To understand what David and Johnathan were enduring, one must understand the manic dilemma as a matter of voltage, as Jamison asserts, “The sheer force of life, the voltage, can be staggering in mania.” By this, she means that the level of electricity in the brain increases during manic episodes.
Since all our neurons compete around the clock to be expressed in our thought and behavior, there had to evolve a mechanism with which to restrain behavior—to ignore the irrelevant neurons, so as not to make the mistake of installing the fridge and oven before breaking ground or walling the frame. So as not to stay up all night talking to oneself, crying on the floor, not eating at all, and confusing peers and bosses with our speech. Because surely, then, the home would fail to maintain a livable structure, and we would fail as human beings at surviving.
The brain mechanism tasked with restraining almost all our potential behavior is called the basal ganglia, “A filter that keeps inappropriate movements from being expressed.” In contrast, behaviors that are actually expressed, have been referred to as “liberated” behaviors. Behavior, is the central focus of this book, from the standpoint of our bullied divergents and also bullies. It is also “the central question of neuroscience at the present time.” (Italics added)
Behavior is a dopamine-based process in which the chemical dopamine is released upon one’s prediction that a specific behavior, or set of behaviors, will reap the immediate rewards—sensory rewards—that were intended upon asserting one’s behavior into the environment. I wish for warm water, so I turn the nob to the left. I want my date to think I’m funny. I tell a joke. I feel like a bit of sugar. I eat a donut. I like salt…Doritos! Think of it as continually soliciting your next sensation.
As humans, we persist as ongoing, perennial sensation seekers and predictors. If you expect to read the next word in this sentence, congratulations, you’re a success! But if the dog bumps into your arm and you drop the book onto the ground, wrinkling the pages, chemicals will flush the brain, initiating discomfort, letting you know all about your misstep, and you will scramble to fix it. Or, if you come across a word that you feel like you should know, but struggle with the definition of, you will endure a sense of discomfort, the manifestation of chemicals in your nervous system urging you to fix it—to decipher the meaning of the word that is troubling you. To resolve the inaccuracy of your prediction. Googling the word of interest, you resolve the bump in your road and persist in the enjoyment of a more predictable sensorial trajectory throughout your day.
Striatal dopamine (don’t get caught up on the word striatal), Friston asserts, “can be thought of as modulating the balance between inferring what to do and what not to do.” Whatever you are doing right now, is the best that your organism (you) can do in the way of survival, and dopamine spikes precede all of it. Moms, dads, and divergents, you are wise to pursue this piece of literature. Give yourselves a pat on the back and proceed. But don’t give up should you discover discomfort amidst learning new, challenging ideas. In learning this new information, you’ll be able to predict and understand the humans around you better, and your quality of life will improve. So, how does all this impact David and Johnathan? The basal ganglia is poppin’ with folks like David and Johnathan, like kernels in an overheated popcorn machine.
The sheer magnitude and impressiveness of David’s behavior prior to his decline appeared superhuman. He successfully doubled the size of his business in the trying wake of the lockdown, while also taking on new, extravagant, and time-consuming hobbies, mastering them to unusual levels. But the most impressive implications of his enhanced abilities were reflected in his workout statistics. He had been heavily into the DC fitness scene at the time, particularly exercising at local boutique fitness studios throughout the city. He kept a WHOOP strap on his wrist 24/7 to record his workouts, sleep, calories, and, most importantly for fitness enthusiasts, a “strain” level, which provided a more comprehensive measure of his output throughout the day. At age 43, he consistently ranked in the top ten among WHOOP athletes in Virginia, among tens of thousands of daily competitors of all ages. One day, he decided to see if he could win a Virginia competition. At 43, he accomplished just that, completing the day with over 7,000 calories burned and topping all strain levels.
While the WHOOP tracks one’s daily strain levels, it also measures the calories burned and strain exerted during shorter workouts. For 45-minute classes, whether boxing, spin or athletic training, his record high was always a 14.4 strain. He could never break 14.4, no matter how hard he tried. The scores begin at 0. Pretty much anyone can get to 12. That happens quickly. Around 12, every tenth of a point becomes harder to achieve, necessitating greater output or exertion. But in the case of David, it appears the efficiency of his movement gave way to extraordinary feats. A typical workout for David would resonate around 14. After 14, 14.1 was like climbing a miniature mountain. 14.2 was like, Oh my god! Not gonna happen today. So you understand that 14.4 was unlikely, ever, and when he achieved it, he posted his numbers on IG because his ego required all of DC fitness to acknowledge his greatness. Grandiosity is one of the main symptoms of the manic, after all.
One morning, manic and not having eaten or slept properly in months, he walked into a spin studio in Clarendon, Virginia, afraid to mount the bike. His lips were chapped from dehydration. He thought to himself in the dark, spandexed room, with the warm-up music blasting amidst the smiling ponytailed spin junkies, “I should not get on this bike. I’m afraid to get on this bike. I’m going to fall off this bike.” He didn’t fall off the bike. He got off the bike the same way he always did, forty-five minutes later. As usual, the first thing he did was check his WHOOP app on the iPhone, this time to discover a 14.7. An otherwise impossible achievement, the malnourished manic depressive was not only crushing business, but he was crushing fitness.
David’s getting a 14.7 that day would be like Michael Jordan suddenly getting inches on his vertical, at age 43, malnourished and underslept. It was inexplicable. I know, because the intrigue over all of this prompted me to enroll in an online neuroscience class through Berkeley. When inquiring about what may have been occurring to enable his performances, the professor of neuroscience couldn’t provide even the slightest insight. Soon thereafter, he achieved a 14.9 at a local boxing studio, utterly inexplicable. So now you understand what bipolar disorder can manage due to the “sheer voltage” that fuels it. Jamison addresses this as “a special access to a power beyond what is ordinarily known to an individual or his society,” noting in particular, “brisker physical and mental activity levels” and “increased productivity.”
