After a couple of weeks during which I'd experienced unaccountable intellectual, emotional and moral growth, I made a discovery which I thought could make me incredibly rich. As I rotated the idea in my mind, it slowly dawned on me that I'd be so rich that I could walk out the door and might never need to see my beloved house again, should I choose not to.

Doing just that, in search of either intellectual excitement, or pampering, whichever I could find first, I left home leaving a trail of destruction, fear or bewilderment in my path. To recount the entirety of that day of crisis would take an essay ten times the length of this one. You need, however, to understand the worst of it if this essay is to make sense.

(Please note this covers a period in 2006 when I went through a very serious manic episode on the way to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I'm completely stable now, and have been for 18 months.)

It's one of the principal symptoms of the first manic episode that the mania is obvious to everybody but the person experiencing it. My boyfriend Ben, a doctor, had had a bipolar boyfriend in the past, and had recently been increasingly concerned that I was heading in that direction. In the afternoon of my day of havoc in Hollywood, before I'd done any real damage, Ben, called me, sounding tearful. He was wondering where I was: I'd forgotten about our meeting with our counselor.

After Ben's call, it became, all of a sudden, the most important thing in the world that I get to that meeting to assuage Ben's worries. The resulting anguished rush through Hollywood on foot, during which