Do You Have Bi-Polar "Disorder" or Manic "Depression?" Follow Up

This is a follow up to the original essay I wrote, you should read it before reading this one.

There is one common thread that I have found of what I have read from people who have the "Condition" and talked to some about it. They can't remember what thoughts they had while experiencing a Manic episode or, at least, they refuse to talk about it. Since the psychiatric profession has been heavily prescribing Lithium to avoid the Manic state, they are doing more harm than good. I took it once and have refused to be dumbed down to a normal IQ ever since. By prescribing Lithium they are taking a brilliant person and dumbing them down to the ordinary IQ level. I, personally, consider someone who has an average IQ to be an imbecile, especially compared to someone in the Manic state. The only real difference between a person with an ordinary IQ and a genius is that the genius uses more of his/her brain to solve problems. The Challenge to the psychiatric profession is to prove me wrong!

I seem to have a unique way of dealing with my Manic states. I still have them because I refuse to be dumbed down by taking lithium. I do take a small amount of tranquilizer to help me sleep. It is the best way I've found to prevent Manic states from disrupting my life. Instead of taking the attitude that a person in the Manic state is only in a state of extremely high brain activity, psychiatrists force the person to take heavy doses of drugs that generally forces the person into the catatonic state. When they get out from under the drugs, they are generally out of the Manic state and either refuse to talk about what they were thinking or forced it from their conscious mind.

Way back in the late sixties, while in a Manic state, I came up with an idea for a method of storing and retrieving information. I was able to develop the idea after a few years and made quite a bit of money from it. I talked to several patent attorneys but they only offered the opinion that it could not be patented. If I had found a patent attorney who would help me patent the method, IBM wouldn't have been able to develop their own version of the method and give it away with their systems. There is one fact of life in a free enterprise system. You can't compete with a product that is being given away free.

I recently experienced the Manic state for the Umpteenth time and remember what I came up with. I came up with an idea for a computer program, which I will keep secret until I find out if I can find the information I need to develop it. I have run the idea by other computer programmers and they agree that it would be a phenomenally profitable computer program. Another idea I came up with was to solve a problem with the state lotteries. I passed the idea on to the local representative in the state legislature. She is probably so enamored of the money that the state gets, primarily from poor people, that she will even try to stop me from getting the idea to other state legislators. The idea in simple terms is to build a data bas in the state computer of the social security numbers of all the people who have purchased lottery tickets during a week's time. The data base would be built by the person being required to give his/her social security number when purchasing lottery tickets. When that person purchased $50.00 worth of tickets, the state computer could refuse to issue anymore until the next week. Of course, there would have to be a "Fire Wall" between the data base and any information on the identity of the person. Even the clerk selling the lottery tickets would not know who the purchaser is, just their social security number. Sure there would be a number of people who would try to use other people's social security numbers, but that is a federal crime already. There would be those who would break the law, but there is no law that is not being broken. We prosecute those that break laws when we can catch them.

If people are in the Manic state, why not give them an IQ test to see if they are capable of solving problems that the normal person can't solve. IQ is simply a measure of your ability so solve problems, instead of locking them up and drugging them into the catatonic state. To treat a person who has been in the Manic state as having been having DELUSIONS is a great injustice to them. Instead of calling their ideas delusions, why not explore them? Instead of calling a person in the Manic state DELUSIONAL, a simple "HOW?" might be all it takes to see that the person has an idea that you don't understand.

I have no idea of the background of the person, but she wrote a comment to the original essay accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about. She has been "DELUDED" by the psychiatric profession into believing that the Manic state is caused by a shortage of Lithium in the brain. Lithium is successful in preventing the Manic state, but the Manic state is not brought on by a lack of Lithium in the brain. That is like saying that a headache is caused by a lack of aspirin. No one knows what causes headaches and no one knows what causes the Manic state. The best treatment is to let the person explain to you what they are thinking. After having experienced the Manic state I can tell you that it is caused by a need to solve a problem and that it nothing more than allowing the brain to run through it's memory looking for a solution to the problem. A person in the Manic state can solve problems that appear to be insolvable to other people. Since I am a computer programmer, I will say this, "The human brain is the most magnificent computer ever devised." When it starts to work on a problem, try to help the person solve the problem instead of drugging them into the catatonic state and dumbing them down for life with Lithium.