Hydroponics, Doomday Prepping, and Salsa! When you're hypomanic and you know it...

Hydroponics, Doomsday Prepping, and Salsa. All I have to do is mention these things to my wife and she knows exactly what I'm talking about. These are just a few, but notable, examples of how my hypomania has shown itself in the last few years.

Hydroponics - I went on a 1 month kick of massive research because I was going to save my family $$$ and give us healthy food to eat at the same time. Win-win, right? I had most of it worked out but had no yet spent much money on anything, thankfully, before I came down from this hypomanic episode. It's a great running joke in my house.

Doomsday Prepping - a more costly and time-consuming jaunt. I was pre-bipolar diagnosis and coinciding with the beginning of The Walking Dead, I went through several prepping stages over about two years. I did spend a lot of money, but I had a good job at the time. We just started having kids so this was definitely a huge factor. Most of my prepping stuff is gone, but to this day, I still have a box of gas masks and NBC filters in my garage. They're probably useless but I can't throw them away for whatever reason. Great for a nice smile when I remember what's in that box.

Salsa - this was a fairly recent one when I went hypomanic for just a week or so. I was randomly inspired one day by a celebrity chef and his amazing fire-roasted salsa. So inspired that I spent about $60 on ingredients for ONE batch of salsa. I also only gave myself just over two hours to make it all, including shopping for the ingredients, prep, and fire-roasting the peppers and veggies. By the time I was done, I was wiped out and had come down from that episode. I have a culinary arts degree so hypomania often manifests itself in the form of various cooking inspirations - and the associated waste of money for these excursions. I've learned to "sleep on" my food ideas now so that helps save a lot of money.

I just thought I would share this with my fellow BPer's out there. We all have experienced these things. It gets embarrassing sometimes, but we have to be able to laugh at ourselves.

Feel free to share your stories. I'd love to read them.

I once planned to sail around the world in a smallish boat. I would stay up all hours arguing with people on the internet about whether boats I was looking at were seaworthy enough or not (spoiler - they weren't).

I was convinced that there was a formula that made music appeal to people and stayed up all hours trying to work it out on MIDI keyboards and composing software. I argued with people on the internet (I think there might be a pattern here ) about whether or not cheap keyboards and free open source software could produce music on par with high end synthesizers and professional studios.

I had another sailing episode but this time I was going to build a 14' boat and "only" go to the Bahamas from FL. Of course, late night arguments ensued...

These weren't all that recent; I seem to have reigned it in some and was mostly just an arrogant jackass the last few years. Except for a couple of times when I was convinced that I could cure any disease in my body with my mind and I could be immortal if I avoided a violent or accidental death.

I once ordered a $300 direct-marketing kit. It had all the stuff you need to start a business. I even got a business license and called it Wee Five Enterprises. Only trouble was, I didn't have anything to market. Guess I should have thought of that BEFORE I spent the money, which we could ill afford in those days.

Another silly thing I did when hypomanic was buy about 100 plants for my yard. Now, I love gardening, but I have to watch my back and knees because they're full of arthritis and I get sore for days afterwards. Well, I got everything planted---it took me from mid-afternoon till after dark---and on top of that I pressure-washed the patio. For FOUR HOURS.

The next day I could barely walk. But at least the yard looked good. LOL

This is great stuff! Your boating stories remind me of old Sam "Mayday" Malone from Cheers. Things didn't end well (fictitiously) for him and his boat adventure either. I'm showing my age with that comment, eh?

Interesting you bring up those grandiose-esque thoughts with the music and disease curing. I've figured out that when I start thinking like this, no matter what the subject or how logical my reasoning may seem at that moment, I am clearly encroaching into hypomanic territory. Most recently for me it was Pi and it's relationship to calculating the circumference of a circle. When I go all Einstein or Hawking, I am sure there's a secret to the universe there.

Gardening has been a recurring hypo subject for me as well. Right after my second child was born I got on a vegetable gardening kick but managed to spend just $80 on Amazon for books and seeds. I think I planted about a 6 square foot (HUGE I know) mini farm in my backyard that yielded absolutely nothing. I went into a few big hypomanic phases that year so I think things could have been much worse. I did not yet know I was BP, but I definitely knew there was a compulsiveness issues going on that I had to watch carefully.


And I've done the business thing a few times also. I probably spent $1200 on the my last genius idea alone, but over 2 years for a website I never ended up setting up. It's amazing how good some ideas seem to us for just a short period of time.

I always get on a kick where I want to homestead. I work full time and we are always gone on the weekends. This is just a silly plan for me!

I remember that Cheers reference. It was how they brought him back working for Christie Allie (sp?) instead of owning the bar. He said they named the place he ran aground and destroyed the boat No Brains Atoll.

Yes, you would think I would recognize the grandiose ideas and eventually I do start to question them but it can take a while. When I believed I could cure diseases I knew not to tell anyone because they would not believe it was possible and the government would probably turn me into a lab rat.

