That first manic episode...

I was in New York when it happened. November 2001. Two friends and I had gone there on a shopping trip, the trip was designed to be 'manic' - shopping, clubbing, sightseeing...So how was I going to recognise if anything was amiss? I'm a lively, upbeat, positive kind of girl anyway.

In fact, looking back, I was high in NY for at least three days before coming back home but London was where all the trouble started. In NY I'd had a blazing row with a good friend - my first real experience of anger which was dangerous and alluring. I'd also had a 'spiritual' experience at the World Trade Centre and had met God or so I had thought. I came back to London on fire for this new religion - Christianity - and threw myself into it wholeheartedly. I had all these new ideas on how to live my life: no sex with my boyfriend till we were married, no swearing, announcing to everyone that life was going to be different from now on. And it was...I just didn't know why. Food tasted cleaner, colours were brighter, I needed no sleep and would wake early, I needed no food, I wrote down in a journal lengthy conversations between myself and God. My mum had come to visit (for a week) and being a Christian herself - was overjoyed at this new change in me, though later she admits that 'something wasn't right'. My boyfriend didn't notice anything except I had a lot more energy than usual. If anything, they both thought I had jet lag and was excited about being back from my trip. Then mum left and that night things started to get weird. Thoughts turned towards paranoia, I went hysterical at my boyfriend, talking to him as if I was God and referring to myself in the third person. I was shouting at him, frustrated that he couldn't understand my gibberish. We'd watched a film the night before and suddenly it all made sense to me, everything had this new meaning for me, special significance. We called the ambulance out because I thought I was having a panic attack, I felt so strange. I imagined I had a million and one weird diseases, and was convinced I was going to die during the night. I kept waking up and screaming out names of the illnesses I thought I had. My thinking got more and more warped...I laid out a shrine of books for my boyfriend hoping that he'd see the same significance in their titles as I had done because he'd then truly know my state of mind....The next morning, (I hadn't let my boyfriend sleep), he managed to get me on a train and down to my mums (Devon). I think it was the most difficult thing he's ever had to do. I can't remember much of the journey - I was singing out loud and screaming at the top of my voice. When we got to my mum's (after even more disjointed behaviour) I had a mini 'fit' and fell down and cut my head. I was taken to hospital and from there, they sectioned me. They found drugs in my bloodstream which means I may have been spiked whilst in America. A possible 'trigger' along with the long plane flight as another possible 'trigger'. That was my first and only manic episode. It scared the hell out of me. I smelt things that weren't there. I communicated in sign language for over a week. I didn't recognise my boyfriends face. Nothing that I can remember would make me want to go through that again.

Since November, I have been diagnosed 'properly' with bi - polar and was admitted into hospital for 6 weeks (March 2002) whilst they monitored me and put me on medication. I had a depressive episode in hospital, preceded by dreadful anxiety. Depression knocked me for six. Couldn't move, eat, sleep, cry, couldn't get up to clean my teeth or wash in my lower moments but the anxiety was worse. Waking up already anxious, and then every single thought being clouded by it. Hours go by and you can't recall what you're thinking you just know you're thinking the same thoughts over and over again. My endless thoughts were, "I'm never going to get well. Nothing is going to make me feel any better. I'm going to be like this forever."

Now I know different. It doesn't have to be like it forever. Thanks to anti-depressants and a mood stabiliser I am now back at work part time and taking things really slowly. My mother and boyfriend have educated themselves well enough to recognise the signs the next time they suspect that I might be going high - I'm trying to keep a mood diary to see if I'll be able to spot the signs myself; I expect they'll be hard to see since I'm generally a very excitable person anyway and the last time I went high I was halfway across the world removed from my normal environment but I'm doing my best to learn about the illness.