[xxblackrosesxx]

Can you remember it? What did you do during your mania or hypomania ? Did you experience any psychosis? Did you regret a lot of stuff?

[Miss Laura]

I had a lot of mini mania like spending sprees etc before my major one which was a one night stand at a wedding in England while I had a boyfriend whom I was there with. It's soooo out of character for me. I had to endure an 8 hour train journey after wards in which my boyfriend and I had split as I said it was over between us. He was heart broken. When my friends found out they were horrified as it's just not me at all

[UpDownAround]

Being type II, I really don't remember a specific first time. Having more energy and (I thought) more clarity of thought was just something that happened from time to time. Sometimes when I felt almost high, I kept it to myself because I was afraid I caused it from doing drugs years earlier; especially if later I remembered having a delusion. I remember a period of time where these events started being more common and the lows in between are actually what caused me to seek (or get pushed toward) help.

[HALLIEBETH87]

No idea. Started when I was a teen so I thought I was just hyper

[Sanctum]

Type 2, first hypomanic episode came after starting SSRI's. My family doctor told me, "now this will take awhile to take effect - don't expect it to be like turning on the lights."

So I thought it was great when it was like turning on the lights. I'd been badly depressed for so long and now suddenly I was cured! I had so many plans, so much I wanted to do to make up for lost time. I was excited and couldn't keep from laughing.

Then, maybe two weeks in, the bubble popped and down I went.

[cmorales]

Angry. Very angry. I was a very quiet kid and this disease seemingly woke up a monster inside me when I was about 13 or 14. I was stomping around the house yelling at my sister, yelling at myself, just growling and snarling and yelling. I was twitching with rage. I was just so angry with no reason for it. Completely out of character. The anger itself didn't last all that long, but it was intense and launched a slew of other problems such as insomnia (which would lead me to becoming psychologically dependent on OTC sleeping pills at 14) and my first psychosis (thought broadcasting).

[annielovesbacon]

I'm bp2 so most of my hypo episodes are just me being super productive and chipper and energetic. But the first episode I had that scared me, like I was out of control... I was in my dorm room and I had so much energy I didn't know what to do. I tried to calm down -- reading, playing cards with my roommate -- but nothing helped, I couldn't focus. I asked my roommate if she wanted to go on a drive with me because I couldn't think of anything else to do. But I drove so fast and so recklessly that she got scared and made me take her home. So I did but then I drove off and drove extremely fast some more (this is the middle of the night btw). Then I chain smoked cigs (I had never smoked before but bought them on impulse) until I fell asleep in my car in an alley. I had never felt that out of control before.

[Nammu]

I don't remember it was years ago and I didn't know I was manic. It was a blur as I slept very little and was convinced I could solve the worlds problems if only others would listen to reason. I spent a lot of time writing and aft wards most of the writing was gibberish.

[all74]

The only part I remember is sitting in a university lecture with a friend and driving her nuts with all my jokes and muffled laughter. Totally inappropriate, of course, as the class was "Childhood Psychopathology."

[LacunaCoiler]

My first manic episode started off with too much energy. I couldn't sit still, I needed no sleep, I talked too much and a mile a minute, I was the life of the party as they say. Then it turned into irritability. I was picking fights with the wife for no apparent reason. They were so irrational that I flipped out on her about socks on the floor. Something so trivial, but I flipped out, flipped out. I was throwing stuff, cursing, and just being mean to the wife. Another time I nearly jumped the counter to fight the pharmacist because he wasn't understanding what I was saying. Luckily the wife was there and could see the escalation so she got me out of there before anything happened.

The came the paranoia. I was seeing shadow people and they were there to get something, I didn't know what, out of my head. They would haunt me at night, staying in dark rooms or just out of reach of the back porch light. And during the day they had spies spying on me to report back to the shadow people. One time I got out of the house while the wife was upstairs reading because the shadow people were looking at me through the glass in the backdoor. I took the keys to the car and drove up and down the freeway, at really high speeds so the shadow people could catch me. I had to stay on the freeway because it was the best lit street in town. The wife called me when she found out and convinced me to pick her up. She spent a good 3 hrs driving up and down the freeway with me but she was behind the wheel so we were driving a normal, non dangerous speed.

After that the wife called my shrink and we added a mood stabilizer to the anti-depressent I was on. That's when my diagnosis changed from nos mood disorder to bp 1.

[WildcatVet]

I remember my first blown sky high mania after starting an antidepressant ~ promiscuity, spending spree, drug/alcohol abuse, two DUI's.... Boy do I regret things.
Now I only have hypo episodes...actually mixed episodes...where I'm agitated, hostile, irritable, sometimes even violent. I hate it...would rather just stay plain depressed although that can be very dark too.

[251turnaround]

This is the earliest prolonged episode I can remember, and I'm not 100% sure it was hypomania, but here goes:

Summer 2013 was an amazing time for me. I started that year depressed and anxious, but come late spring that anxiety and depression vanished and I suddenly became much more outgoing, adventurous and talkative and started taking on a bunch of hobbies. The biggest event of that summer that makes me believe it was really hypomania was when I decided to go across the country by myself to visit an online friend. Normally I'm too anxious to even go to the store by myself, let alone go across the country. Anyway, I was planning on taking a two week long train ride there so I could "hear everyone's amazing stories" on the way there. My parents had eventually talked me out of it and I had settled for a plane ride instead. That was a good trip even though I said a lot of things I wish I hadn't.

The rest of the summer was spent taking lots of photos of the amazing world and spamming facebook with stupid updates as if I was the most popular person in the world. Come early fall, I had a total meltdown. I tried to erase all traces of my name and face in the house for some reason. I took sharpies to pictures and ID cards, and violently "rearranged" items in the living room. Eventually I became suicidal and ended up in the ER, somehow narrowly avoiding a psych ward stay.

After that mess, I saw my pdoc who told me she was suspecting bipolar, but didn't want to commit to a diagnosis. It wasn't until a year later that I was officially diagnosed during neuropsych testing.

[99fairies]

The first episode I had lasted for 6 months. I have so many things I would love to not remember. I now have PTSD from that time.

[richeyd80]

It felt like I was starting in my own movie, complete with movie star treatment wherever I went. It was a glorious feeling

[glennk]

Felt like I was on top of the world. Was taking 15 hours of classes at university and working two jobs (20 hours and 25 hours). I bought a new car as well.