Just a few years after the episode following my sequoia getting wrecked I had another episode. I had stopped my meds, I wasn’t going to therapy, I was drinking heavily, and I didn’t have a healthy routine. You would think after all of my terrible experiences fighting mental illness that I would have been more diligent. The side effects of the meds are just so terrible that I have a very hard time complying with my treatment. And there is always the way hypomania makes me feel wonderful. Even as I’m writing this I’m struggling with my meds and not wanting to be on them. I feel so tired, dizzy, numb, and fat. 

Leading up to this episode I got a job as a liftie at Deer Valley ski resort in Park City, UT. One benefit of doing that job was all the weight I lost and quickly. Looking back, mania had a huge role to play in my weight loss. I always lose weight when I’m manic, even though some people tend to gain weight when manic, which I can’t even comprehend. Being a liftie is a very physical job, if you’re actually maintaining the ramps and helping people. Before the ski season started I went on a salt flats fishing trip with some of my fly fishing guide buddies. We went to Southern Mexico right on the border of belize. It was an amazing trip. I caught a large permit which is one of the most difficult and desirable fish in all of fly fishing. 

We had been in Mexico a few days and I was fishing with my buddy that had already caught a very large permit. After he tried for a tarpon for a while it was my turn to fish. We went out searching for permit. We found a couple permit and I blew my shot. I landed the fly right on it, spooking it. I started to reel up because it was my friends turn, but he let me have another shot since he already caught one the other day. So we came upon a school of them tailing. It’s very rare to get multiple shots in a day especially that close together. Tailing means they were actively feeding and were more likely to eat a fly. The guide had amazing eyes, he spotted them from like 300 yards out. He poled me over, intercepting them, and I was about to get a shot but I realized that my line had a knot in it, which would have been tragic if it ate my fly. So as I’m frantically working on the knot the permit was getting closer and closer. The guide told my buddy to get his rod out and put a fly on the fish. By the time my buddy got his rod out I got the knot out. At this point the permit was 30 feet away, just a chip shot. My adrenaline was pumping. I cast and landed my crab fly just a few feet away from it and leading it. I started slowly stripping the fly line and it chased for a couple feet and ate the fly. I strip set and kept stripping worried about trout setting (when you lift the fly rod to set the hook) as they call it. This section of my memoir might sound like greek… To strip is to pull fly line through the rod. My buddy was yelling, “lift your rod, you got him!” So I did and I don’t think the fish knew he was hooked at first. Once my rod was raised the fish took off so amazingly fast. He was tearing through my backing line on my reel. It started to get low and I was worried about it running out. He went for the coral and that would have been game over. I kept turning him from the coral. Eventually I got him up to the boat and my guide tailed him. I jumped into the ocean and snapped a few photos with him. I’ve caught a lot of fish over the years but this permit was my favorite. It was my first and only time fishing salt flats. 

The whole trip I consumed beyond excessive amounts of alcohol. When you go from over a mile high to sea level your tolerance goes through the roof. I drink to get drunk so I just consumed more. When we would get on the boats in the morning the guide was aghast at the amount of beer we would bring. It didn’t even impair our ability to fish. Partly due to our training, haha. We drank and fished almost everyday. 

Leading up to this episode I was drinking a lot of whiskey daily. Looking back on it, I was using the alcohol to self medicate. It actually has the opposite effect on my moods, making them way worse. After getting back from Mexico I started working as a liftie full time. When I first started I was dog tired everyday. I wouldn’t even take a ski break on the mountain, because I was too tired. After a while I was not sleeping more than four hours a night and my energy levels had gone up. I was loving my ski breaks and my skiing abilities exponentially improved. I’m not sure how long I could have maintained this hypomanic episode. But as it does, life stress triggered a manic episode.