It starts with a effortless climb into mania, takes weeks, then some opposition, some storm and I start to look down, scared I might fall. I tax myself to the limit to continue my climb, physically exhausted but determined.

I become highly, psychotically, suspicious. I slowly really lose any knowledge about the ground below and don't feel I might fall, I am on relatively steady ground but very much isolated from the world. Then I become at times really afraid of my health: it comes and goes. I really feel like literally burning up or out when I do. I might start to hallucinate visually, pretty much always at least auditorily. I feel that I transcend my being, derealising, but with manic intensity and clarity. I don't think reasonably or logically, I don't think anything about anything: my mind is preoccupied by just experiencing.

My mood starts to get really erratic, changing first maybe daily to the extremes, but soon from hours to minutes to seconds. I constantly second-guess myself with real extreme vigour and depression intermingled. Depressive thoughts and euphoric thoughts can't keep up with the changes in mood. I feel being utterly bormbarded and want out.

At that point, either I become fully manic again for weeks, obviously with greater severity of psychosis, or I become severely, post-manically depressed. Suffocating. Feeling like my burned-out self is still smoking hot and evaporating any juices that give meaning to anything. It's not just experiencing to meaning, it's feeling absolutely being mentally starved out. It takes weeks and then lifts. I get a peaceful, mild depression and I feel not so much lucky to be alive, wanting nothing of it (but knowing that in time I will), but still very much lucky to have survived.



Does anyone share the experiences of these different stages?