One thing is that, as is not uncommon for a manic-depressive, I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. This means my moods are affected by the changing of the seasons. The sun of the summer elevates my mood, while the long dark hours of winter make me feel depressed. Many people have SAD without being manic-depressive, and only a percentage of manic depressive people have SAD. I guess I just got lucky to have both.

So technically speaking at this time the lack of light for a big chunk of the day should be making me feel sad. The problem at this time is that I’ve been hypo-manic since August. In the past SAD would bring my mood down from hypo-mania, but this bout of hypo-mania seems to be impervious to the light.

Another factor in this bout of hypo-mania is the impact of the weather. Weather, like the wintry storm weather we just had, provides a lot of energy that is impacting my mood almost directly. High winds like we had, tosses a lot of energy out into the environment. When I went outside that energy did a number on my hypo-mania number, to the tune of 8 on a 0 to 10 hypo-mania number. So besides lingering hypo-mania from this summer, I was also getting a double whammy from the weather (not only high winds but ice/snow on the ground). The ice/snow is a trigger for me because my hypo-manic brain wants to go out and shovel all the ice/snow off of everything. Not a healthy attitude to have given how slick things were outside.

Sorry but I’m going to have to cut this post off short because being 8 out of 10 on the mania scale actually makes me manic, not hypo-manic. And I know I’m manic because I feel like I’m stoned as hell. I have that “mania is a better high than cocaine” feeling I know oh so well.

The only thing I can say is I hope the weather we had goes away and quits triggering my mania. Maybe then I could get back to the middle (5 on both my mania and depression numbers).