Detour from Normal (41 page)

It's very confusing to suddenly become emergency manic. I spent days wondering how and why it happened. My reduced cognitive abilities weren't of much help, and besides, the answers to those questions weren't really pertinent to my emergency situation. I concluded that only a higher power could have done such a thing. It was so completely outrageous; there could be no other explanation. Not surprisingly, a common delusion among people who are manic is a sense of enlightenment of one kind or another. Many sufferers believe they are Jesus, are experiencing what Jesus did, or that God is calling them for some grand purpose. There seems no rational explanation for such an overwhelmingly positive change. It is indescribable how your perception of life can be impacted so much in an instant. Just as quickly, it becomes your new reality—everything previous seems like an illusion.

I reached the height of my mania at Phoenix Mercy, a level of mania I'll simply call "peak mania." I cannot conceive of anything beyond that since it took so incredibly much for me to reach that level. For me, the main purpose of that state seemed to be conserving brainpower by allowing the brain to function only at the most primitive level. Conservation was accomplished by disconnecting everything possible and compensating for the losses by boosting specific senses even more than in emergency mania.

I'm convinced that peak mania is the last stop before your brain completely shuts down. If you think of your brain as a car battery, it would be like the final moment when the battery can barely turn the starter and you wait in dreaded anticipation for the clicking sound of the starter solenoid signaling the battery's final demise. My sleep deprivation by that time had depleted all of my brain's reserves. There was literally nothing left. To give you an idea of what it's like being in peak mania, imagine if you were dropped in the wilderness and given a choice of three things you could use to survive. You'd certainly want the most useful items you could get. That's what I was given—the most necessary tools to survive and nothing more.

You'd think that rather than take away so much, my brain would have simply put me into a coma and taken some time to recover, keeping my function intact. Surprisingly, it seemed more important for me to stay awake. My brain sacrificed everything it could to give me even a few minutes awake. My body was clearly unable to fix its problems itself. I can only surmise that allowing me to be awake and functioning at any level provided opportunities for me to fix myself, whereas being in a coma provided no possible salvation.

In peak mania I quickly learned to manipulate my environment to get what I needed by depending almost entirely on heightened senses and
intuition. In the psychiatric ward of Phoenix Mercy, I was able to break through to doctors and staff, gain their trust, and convince them that there was nothing wrong with me. I was released on my own recognizance in a matter of hours, despite the fact that I was at the highest level of mania imaginable. Even though I was the least functional I could be, by design I was the most capable for my environment of the moment. In only a few hours, I discovered my heightened senses, studied and experimented with them, and put them to good use to get myself released.

When I was in the peak mania state, I felt just as I did in emergency mania, but the world took on a surreal quality because I was operating on so little. There was a feeling of tunnel vision, which might have been attributable to inhibited input from peripheral vision nerves. There was also a sense that everything was very quiet, perhaps because certain aspects of my hearing, which didn't provide much useful information, were inhibited. Minimizing unnecessary sensory input would certainly present another opportunity for conserving brain function.

In all my levels of mania, I noticed that each seemed to set me up perfectly for a basic level of survival in the particular situation I was in at the time the mania changed. From there I could not tell if it adapted to new situations. I suspect there were continuous changes, but if there were, they were so subtle that I quickly adjusted. I only noticed the step function changes.

Sleep Paralysis

At Phoenix Mercy I was in very dire straits. Due to extreme sleep deprivation, not only was I at the peak of my mania, I was having repeated
seizure-like symptoms. What I referred to as a seizure was not exactly a seizure per se but a spontaneous shutdown of major muscle groups. I chose to call it a seizure because it was the only thing people could relate to. The mechanism for it appears identical to that of sleep paralysis, which affects the same muscle groups during REM sleep. Although people believe that sleep paralysis occurs so you don't flail about while in REM sleep, I believe it serves another important purpose: it silences billions of nerves, providing an opportunity for the brain to recharge all the chemicals needed for another full day of electrochemical communication. In my case it was impossible to get any REM sleep. Once I reached a critical threshold, my mind forced me into paralysis regardless of what I was doing, perhaps so that it could recharge. I typically didn't remain paralyzed for very long, but without treatment, the paralysis would reoccur every fifteen or twenty minutes.

During paralysis, my sight and hearing remained intact, but I could not speak. When my body was released from the paralysis, I would feel pins and needles as you would if your foot fell asleep, most noticeably in my arms, hands, legs, and feet. The associated pain could range from mild to intolerable—from pins and needles to a thousand bee stings.

After many repeated seizures at Phoenix Mercy, it seemed the paralysis began to claim even internal muscle groups, causing me to have extreme abdominal pain and to wretch and vomit as well. To make matters worse, my arms and legs sometimes jerked as if nerves were misfiring (as sometimes happens when you are falling asleep). I mention all this because it seems obvious that I was suffering from a neurological breakdown, yet all the hospital did was monitor my heart rate, respiration, and temperature. Had anyone thought to connect me to an EEG or similar equipment to monitor my brain waves, I think they would have
been stunned by what they saw. I don't know what their rationale was for giving me Ativan, but I'm thankful they did, or I might have ended up in much worse condition. Although doctors and psychiatrists generally prescribe Ativan for anxiety, for me it both stopped seizures in progress and prevented future ones by allowing me to sleep. It proved invaluable in my treatment, and I don't think anyone other than me recognized that.

