I also am dx'd with Bipolar 1. I had many many full blown manias, with lots of depressions. Honestly and I know unlike a lot of people here the mania always caused me more problems than depression. When I was younger I got a lot of the euphoric mania, tho I would say this... Mania only remains euphoric untill a point and when I would become so manic the euphoric good feelings would flee, and being so out of my mind would cause me to become scared, paranoid and psychotic, tho not really depressed. It's a hard thing to describe because I do not feel like that fits into dysphoric mania either and it not really a mixed episode either and I know those well. For me this does not include rage or irritability, neither of which I have ever had much of. Tho I do become extremely physically and mentally aggitated...not irritated beyond a point that is even really workable at all. Maybe I am a bit alone on that not sure. I should say used to, I have not been that way in a very long time. So maybe the mania just become dysphoric at a point, but without the rage type feelings that others talk about. What ever is is, I has made me never want to experience mania again.

The idea that mania is great and fun and so good feeling I think is a bit of generalization. Mania can indeed be very scary, depending maybe on how we feel about not feeling in control. How we perceive mania to feel might make a big difference in experience of it. When people talk about good manias all I can relate that to in myself is hypomania. Which is pretty short lived. The length of my manic episodes usually lasted months which might be why it became unbearable. I always seemed to be maybe a little more on the manic side but I learnt early on many good coping skills for depression that really seemed to help.