In September 1998 I started getting manic again. The weird thing about it was I had managed to stay clean and sober for the past few months, and I thought I had a grip on this illness. But a manic episode can be triggered by many things; it doesn’t have to be drugs. It could be stress, lack of sleep, the wrong medication, and many other things. I hadn’t slept in days, and that was why I was getting manic. I couldn’t stop the fast moving thoughts, and often felt like the thoughts were revealing things to me that I didn’t know. I started having grandiose thoughts, or thinking I was something more than what I am. I was hearing these voices in my head. They were telling me I was God and giving me all kinds of information. It was like I had figured out the meaning of life because of what the voices were telling me. Sometimes I would have conversations with the voices, as if they were real people. Then other times I would argue with the voices, because they would be taunting me and calling me names. Sometimes they would be so loud, and I couldn’t shut them up, which made me feel insane. I became delusional and felt like I was losing my mind. It was like my mind was a radio that I couldn’t turn off. It was just constantly going full blast in my head. There was so much happening in my head, and the countless ideas and energy made it almost impossible to sleep. Sometimes I felt like people could hear my thoughts, and that made me feel very paranoid and anxious. When I would think about something, the voices would respond to what I was thinking. I felt like someone was watching me, like spirits or demons, and they were there to torment me. My thoughts weren’t grounded in reality. They were delusional, thoughts that had no beginning and no ending. They would just enter my mind, and leave just as fast. It got to a point that my reality and my delusions were on the same level. I couldn’t tell the difference and I couldn’t concentrate or focus on anything. I was preoccupied with the constant flow of ideas and information that was circulating in and out of my head at 100 miles an hour. I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. When a person is going through a manic episode, what they see and hear is real to them. They usually don’t know they are manic, but other people can see it. Reality and fantasy almost co-exist. Most of the time mania feels good, so the person likes it. Being manic feels like being high on a powerful drug like cocaine, but you can’t come down from it. You just get higher and higher or more and more manic until you’re totally out of your mind. You can’t sleep, you just continue to think and think and you can’t stop your mind from racing. You lose your sense of judgment when you’re manic. Things that you would normally consider wrong seem like they’re O.K. to do. There were times when I became very promiscuous, and would have unprotected sex with strangers and prostitutes. I didn’t care about the dangers of my actions, and never considered the consequences. I was very impulsive, and did things without thinking. I remember feeling like I was so smart, like I knew everything. It was like everything made sense to me, and I had figured out life, which made me feel like I was God. Sometimes the voices would sound like people chanting my name, and other times it sounded like people talking about me, which made me feel angry that they were making fun of me and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. Sometimes I would be on a bus or train and it seemed like everyone in there knew who I was and were saying bad things about me. This made me very paranoid and the paranoia turned into anxiety. It made me afraid to be around a lot of people. I remember feeling like an alien, like I wasn’t even human and people could see it. There were other times when I felt like I could read a person just by their bodily movements and jesters; it was like I could read their mind. It seemed like everything meant something, every sound I heard and everything I saw, and it seemed like everything made sense and was connected in some way. Sometimes it felt like I was controlling everything around me; the birds chirping, the dogs barking, and it seemed like they were almost talking to me, and letting me know they knew I was there and they felt my presence, in essence making noise to acknowledge me. There were times when I would sit in the park and stare at the sun for long periods of time, until it looked like a purple orb spinning extremely fast and dancing in the sky. When I would finally take my eyes off the sun, I would look at the trees and grass and everything looked like it was glowing. Then I would see birds fly by in a formation and I thought I was controlling them with my mind. Sometimes I would feel like everyone around me could feel what I was feeling when I was in their presence, like I was making everyone around me high. I would hear people whispering, saying, “That’s him!” I could hear them saying my name as if they had been waiting to meet me. This made me feel like everyone knew who I was, furthering my delusion that I was God. This state of mind almost always ends with me getting in some sort of trouble. And waking up in jail, not remembering what you did to get there is the most shocking dose of reality you can get.