How do I know if I’m manic? Because I know how I feel when the glands are pushing out the hormones at a great rate of speed. These extra juices make me high, high like when I use to snort cocaine. In fact I tell people that a mania high is even better than cocaine ever was.

So, when I’m being mindful I can take a step back, as if an independent observer, and say, “Man, I’m really loaded, therefore I must be really manic.” Without this ability to be mindful I would just feel really good and wouldn’t question why. It’s the act of stepping back into mindfulness that allows me to be aware that I’m manic/hypo-manic.

It probably took me fifteen to twenty years to develop my mindfulness to this level. I’m sure there are others who can obtain mindfulness quicker, but I don’t think it’s uncommon for it to take as long as it did for me. In fact many manic depressives never reach this level of mindfulness. And even if you do, that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when your mindfulness fails you. It’s impossible to be perfect, so there will be times when you are high on mania and all you can do is run with it, i.e., let your mania have its head.

In such cases, off your mania gallops taking you with it. The feeling is as addictive as any other drug, with mania producing the drug internally through the brains base biology. The “chemical imbalance” often referred to when a person is manic or depressed is nothing but the brain operating as it always does except it;’s either producing too much happy juice, or too little.

The truth is all human moods are on a spectrum, it’s just in the case of manic depression the spectrum is stretched wider and more intensely than in a non manic-depressed person.

I’ve got one last observation. How do you know when you’ve attained “mindfulness”. For me I know when I’m mindful because accompanying all other observations is the awareness that you’re being mindful. Call it being mindful of being mindful. Once you’ve attained this level of mindfulness it almost becomes automatic. That includes being mindful of being mindful even when it’s the last possible thing you want to be having. One reason is that mindfulness can become circular, leaving you trapped going round and round. Depending on how manic you are, say if you’re having racing thoughts, and hence your thinking races ever faster and tighter in the circle. You can actually get stuck and require an external interrupt to get out of the loop.

I hope this discussion of being manic has been helpful, but I hope it was at least been interesting. If not, please let me know.