Mania, Medication, and Memory
Andy Dongkwun Lee, 2T7 WB
I was entering my first day of junior high school. It was a new school in a new province and I was unsure about making close friends.
I entered my social studies class and sat at the back. Looking to make a friend, I spoke with my neighbor. He said his name was Janus.
At first, Janus seemed nice enough. He was talkative and funny, cracking jokes that made me laugh. But as the weeks went on, I noticed he had some...quirks. His moods would swing wildly from being the life of the party to lying on the floor for hours staring up at the ceiling fan.
One day, he came to class with his head shaved completely bald. The next week he had dyed his hair bright green. He started dressing in camouflage pants and trench coats, claiming he was going to join the military after he finished school. A few days later he had taken up guitar and was going to drop out to become a rock star.
I didn't know what to make of Janus' bizarre behavior. He seemed to have a new, overambitious plan every week, pursuing it with intense passion before abandoning it just as quickly.
The other students started calling him "Janitor" behind his back, assuming he was just looking for attention. But I could see there was real anguish and torment behind his eyes. It was like he was being driven by forces beyond his control.
Still, Janus and I remained friends, as I was one of the few who didn't treat him like he was a joke or a freak. On his up days, he was fun to be around—the life of any party with his wild ideas and outgoing personality. Other days, he was paralyzed by lethargy and depression, curled up in bed for days. I tried to be supportive, but I didn't know how to help him. I was just a kid myself, baffled by his rapid mood swings.
As time went on, his mood swings grew more extreme and erratic. One minute he was angrily lashing out at me and the next, he would be flooding me with apologies . He got into fights at school, arguments with teachers, and repeatedly ran away from home . His grades tanked as he went from being a star student to flunking out. I stuck by him, but it was hard with his behavior pushing me away despite my attempts to understand.
One morning, Janus didn't show up to school. Or the next day. A week went by and there was no sign of him. Rumors started circulating that he had been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility after some sort of manic episode. I was scared but also relieved that he was finally geting the help and treatment he so clearly needed.
A few weeks later, I received a text from Janus that he was in the hospital. When I visited him, he seemed heavily medicated—groggy and shuffling with a dazed look in his eyes. The vibrant, turbulent person I knew seemed to have been sedated right out of him.
"I don't feel anything anymore," he told me flatly, staring down at his trembling hands. "The sadness is gone, but so is everything else. I'm just...empty."
I felt a lump in my throat, not knowing what to say. My friend was slipping away from me, just in a different way than before. The medications had helped stabilize his mood swings, but at the cost of flattening his entire personality and sense of self in the process. It was like trading one life for another.
Janus was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a condition characterized by dramatic highs and lows in mood. The "highs" of mania brought euphoria and delusional self-confidence to pursue those grandiose whims like being a rock star,but were inevitably followed by devastating "lows" of depression—a soul-draining void where he could barely summon the energy to get out of bed.
I tried to be there for him as this condition took over his life. His parents put him on a cocktail of medications that blunted the manic highs and depressive lows, but also muted his personality and thoughts. The once brilliant student struggled to focus and retain information. He seemed forever in a drugged, detached state suspended between the uncontrolled emotional peaks and valleys.
Janus ended up transferring to a specialized school. We texted occasionally over the years, but our lives went down separate paths. His career, attempts at relationships, and milestone moments of life were constantly derailed by his constantly changing moods and treatments.
He struggled to find the right combination of medications and personal adjustments that could manage his bipolar episodes without numbing his mind and spirit.
Janus confided in me that he felt tormented—like his true self was being held hostage by this never ending tug-of-war between bipolar mania and drug-induced numbness.
"I don't know which version of me is authentic anymore.”
Decades later, I got a call that Janus had been found dead in his apartment at age 39. The police suspected suicide, or an accidental overdose on opioids while trying to self-medicate his internal pain.
It was a tragic story with no clear solution. There was no way to preserve his passionate spirit without opening the floodgates to crippling mood swings. He had waged this battle for so long during his brilliant boyhood years, leaving him just a faded shadow by the time we reached adulthood.
As I stood at Janus' gravesite, my heart ached for the loss of my friend.
No one should have to cry out "don't leave me" in that scared, small voice as their authentic self slips away amid the shifting tides of mania and depression.
