[maleldil]

It does, though. Well, hypomania at least; I've never experienced mania.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have a single day of hypomania for the rest of my life if I could help it, but it _does_ make you more productive for a short amount of time. It isn't worth it, however.

It comes at a cost, not only mental but also physical (lack of sleep, disturbance in appetite), but in that short period where your brain is on fire, you can do a lot more work than usual.

During one of my worse episodes, I was doing 16 hours of high-intensity work per day for about a month. Then I crashed, of course. In my experience, bad hypomanic episodes are usually followed by even worse depressive episodes. Just the sheer exhausting from it is bad enough to make you want to avoid it as much as possible. Lithium is a life-saver.