The first draft of Invisible Driving (http://www.invisibledriving.com/) took a year. I thought the ms. did a good job of recreating the flavor and texture of mania. So I began the torturous process of finding a literary agent who knew how to pitch the book. I did finally find one, at a respected NYC agency. She came close to selling it but was ultimately unsuccessful. This prompted a reevaluation. Several bumper-to-bumper rewrites later, I added a second voice – a “recovered” narrator. It had become clear that the mania, however entertaining, needed an emotional underpinning, a sane context.
      You might imagine that writing the brief chapters in the recovered narrator’s voice would be far easier than the verbal pyrotechnics required to recreate the sensations of mania. No such luck, they were actually the hardest of all. Not only did I have to deconstruct the emotional architecture that made me susceptible to the illness, I had to lay bare my feelings about having it. This chapter, the second in the book, sums it up bluntly.
 
      Manic Depression almost destroyed me. It might still. There’s no cure. I live every single day of my life with the fear of becoming that man again. The man behind the wheel.
            I’m never totally safe. I can’t ever completely relax. I can’t take my sanity for granted the way other people do.
            I’ve gotten the upper hand. I had to, to survive. I’ve got a shrink. I take my Lithium. Every morning. Every evening. I’ve put together a support network of friends and family. The people I love can tell in a shot if I’m about to go off. They jump into action.
            I’m trying not to be bitter. The ounce of prevention makes my life livable, but it doesn’t cure anything. A couple of false steps and I’m back on shaky ground.
            I hate this disease. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I think about it every day, whether I want to or not. I couldn’t add up what it’s cost me. I couldn’t measure how it’s hurt me. It’s stolen any chance I had for a normal life. My revenge is in hurting it back. I want to put a whoopin’ on it, I want to kick its butt into the middle of next week.
            I thought I was a real clever guy. I thought that by writing a book about Manic Depression I could loosen its grip on me once and for all. Look it in the eye like a man and stare it down. I thought that Manic Depression was an alligator and I was going to kill it and slice it up for shoes. For a while it did work out that way. I began to relax. Got a little cocky. I dozed off.
            Then some stress at home and BAM, minor episodes began breaking out like a rash. They’re easy to treat, but that doesn’t make them fun.
            When I build up a little confidence, the illness cuts me off at the knees. When I’m glad, it returns with a reason to be sad and scared. It seems like I’m always starting from scratch. Again. Again. Again.
            This is the story of one of my three major Manic episodes. In many ways it was the worst one. I wrote it from the inside out because I wanted to blow the whistle on this pox. I wanted to give my readers an advantage my friends and family never had. Knowledge. It goes inside the Manic mind, inside the cracked logic. It reverberates with the sound of Manic speech. It sees the behavior through the eyes of the afflicted.
            I’ve suffered because of this illness, really suffered. My friends, my family, they’ve suffered too. I want to redeem that suffering and make it worth something.
            The telling takes you through the whole trip, with your tirelessly chatty narrator guiding the way. Beware of him. He’s as far from me as Mars is from Mercury. I can’t say I like him, but I do look on him with awe. Wonder. Even now, many years later, I can hardly believe it was me. But it was. I’m not proud of it. I’d pay the devil to be able to take it all back. But that luxury isn’t an option. What remains is telling the truth of it.
            When I was “high,” Manic high, one of the dangerous things about me was that I believed my own twaddle. That gave me a power over people. My energy, creativity, and complete self-confidence were seductive. I was a tidal wave, pulling people into my delusions.
            The episode was kick-started when my department at Honeywell was killed. Restructuring, downsizing, rightsizing, whatever you call it, it was corporate political gangland-style execution to me. A really wonderful department, full of great people. That was the best job I ever had, and I’ve had plenty. It had taken me a lot of sweat to get it, a lot of sweat, and a lot of heart.
            I’d had to battle back from my first true Manic episode, that one was touched off by a really horrible divorce. Divorce and finding out that I was Manic Depressive, either one would have been enough by itself. That was a season in Hell. I was fired from jobs, found new ones, got fired from them too, all thanks to the illness.
            At last I managed to pick myself up off the canvas and stop the stars from circling my head. I’d fought like hell to get a good custody agreement. I had a great relationship with my daughter Paula, she got every drop of love I had. I didn’t have a girlfriend in those days so it was just me and the P, we were like a couple of buddies. I was devoted to her, I cared passionately about being a good father. My life was coming together, I was feeling security for the first time in my post-divorce life. I was pretty happy, even content. I felt that I’d become a man at last, independent and competent. Losing the job put an end to that.