Summary:
This memoir of a lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder, complicated by eating disorders and alcoholism, records the internal experiences of mania, confusion, depression, delusion, anxiety, terror, wild impatience, discouragement, and at times clarity and resolve that alternate in her life of recurrent struggle. Diagnosed somewhat belatedly as rapid cycling type 1 bipolar disorder, her disease drove her to one disastrous coping strategy after another until she was hospitalized for her eating disorder and for cutting herself. After years of intermittent hospitalizations and encounters with several incompetent psychiatrists as well as a few who were consistently helpful, she has come to understand exactly the kind of help she needs-at times trusting others' assessments of her condition more than her own, accepting supervision, abstaining from all alcohol-a critical factor in avoiding psychosis.
Her doctors continue to recalibrate her complicated drug therapies, and her moods and control remain precarious, but she has learned to live with a disease that seems still to be poorly understood, accept the limits it imposes, and handle it with intelligence, humility, and even at times a wry note of humor. She has learned to accept help from the husband whose love survives recurrent unintentional abuse, and from parents and friends who remain supportive. She ends the memoir on this note of acceptance, appending to it a list of facts and statistics about bipolar disorder designed to help situate it for the reader relative to other diseases and disorders.
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