MENTAL HEALTH
The Mother of All Comedowns: Recovering From a Manic Episode
Coping with the fallout
A friend of mine recently went high. Things escalated and he ended up in hospital. I really felt for him. Not because he was incarcerated, though that was part of it. Not because it meant he’d have to get back on the medication wagon, though that was part of it too. Mostly, I felt for him because I knew the mountain he would have to climb when he came down from his high. He’d get spat back out into the world and be faced with the simultaneous challenges of processing what had happened to him and rebuilding his life, reputationally and relationally.
Manic episodes really do precipitate the mother of all comedowns.
Here’s a flavour of what you’re dealing with:
The slow dawning horror that you have not only lost your mind, but actively sought to broadcast your breakdown to as many people as possible by contacting everyone you know, without discrimination (university Professor? Get him on the phone at 7am! Ex-boyfriend? Call him up from the hospital! Person you haven’t seen in a decade? Request they visit you on the ward!). All the while you may well have been posting incessantly on social media — making absolutely sure everyone you’ve ever crossed paths with knows what you’re up to now!
The loss of your professional reputation — see contacting everyone you know, above. This also extends to — at best — making a public scene at your workplace, and erasing any boundaries you might have sought to erect at work. At worst, it means realising belatedly that you’ve handed in your notice or been ‘let go’ — and losing potentially years’ worth of the blood sweat and toil of building a stable career (especially if you’ve had to do this more than once).
Personal relationships thrown into jeopardy — try as they might, it is pretty impossible for your partner / family / friends to box off ‘manic you’ from ‘you’. Whatever you said or did — be it an insult or an infidelity — will have left its mark, and doubtless you’ll feel the need to apologise, make amends, and rebuild — when you’re still shell-shocked and barely able to recollect the details of what’s happened to you. At best, they’ll support you and you’ll feel guilty regardless — at worst, you might lose them forever, and have to live with the feeling that on some level ‘you did this’.
And to top it all off –
A generous bout of clinical depression — this isn’t true for everyone, but more often than not what goes up really must come down — and after firing on all cylinders for what could easily be several weeks, a crashing low may well be on the cards. For me, it was without fail — I could count on at least two further lost months without the ability to work or function properly as I physically and psychologically needed to hibernate, post-mania. (By the way, I’m not going anywhere near ‘diagnosis’ here. Just saying that if you’ve been manic, you might well then become depressed).
It’s called a manic high for a reason
If you go out for a wild night high on drugs, you spend the next couple of days with feeling like shit, recovering and recharging. That’s what we typically understand as a comedown — it’s just that after mania the comedown is way more extreme. There are clear similarities between the experiences, although in being that much more extreme, mania probably appears to the world as less ‘loving and free’ and more ‘unhinged and ill’.
In my experience at least, being manic does actually feel like the purest form of freedom — the freedom to do, say and behave however the fuck you want. Whether I was roaming the streets of London, outrageously dressed and being a total exhibitionist (and feeling like a celebrity all the while) — or locked onto a hospital ward for weeks on end, literally incarcerated — that feeling of freedom remained. Until the comedown.
So the million dollar question: once you’re in the manic comedown, how can you begin to recover?
A few reflections from my experience:
1. Take back some privacy
As soon as you can bear it, do an online clean-up, deleting any social media posts that you would prefer not to be ‘out there’ or freezing your accounts. If it’s too painful to look for yourself, ideally you could ask a trusted friend to do this for you — which is what I did.
2. Remind yourself that people aren’t that interested
Most people are pretty self-absorbed, and most people aren’t malicious. So either they’re not going to dwell too much on what may or may not be happening with you — or they’ll be genuinely concerned (just as you would be if it happened to them).
3. Define your own dignity
It’s up to you to decide how you feel about your episode, and where this experience sits in the story you spin for yourself about your own life. Personally, I have done a lot of thinking about the drivers and content of my manic episodes, and I believe in both the validity of much of what I thought about and did during those times, and the experience as a whole. It has taken a long time, but I now feel my life is richer for having had those experiences — and no one else’s perception can take that away from me.
4. Re-build step by step, with the right people around you
Patience is a virtue — and it’s important here. As is being kind to yourself. You’ve been through a majorly traumatic and confusing experience. Focus on identifying what is the next possible step you could take to move forward — that could help you climb just one rung of the ladder, starting from wherever you’re starting from. Stick with the people who make you feel the least bad about what’s happened — ideally with people who make you feel accepted and understood.
5. Accept it may take a long time…but try if possible to learn from it
Your feelings about the episode and its impact will change and evolve depending on what else happens in your life — including of course whether or when you have other episodes. For whatever my personal opinion is worth (!) I would encourage you if at all possible to view it as something to learn from, rather than something to get over. Reflecting on my episodes in this way have helped me to learn what I need in order to be grounded and balanced, and value that glimpse into the spectrum of human psychological experience.
For me, looking at it in this way makes it less painful — which, given I can’t change the course of history, is preferable to me than forever looking back and cringing.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not still a mountain to climb. Wishing you strength wherever you are on this journey.
