an unquiet mind a memoir of moods and madness

I imagine I must have spent far more than thirty thousand dollars during my two major manic episodes, and God only knows how much more during my frequent milder manias.īut then back on lithium and rotating on the planet at the same pace as everyone else, you find your credit is decimated, your mortification complete: mania is not a luxury one can easily afford. Or maybe I just thought about shoplifting, I don’t remember, I was totally confused. Once I think I shoplifted a blouse because I could not wait a minute longer for the woman-with-molasses feet in front of me in line. During one spree in London I spent several hundred pounds on books having titles or covers that somehow caught my fancy: books on the natural history of the mole, twenty sundry Penguin books because I thought it could be nice if the penguins could form a colony. I bought precious stones, elegant and unnecessary furniture, three watches within an hour of one another (in the Rolex rather than Timex class: champagne tastes bubble to the surface, are the surface, in mania), and totally inappropriate sirenlike clothes. So I bought twelve snakebite kits, with a sense of urgency and importance. What with credit cards and bank accounts there is little beyond reach. Unfortunately, for manics anyway, mania is a natural extension of the economy. Credit cards are disastrous, personal checks worse. The money will come from somewhere I am entitled God will provide. “When I am high I couldn’t worry about money if I tried. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.”Īn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness Everything previously moving with the grain is now against- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. “There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness.

An unquiet mind a memoir of moods and madness