Mania starts off fun, not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after awhile.
Interpretation
Mania can initially feel exhilarating, but it often leads to negative consequences if left unchecked.
In this quote, Carrie Fisher describes the exhilarating and deceptive nature of mania, where one may initially experience heightened creativity and productivity, likening the mind to a computer with endless channels of stimulating thoughts. However, this euphoric state can quickly spiral into chaos and distress, highlighting the importance of balance and awareness of one's mental state.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health awareness, this quote can illustrate the dual nature of conditions like mania.
I trust myself. I trust my instincts. I know what I'm gonna do, what I can do, what I can't do. I've been through a lot, and I could go through more, but I hope I don't have to. But if I did, I'd be able to do it. I'm not going to enjoy dying, but there's not much prep for that.
Over time, I've paid attention, taken notes and forgotten easily half of everything I've gone through.
I went to a doctor and told him I felt normal on acid, that I was a light bulb in a world of moths. That is what the manic state is like.
There's a line I have that our family was designed more for public than for private. But there are definitely some things that are only mine. I am someone who dreams at night, and you don't know what I'm dreaming.
You know how most illnesses have symptoms you can recognize? Like fever, upset stomach, chills, whatever. Well, with manic depression, it's sexual promiscuity, excessive spending, and substance abuse - and that just sounds like a fantastic weekend in Vegas to me!
I am truly a product of Hollywood in-breeding. When two celebrities mate, someone like me is the result.
That's what stress management is about, that's what psychotherapy is about, finding religion, or finding your loved one or your hobby - any of those, they give you more outlets, more of a sense of control, more of a sense of predictability, of social support. They give you the means to psychologically finesse ambiguous outside reality.
I had really bad obsessive-compulsive disorder. At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.
In a typical mental health catch-22, the alienating nature of depression tends to keep its sufferers from finding their way to the very support groups that might help them.
Pain or not, I would most likely walk around in a suicidal reverie the rest of my life, never actually doing anything about it. Was there a psychological term for that? Was there a disease that involved an intense desire to die, but no will to go through with it? Couldn't talk and thoughts of suicide be considered a whole malady of their own, a special subcategory of depression in which the loss of a will to live has not quite been displaced by a determination to die?
One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.
For me, depression is very much tied to my feeling that so much is being asked of me. I have to 'perform' rather than necessarily be myself. I have to perform a perfect Margo Jefferson, at an impossibly high level.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.