As far as I can recall, and I know my recollection will be far from perfect, my first manic episode manifested itself after several sleepless nights. My mind was too active with thoughts, contemplating the big questions. I was working out the formula to a balanced life using basic aikido philosophy. I was connecting all sorts of dots, lying in bed, my mind teeming with frenetic energy. This was after I had just quit aikido. I had stuck it out with my dojo (school) through a very trying period, and left after it was over. To have done otherwise would have been to admit a weakness I was not prepared to admit. I remember how ecstatic I was during my final class. It was an advanced class. Everything just seemed to work so… perfectly. I was interpreting Sensei’s technical comments more metaphorically. Everything just seemed to have a deeper significance than it normally would have for me. I was finding codes everywhere. I also reinterpreted my sleep patterns. During the course of that year, I used sleep as a means to escape life, sometimes clocking up to 12 hours a day. With this new found energy, I believed I no longer needed sleep to function. I was invincible. I had found eternal life. This was it. Before or after this happened I had a revelation: I was the Messiah. Not so much in the Judeo-Christian sense, but a general Deliverer. I was also a Messenger. I had worked Life all out and it was my duty to spread the Word. This so-called revelation could not have seemed odder to me than anyone else. I thought this was ridiculous and that God was really having a go at me. I mean really, me? I asked, pacing my bedroom. This had to be a joke. Not being very religious, I rarely, if ever, talked to God, but on this occasion, I actually asked God if He were joking.

After this period of insomnia, I found myself on the sofa lulling into a deep, deep coma. The heaviness was so great that it felt like something more permanent than sleep. Frightened, I couldn’t let myself close my eyes and lose consciousness. I wasn’t ready to leave this world, especially just when I’d started feeling better, feeling happy. I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to let it go. I jumped up from the sofa and ran to my dad and told him that I was the Messiah. His classic ‘Dad’ response was to take me to my mother, where I got the Chinese treatment for heat stroke, which she believed I had. It is where it is believed that there is too much heat in the body. I ended up with black marks on pressure points around my temple, neck, back and ankles, supposed proof of the condition.