Insomniac Nightmares

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not mentally well… as if that wasn’t readily apparent from the things I write, read, play and watch. It makes things unpleasant, to say the least, a lot of the time. Even with medication, there’s still periods where the world just, for lack of better explanation, “grays out” and seems half-real and ultimately pointless.

That being said, on the whole, I prefer to have the meds than to be without them… except for one little thing.

Among my problems is bipolar disorder. Saying mood swings are a bitch is an understatement. When they initially diagnosed me, they thought I was severely bipolar and only medicated that. Then they discovered my “normal” was exceptionally low and adjusted to include severe depression. That’s been a little better… but the problem is that my bipolar experience included fairly lengthy – a month or more – periods where the mania would stick around, kick up its feet, light a cigar and make itself comfortable.

I miss those periods. Maybe not enough to say “fuck it” and chuck the meds, hoping the manic phase lands quickly and sticks around – because the low period is literally about six inches from going to bed and never coming back – but still a strong yearning.

I would sleep for two or three hours, add four thousand words to a manuscript, kick out three blog posts, clean the house, stack raid after raid in WoW or dozens of Greater Rift runs in Diablo and still feel energized. To be fair, I’d be smoking like a chimney the whole time, nervously munching on anything in the fridge and consuming prodigious amounts of soda and coffee, but at least I felt productive.

Without those periods, managing a single blog post and one or two sentences on a manuscript or story is an accomplishment. Add in the other health problems, where sitting in my chair or any kind of moving about for any period leaves me winded and exhausted, and even that much feels like a Herculean struggle sometimes.

So… yeah. There’s times where those manic periods look pretty appealing, and I wish I could capture them again and put ’em to work for me. I might actually get something done around here. What about my fellow neurodivergents out there? Do you feel better or worse with treatment? Are there things you wish you could keep from a pre-treatment period, even if overall you prefer the situation when it’s medicated? Let us know down below!