Living with Bipolar Disorder: Six Months of Mania and I’m a Maniac!

Intelligence is the knowledge that you have the experience to understand what you need to do. You can change your mind if you want to get a different outcome, experience. Conscious awareness of what you are doing. It’s fascinating to learn something. Being able to understand, comprehend, apply and adapt your knowledge to your situations is your aptitude and your ability to learn and survive in life. Time served tradesmen, stalwarts at companies with more years experience than what you have lived. You know what I mean?!? Asking if someone knows what the answer to this or that is, a flippant question, I.e. the last date and location of the last battle on British soil? Do you know? It was the battle of Culloden, on 16th April 1746. Knowing that is all well and good. Now knowing what it meant, why it happened, is understanding.

Further to the below, the saga continues

I would never say that I am anymore intellectually blessed than the next person. Nor would I say that I am clever. I have, very kindly by quite a few people, been called intelligent, clever and words to that effect. As flattering as it is, I don’t think I am. For example, practical activities such as hammering a nail in a wall to hang a photo or picture, anything associated with D.I.Y, changing a flat tire on a car (or even helping), you get the gist and the list goes on, I’m more a hindrance than a help. Now, theoretics and analytical explanations, I’m more at home. If you and I were driving somewhere and we broke down, I reckon it is something that I can explain and understand with the internal combustion engine and what has happened, but fix it? Nah mate!

Cast your minds back to your school days and your average class sizes. For me it was about 30 or so of us on average in each class. I’m sure you had favourite classes and you had some that dragged on for an unbelievable amount of time and sent you to sleep nearly. You have to think about it as if someone is in a class that they enjoy and are interested in, they are going to listen and be focused on what is being taught. You have zero interest in a class, you are going to daydream or distract yourself from what is being said. You are also going to set a precedent for yourself and not being able to tune in a couple weeks down the line as you are lost regarding the topics. However, this is not what defines intelligence. Education is an academic achievement in regurgitation.

For example, I have a close friend who was born in a Spanish speaking country. They have lived here for more than half of their life, yet they have had to sit an exam and prove their ability to speak English. Would a 5 minute face to face conversation not suffice?

Intelligence is not measured by the number of A* or % your exams get. It’s about knowing what you are doing, application of your knowledge to any given situation and how your experiences will afford you the understanding you have of what is going on.

So, I’m in a manic state now and have been for the last six months at least. You can see the link at the start of the blog regarding your sleeping patterns and then the fact that sleep is practically non-fuckin-existent! Well, I’m beginning to become more and more irritated with the manic episode. I’m now no longer enjoying the creative and carefree expression of my blogs I was writing. I’m not saying that they were better than normal, I just didn’t have to think about the words or concern myself if I was possibly upsetting someone with what I wrote. I’m now having to continuously stop and read, re-read, pondering my words, losing the point I was trying to make, and primarily losing the words that I have in my head somewhere along the way to them coming across via the typing of them. I’m having trouble with spoken words too.

I’m well aware that being manic is causing this. Take a deep breath and go again. Chasing the countless this and that around your mind though, generally means that the thing you were talking or thinking about is pushed out of the way and then you have another thing that you need to say, without knowing where the last thing went to.

I have a few different perspectives on one or two things than my mates. I’m just not able to explain as to what I have formulated my understanding on to get my opinions. So for example, on the subject of what exists and what doesn’t exist.

What exists is basically anything that naturally occurs. Everything natural. A product of nature. Interaction within the universe. This defines existing and the meaning of existence. Buildings and man made structures ‘exist’ but they aren’t natural or doing anything once they are built. They are simply shelters for sleeping, working or living in.

Convention, social constructs, buildings, vehicles, weapons, manufactured goods et al, these items aren’t real. They have been created for a materialistic generation. Consumerism is the new communism, or fascism, or socialism, or whateverism.

Materialism proposes that everything is physical; everything can be comprehensively described and explained in the principles of physics. For over 50 years now there’s been challenges towards materialism that have focused on mental phenomena such as consciousness, reason, and value. The tacit assumption among most materialists – one shared by most of their critics – has been that more basic biological phenomena, such as metabolism and reproduction, do not pose a serious obstacle to the materialist program, that these can be easily accommodated within a materialist framework. But there is reason to think that this assumption is false. Thomas Nagel has recently argued that materialism cannot countenance biological phenomena at large. Like so many anti-materialist arguments, however, his focuses on mental phenomena. After explaining why this is a liability for him and other would-be critics of materialism, I advance an anti-materialist argument that appeals directly to biology. Materialism is false, it says, because our best empirical descriptions and explanations of biological phenomena appeal to biological organisations or structures, and there is good reason to think that these appeals cannot be eliminated, reduced to, or paraphrased in favour of descriptions and explanations framed in exclusively physical terms. As a result, not everything can be described and explained exhaustively by physics. Materialism must be false. The reason, however, has nothing to do with mental phenomena specifically.