Surprisingly, at Pinecrest I was able to prevent a seizure. I did it by "changing up," as I called it. By using extensive muscle groups and stimuli in a random and ever-changing fashion, I was able to hold the seizure at bay for literally hours until I was able to prevent it with Ativan. Had I not done that, I would have had another seizure within minutes of entering Pinecrest. During that struggle, there was a constant sense of "fighting the monster." I could literally feel how close I was to collapse at all times. I felt feverish, agitated, and desperate, well aware of what awaited me. In later stages of mania, the knowledge of changing up was disconnected either by coincidence or design. I have a feeling that my body absolutely needed to shut down and wasn't about to let me interfere again, so when I was thrown into emergency mania, my memory of changing up was probably the first thing to go.

Hypnagogic dreams

In Gracewood there was a young woman whom I occasionally talked to. She was attractive and seemed normal. I couldn't help but be curious as to why she was there. I soon received my answer as she related a story that left me incredulous. She described being shot and the detailed efforts to save her life. First her heart was removed and replaced by her
boyfriend's heart, which was then replaced by her son's heart. During the recounting of her story, she showed me the bullet entry and exit wounds on her thigh. I couldn't help but wonder if there was some real basis to her story.

It wasn't until many months later, when I was researching my own unbelievable visions of the flawless night that I learned of hypnagogic dreams. A hypnagogic dream is one where you can be awake and be dreaming at the same time. We've all had dreams that were so vivid we were thankful to awaken from them. Imagine if the dream continued, mixed with reality. Pinching yourself would result in the expected discomfort, and your senses would confirm your experience—even taste and smell. With such undeniable confirmation, it is impossible to distinguish dream from reality. Having experienced this firsthand, I can fully attest to the remarkable realism. Hypnagogic dreams are not uncommon in situations of trauma or substance abuse. Perhaps this explains some of the bizarre stories of the mentally ill and their certainty that they are true.

Micro-Emotions

When I was at the peak of mania, I sensed things about others like never before. I have since learned of micro-emotions: involuntary movements of facial muscles, or "tells," which exist for less than a second. There are seven different micro-emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, contempt, and fear. Law enforcement officers are trained to recognize micro-emotions when dealing with criminals and routinely use that training to uncover the truth during interrogations. When I was
manic, my mind processed information much more rapidly, and with my elevated senses, these normally fleeting tells must have been very obvious to me. Though I had no idea what micro-emotions were at the time, I was able to recognize what I sensed as either good or bad and thereby manipulate people to accomplish my objectives.

Selective Hearing

You may recall a phenomenon that I called the "shield." I've learned that the correct term is "selective auditory attention" or, more commonly, "selective hearing." When we think of selective hearing, an image of a husband who doesn't pay attention to his wife comes to mind. In reality it is much more common and dynamic than that, and we all use it frequently. In fact, it is such a common behavior that we work around it on a constant basis without even realizing it. When we start a question with someone's name or an affectionate term such as "honey" or "dear," it is often to reach past selective hearing to gain their attention, much like I did at Phoenix Mercy when I spoke kindly to people in order to secure my release. The magic of selective hearing is that it allows us on one hand to hold a conversation with a single person in a noisy crowd, and on the other to block something entirely that we don't wish to hear, as when Rude Guy was pestering the nurse. It is even possible to filter an entire conversation, letting through only critical bits of information. This is done all the time by people who must conduct interviews and fill out forms (social workers for example). It's important to point out that the sound is entering our ears just fine, but the mind is systematically filtering out unwanted information, often with us not even being aware of it.

Collapse of the Ego

Many readers might be inclined to discount what happened to me during my encounter with the "big machine". This is actually a well-known phenomenon, referred to as a "collapse of the ego." Several other authors have experienced this and written about it, including Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, and Sean Blackwell.

After years of near suicidal depression, Eckhart Tolle experienced a collapse of ego that permanently ended his depression. He then abandoned his secure life and lived simply and anonymously on the streets of London for several years. He subsequently published several top selling books that radically improved readers' lives. He is now a highly regarded spiritual leader.

After ten years of self-loathing, rage, and depression, Byron Katie found herself at the lowest point of her life, abandoned at a halfway house by a family who had lost all hope for her. She awoke one morning on the floor of the attic where she had been confined and discovered that her world had miraculously changed. That event spawned a new purpose in her life, which she dubbed "The Work." She turned her focus to writing and speaking, and became a best-selling author and highly sought speaker.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, experienced a similar state of consciousness after a devastating stroke. Although her recovery and her discoveries about the mind are the main focus of her book,
My Stroke of Insight,
she spends several chapters describing her experiences with this state and its potential benefits for mankind. Her book has sold millions of copies and is at this moment being made into a movie produced by Sony Pictures and directed by Ron Howard.

Sean Blackwell's book
Am I Bipolar or Waking Up?
details his personal collapse of ego due to psychological trauma and the inspiring changes it brought to his life. He believes that the collapse of ego will lead to a permanent cure for people suffering from various mental illnesses and is passionately spreading this message. He is very active on YouTube with dozens of videos and has a huge and growing following.

I described my personal collapse of ego in vivid detail in chapter eight: Inside the Big Machine, but haven't spent much time discussing how I felt or what it was like afterward. Moments after my collapse, my mind was crystal clear, devoid of chatter and keenly alert. My body was completely relaxed and I felt a serene peace like never before. Without initially realizing it, I'd been freed from a lifetime of baggage: all my guilt, anger, shame and doubt were gone; I'd been given a clean slate. My ties with the past and future were temporarily severed, and I was left with only the certainty of the present moment. If I were to describe how I felt in one word, that word would be reborn.

Lacking my previous inhibitions, I was happy to talk to anyone about my experience. What I explained to them initially was that I'd lost my emotions. "What about love? What about joy?" they asked. I still had those emotions, and that puzzled me. Then I realized that I hadn't lost all of my emotions, just the negative ones. Without them I saw life in a totally new and euphoric light. Back then my family and friends wanted nothing more than to have their old Ken back; I can't imagine how mentally ill I must have seemed to them.