Once negatives (like static & black shadows) appear in "a pretty good manic phase," that phase is headed to its end. I've never heard of anyone going from manic onto anything good.

As much as most folks enjoy the manic part of bipolar, there's just no way to live there. We live in cycles, & that's just the way it goes. Managing them so they don't totally destroy our lives is the primary goal for a lot of us--even tho it means giving up those manic highs. The crashes are just too awful.

I hope you'll tell all to your pdoc saturday. The time to make a decision about how to handle your condition isn't now. But that's just MHO. Let's see what others say.