Fraught with Madness: A Playwriting SIP About Ideas, Drugs and Lunacy

Abstract

Bipolar disorder or manic-depressive illness is a mood disorder that affects about I% of the U.S. population. The illness gets its name for how it cycles between episodes of mania and depression. Originally a Bipolar II, (more prone to depressions,) I "evolved," if you will, into a Bipolar I (prone to both manias and depressions) upon entering college. It seems once you mix the disorder with higher learning, the results are explosive. I had my first genuine manic episode in the spring of my freshman year just outside Balch. I got caught running in the brick circle. I stayed in the circle for a long time. Ideas were what held me there. Flighty, frenzied and irrational ideas, yes, but ideas nonetheless. I developed a terrible addiction to ideas. I began experimenting with different ideas and many of them were very dangerous ideas. Because of this, I have ideas about my own glorious ascension and grim demise on a regular basis. It's a reality I've learned to cope with, though not without the help of counseling, friends and lots of alcohol. So naturally, when the time came to put together something I should consider my capstone experience at Kalamazoo College, ideas and mania would play a large part. In fact, the "idea" of the SIP was something that I have always relished in bringing to fruition. And now I'm here, still harrowed by my ideas and at the brink of finishing my SIP. There's something beautiful about it. It's actually making me cry. And soon I'll be crying just to get it out of the way and onto new dark and terrifying things. Now it may not make much sense. There may be poor sentence structures and typos and half-witted concepts, but it's all me. That's guaranteed. I did my best given the circumstances. I'm proud of it and that's what matters.