Well the first time I was hospitalized I believed I'd seen God/Heaven while on LSD. I had somehow made a promise or pact with the Universe that I would live my life and die some sort of eternal death so that my lover at the time (a Grateful Dead junkie) would be able to see what I saw. I had been as specific as to say that even if I married and had children, I would someday die for this other kid's soul.
I got on medicine and sort of shelved the weird thoughts that I had some secret knowledge of the Universe. Then I got off medicine and got real religious.
Then lo and behold, like 15 years later I picked up where I'd left off with the same delusion. I got the idea in my head after three days with no sleep and a steady diet of Sudafed, caffeine and alcohol that the Universe was now demanding payment on my promise to die for this dude I'd known briefly but intensely in college. I didn't feel suicidal, I just felt I needed to go through something big to come clean about the first episode. I likened my three day hospitalization to Christ's descent into Hell. The same doctor greeted me at the hospital that had diagnosed me as Bipolar I years before. My brain was mush. I was pretty hopeless. I accepted the diagnosis this time. Anything to get back to reality and my family, whom I love.
Now, I have a pdoc, a therapist, all of you lovely people and a long term prescription for a little Abilify. My grandmother was Manic-Deppressive too.