Interlude

In my defense, in 1963 there were no effective options available. Manic-depression was treated with the same drugs as major depression, psychosis and schizophrenia; lithium wouldn't be approved by the FDA for seven more years. But let's go back a few months and take a quick look.

At age 12 I began to realize that something was, if not wrong, at least different. There were "slow" days and "fast" days, and it was easy to tell the difference between the two.

Fast days were fun, sunshine was brighter, music and thoughts and ideas swirled through my head. I could easily finish my homework - before I left the class. I had boundless endurance (although I didn't actually think of it that way, just that I could "get stuff done"). Everyone liked me, everyone loved my jokes. Although fast sometimes only lasted a day or two, it mostly covered entire weeks.

Slow days were a time for rest, and trying to get out of chores. When I was slow the world was cloudy, almost fogged in. Everyone else went speeding by me while I bumped along blimp-slow through the day. If it was a weekend, it was time to sleep in, maybe catch a nap in the afternoon. Slow didn't last too many days, sometimes just one day; they were something to be endured so I could be fast again.

In the mornings I would wake and lie in bed a few minutes and watch phosphenes, assessing the day ahead, deciding whether it was going to be slow or fast. On a fast day it was like watching thirty movie screens overlayed by a Krazy Kat cartoon. On a slow day, more like black-on-black seaweed swaying in a gentle surf. A fast day required discipline to get to school on time: I couldn't get distracted, start reading a book or magazine or start a drawing or fiddling with a model. I could read at the breakfast table, that was OK, since someone would be there to kick me out the door if needed. A slow day had it's own special attentions or the ordinary affairs of getting ready for school would take too long to complete. It was like wading upstream in a slowly-cooling lava flow.

So I knew something was different with me. Other people didn't seem to go slow and fast. The friends with whom I shared the feelings had no knowledge or experience of such odd things. I was an avid reader, haunting the local libraries almost daily, but my research didn't, at the beginning, turn up any information on the slow/fast days phenomenon.

I didn't tell any adults of these things, mainly because I had one more "symptom" which I didn't want anyone to know about: I was crazy. Not "that's one crazy little kid" or "hey, man, are you crazy?" More like delusions, hallucinations, the Voice of God, that sort of thing. I wasn't real crazy, and the delusions came and went pretty quickly (and a lot of the Divine Conversations were like "Hey, you're not real" - "YES I AM" - "Don't hand me that; you're part of my own brain. Now fuck off and leave me alone."). But, for all I knew, even a little bit crazy got the victim a trip to the nearest insane asylum.

You see, schizophrenia was the only insanity widely mentioned in popular media at that time, so naturally I thought I was schizophrenic. And, in 1962 schizophrenia was apparently not successfully treatable, since all the victims seemingly spent their lives in institutions. I was one scared 12 year old. I started doing deeper research into insanity and finally came across manic-depression. Manic-depression! The symptoms mostly matched (the depression part never did jibe well with my experiences, until recently - more on that later), the manic individual could have delusions, even hallucinations, and better yet, lots of really smart, famous and artistic people were suspected of being manic-depressive! It was like jet-set crazy. One problem: get too out of hand and you still get incarcerated.

That's when I shut up about my condition, not even my friends could know. I started making jokes ("Ha, ha, I guess I'm borderline manic-depressive, ha, ha.") and rehearsing excuses for irrational behavior ("Sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night: my hamster got out, see...", "Yeah, I've been kinda queasy today; I hope it's not the flu *cough*cough*.") I think I fooled most people, although a few apparently noticed that something was wrong.

That's for another post.