Hannah Murray

And I was like, yeah, no, I'm meditating and everything's amazing.

And it's harder to

know when someone's in a danger zone if it looks like joy and it looks like energy and it looks like productivity as well.

I remember talking to a psychiatrist once and saying and referring to mania as the good side of bipolar and he was like they're not there's no good like it's not they're equally dangerous and in fact mania is probably more dangerous and

And it took me a long time to kind of acknowledge that that was true, that the mania wasn't this kind of superpower.

And if only I could get rid of the depression, then everything would be amazing.

That they're equally destructive and damaging.

That's really hard to describe and really hard to understand, maybe unless you've experienced it.

Like there's a sadness for me about not always being able to trust in one's own happiness.

which I think I'm getting better now also at distinguishing the difference between happiness and mania.

But for a long time, I think I had only really experienced happiness when I was manic.

So I have to now kind of be like, are you happy because something good has happened?

Or are you just randomly ecstatically happy?

trite question but do you or did you worry that those moments of mania or rapture were wrapped up in your creativity I did yeah I did and I think I mean I so I I want to be very clear that I take medication now and I'm very and I plan to take it for the

don't feel that way and they're very keen to come off medication.

And I do think there can be a little bit of an over glamorization of the relationship between mania and creativity.

And I'd like it to be clear that I wrote most of this book while on medication.

What I've actually found is that the more stable I am, the better creative work I can do.

But it's very appealing to do it all in a rush and stay up all night and write thousands of words.

But you can't really turn that into anything real, I don't think.