Chemical Khichdi:Read an excerpt from a new book on living with bipolar disorder

What does mania feel like? Every bipolar person’s experience of mania will be different, given individual personalities, but perhaps the process of what governs it may not be so varied. ‘Patients with bipolar I and II disorder have an extremely high rate of co-occurring substance use disorders’, with bipolar I patients having a ‘40% lifetime prevalence of alcohol and other drug use disorders’ says a paper titled ‘The Prevalence and Significance of Substance Use Disorders in Bipolar Type I and II Disorder’. As one of my doctors told me, ‘When you’re manic, you look for excitement in places where you know it can be found.’ Imagination makes you feel alive, like nothing else. I love these lines from Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father’s Memoir of Love and Madness, by journalist Michael Greenberg, about his daughter, Sally Greenberg, the fifteen-year-old bipolar protagonist of the book.