It's pretty common for us "little peanuts" to feel some envy about the wealthy and better-known citizens among us. Who, after all, wouldn't want to be a millionaire?

But recently the news carried a piece about Ed Bazinet, 68, a wealthy New Yorker who went on a wild spending spree that ran through the millions of dollars. His problem, it turns out, is the brain malady known as manic depression, otherwise known as bipolar disorder.

According to ABC News, Bazinet spent five days buying millions of dollars worth of furniture, art and knickknacks before he realized his behavior was owing to mania and he checked himself in for treatment.

Medical science has long recognized that wild spending is a classic sign of the manic phase of mood and energy that people with bipolar disorder must sometimes contend with.

Such sprees can be disastrous to a person's finances, obviously, and they can also be deeply embarrassing. While an American in more typical circumstances than Bazinet may go through a modest spending spree, say racking up thousands of dollars of bills on a credit card, the scale of Bazinet's spending and his fame in New York meant that his personal problem became a public news item.

Still, it could be that some good can flow from Bazinet's difficult experience. As his publicist put it, "There is no shame with seeking help for this treatable illness, and we hope that this opens a dialogue to educate others."

Manic depression is not a disease of just modern times. Going back all the way to ancient Greece, there are medical descriptions of people with strongly alternating periods of energy and moods. Early doctors noted that a person could be "high" and then "low" in quick succession, with alternating periods of tears and euphoria.

Indeed, in what are now called mixed states, people can experience ups and downs that are strongly interlaced with each other. The bipolar brain, if you will, can run the "upside" as well as the "downside" chemistry at pretty much the same time.

Like schizophrenia, bipolar tends to show up in adolescents and young adults. It cuts down people including some very able ones just as they are really coming into their own. The good news is that doctors are now more likely to recognize bipolar symptoms earlier than they once did. And early treatment can lead to better outcomes for the individual.

But that's hardly to say everything is rosy in the bipolar world. Some manic-depressives experience more than just highs and lows. In extreme cases, patients can suffer psychotic symptoms such as visual or auditory hallucinations. That fact makes the disease deeply scary, both for the person experiencing it and for friends and family members.

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ROCK DOC: Basic biology implicated in wild spending spree