Engineering the perfect hypomanic episode

I'm not dealing with an eating disorder, severe anxiety, major depression, or heavy drug use.  However, I know quite a few other grad students who are dealing with at least one of those issues.  Some of em' are dealing with multiple items on that list.  It's not that psych grad students are all damaged people who wound up in this field to face their own demons.  There is some of that to be sure, but most of us have/had our demons pretty well under control - until grad school drags us down anyway.  Grad school just has a special way of taking all of your worst tendencies and turning them against you.  Psychology isn't special in that respect.  It's grad school in general.  As many grad students from other fields that come through the psych clinic at my university, there's no doubt it's just a crappy situation in general.

My own personal nuttiness involves the lack of sleep.  Now, I'm not usually one to go without.  I probably get more than a lot of people on average (a fried thyroid gland makes that a necessity).  But when I need to get something done, it's time to go hypomanic.  As a matter of explanation, I'll just refer you here.  Hypomania is actually a really useful thing, when it's not snowballing out of control into fluctuations of full-blown mania and major depression.  Like a lot of people with attention deficit issues, hypomanic states are when I work best. 

Now, I've already mentioned that I have ADHD (inattentive/non-hyperactive subtype).  Thus, my chronically understimulated brain needs to get really worked up to get in a productive groove.  I'm not the kind of guy who can operate in a routine schedule and plink away steadily at projects.  Nope, I do things different.  I ignore a project completely and then devote 10-15 hours to it, generally straight through the night.  If necessary I'll do this day after day, working on 1 - 4 hours of sleep a night for a week or more - some nights doing nothing more than resting my eyes for 20 minutes or so.  That's both the curse and the beauty of ADHD.  It's hard to focus on anything day to day, but once you're in the zone, it's like you're so focused that you can't be distracted by little things like eating or sleeping.  Hypomanic states are my 'zone'. 

One of the more effective psychotherapeutic treatments for Bipolar Disorder is Interpersonal Social Rhythms Therapy (ISRT).  Its primary purpose is to regulate sleep wake cycles and maintain a stable circadian rhythm.  Unstable sleep patterns are one of the most reliable triggers for hypomanic (or full-blown manic) episodes in people with Bipolar Disorder.  So I just do ISRT in reverse and create the conditions for hypomania.  Since I don't have actual Bipolar Disorder, I never get to full blown mania (came close in high school a few times though). 

I kick off the party using massive amounts of caffeine.  Not only does it stave off sleep, but the stimulant encourages pressured, rapid thinking and emotional states.  Thoughts race, muscles get jittery, and I feel my creative juices start tearing around inside my head at a hundred miles-per-hour.  I'll keep hitting the caffeine for the first night, but after that it's not too necessary.  I'll just catch naps here and there and stay in the zone for as long as necessary.

Of course hypomania has its downside.  My already questionable impulsivity filters are further weakened and I tend to say things that are best not said.  I also lose my sense of emotional stability.  I'll cycle through periods of intense emotion, coming to tears looking at my wife kids as they sleep, and periods of complete emotional sterility where I feel a certain level of affinity with psychopaths the world over.  Plus there's always the crash at the end, both physical and mental.  I'm used to it, and I generally push through the depressive stuff okay, so long as I can put in a good 12-15 hours of sleep on a weekend. 

I also tend to drive myself until I get sick.  This past weekend, just by chance I was sick already.  I got a sore throat and was too exhausted to work at all on Saturday, and thus had a massive crunch on Sunday.  So out came the Mountain Dew, and I said bye-bye to normality.  I didn't sleep a wink last night.  I didn't eat for 24 hours either, unless you count Mountain Dew.  I came home today and crashed on the couch for three hours and now I'll probably be up most of the night.  I've got enough deadlines this week that I might have to keep this up right to the weekend.  My nose is running like a faucet and I'm not particularly looking forward to this week's stint in the zone.  I might need more caffeine, in which case I'll call in my big gun - NOS.  Oh well, duty calls.