One of the nuggets of parental wisdom that has proved most true for me as I slink into adulthood is the notion that the joys gleaned from anticipation are usually greater than any pleasure any one event could ever yield. The fondest memories I have of my childhood Christmas mornings don’t involve messing about with any particular long-desired gift, but concern the gnawing desire to know what lay under the reindeer-print wrapping paper as I jiggled my footie-pajama clad feet on the stairs waiting for my parents to make what seemed to me to be the longest brewing cup of coffee in modern history. So rarely do things ever meet, much less exceed, our expectations of them that most often it’s far more satisfying to revel in our deluded imaginings of what the future holds than to remember the event itself. But, these rules only apply to the anticipation of the pleasant while the opposite normally holds true for the dread we experience concerning looming pain or loss. Right now, it is that far-fetched fear of the uncomfortable that sags as I sit here, watching my imagined misfortune worsen by the second.
When I was seventeen I was diagnosed by my impressively droll psychiatrist as having bi-polar disorder and was placed on a low-level of lithium in an attempt to curb my flights of manic fancy. The diagnosis was the result of a rash decision I had made to embark on a clandestine journey to Chicago one weekend to live out my greatest Ferris Bueller’s Day Off fantasies and to have my undoubtedly brilliant writing published by Random House. I was told that the urge to enjoy a pleasant weekend in the Windy City was not abnormal, but that the conviction that setting off at 7 ‘o clock on a Friday night by myself with the intent of spending my nights in the back seat of my Volvo within the bowels of a parking garage until I could cash in the check from my publishing contract was a bit out of the ordinary and should be seen as cause for alarm. I was informed that the swell of ambition and adventure that I had been riding was the result of a manic episode, the hyperactive half of the bi-polar cycle that allowed me to operate under the false pretense that I was the reincarnation of Truman Capote minus the same-sex tendencies. This, coupled with the numbing depression that I had felt for the week following my foiled excursion (I was picked up by my parents in the wee hours of the morning in a Inn just outside of, and mercifully not in the heart of, Gary, Indiana) indicated that I was probably the proud owner of a chemical imbalance that would have to be medicated toot-sweet.
I was prescribed the Lithium with a minimum of soul-searching from my psychiatrist as the medication was pretty devoid of side effects and I proceeded to routinely ingest it as a twice-daily pharmacological afterthought for the next six years. However, this past spring I was told that my bi-polar diagnosis was probably made in haste as a knee-jerk reaction to my adolescent spontaneity. I was inclined to believe him as misdiagnoses among teenagers with bi-polar are a common occurrence owing to the fact that mood disorders are notoriously difficult to identify before the brain has fully finished developing. In an effort to make a dent in the ever-increasing mound of medication that I was taking I decided that it would be best to drop the lithium whenever the opportune moment arose.
That moment surfaced last week and I began my trial separation from the drug in an attempt to let my brain do a little self-maintenance. Initially I couldn’t notice any difference off the drug and came to the immediate conclusion that the Lithium had indeed been superfluous and my bi-polar label premature. Then, when my family came out to the Pacific Northwest to visit me I began to feel inappropriately glum. All of the sudden I was blindsided by a wave of depression that turned me into a muted malcontent, sitting through meals without uttering a word and tolerating my family’s conviviality like it was a pointed attack on my sensibilities. It became terribly exhausting just existing while being forced to erect this front of enjoyment that was half-assed at best and totally ineffectual. What should have been the highlight of my of my summer became an irritation and an annoyance. The switch was flipped.
While I was sitting in my parent’s hotel room, a converted whorehouse boudoir formally occupied by the house madam Marie, I suddenly felt very sardonic and witty. As a matter of fact I made a point of commenting aloud that, “Dear God, I feel terribly sardonic and witty.” I had been lifted from the depths of my depression and was now convinced that I was the cleverest man who had ever lived and that every sentence that passed from my lips was so marvelously constructed that it belonged in a long lost Evelyn Waugh novel. As we went out to dinner and I ordered my disappointingly bland entrée I felt like a less dapper and un-mustachioed Clark Gable and had the urge to rush back to my hotel room and write the great American novel. I was giddy and almost incapable of expressing myself without drowning out my sentiments with the giggles. A lovely heat began emanating from my limbs and I was ready to make a pass at our waitress when I became disappointingly self-aware.
“I am having a manic episode.” The realization crossed my mind and I immediately entered into a bizarre out-of-body experience where I was both cognizant of and under the control of my own insanity. However harmful I objectively acknowledged mania could be, I couldn’t help but bask in the high it gave me. It was at least as good as any drug I’d ever taken and in fact made me feel like I had just snorted about 100mg of Adderall. If I could distill this sensation into some sort of powder I and sell it I would become filthily rich. My sister also pointed out that this distillation would be about the same as cocaine and why didn’t I save myself the trouble and cop some of that instead, which I had to acknowledge was probably true. Being in active recovery from alcohol and drug addiction and living in a halfway house, I couldn’t help but feel guilty about relishing the high that I was feeling, but quickly dismissed this guilt after realizing that I was in no way responsible for the gross misfiring of serotonin in my noggin and that I was paying for this momentary glee with an inordinate amount of depression. I made up my mind to milk my mania for all it was worth.
My mini psychotic episode was disappointingly short and ended after the dessert menu had been passed around, leaving me oddly balanced and calm. On the plus side, I am now quite certain that I would benefit from a regiment of Lithium, which should take some time to reestablish because of the excessive bureaucracy of psychiatry. A part of me is in no rush to hop back on the meds in the hopes of experiencing another ego-inflating bout of mania, all the accompanying depression be damned. So, I sit here and write out this little screed while waiting for the roller coaster to let gravity have its way and leave me an indentured servant to my psyche. Hopefully I’m not possessed by the uncontrollable urge to shag ass to Chicago again because this time around I’m about 2,000 miles farther away and would probably run out of steam before I got out of Montana.
