Four years and four days ago was the last time the lights went out.

That was my last major clinical depression: Four years and four days ago.

I got up at about 4:30 am. I didn’t wake up because I wasn’t actually asleep. I got up – meaning I got out of bed. Took my dog to the dog park and sat on a picnic table. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I wasn’t exactly crying because crying takes emotional exertion and I had run out of that. It was more like just water dripping from the corner of each eye.

I am a clean & sober recovering alcoholic/addict but I made one last desperate attempt to make myself feel better.

In the words of the inimitable Gomer Pyle, “Surprise. Surprise. Surprise.”

A group of three managed behavioral healthcare organizations, who suspiciously call themselves the “Coalition for Parity,” have sued the feds, claiming they were “denied their right to participate in the rule-making process” for implementation the Wellstone-Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.

Who didn’t see THIS coming?

The Coalition says the “interim final rule” drafted by the feds is so “vague,” “ill-informed,” “ill considered,” “fatally ambiguous,” “unrealistic,” “severely flawed,” “carelessly drafted” and “boundless” that the rule “does not advance the cause of mental health parity; but rather impedes it.”

According to court papers filed on April Fools Day (Seriously, they filed this on April 1) the Coalition for Parity says it “strongly supports mental health parity.” In fact,  the Coalition is so concerned about parity that it believes separate deductibles are the best way to ensure that people like me, with mental illnesses, get the care we need – especially low-paid workers, addicts and alcoholics.

I still get manic but it’s a kinder, gentler mania.

“Whaddya have goin’ this weekend?” a friend asked during a phone call last Friday.

“Linda is turning 50 so I’m going to her party on Saturday night. Other than that, nothing,” I told him. “I’m sure I will find something.”

Oh, yeah.  Somehow – despite the mood stabilizer I take (religiously) – Mr. Mania snuck into my bed and we woke up together on Saturday morning with a spectacular To-Do List.

“… my finely wired, exquisitely alert nervous system.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of my mania. Unfortunately, I didn’t write it. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison did. It is in the first paragraph of the prologue to her brilliant bestseller An Unquiet Mind.

I like the word “exquisite” because it implies a sense of refinement and elegance and I am neither when I am manic. I envision a chaotic mess of synapses frantically trying to keep up with a torrent of hormones. Some explode like a blown transformer and sizzle like a live wire.

It feels like a primal part of my brain has taken over. Every cell attached to my senses — smell, touch, sight, taste, sound — is ready, like a racehorse in the gate, snorting, pounding a  hoof and waiting for the race to begin.

Last night I watched George Clooney’s recent  movie Up in the Air. He plays a traveling hatchet-man who flies hundreds of thousands of miles every year to reach destinations where he will ruin people’s lives. He measures his success by his frequent flier miles.

He has an apartment somewhere, bare and stark white, which he occasionally visits. He has no friends but is warmly, but superficially, welcomed by airline personnel wherever he goes. His parents are dead, and he is estranged from his sisters. He seems very happy until  he meets his female double –  tall, thin, beautiful blond businesswoman who seemingly lives up in the air and out of a suitcase just like George.

In case you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t ruin it for you. But you can probably figure out that George falls in love and begins to question his self-imposed banishment from humanity. His heart gets broken (which is where the movie enters the realm of science fiction because what woman in her right freakin’ mind would break George Clooney’s heart?) and George finds himself back in his old shoes, alone, unloved and up in the air. He is not happy.

I am sick about the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince. I close my eyes and say a prayer for her 12-year-old sister, who found Phoebe in a stairwell leading to the the family’s second-floor apartment in South Hadley, Massachusetts on January 14. I cannot imagine the depth of the family’s sorrow and anger, and I don’t want to try.

We don’t know much about the bullying Phoebe endured at South Hadley High School in the months before her death, and we know almost nothing about the nine teens charged with a smorgasbord of shocking crimes against her.

We all want those details. But I want more. I want to know how those nine teens reacted to their arrests. I want to know if they feel a shred of regret and remorse. If the teens made statement to detectives, I want to hear their recollection of what happened. I want to hear the tone of their voices. I want to see their body language.

Good news! The Federal Aviation Administration is lifting its ban on allowing pilots to fly while on antidepressants.

Bad news! I still can’t be a pilot.

While lifting the ban on antidepressants made for great headlines today, it’s not until you read down into the story that you learn that under the new policy, pilots who take one of four antidepressants — Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa or Lexapro — or their generic equivalents will be allowed to fly “if they have been successfully treated by those medications for a year without side effects that could pose a safety hazard in the cockpit.”

That’s cool, but they are all SSRIs. What if a pilot needs more, like Wellbutrin, an NDRI, along with an SSRI? That’s my regimen. I take Lexapro AND Wellbutrin. Does that mean the pilot cannot fly? Yes.