The Surfer in the Acid Bath

By Daniel Nenning

It doesn’t start with a bang. It starts with the wind.

You are standing on the beach of your own mind, and for weeks there has been nothing but a leaden calm. The water was gray, viscous like quicksilver, and every step into it felt like trying to wade through wet concrete. That is the Deep. The Depression. It isn’t sad—sadness would be a feeling, and feelings are a luxury. Depression is the absence of everything. It is the moment the director yells "Cut," but forgets to relight the set. You sit in the dark, and mere existence is an imposition. Breathing is labor. The colors have leaked out of the world as if someone turned the saturation dial down to zero. You are a ghost in your own apartment, a shell, waiting.

But then the wind shifts.

At first, it’s just a tingle on the back of your neck. A small crack in the gray cloud cover, letting through a beam of light so bright it hurts. Suddenly, the coffee doesn’t just taste bitter anymore; it tastes like possibility. Your synapses, dormant in hibernation for months, suddenly fire volleys.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The wave is coming.

This is where opinions diverge. The textbooks say this is the onset of the illness. I say: This is the moment I wax my surfboard. You have to understand that mania—or hypomania, its slightly more presentable little sister—is not just "being in a good mood."

That is bullshit.

It is like hooking high voltage up to a 40-watt bulb. You glow. You vibrate.

And yes, I have learned to ride these waves.

In the beginning, when I was young and stupid, the waves smashed me. I drank, I ran, I spent money I didn’t have on things I didn’t need to impress people I didn’t like. I was a tsunami hitting the mainland. Pure destruction.

But now? Now I see the wave coming, and I have respect. I paddle out. I feel the water rising beneath me, this massive chemical force lifting me up. And if you hit the sweet spot, if you stand right on the edge, it is the greatest feeling in the world. You are faster than time. You see patterns where others see only chaos. You are charming, you are funny, you are invincible. The world is no longer a drab waiting room; it is a neon-lit playground, and you hold the master key.

That is the seduction. That is the siren song.

I stand on the board and carve through the barrel of the wave. I write texts at half-speed, my thoughts are crystal clear, I connect ideas that have nothing to do with each other into a perfect mosaic. Sleep? Overrated. Who needs sleep when life is this urgent?

But the treacherous thing about surfing is: You can’t stay up forever.

Every surfer knows the wave breaks. That is physics. And that is the price we pay. The plunge. The bill always comes due. When the wave breaks, you don’t just fall into the water. You fall onto the reef.

The crash is brutal because it is so familiar. Yesterday you were God; today you are the beetle on its back. The energy recedes like the tide before the next storm, and it takes everything with it: your confidence, your eloquence, your hope. What remains is the silt. The shame of what you said when you were up there. The fear of the shards.

And that is the loop. Day after day, week after week, year after year. It is a merciless metronome.

Tick (up), tock (down).

But here is the secret we rarely dare to speak aloud: I love the ride as much as I fear it. I have learned to stand on the board without crashing—most of the time, anyway. I have learned to enjoy the speed but to pull the brake before I smash against the cliffs. I have become the weatherman of my own biochemistry.

It is a life in the extreme. A life without middle tones. While others drive politely at 60 mph in the middle lane on the highway of life, I know only full throttle or emergency braking. It is exhausting. God, it is so damn exhausting. It never stops. The sea will never be entirely calm.

But when I stand up there, on the crest of the wave, in the blinding light of my own neurochemistry, and for a moment everything, absolutely everything, makes sense—then I know:

I wouldn’t want to trade. At least not until the wave breaks.

And it always breaks. Until one day, it stops forever.

About the Author Daniel Nenning

He is not a tourist in the world of extremes; he is a resident. Daniel does not write from the safe distance of an observer, but directly from the eye of the storm. He is an alchemist of his own biochemistry, having learned to transmute the lead of depression and the harsh neon glare of mania into something third: radical acceptance and unvarnished art.

For him, bipolarity is not merely a diagnosis to be dragged around like a heavy coat, but a lens with ultra-high resolution. He sees the world where it cracks, and where the light refracts most brilliantly. His mission is to break the silence and sweep the shame off the table.

He is living proof that you don’t have to shatter when reality shakes. That you can learn to dance on the narrow ridge between genius and the abyss without falling. His voice is a beacon for anyone who feels lost in the gray fog or threatens to burn up in the high.

His message is simple and powerful: You are not "broken." You are an amplifier in a world that is often too quiet. Learn to operate the dials. The music that follows belongs to you alone.