A couple of years ago my wife and I played a lot of World of Warcraft. We’d both just turned in our Masters Theses and were looking for some major recuperation. Major recuperation turned into major addiction for her, minor addiction for me. My fascination with WoW started with the maps, the geography of the game, and the auction house. I could spend an hour auctioning off gloves and swords and the like, watching prices go up and down with supply and demand in this totally unreal environment. But it was the geography that has stuck with me.

Now, many months out of the game, both of us have flashbacks to spaces within the game. For me, it was the original march to Ironforge from the new character spawning ground for dwarves. There was something magical about discovering that those blue hazy mountains in the distance were actually, up close, places to explore far, far away from my untreated bipolar symptoms.

My wife had a WoW flashback just the other week at PS1, an arts museum in Long Island City. (It was a flashback to the Tauren huts, if you’re up on your WoW). A new exhibit was being constructed and it triggered those paths laid down so deeply in her brain from months of playing the game.

I flash back during dull moments at work more frequently now that I’m on medication. Last year, when I was meds free, I had fewer flashbacks. So something in my meds is digging up these geographic pathways and displaying them to me at the odd downtime. Suddenly I’m walking down a computer-generated valley path – but it’s total immersion: I don’t see the edges of my Mac, I simply see that world.

I also have flashbacks to real-life scenes more often. So, more flashbacks in general. Scenes popping up like Spring lillies. They’re almost always pleasant, or at least neutral, and they’re entirely due to the meds – Abilify, Lamictal, Wellbutrin, whichever you are, you’re doing something very strange but a little bit wonderful too.