Slashdot Mirror

I do have an issue with some of the things the author of the article, Kelly Luker said in her story.

The fact is, I did in fact tell her (and I've long held this to be true) that I can work effectively while sufferring fairly severely from the symptoms of manic depression.

That's why I said that I can work effectively even when I'm wigging.

I've been in offices programming late at night, doing up some C code in emacs, while being unable to bring myself to look out the window because I had an overwhelming sense that Nazi panzer divisions were having maneuvers in the parking lot.

The first few years I was a programmer, I sufferred pretty heavily from symptoms of manic depression and I did pretty well both at teaching myself to be a programmer and at actually producing working code, in terms of shipping products.

But one thing Ms. Luker really didn't seem to understand is that it is not desirable to be manic.

A manic episode is a profoundly psychotic state. It is extremely frightening to experience. It can be very frightening for other people, especially those who really don't understand what is going on (hence my desire to educate by writing web pages and slashdot articles). It is physically exhausting - I've gone as long as a week without sleeping, and the lack of sleep escalates the mania in a vicious spiral. Really the best one can hope for is that a caring friend or watchful doctor will get the sufferer to a psychiatric hospital before something really bad happens.

People who are manic:

• Make abrupt changes to their college major, as I did, from physics to literature.
• Get married to strangers
• Have abrupt and ultimately deeply regretted sexual affairs
• Blow their life savings on items that have no real value to them
• Start massive projects and abandon them the next day
• Rob banks, when they are otherwise law-abiding citizens

I could go on but basically I really want to emphasize that being manic is a profoundly altered state and not something to be desired, any more than being manic is.

Because mania has a pleasurable feeling, and people in manic states tend to bubble over with new ideas, Ms. Luker really seemed to have the idea that it was really great to be manic. She seemed quite taken aback when I pointed out to her that mania was really about the worst thing that one could experience, short of maybe actually committing suicide. But that emphasis did not make it into the article.

I do say on my website (and I said to Ms. Luker) that manic depressive people tend to be very creative - but not while they are manic.

There is a distinct difference between having racing thoughts and bubbling over with new ideas and being able to create.

What really is good about being manic depressive is the creativity one gains from it. And there is a definite link between manic depression and creativity as evidenced in Kaye Redfield Jamison's book Touched with Fire

But what I've always emphasized, what it took me years to learn in the early days and what a lot of manic depressive do not understand until they've been through years of therapy (this is something that the medication which directly treats the symptoms doesn't help with), is that the real creativity comes when you have achieved a balance.

You see, the manic depressive is most creative when he or she is "normal".

Mike

Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow

Michael D. Crawford