Can't put it down! | Madness: A Bipolar Life

in the troubled mind | Madness: A Bipolar Life | Marya Hornbacher

books:


	• Madness: A Bipolar Life Marya Hornbacher Houghton Mifflin, 2008 - 299 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Bipolar Battles Beget Hope

Just reading the table of contents in Marya Hornbacher's book, Madness: A Bipolar Life, offers the reader some insight into the world of bipolar illness--"Depression," "Meltdown," "Escapes," "Hypomania," "The Diagnosis," "Losing It," "Hospitalization #1," "Hospitalization #6," "Release." The nature of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia makes the illness worse by the vicious cycle of paranoia, pain, and insanity that cause the suffering person to do everything to sabotage her treatment, or as Hornbacher says, "...how to make sure that you'll be getting crazier by the day." So when her psychiatrist says, don't drink alcoholic beverages, keep a routine, eat healthy, take the meds and so on, Hornbacher does just the opposite. Not because she's intentionally trying to disregard her doctor's advice, but because her manic episodes and the voices in her head tell her that she's okay, while the depressive episodes prevent her from taking any action at all.

Confounding all this confusion, the quality of care also takes its toll on her mental state as the emergency room doctors sometimes make medical decisions that oppose her doctor's treatment plan. In a sad but amusing account, Hornbacher patiently explains to the hospital psychiatrist that she's not depressed, but coming off a manic episode. The psychiatrist decides to increase her antidepressant medication and sleeping pills. When Hornbacher argues that she's an addict and can't take the medication the doctor prescribes, the doctor says, "I'm sure you won't start abusing it." Nothing Hornbacher says can convince the doctor to follow the regimen prescribed by her own doctor.

The author's account of her heroic struggles to escape the insanity of bipolar disorder, and her honesty and insight into her bizarre behaviors, make a fast-paced, gut-wrenching story. One that causes the reader to not only better understand those who suffer from this illness, but to cheer with the hope that Hornbacher expresses in experiencing good results as she strives to take her medications, exercise, use light therapy, participate in group therapy sessions, and listen to her therapist. Her ability to maintain this tenuous balance depends upon whether she can keep her swinging moods under control.

Hornbacher chronicles the often humorous though sad episodes of a person with bipolar disorder. In her manic episodes, she's a university teacher, a writer, and a lecturer doing a hundred and one different things all at once while drunk, on medication, and with little or no sleep. With insight, she says, "That I have made it all this way without dying or killing myself or someone else is a miracle, or a joke." It's no joke that she has successfully chronicled an illness that has contributed to her brilliance as well as to her suffering, in a way that allows the reader to understand and feel compassion for people afflicted with bipolar disorder. And she offers direction to those who might help.

by Susan Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

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Can't put it down!

This is a brilliant follow-up to Wasted. I've been reading it for less than a day and I am nearly halfway through. It's a tragedy that this book will end...

in the troubled mind

I liked Marya's memoir. I have read a number of biographys/memoirs of people with mental illness and what I found most unique and original about Marya's is that she really puts you IN the bipolar mind. So much so that you are taken on the ride with her, more so than is generally the case. In doing this, she has to sacrifice some clarity and details. I'm guessing she does this to make the experience more real but also because many of her experiences occurred when she was either very off balance or both off balance and drunk... so in those cases, it would be harder for her to get all the details objectively clear anyway... so rather than focus on those details or presenting those details absolutely perfectly, she seems to have decided to put you in that 'confused space' with her, so that you can really feel what she was feeling... this to me was the best part, the greatest achievement, of what Marya has created here for her readers. It is possible that some may find this jarring for the first 100 or more pages...but the final 100 pages do give more overall perspective, if that is something you are concerned about.

Of course, being very interested, I wanted to know more, I wanted, at times, more objectivity, more details about her life, about the people around her (friends and family, etc), about the process by which she learned to write so well and do other things so well, including the magazine work. But I think she kept to a very clear purpose here. And that seemed to be, I think, to give the reader a very real honest, straightforward sense of what the bipolar mind is, how it thinks, how it hears and unnderstands and interprets, etc.... she achieved this very well...

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An insight for those who don't quite understand

I cried reading this book. While I have been diagnosed with Bipolar II, where the mania is not so severe, but the depression is, I got to see myself from the outside. Marya's pictures in to the life and mind is extrodinary.

My husband is reading this after hearing an interview with her on the Dianne Rhem show on NPR. He said he finally knows me better than he ever has. The book is frightening, but at the same time hopeful.
A must-read for anyone who wants to see mental illness from the inside

Interesting but needs work

I'm a clinical social worker. As a professional I found Marya's story very compelling. I do think, however, that the writing was only fair and the book could have been edited down some (especially the sections of her hospitalizations....too much to read...too repetitive). And at times it seemed a bit chaotic and disjointed. But I think it's worth reading.

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