I’ve read in many, many places that antidepressants can pitch a person with bipolar into mania. I was willing to risk it. I’d been coming down in mood, sleeping terribly, and waking up hungry at 2am. I asked my doc about getting on an anti-depressant to counter this. My up-moods are controllable, so I wasn’t afraid of what might happen should I get kicked into hypomania.

He was game. He’s a tinkerer, just like me. We like to adjust the medication. I get a burst of hope, and I’m not sure what he gets out of it. It just works out this way.

Hypomania did come: I found myself waking at 3am with an urge to work on something, shop, do something. I thought I was able to go without sleep, that I had too many interests to waste time sleeping. At work I was chatty yet nervous all the time, with sweaty palms. Coffee was consumed at a massive scale.

But the depression went away further. I could laugh more freely and getting out of the apartment (when I wasn’t going to work) became easier.

I reduced the dose. This is Celexa, and I had gone up to 60 milligrams 20 milligrams per jump, so I took it back down to 40. The hypomania eased, though there’s still a little left, and my sleep has been remarkably better.

Tinkering sometimes works, although I think I’m too into it. That hope of finding the right drug this time presses my buttons. Continually looking for that productive, happy, chatty hypomania without the nerves and urges, which I get so rarely – that Teddy Roosevelt vim and vigor.