what if one pathway involves a deprivation of meaning?
what if prolonged conformity, misalignment, masking, or suppression of differences leads to a “hunger” for authentic inquiry, expression, and connection?
what if more leads to more, as if “binging” on an unacknowledged but deep need, until feedback processes begin to fail and a runaway process is underway?
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and what if mania is about deprivation — but something before sleep…meaning, maybe, or authenticity. Conformity, ignoring contradictions and injustices, small talk and drama, sensation without feeling, suppressing the desire for meaningful expression and connections, for questions alive with mystery and wonder, for coherence in a world that often feels so unalive, slowly losing myself and then forgetting what it felt like to be…alive, engaged, curious, open, eager, discerning, disciplined, generative.
a “snap,” like resetting a bone, a zooming out to see a bigger picture, then a hunger, desperate for all I had been deprived of (deprived myself of).
“snap” -> new ideas, connections, and insights -> more leads to more -> less sleep ->(looser connections, less scaffolding, less reality-testing <-> being misunderstood and hunkering down) ->
readings/concepts
Shitij Kapur – Aberrant salience
connections
“Dopamine as the wind of the psychotic fire” (Laruelle & Abi-Dargham, 1999). In “stubborn” I began exploring the connection between dopamine and meaning.