how this started

That is a very very long subject, which is out of scope in its most exhaustive examination, but let me back up just a few days or weeks.

This = manic episodes, and even hyper-mania.

Hypermania = anxious, stressed, but ironically more aware in many ways, enhanced perception, because brain is running "a million miles a minute". Does this make sense to anyone but a bipolar? Probably not, but think of the last time you had 10 to 100 cups of coffee (a possibly fatal dose I think) in an hour or two, or the last speed trip you are on (Never for me for either, except one MDMA and that didn't feel all that speedy. Note that I was unaware of the controlled status of MDMA at the time, in 2000, because some fellow raver sold it as if it were a healthy supplement. Hey, it was my first, and last, rave (in a club that soon thereafter shut down in a drug raid...))

Anyways...

Stress of a new job with no written specs was a factor. Overexcitement at my substantial pay rate (ahem....) leading to a bit of mania on Monday night after 4 beers seems to have precepitated this event. The stress of 5 caffienated drinks a day on Monday and Tuesday leading to virtually no sleep those nights (2-3 hours a night). My body crashed tuesday night and I could barely take the bus home without falling asleep on it. The wednesday bus was even harder. Then I crashed in a hot bed with a comfortor on for a nap, forgetting to drink water first. I awoke more tired and groggy, and started to fear something was wrong. It took a while to self-diagnose heat-exhaustion, and another two hours to get passed my embarrassment enough to call 9-1-1.

After that, fire department volunteers arrived in seconds to question me. Then an ambulance, and I was off to a hospital. I chose Northwest, since I used to live up there and prefferred it to downtown. (Makes less sense to me now considering work is downtown and I could have almost walked from Harborview... plus a cheaper ambulance ride if closer... but that was the thinking at the time.)

I did not realize I was manic or hyper-manic until significantly later, after some self-observation and reading. It seems to have been an overcompensation; once my brain had a chance to sleep some, it decided to drop the depression and enter the reverse state. Everyone I complained to about this state seemed to think it perfectly normal (despite how different I felt having observed such rapid coincidences, contradictions, and irony ... all of which is difficult to explain without several examples, but my manner of speaking and writing has changed, to the extent that I contract myself a lot, writing either a self-contradictory sentence, or one which contradicts the previous one, yet is ironically "True". Again, it would take some examples, or a book, but I have to get going to work...