I start researching three different books I think I'm going to write. My husband, he's a ff so works 24 hour shifts) came home and asked me how I slept. I told him I hadn't. I had been up all night doing research for a book I'm going to write on Queen Soraya. He wanted to know why and who is Queen Soraya. I exclaimed, "THAT'S exactly why I need to write a book on her."

Thank you Distorted Me for starting this thread. It made me feel more 'normal'.

I prepped for the millenium.
Body armor. Rifles well placed. 15k rounds per caliber. Most in magazines or drums already.
Vehicles in several places. Gas underground. Electric fences. And more.
No food, no water for more than a week. Someone out there has to have some.

I threw a gas mask party with my other preppers friends on January 1 2000, a Saturday.. Great firework show.

Now I realize that if it would have happened, life wasn't worth living.

I look into conspiracy theories and try to solve them. I feel like I could win some HUGE prize by proving it right/wrong. But then I start to get paranoid because I feel like I'm searching too deep and getting too close to something and the govt is going to come after me.

Oh my! I once bought $1000.00 dollars worth of armani clothing which was half my income. I also bought $800.00 dollars worth of fantasy books, which by the way, I'm still reading. I spend money when hypomanic.

I do the same thing! I don't know how many dead books/stories are on my hard drive now.

My hypomania always starts with a "great" idea and a ridiculous burst of energy. Like, now that I'm on disability payments I can move to the most expensive part of Montana, or sew my daughter's prom dress after my hysterectomy surgery, or write that science fiction series that I haven't touched in years after an online writing course. The last one was after my daughter's boyfriend moved in and I thought I could do the Martha Stewart thing. I still have big dreams but I keep it more in reality now. (That dog trainer thing in Denver? Probably not.)

I'm surprised my husband hadn't divorced me after some of those.

Ha! Homesteading was part of my doomsday prepping master-plan. I was just trying to cover all my bases. I still have all the books I bought.

No Brains Atoll!! LMAO!! I totally forgot that part!

Thank you so much for this one. I did not want to admit to the thousands of rounds of ammunition I bought over a 2-3 year period. I only had two AR's, two pistols, and one shotgun but you know I wanted a lot more than that. And I'm kind of a loner so it's not like I had a militia to arm or something.

To raise a little cash, I just recently sold 400 rounds of 5.56 to a friend who won a S&W AR in a raffle (gotta love the South). When I was going through what I still have left now, I was still astonished. The only firearm I have now is my 9mm. Probably a good thing for now. It stays in it's safe anyway.

I can relate to this because every time I get hypomanic I get very obsessive and spend a bunch of money on something I probably will never finish. I get a jillion creative ideas flowing and buy a bunch of stuff for projects I'm going to do and either A.) never do them, b.) half finish them or c.) obessively finish it all in one night, usually up until like 4 am or more. Or don't sleep. I always feel like whatever i do is going to be great at the time, only to come back to reality and realize I'm out a couple hundred dollars and it really didn't turn out the way I had planned. Very rare it does. I'm also so obsessive but easily distracted at the same time, bouncing from idea to idea.
I've binge bought cameras, music supplies, art supplies, cooking supplies. Super guilty of buying hair dye and changing the color of my hair like three times in a month. Suprised I still have hair.

Nothing better than a 12ga 25yds or less. I'm a fan of big calibers. 7.62x39 7.62x51 for snipping. Althought ARs have some merit in the weight dept.
I carry a Glock 36. If I can't solve the situation with 7 rounds, I'm dead anyway.
Never surrender.

I’m kind of a prepper myself. When I get hypomanic i get extremely focused on it. I start reading doomsday apocalypse type fiction which only makes it worse. The next time I get on an end of the world kick I’m going to focus on finding all this stuff I bought and getting it organized instead of spending an arm and a leg on new stuff.

Truth be told if there was actually an apocalypse I prefer to be at ground zero. I wouldn’t want to survive it. However I have lived in parts of the world where natural disasters happened on a regular basis. Earthquakes, typhoons, etc. I lived through 6 weeks of no electricity or running water And it was a nightmare. I had to drive down to the beach everyday with buckets so I had seawater to flush the toilet. I got real friendly with anyone who had a swimming pool. I learned how to eat spam without barfing it up for the protein. With the stuff I have stashed away now I could easily get through 6 weeks now without having to scramble for food or water.

Thanks, Distorted Me, I always enjoy reading these threads. Gotta keep a sense of humor.

Well.... There was the one where I woke up one morning and declared that we should sell our house and move thousands of miles to a remote area we'd never been and didn't know anyone. Why? Because I'd had a dream. My ex thought perhaps at least visiting there would be a good idea. Wha?! Why?!! I reluctantly agreed that would be ok (but completely unnecessary, lol!)

