Who is being too polite to say what? Who knows what? What did I do? Why? And most hauntingly, when will it happen again? Then, too, are the bitter reminders … medicine to take, resent, forget, take, resent, and forget, but always to take. What then after the medications, psychiatrist, despair, depression, and overdose? All those incredible feelings to sort through. It goes on and on, and finally there are only other's recollections of your behavior … your bizarre, frantic, aimless behaviors … for mania has at least some grace in partially obliterating memories. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against … you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and emerged totally in the blackest caves of the mind. Humor and absorption on friend's faces are replaced by fear and concern. The fast ideas are 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.

This is an excerpt from 'An Unquiet Mind,' a memoir about having manic depressive illness.

Kay jamison an unquiet mind