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Sorry that this is a little textbook, but bipolar episodes/moods typically last at least for several days, not hours. You say you have PTSD --sometimes people who have experienced trauma have trouble regulating their emotions and have intense and different emotions throughout a given day, depending on what is going on in the environment in the moment.
As for my experience: I get extremely restless, like I'm crawling out of my skin -it can become excruciating. My thoughts come at me a million miles an hour and I talk non-stop, I have an unstoppable urge to get out what is going on in my head. I become convinced that everything I think and say is brilliant, I become hypersexual, flirt a lot and overestimate others' attraction to me. I tend to shop like crazy and for things I wouldn't normally buy. Objects feel extremely clear, bright colors fascinate me, textures excite me. I've cried at the beauty of a flower. Not a bad thing, actually.
I sleep a couple of hours a night and am not the least bit tired. This can go on for weeks if not treated. Luckily these days, I'm starting to catch it earlier. My therapist is helping me with this.
During the period of time before it's treated (Seroquel upped)/if I don't catch it early enough, I deteriorate into also (and this is probably atypical) starting to be unable to tolerate loud noises (or what seem to be deafening and instrusive to me) and I sometimes become paranoid, think others are out to get me, either one person, or more than one person in league against me.
Some people seem to experience mania as a purely positive event. In my case, there are aspects to it that are awful (other parts experienced as a kind of euphoria) --between these things, how bad and embarrassed I feel afterwards, and the crash that comes afterwards (mostly because of increased meds that I have to titrate down again very slowly knocking me on my a **), I'm all for avoiding the mania, even if it means taking meds, including Seroquel that in many ways I hate, hate, hate.
There are other things, but this is the gist of it.
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