Tristimania

In the book, she uses her training as a writer to make notes, and tells the story of the condition both from the inside and in terms of literary understanding: with etymology, metaphor, mythology, music, and poetry pressed into service to give the reader a picture of the events as she perceived them.

[2] In the book, Griffiths explores both intellectually and subjectively a year-long episode of manic depression that she experienced, something that she found at once terrifying and attractive, based on the notes she kept at the time.

[5] Griffiths briefly enumerates the causes—genetic vulnerability (having a combination of genes that predispose to the condition); long-term stress; a trigger, in her case a "mild" sexual assault.

She notes that hypomania and mania can appear as hyperacusis, sharply increased awareness "certainly an aspect of artistic sensitivity",[11] and compares the experience to flight—followed by "payback time".

[12] Griffiths tells how she felt, using metaphors, anecdotes, descriptive passages, narrative of how her doctor patiently helped her: "He listened, deeply.

[14] She examines the mythical figures associated with the condition, starting with Mercury-Hermes, "one of the Trickster gods"[15] and "the only shaman in the pantheon", "dynamic, quixotic, enigmatic".

Griffiths notes that many of Shakespeare's characters, too, have mania, depression, or both: Antonio, Jaques, Hamlet, Lear, Timon, Cleopatra; and wonders if he experienced it himself.

She explains the book's title as "the 18th-century word she prefers to capture the precise combination of mania and melancholy in a mixed-state bipolar episode ... a condition steeped in metaphorical significance."

"[29] The reviewer observed that Griffiths used her notebooks, "very precious to me ... footprints of my thoughts, tracks of journeys, curiosity-paths and desire-lines",[30] to make sense of her experience.

She praises Griffiths for the "difficult trick of taking you into the depths of her madness ("I could feel my mind on a slant, every day more off-kilter, every night sleeping less"[32]) while managing to remain a completely reliable guide."

Griffiths is a high-wire writer who performs the difficult trick of taking you into the depths of her madness while managing to remain a completely reliable guide.

Griffiths's subtle point is that in madness we live inside metaphors that offer a parallel understanding of what is real that is no less valid than any other, only less tenable.

Griffiths discusses Mercutio (here played by Orson Welles in Guthrie McClintic's 1933 production of Romeo and Juliet ), one of Shakespeare 's Trickster characters, and their connection to manic depression .
Griffiths walked the Camino de Santiago (thick red line) across Spain in an attempt to cure herself.
In bipolar disorder , mood switches between mania and melancholy.