We as people, tend to occupy our spare time with the activities we hold as interesting and enjoyable to learn, interact and be a part of. This isn’t necessarily limited to our spare time, we all have different circumstances which present us a situation to which we apply ourselves. I’m not going to hypothesise multiple connotations of scenarios but I’m just going to give a brief overview of what my predicament means.

So, I’m now no longer able to work. So even though I stopped working in February this year, it was a couple of weeks ago I ended my employment as I have no possibility to return to work in any capacity now, or in the foreseeable future. Sucks eh? (Don’t know why I wrote sucks as I’m not American 😂 never used that word before. Blaming my American blogging friends). I’m manic and I’m probably not far off with saying that I reckon I have had about 1/4 or 25% of sleep recommended up to now in 2023. I’m sure I’ll have a prolonged visit from the Depressive phase that will very generously portion my sleep back to normality. The extreme insomnia coupled with the extreme sleep, boarder line hibernation, is probably appealing for some on face value. When you get 6 months in and you can’t remember your last normal nights sleep, it’s just not funny anymore. You try to do all the things that you read on sleep hygiene and do whatever you think can help. Then you realise that you are taking before bed, 300mg Quetiapine (on top 250mg in morning), it’s not sending you off to sleep. It’s classed as a tranquilliser in the USA, known for sedation properties and would wipe out everyone who lives on your street. Shitttttttttt! Somethings wrong here 😂

I’m not eating anything like something that you would say resembled a diet. I’m trying to figure out how to get breakfast and dinner then tea eaten whilst I’m not hungry in the slightest!

It’s all complete madness with regards to the sleep and appetite. But then again it isn’t. It’s not normal when I compare it with an ordinary person’s routine. Ordinary people have a night of no sleep or less than four hours sleep and they have real difficulties coping the day after. I’ve heard people complaining about getting just one or two hours sleep. But it’s not fair to compare that with my sleep patterns. People can dismiss you when you are chatting and you say you haven’t had sleep for 48 hours say, you don’t look or feel uncomfortable, people are cautious in believing you. Fuck them, it’s not important to make everyone believe what you say.

I have always believed that if you have an interest and want to progress with your understanding and involvement of any subject or activities, then you will succeed. You might raise an eyebrow there, but if you want to be a chemist say for example, you didn’t though pass your exams at school. Many people will think it’s impossible to do. However, you can go college and sit maths and English along with Science (Biology, Physics and Chemistry). Now you might have no interest in maths or English but you are now studying three topics instead of full spectrum at school. Generally speaking the class sizes are smaller than school and lectures are on the needs of you and your classmates.

So you manage to get your grades and your in college now doing your A Levels of Chemistry, Biology and Psychology for example. Your aiming for 2 D’s to get into University (this was mine but it was 2001), and you apply yourself and your going to succeed.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if I had to give 18 year old me a piece of advice regarding university, then it’d be not to stress about the things you get taught in lectures. You are simply going in to more depth on a process and you learn intricacies. Simply because of the wide range of avenues that potentially could be the pathway for each student. Going in-depth and uncovering one particular process specific to just one of them isn’t going to give people the opportunity to get in to a different areas. They won’t have a foundation for basing their understanding on and would presumably have to study for this or simply pursue a career in the area that was taught.

Having an education from institutions is all well and good. The thing is that you have no opportunities to apply the information you have acquired. When you next visit the Chemist’s, watch the Pharmacist there and see what they are doing. Simply signing off the prescriptions that they are passed. I have seen them measuring out liquid medication, very seldom giving advice. I’ve been a couple of times with a few questions as I can’t get GP or Psychiatrist to answer within a week or so. The Pharmacist knows the answer to the questions but they can’t advise you about it and you need ask your Doctor or Psychiatrist. Shame that after all the years study to be then in a role you have little opportunity to apply your capabilities. It’s how it appears to me anyway. I might be wrong?!?

***Reading this back a couple of months down the line, I was definitely manic when writing this ✍🏻 so disclaimer if you didn’t understand what I was on about 😆***

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