The opening quote from the Neuroscience text doesn’t solely imply that the goal of neuroscience is the amelioration of disorders. It addresses its role in understanding our capabilities. Notable here in honor of the concept of voltage, because these achievements…these behaviors…were a matter of that, was one of David’s final visits to his chiropractor. As a normal course of his visits, David’s chiropractor would balance his “chi,” or, energy…voltage…by way of attaching cords to his head, torso, and feet.
During this visit, she paused and appeared perplexed. She told him that the computer was unable to measure his energy that day. It was requesting an additional cord to perform this otherwise routine task. It was the first time she’d encountered the circumstance. The voltage was, simply, outside of the range of what a human nervous system was supposed to produce. So, you understand that Jamison is spot on. Mania, and all its wonders and degradations, are a matter of voltage. Way too much voltage. Certainly, too much for the basal ganglia—the behavior filter—to do its job.
In the end, David lost all his friends. His family cut him off. His business fell through. He suffered a bike accident at 40 miles per hour that sent him skidding across Route 50 while exiting the city. He morphed into a blabbering hermit-skeleton. It was simply too much voltage for him to handle responsibly. These contrasting achievements at once superhuman and then again, almost subhuman, prompt an intrigue over which Jamison refers to as “the 20th century view on psychopathology and genius.” Precisely what the Neuroscience text is getting at—the pitfalls and pain vs potential and gain.
But for our little guy Johnathan, tasked with managing this voltage as a ten-year-old, it becomes less intriguing and of far greater concern. For at the center of one’s ability to survive this disorder is one’s ability to “tolerate extremes of emotions.” Considering that while the average onset age for bipolar disorder is 18, our Johnathan was overtly displaying manic symptoms before the age of 10. We must imagine and empathize with our much younger Johnathan, born into this extraordinarily creative, super sensitive, immature body. He is prone to inexplicable emotional and social disturbances and situated in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Washington DC. The poor kid had his hands, or perhaps we should say, brain, way too full.
Johnathan in a dojo was uncontrollable. He kept his hand raised in the air perennially. He’d walk from the back to the front, past his peers who’d remain in still front positions, with his arm stretched all the way up as if a magnetic pull attracted his fingertips to the ceiling. His shoulder up past his ear, his whole body engaged in the “liberation” of movement as if an urgency to behave had consumed him in a room where we specialize in temperament. You see, he had to express himself. His behavior, needed to be liberated. Dopamine, kept this liberation at a pace that the rational part of his brain could not keep up with, rendering most of the ten-year-old’s behavior at the discretion of a subconscious enduring intense electrical storms passing ideas and sensations around like a hyperactive pinball machine. He kept a super annoying, high-pitched voice that would utter and then try not to utter, but always utter amidst the fluttering fingertips raised up to the sky. His face stretched out as if to match, and he never had anything relevant to say. All of this from a round, pale face with pink, puffy cheeks as if the Pillsbury Doughboy Junior on speed had signed up for karate at my dojo, a challenge that 99.99% of other senseis would have rejected. Yet I adored him for it.
Meanwhile, his peers vied towards temperance and anticipated the lesson from their sensei and all its karate wonders—bagwork, board breaking, jokes, life lessons, and sparring. Many practiced at home and came prepared for their opportunity to impress with their knowledge of the Five Shaolin Principles (Sincerity, Self-Control, Etiquette, Effort, and Character), while likely disdaining, or at the very least, perplexing uncomfortably and impatiently in response to the manic youth’s inappropriate behavior, which interrupted class like a fitful baby during his mother’s cocktail party.
He was “managing” his environment as best he could, however. While children were rewarded for their temperament in that room, for him, temperament translated into utter failure. Remember the role of dopamine in the liberation of movement and solicitation of sensation, and this best interest of survival thing. He must have intuited that failing at trying to keep still was more detrimental to his well-being than acting a fool, and less rewarding sensorially. I can’t say that I disagree, as we’ll explore through my own childhood experiences in Chapter 4.
In his private lesson, I dealt with a different Johnathan. This one was relieved of the pressure of having to compete by way of temperament amongst his peers. This Johnathan, I shared fun with in exchange for small amounts of his focus. For example, I might allow him to demonstrate some of the popular dances he learned on YouTube before transitioning him back to the mirror to review the last few steps of a maneuver. An unforgettable moment was when he finished demonstrating the floss and suddenly transitioned into the stanky leg like a run-on sentence, “Wanna see the stanky leg!” Standing tall, erect and proud, the ten-or eleven-year-old Pillsbury Junior required no cue to place his hands on his hips, extend his foot as if in a karate “cat stance,” and begin waving his knee in circles as if to convey a dirtier version of grinding. Too young for this sort of thing? Yes, but it goes with the territory.
Bipolar children tend to take in more environmental information than do their peers. They tend to understand more advanced facets of life, exist ahead of their time, and ultimately get punished for it. A lack of peer emotional reciprocation, combined with a tendency to associate with older crowds who understand and have access to more advanced life materials, weaves a punishing web. These ingredients often include more advanced ideas, music, as well as drugs and alcohol, which we will explore further in Chapter 6. Johnathan wouldn’t escape an available moment to educate on his favorite dance moves and musical artists (Post Malone was and still is, I believe, one of his favorites), as well as his favorite songs of which he’d launch into a performance for you at your non-request. A full-fledged show, characterized by off-beat fidget-dancing, off-pitch screech-squealing, and yes, a shimmering hand lofted up to the sky. Indeed, like so many bipolar children, Johnathan, to my best inclination, is a musical genius/expressive artist, jet pack to boot, flying over his peers’ heads.
