First, please put up with a little "history" until I get to your asking about how to deal with the mania!

When I was first diagnosed with BPD, I thought, great, finally I know what's wrong, they can put me on some wonderful medication, and I can finally stop feeling so crazy. Sad to say, it just doesn't work that way, unless you are very, very lucky.

The first thing I'd like to say is I believe that medications are critical to treat this. I lived undiagnosed for many years and was suicidal (again) when I got to the "last chance" pdoc before I ended it all. The med search was awful. I suffered from lithium toxicity, depakote caused my hair to fall out and my feet to swell up and crack open, abilify made me dizzy and I fell twice and threw up every morning for a month. There were many more. None of them really helped the mania 'cause I can't tolerate the "therapeutic" dose, altho I tried, I really tried to keep it under control. But finally over a year ago I was put on Seroquel.

The med doesn't matter, what does is if it works for you. I had an arrangement with my pdoc that when I felt manic, I CAREFULLY upped the dose daily until reaching what I could tolerate (I have a very low tolerance to these meds, and have many side effects, the Seroquel sends me into zombie land).

But what I was getting to is that, again, I believe meds are critical, and please work with your pdoc about dosing to help the manic/depressive states. I'm not really sure if any but the one I know about can be raised/lowered to fit your mood. But I've learned what works for ME and just wanted to share with you.

Also, when I get manicy, those are the times I do things like create files listing all my creditors, addresses, account numbers, balancing checkbooks, sorting emails into files, searching online for fun stuff, like avatars, and I'm a BIG fan of online FREE slot machine games (don't dare do it for real money!). or card games, you get the picture. Housecleaning is good too.

But seriously, the real solution is to take your medications as your pdoc has prescribed. I also take a tranquilizer for anxiety/panic attacks that sometimes accompany the mania, just a thought. Hint: be very honest with the pdoc, he can't treat what he doesn't know about.

Good luck, please post how you are doing. Take care.