About 17 years ago I tried out some vamachara tantra exercises I found on the web. Heady stuff. It gave me a three week episode of full-blown mania. I only needed four hours sleep a night. I had this wild urge to run and jump everywhere I went.

After three weeks, it culminated in an auditory hallucination that was indistinguishable from telepathy. Then the mania suddenly drained and never came back however often I repeated the exercises.

Years later, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but it's usually fairly mild, with hypomania and mixed states which get worse when under stress. Nothing was ever again as intense as the meditation-induced mania of 2004.