Would I Have Written My Books Without My Manic Episode?

It is a question I often ask myself. Would I have written the books I have written without experiencing my manic and psychotic episode in 2023?

My answer is both yes and no. Yes, I believe I would have written books. But no, I do not believe they would have been the same books.

The desire to write existed long before my episode. For more than twenty years, I dreamed of becoming an author. Throughout my adult life, I collected ideas, filled notebooks, reflected on life, and imagined the books I wanted to write. I was fascinated by topics such as spirituality, creation, evolution, mental health, and the nature of human experience. The writer was already there. What was missing was the catalyst. For years, I thought about writing books. I planned them. I imagined them. I started them. Yet very little was actually produced. The dream remained largely unrealised.

Then came the events of 2023. My manic and psychotic episode changed many aspects of my life. It led to hospitalisation, unemployment, damaged relationships, and a long recovery journey. At the time, it felt like my life had been turned upside down.

Yet looking back, I can also see that it created a turning point. The episode forced me to confront questions about who I was, what mattered to me, and what I wanted to do with my life. It disrupted the path I had been following and created space for something new to emerge.

When I was admitted to the Hills Clinic, I began writing extensively. I wrote The Dialectics of Mania and A Turtle's Journey in the months that followed. For the first time, I was not simply thinking about writing a book. I was actually writing one.

The real breakthrough, however, may have come later. When I travelled to Canada later that year, I made a decision that changed everything. Rather than continuing to think about all the books and projects I wanted to create, I began systematically writing them down. The ideas that had been floating around in my mind for years finally started taking shape on the page. The Wellness Revolution. The Creation Series. Lived Experience Power. Numerous websites and research projects. One after another, ideas that had existed only in my imagination began to become reality.

Looking back, I do not think the manic episode created the writer. The writer had always been there. What the episode did was create the conditions that allowed the writer to emerge. It forced me to process my experiences, examine my life, and reconsider my future. It pushed me towards writing as a way of understanding what had happened and what I wanted to do next. At the same time, I do not believe the episode alone explains the books. Many people experience crises and never write a single page. The difference was that at some point, I committed to stop dreaming about writing and start doing it. That decision was just as important as the episode itself.

I also suspect the books would have been very different had the episode never occurred.

Without it, I may never have written The Dialectics of Mania. I may never have written A Turtle's Journey. My work may have focused more heavily on spirituality, creation, and cosmology without the lived experience perspective that now runs through so much of my writing.

The episode gave me a story I could not ignore. It forced me to confront questions of identity, recovery, trauma, resilience, and meaning. Those themes now sit alongside my interests in spirituality, creation, and human development.

So, would I have written my books without the episode? Probably. Would they have been the same books? Almost certainly not. The episode did not create the writer. It created the circumstances that finally allowed the writer to emerge.