Definition of Mania

Mania: From Greek μανία; "madness, frenzy." From Greek: μαίνομαι; "To rage, to be mad, to be furious." An established criterion for diagnosing several mental disorders.

I will describe it to you, this mania. Taste the absinthe hallucination as this sudden green intoxication trickles down your throat, streamlining into veins as your heart dances by the electric strobe light, beat after beat. The room blurs twice, stands at attention, and blurs again. Distortion sets in and you just want to shed everything right then and there, regardless of the voices that zoom in and out those ears. Brace yourself for the roller coaster ride-

"Drinks have been poured."

The visions start. Not necessarily in your eyes but they riot freely in your mind. The word salad is so tasty as it runs off your tongue- you honestly don't give a damn at your companion's confused expression, because your creativity levels are off the charts and you swear, you just want to go.

Disregard the methods completely and set yourself down as the words, the colors, the notes start pouring in through that trepanned hole in your head, still steaming from freshly raw drills. Ignore the sensation of broken bone and hot red as you work with a hunger that burns in the pit of your mental stomach that cannot be sated until the insanity has run its full course.

"Champagne, yeah?"

Then the dark chocolate settles to the bottom. Those corners of your mouth can't stand up any longer and they collapse like an unwieldy canopy at a windy beachside wedding.

In other words, you feel like shit. And this is when you start pulling things out of dark places you normally wouldn't. The rock on top of your head is superglued and unshakable, pressing out your cream-cheese brains and opening your mouth to wormy things that slither onto the canvas and produce indelible inkspots of black and ugly. So inspiringly twisted that whatever you created under this low in your life is a delusional representation of everything you believe in and you say you don't believe in.

Oh, we insane children, strangled by the confines of our tangibility. We desperately hitch our hopes to the chariots in the self-created sky, praying that we will one day find a way to truly remain in the land of our freedom. Hear our lamentations, Morpheus- we stand at the gates of self-induced paradise but we never manage to stay in. We're driven by the threat of normalcy, the pedestrian bread-and-milk life.

Why would we want that, when we dream of shrooms, of belladonna, henbane, mandrake, and the everlasting poppy-red pearl? Waltzing into our visible fears we see things other people can't. Better to be a bit crazy than to hide from the reality that others pretend not to notice, even if it's breathing down their neck at this very instant.

"Cheers to that."