HYPOMANIA
Is It Safe to Trigger or Extend Hypomania?
A Personal Perspective: Ride the waves but don’t push the river.
Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

I sleep deeply and need less. No longer eight to nine hours. I’m fine with six to seven. My eyes pop open, and thoughts flutter faster than I can catch them.

An early morning walk and colors sparkle bright and beautiful. The sky smiles an 80s eye shadow blue.

Back at home, my pedestrian breakfast walks into another realm. Raspberry jam bubbles with mammoth sweet tartness and the butter on my toast unleashes its heavenly aroma. A wide space opens around each bite, and I fall into the experience entirely.

At my desk now, hands on the computer keyboard, like an orchestral pianist, my fingers machine gun out a blog post and scenes for a stage play. They’re good. Really. Not like the crap poetry I think is good when I write in a swirling mania.

The work I do while in the land of hypomania has substance and quality. The experience is effervescent. Not something that’s easy to let go. It does inevitably, though, go. Unlike depression, it passes quickly. A short visit, one or two days, three at the most. For me. Now. That wasn’t always the case. Early in my recovery, it lasted longer, created more damage, and often swooped into a mania that could fling into psychosis. Not pretty. Never pretty.

I recognize it for what it is. Hypomania. A mood state less severe than mania occurs episodically in bipolar disorder. I don’t panic anymore. I take advantage of it without coaxing it to stay longer. That can court disaster. In this place, the world doesn’t feel unreal. I don’t feel invincible. I know I’m not walking in multiple dimensions. That would be the florid flavor of mania. But the border between the two states is freakishly vague.

Like stepping from one province into another, you don’t know when that happens unless you know what to look for. It can happen in a manic blink of an eye without you even noticing, and certainly not noticing in time to do anything to prevent it.

I was asked in a Q and A the following question: Is it possible to safely trigger an extended period of hypomania?

I’m living well with rapid cycling bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features. I say "living well" because, having found effective self-management tools, a good counselor and doctor, medications that work without side effects, and a strong social network of understanding (and fun) friends, mood episodes do not derail me. When the inevitable depression or hypomania comes, they’re less severe, shorter-lived, and I know how to help myself.

It’s often hard for loved ones to understand why we would want to perpetuate mood states that can cause us so much trouble. Maybe my experience sheds some light on the seductive nature of hypomania.

Back to the question. You can try to extend a hypomanic state once you’re in it. Continue sleeping less, meditate too much, eat very little, drink lots of coffee, keep ideas coming, and write everything down. But can you do it safely? I highly doubt it. I’ve never tried. The potential consequences of such an uncontrollable state far outweigh any of its lures. Full blow mania, psychosis even, hospital stays aren’t great trade-offs for such ephemeral exuberance.

A good psychiatrist I worked with made two points when we discussed dealing with hypomania. First, he said if I noticed I was in a hypomanic phase, be careful because it can snap into full-blown mania without notice. Hence why I never intentionally try to trigger or draw one out.

The second point was surprising to me. He said it’s ok to advantage of its creative and productive energy. Don’t do things to exacerbate it. Allow it to pass when it starts to move on. But if you find you’re inspired to write, write. Cleaning your house? Clean your house. But at the same time, be vigilant. At the first sign of symptom escalation, I was to contact him.

There’s a deeper issue at play here, though. If I find myself reminiscing about what I think are the glory days of hypomania (by the way, there aren’t any) and longing to recreate them, I need to ask myself a question.

Why do I want to be hypomanic? What's missing in my life?

Usually, vitality has left the building. Maybe there's no levity, no joy. Or I’m simply not having much fun, engaging in enough creativity or perhaps feeling disconnected from my spirituality.

Looking at it that way, I can reengage in satisfying activities and fulfill those needs. I might write, get crafty and make a card, buy flowers and arrange them in vases, go to the ocean to feel its expansiveness, walk in the forest, meditate, watch reruns of Friends, or call a friend who makes me laugh.

Ironically, the longing for hypomania, something which hobbled me before, now has the power to help me create a fuller life. It’s a signal that reminds me to rediscover play in my life and a satisfaction that goes beyond fleeting glee.