A friend had actually noticed this a few days ago on how my mood really affects my driving so I figgured I would see if anyone else had similar expierences.
My driving goes something like this:
Normal: Good driver, stay in the speed limit, let people infront of me, stop at the red lights.
Hypomanic: Nascar driver, the best driver in the world! Speed limits dont matter, I go as fast as I can to feel the excitment and the adreniline pumping. Anytime someone starts going faster than me I speed up and try to race them. There is no such thing as a red light, only yellow ones!
Mixed: Road rage... Anytime someone cuts me off I think they should be arrested and put in jail for life, but there is nothing wrong with me cutting someone else off. Everyone is honking their horn at me (so annoying, I know it's not really happening but its hard to tell which are real honks an which are made up honks). Basically when I am mixed, I dread driving.
Depressed: Don't really care about anyone else on the road, going 40mph on the freeway, fuck everyone else on the road!
I figgure I may as well share a funny, driving story I'm sure a few will get some laughs from,
I was driving back back to work from lunch in downtown San Diego (lots of traffic). I came to one intersection where there had been an accident scene, and cops were all over. The real fun part for this whole story is though, I was hypomanic at the time. So as I pull up to the light, and I notice it is green for me, but I have this huge flight of ideas on crossing the intersection without doing anything stupid. So I look, make sure there is no one in the intersection, make sure all the cars are stopped, etc.
Well once I verify that it's safe, I start to cross and think everythings fine. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone here, but one of the downsides of mania is that as you have a rush of ideas in your head, you sometimes forget the simple stuff. In this case, as I was making sure I was not going to do something stupid, the light had changed from green, to yellow, to red....
Halfway across the intersection I hear people yelling, Horns honking, breaks screeching, as two different cars almost t-bone me. My anxiety soars, and I freak out and hit the gas to move. As I am almost across the intersection, I hear *thump thump thump*. That threw me into a full blown panic attack as I thought I had just hit someone. Luckily, it was a cop who had hit my window and as I looked back he was telling me to pull over. Freaked out, I pulled over, got out of my car, and started walking towards him. whoops...
The cop puts his hand on his gun and starts shouting "Get back in the car, Get back in the car!" By this point, with hypomania and a full blown panic attack, I was so far gone that I just stood next to my car. He got up next to me and I think he said get back in the car, but I was barely functioning at this point. I kind of remember being in a daze as he shouted at me about almost causing a second accident and how stupid it was. He finally asked me "what were you thinking" and I snapped back to reality, told him I had bipolar disorder and an anxiety disorder and exactly what was going through my mind and how sorry I was.
I could tell suddenly he was trying to hold back a smile, then he started shaking his head, looking at the ground, looking at the sky, then the ground again. After an akward momment of silence he says "give me your license", so I fumble through my wallet and hand it to him. He calls it in to verify it, and continues making chit chat with me, where are you coming from, where you going, etc. Then I get a wonderfull wise impulsive idea... I shout at him "You need my license and registration!" so I dove into my car ripping open my glove box. I think this freaked him out, as he starts shouting at me "Get out of the car, Get out of the car" and when I get out and look back up, he has his hand on his pistol again, and he is about 15 feet away.
He walks back towards me, tells me to just sit still and wait. He calls in my license number again, and the radio says something back to him... he hands me back my license, looks at the ground again shaking his head, and tells me "Go." then starts walking away.
Post edited by: zip21, at: 07/09/2010 06:58 PM
