it.
UPDATED: Printed as “A New Yorker’s State of Mind: Recognizing Highs to Prevent Lows,” Fall 2012
