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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

Yet is it any wonder patients end up going off it so much? Her description sounds fucking awesome. What sane person wouldn't want to experience that kind of thing? Limitless energy, godlike feeling? In fact, apart from the depression and life-threatening stuff, why wouldn't you mostly wanna be like that? I suppose if you have to hold down a job an "be an adult", meh, OK you've got no choice. But if you're otherwise set? Bring it on.

Depakote, yuck. Gain weight, feel like shit. Or others that remove all desire (except hunger).

It's sad that medicine currently has no attractive offers for strong mental disorders like this.

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> "Limitless energy, godlike feeling? ... why wouldn't you mostly wanna be like that?"

Impaired judgment. The 'godlike feeling' results in thinking you cannot fail, and therefore in making decisions that are not even remotely prudent. For example, I know someone who, during a manic episode, tried to buy a limo off of ebay.

From what I understand, the deep depression isn't actually all that dangerous -- you don't care enough to do any active harm. The climb out of depression, where the emotional funk is still present and there's sudden volition, is most dangerous from a suicide perspective. The peak of mania, where you're unstoppable and fearless and possibly thrill-seeking, is almost as dangerous.

As someone who has experienced true mania, and the swing from depressed to manic, this entire comment is 100% correct.

It is not a wonder they stop taking medication - at least at first. The second or third time they wake up in a psych ward and realize they have done serious damage to their relationships and career, medication may not look so bad...

You are right that many of the medications have serious side effects. There are certainly better choices now than in the past, but there's plenty of room for improvement.

I think of the manic side of the spectrum like drinking: at mild doses, pleasant; at high doses, difficult and usually undesirable; at extreme doses, you don't know who you are.

Actual mania (not hypomania) is usually more unpleasant, from what I've seen. (I know quite a few people who've had it.) The stereotype is that the happy mania is the "normal" mania, but the anxious, angry, or psychotic versions are more common. I also think (although phren0logy is going to know a lot more about this than I do) that it's very rare for a person to have only the "happy" mania, unless you're talking about mild hypomania that might not even be classified as bipolar (I tend to think of BP as a spectrum and think that 10-20% of people are "on the spectrum", but that's not the same thing as having BP1 or BP2).

I've only had one actual manic episode (almost a decade ago) and my current doctor's pretty confident that I wouldn't be classified as bipolar based on recent and current state... but the one manic episode that I had was awful and I'll never forget it. There were flashes of the "happy" mania, but it was mostly anger and anxiety, with not a small number of panic attacks.

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