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There are no words for the horror, the story of my madness, by Emmanuel Carrer.

It's disturbing. At almost 60 years of age, to be diagnosed with an illness that you've suffered from your whole life without it ever being named.

Your first reaction is to protest. I protested, insisting that bipolar disorder is one of those notions that are all of a sudden invoked and get pinned on anything and everything.

Famous people to come forward and talk about living with bipolar disorder.

Then you read what you can on the subject. You re-examine your whole life from that angle.

And you realise that the shoe fits perfectly even. That all your life, you've been subject to this alternation of excitement and depression that is of course all of our lot.

Because all our modes change. We all have highs and lows, clear skies and dark clouds.

Only that there's a group of people to which you belong, along with it seems 2% of the population, for whom the highs are higher and the lows lower than average.

To the point that their succession becomes pathological.

However, where the description doesn't fit at first glance has to do with the so-called manic phase, of what until the 90s was called manic depressive psychosis.

The manic state is when people strip naked on the street, or suddenly by free forrars, or feverishly explained to anyone who wants to hear it that what they've got to do is eat guava's lots and lots of guava's to save humanity from a third world war.

I knew a young guy who did things like that, and who, once the crisis had passed, was appalled by what he'd done. He killed himself, as it seems up to 20% of people with bipolar disorder do.

I felt sorry for this brilliant, desperate young guy, and never thought I suffered from the same disorder as he did.

I was depressive, yes. In addition to what can be called empty periods, I've been through two phases of real, severe depression.

The sort that lasts for several months, and during which you hardly ever get up, you can no longer accomplish the most basic tasks, and above all, you can no longer imagine that things will change.

That's the hallmark of depression. You can't believe that one day you'll get better. Well-meaning friends say, you'll be fine, you'll see.

But you only look at them with dismay, and even start to resent them. They're so wide of the mark. It's so clear they haven't got a clue.

When you're in a depression, you think that you'll never come out of it, that you won't come out alive, that the only way out is suicide.

If you don't kill yourself, however, sooner or later you will come out of it, and then once you're out of it, you cross over into the camp of the well-meaning friends, and could no longer imagine this state of intolerable and seemingly endless distress.

When I was young, I had a bad trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms. They sent me to hell, which is, by definition, frightful and never-ending.

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