Tabby took the words right out of my mouth:

I'm on edge constantly.  Like a cat on a hot tin roof, prickly and claws baring.  This sudden and rising imploding pressure building and building within me.  I have to move, I have to run, I have to speak faster and faster.  I can't stop speaking, I can't stop moving, I can't stop running.

Oh, yeh, for a little while - maybe a week or two - “the colors of life start to unfold again,” but then:

I get highly irritable, agitated, and angry.  Everyone is moving too slow.  Everyone is so stupid and won't get out of my way. ... My mind whirls like a turbo at 2000 RPMs and I can no longer make sense of any of my thoughts. ... I want to run but I can't move.  I want to scream but no sound will escape. I want to pull all my hair out by its roots.

There is no let-up, no respite. You need sleep for that. Sleep?

I know something has gone so horribly wrong and I can't make it stop. I can't make it stop and I so do not feel good. I feel terrified.

Now, compare Tabby’s account to something I wrote 11 years ago:

I awoke from a drunken stupor in a strange city in a strange country, jobless and friendless and nearly penniless. You don't really want to be sober, for aside from the unwelcome intrusion of reality, you also find your psyche playing host to the type of cold fusion nuclear reaction that demands instant release. Rage - Goddess, sing the rage - a line from Homer ...

Does this sound like we’re having the time of our lives to you? Seriously, any time I hear an idiot doctor say that we don’t take our meds because we’re addicted to our highs, well don’t get me started. My head literally exploded in slow motion. With me at ground zero, experiencing every excruciating millisecond in a state of preternatural hyper-awareness, no let-up, no escape, days on end, weeks. You don’t need to describe hell to me. Been there, done that.

In my book, “Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder,” I quoted this from Meow:

A small poem on Bipolar ...
SCREEEEAAAAAMMMM
Did you hear that?
That was me;
Inside my head.
I wish I was dead

The biggest myth by far in all of bipolar is that mania is a super-happy state. Even our doctors subscribe to this blatant falsehood. Yes, some of us some of the time do experience moments of extreme elation and expansiveness - the technical term is euphoric - but inevitably our brains have a way of turning on us. One minute, we’re in our race cars, joyfully leaving the world behind in our rear view mirrors, the next we are stuck in traffic, engine revving hard, banging our heads against the dash in despair, sucking other people’s fumes.

It’s as if our internal hour hand is whirring like a second hand. As I describe it on mcmanweb:

Nothing goes right in this state of time. Every rock, every tree, everything God has placed on earth has turned against me and me alone. People conspire to make my life miserable, computers find new ways to throw up error codes, numbers and their values change right before my very eyes, and being placed on hold is enough to reduce me to tears.