Adderall is a quite effective stimulant with manageable side effects, it is also an amphetamine (dextroamphetamine) similar to methamphetamine. I suppose if you mixed that with phencyclidine (PCP) or lysergic acid (LSD) you could probably reliable induce a manic-like state.

“From the brain” is basically like saying from this impenetrable black box.

Medications do not work the same on people with the same conditions. You could have exactly the same depression/anxiety symptoms as another person but have a completely negative reaction to an SSRI that works perfectly for them.

Some people with ADHD can still get high on certain stimulant meds if they take a high dose, but some (like me) don’t get anything but a headache.

For most people, drinking alcohol is a slightly euphoric experience that decreases inhibitions and makes them feel relaxed. For others (like me) it does nothing or it makes me anxious.

Now the physical effects do exist in that latter case; my heartrate and breathing do slow if I drink a lot. But the subjective experience is quite the opposite of what its “supposed” to be.

If you want to feel physically alert, injecting yourself with epinephrine would likely do the trick. But if you want to feel more “manic” as in lacking impulse control, feeling rapid emotional changes, and feeling alert. You likely need a cocktail of drugs specifically tuned for your brain.

There is no single part of the brain controlling anything. I mean literally anything. There are lots of areas that are involved with certain actions like the hippocampus with memory and V1 with visual input but there are basically no processes that are comtrolled solely by a specific part of the brain.

And what makes it even more complex is that every part of the brain is recieving different information from thousands of different neurons scattered across the whole neocortex. Some of these connections seem to follow a general trend, but if you’ve ever seen a rabies tracing experiment you’ll know that basically every part of the brain has at least one or two connections from any other part of the brain regardless of function.

Your brain is a chaotic mess and what little organization exists might not even be necessary. There are mice called Reeler Mice who lack a specific glycoprotein (reelin) which is responsible for organizing the brain into layers. As such, their neurons are scattered all around rather than forming the neat layers and patches that typical mice have. Guess what is wrong with these mice behaviorally? Nothing. apart from the motor issues caused by an undeveloped cerebellum (part of your brain that coordinates muscle movements) they are basically normal mice. (I should note there is some research on reelin levels and relation to psychiatric disorders, but its not well studied and inconclusive)

You could have a completely different brain than any other human on earth and still function like a normal human. There are people without a corpus collosum (the largest white matter tract in the brain, connecting both hemispheres) who are asymptomatic even though most people with the condition get seizures. There are parts of your brain that might not exist in others like the massa intermedia; and there are no signs whatsoever until you do a scan.

It is likely your brain is laid out in a unique way that is unlike any other human. Maybe it can carry out processes and emotions and actions the exact same way someone else’s does, but that does not mean both brains are doing that process in the same way. So it is never guaranteed that a drug or stimulation in a specific area which causes the desired effects on one person will cause the same effect on another.

And the more complex the desired outcome is (e.g. “mania” rather than just “alertness”) the less general your “solution” will be, meaning it will need to be tailored to each subject more specifically.

I mean yeah almost anybody can have a drug induced manic / psychotic episode (usually from stimulants), the threshold and how long it takes to get there and the eventual severity are just different for each person. Technically it's supposed to be a different diagnostic classification if it's drug induced vs organic but realistically psychiatrists will just slap 'schizoaffective' on pretty much any chart and call it a day.

As for inducing an episode... So what makes a mental health diagnosis a mental health diagnosis vs a normal neuro/behavioral variation is literally detriment / impairment to everyday living. So if you're inducing one you're accepting that even with, say, a hypomanic episode, there's some kind of detriment. Usually the main one is that the person becomes a huuuge asshole, but there's other stuff that can still even get the person committed, usually after royally fucking up their life and relationships.

Now, some people need that little extra dopamine for their brain to work right (ADHD). They're also risking mania / psychosis when taking stimulants but the risk is usually minimal at the doses they're taking and it's worth it for them to be able to hold down a job and keep up with self care tasks. You wouldn't want to risk it otherwise and there's a small subset of people with ADHD who are much more prone to mania / psychosis that can't take stimulants at all who have to take very specific combinations of other stuff.

TLDR everything has risks and benefits and that's such a narrow tightrope to walk for no reason and "what if I just microdose" are the famous last words of literally every meth addict ever.

Or just sleep deprivation, which can also eventually lead to mania, hallucinations.

Yeah, and you probably have. All sorts of people have the kinds of experiences manic people report -- staying up late into the night to work on something creative, feeling at one with the universe, feeling powerful or unstoppable, having deeply moving religious or spiritual experiences, being extremely irritable or angry. But eventually you are able to stop and return to a baseline state when the negative consequences grow too intense, instead of spiraling out of control for weeks or months, which is the crucial difference.

You're talking about cocaine or meth or something like it. There are side effects and controlling the dosage over time is difficult.

Why not?

That's not how any of that works. Mania does not come from some special "mania center" in the brain. It occurs from many parts of the brain not working correctly. There is no "part of the brain" to access here.

You like playing games with fire do ya?

No

Yeah it has to have been that

Yeah that makes sense.
It was my original thought at the time but there I was the other day remembering about this after seeing something about thermite and I started wondering if magic had happened... But no it was just a "learning experience".
Thanks for taking the time!

Thanks, it makes alot of sense.
What about the super bright light coming off though, is it normal for melting steel?
Now that I'm writing this I realize that I could just go check videos of steel melting to compare...
But the question remains: would it be possible for thermite to have formed just from the presence of aluminium, iron oxyde and heat?

Edit: My bad, the question has been answered!
I didn't see the other comments when I wrote this...

He said at the end steel goes white hot when it melts, probably that?

Here's a relevant video on the topic of regeneration

https://youtu.be/n5U8M2JtAHk

What about the bright light? Everything else makes sense though?

Only if the cutting includes a section of the central plate.

Steel has surprisingly very poor thermal conductivity compared to many other metals and alloys, stainless steel especially, not sure what alloy they use for fire extinguishers, but the geometry of relatively thin-walled tanks like that means there is very little neighboring metal at any point for heat to transfer through. This means it heats particularly unevenly, wherever you're applying heat is where all the heat is going to be heavily concentrated, and takes a long time for applied heat to even out as it "soaks" through to the rest of the material. This also means it is relatively poor at transferring the heat into your target metal you're trying to melt, too. So that's even more of the heat being concentrated into the area of steel that's being directly heated, not where you're hoping for it to go. Your impatience probably just melted a hole in it.

It's no enough for aluminum to be in contact with iron, they must be powdered and mixed. Also you need extreme temperatures to start the reaction.

Probably not in any meaningful capacity. You would not have produced nearly enough iron oxide with enough of a surface area to react with the aluminum fast enough to accomplish anything noticeable. It's likely you just flat out melted your steel "crucible" by getting it too hot on the bottom. Steel is going to go white hot before it melts.

Thermite needs a very high temperate to start its reaction, I’ve seen it done with a magnesium strip, which is easy to light but burns VERY hot.

Gun

https://xkcd.com/1217/

In all seriousness, I think changing the PH and moisture level would drive them away. It likely depends on where they are and what other life forms are present

I remember waaay back at school, we had to perform some tasks on animals, one being live planarias. You could cut the head in half, and get a two headed worm, so I am not sure if cutting all along would regenerate on 2 full bodies though

Dissecting frogs, chickens, whatever, was not funny times to me for sure