Then there was the stick furniture idea. Sure, made one cool settee. Looked good and you could even sit on it. But I had no real tools and it showed if you looked. Still, had branches filling the backyard, thinking this was The Thing. (Finally, right?! )

Another declaration of moving, this one a mere 2,000 miles to build a cabin and well, kind of homestead (a thing or what?!) No money and even less of a clue. Moved anyway. (Mover's regret anyone? No jobs, finally got one bagging groceries which I promptly lost for getting rude with a customer. Hey, she was a damn b**** and I didn't hold back saying so. When she grabbed for my name badge I nearly went ballistic. No need to fire me, I quit! Holiday weekend. They must've loved that.)

Middle of the night DIY haircuts with dollar store scissors anyone?

In the midst of a big (couple months) hypomanic project, dancing around, throwing my hands in the air and shouting, "I'm a f****** genius!!!!" Over a little something involving a Sharpie marker, glue gun and aluminum foil. Haha, yeah right, right? I truly believed it though.

Let us not even speak of the Ebay spree, the posterchild for which would be a ridiculous fairy-style prom sort of dress in the 2 worst possible colors on me (yellow and aqua) that I just HAD to have because it was "soooo beautiful!" Might've been cute as a 6 year old's costume, but I was in my 40's. My only saving grace was never actually wearing it anywhere...

These are all so great! This is fantastic therapy for all of us. Don't you all feel incredibly normal all of a sudden?

Doomsday stuff seems to be a common theme among most of us. Not surprising at all though given the nature of BPD. All it takes is the wrong news story at the wrong time and we're off to the races. I just remembered this happening to me more recently. I read something about the dozen or so times the US and Russia almost destroyed the world by accident during the Cold War. What I didn't realize, until a few days later, was I had just started going hypomanic that morning (how's that for timing?). When it dawned on me later that I live about 45 minutes east of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I starting freaking out. I had a nice little plan going where I was going to buy some property about 25 miles east of my house, just inside the Smoky Mountains, where we could 'bug out' at a moment's notice. The mountains would shield us from a nuclear blast, at least somewhat, and we could probably get there within an hour even if traffic was bad. Thankfully this plan fizzled out like all the others. I really try to think of every scenario and cover all of the bases which always leads to very quick burnout for me. I don't ever want to be caught "with my pants down" as they say, but you just cannot prepare for every possible situation. My obsessive nature does not want to accept this reality though. I'd hate to see what plan I'd come up with if I got like this during an extended hypo phase. Geez. Living 30 minutes from Washington D.C. for 30 years didn't do me a lot of good in this department.


And I haven't even really experienced a societal breakdown like Shazerac described. This was my nightmare scenario living in Northern Virginia. Traffic was already horrendous during normal times. Throw in a natural or man-made disaster and there's no getting out of the D.C. area, forget it. It's shelter-in-place or nothing. No wonder I got so damn paranoid about this stuff.

Oh! Trying to think of every possible scenario --so true! The only problem I have (yeah, right! ) is doing that with small things, but turning my brain off when it comes to the big stuff(!) Make a big move? Let's go! Economics be damned, lol. Getting better after so many... Fortunately, I don't want to move anymore (like where I am, and am getting too old for this nonsense...It used to be fun, now it's exhausting to even think about, though I do enjoy that "fresh start" feeling -- not that it lasts long...)

So many stories. When I was dx'd, they all started coming back to me. Oh, maybe you're right, seeing how you just totally described my life, lol!

(Just a little heads up -- on the boards here BPD stands for borderline personality disorder, and BP for bipolar. Just to avoid any confusion. )

Guilty of ALL this! I've cut my hair in a hypomanic state and woke up realizing what i've done wanting to cry. lol Plus sometimes I think my creative ideas/projects are so ******** great, but only in hypomanic. Otherwise I think it's **** usually. I don't go on ebay but I can go on amazon or walk into like wal-mart or goodwill (I work there) and buy a bunch of stupid things I think I need but don't. I usually l am really tight with my money but it's
just weird what hypomania can do to me.

I cut off all of my hair down to a #1 guard which is the closest you can go without down all the way. I'm half Asian so I have a nice full head of hair, but it's a pain so I keep it short like military style almost always. I got so tired of it a few times I took it down to the #1 thinking I'd look hot or something. But I ended up looking like I just got out of prison or joined a gang. Being half Asian I already have a "***** face" look anyway without trying. The haircut did not help. You should have seen some of the looks I got from older people.

I'm tight with money too and that does help when I'm hypo, like you. It can be a real blessing because I tend to take a long time to make a purchase decision and spend days researching like a $25 buy. Doesn't always work though. The obsessions can outlast my cheapskate side.

I noticed moving to another area is not uncommon for hypomanic behavior, or the desire to move anyway. I've done this just a few times because I had the opportunity. Something about moving to new surroundings seems to kick off extended hypomania. I stayed hypo for months after I moved here to Tennessee. It is really beautiful here though. This was the best move I've ever made. I would never be able to deal with my BP in the D.C. area. That place is nuts.

I always buy shoes and clothes and expensive ones at that.

I dye my hair blue every manic episode.

I almost get a tattoo.

I do risk taking behaviours because I think I’m invincible.

I overdress for every occasion

I flirt with everybody