Excerpted from Invisible Driving by Alistair McHarg - http://www.invisibledriving.com - the first memoir of manic depression to put readers inside the experience of a manic episode.
            My father used to speak of something called a “Celtic rage.” It was a sort of fit, a blast of furious energy responsible for winning many a battle in the Scottish Highlands. I’ve always felt connected to those mountains, those ancient times. Those wild, fierce souls. The sound of bagpipes gives me the chills. Each time I visit the Highlands I wonder why I don’t live there, I feel such a sense of belonging. I look like I’m from Scotland. I have that same lonely independence. That dour, I’ll suffer anything mentality. And I certainly have that same Celtic rage coursing through my veins.
            My father used to lecture almost constantly, and his stage presence was remarkable. Time after time he would rail against    the degradation of the environment. Then he would identify the culprits. Big business. Short-sighted, greedy developers. He was especially fond of recommending ritual disembowelment for all members of the Army Corps of Engineers. No invective was too cruel, no statement too outrageous.
            As he built up to a full head of steam, his Scottish brogue unfurled and his mustache bristling, he began to resemble a possessed fundamentalist preacher. He spoke of this hideous destruction with breathtaking, self-righteous, moral outrage. There was no mistaking his certitude. He knew he was right. He was furious. He knew who the guilty parties were and he knew why they did it. It worked. People loved it. It was great show business. But it was scary. It had the look of madness.
            What, in fact, was he really so angry about? What, in fact, was I so angry about? When I was Manic I smoldered with a sense of righteous indignation, furiously defending the undefended. Was I really just defending me, without knowing it? As with everything else, having my anger on the surface like that was a unique creation of the illness. Normally I could go for a decade without losing my temper, I was wrapped that tight. The child of European parents, I was so well-mannered that it was almost a problem. Friends told me to loosen up, relax, do something spontaneous. Expressing anger, even having angry thoughts, these activities simply weren’t in my emotional portfolio. On those rare instances when I did express anger, it was expressed self-destructively, so that I wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
            Consciously, of course, the Manic me thought I was on top of the world. But in the real emotional household, far from the out-of- control brain, I was so, so hurt. Most of all I was hurt because I’d played by the rules and been a good person and it hadn’t made a damn bit of difference. I’d struggled so hard on my own, gradually reconstructing my life after the divorce and the first Manic episode. I’d been a good father, really loving and responsible when it wasn’t easy, and it hadn’t made a damn bit of difference. One wave of the layoff wand and it all went away, including my sanity.
            Of course if you dug a little deeper there was plenty I was hurt and angry about. I was really torn up about what had happened to my marriage. I was brutally hurt, and angry with the kind of anger that makes you shake your fists and scream at the Gods, by my mother’s horrible death. My father’s preoccupation with himself was another source of anger. It really bit me. It bit me because it made me feel small and unimportant.
            That seems like enough, but it goes even deeper than that. Some anger, some pain, comes right from the center of my soul. Some of this I was born with. I’m rarely aware of it, I almost never express it. I am, perhaps, afraid of it in the same way that I’m afraid of assuming the power which I have and which I shamefully squander in my stupid excuse for a job. It’s far too deep to have been entirely learned. Call it Celtic Rage. Call it a holy fire of fierce intolerance, contempt for evil, disdain for stupidity. Call it what you want, but beware of provoking it.
            That anger, which had been living in a wet, dark dungeon most of my life, had a field day when I was Manic. Though I felt like I was riding high, real viciousness was never far away. Even my jokes, though I thought they were funny, had a razor’s edge to them. I was more anxious to make people squirm than make them feel good. It was payback time, and I had a whole lot of venting to do. The Mania transformed me into a bizarre reincarnation of my father. I had the furious fire.