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) This book does a good job of putting you front-and-center in the life of a manic depressive. The author was formerly a successful lawyer that had to fight and hide her shocking depressive and manic episodes.
She was driven to uncontrollable behaviors such as eating raw cooking materials like flour and baking soda. In her depression she was often immobile and had no appetite, but would scourge through dumpsters when the urge to eat finally came up.
In her mania, as is often with Bipolar I women, she'd become sexually promiscuous. During her mixed episodes, she attempted suicide many times.
She tried a lot of different drugs and pharmaceutical combinations. She even went through electroshock therapy, which completely screwed with her memory. She shows the tortuous urges she had to continually fight against, and the circumstances that many of them caused her to end up in, including being raped.
It's a good look into the experiences of the author. But for some reason I feel like something is missing to make this a more complete, rewarding book. But that's just my opinion, not the
New York Times Bestseller list's, obviously.
"But the disease thrives on shame, and shame thrives on silence, and I've been silent long enough." (pg. 3)
"The only word I couldn't seem to say was 'no.' [...] Manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's discourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin." (pg. 7)
"There's nothing quite like breaking something - the law, a pane of glass, whatever - to embolden a manic mood." (pg. 11)
"Manic intentions are always good; manic consequences, almost never." (pg. 13)
"The world is essentially bipolar: driven to extremes but defined by flux. Saints are always just a stumble away from sinners. Nothing is absolute, not even death." (pg. 20)
"depression was my secret admirer, and had been for years, [...] I never knew when depression would come to call, or for how long, or how dangerous it would be. I only knew that I had to keep it secret or else. Or else what, I wasn't quite sure, nor was I willing to find out." (pg. 24)
"Stories don't always have to end happily, I realized. Sometimes it's just enough that they end, to make way for new stories." (pg. 29)
"Happiness is fine, in its season, happiness out of season is a sure harbinger of doom. That's why you should never trust a bright blue sky in November. It might tempt you out the door. It might lure you to forget, for a moment or two, that it is in fact the dead of winter [...] How could I ever hope to tell a normal person about the terrors of being happy? [...] what felt like happy now might well be
too happy in a minute - and we all knew where too happy could lead." (pg. 33)
"Terribly, terribly happy was quickly dissolving into not so terribly comfortable. How absolutely marvelous. How thrilling. Probably nobody but a manic-depressive can understand that putting on the brakes is something far more exhilarating than winning the race." (pg. 41)
"True beauty, I realized, is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it." (pg. 88)
"What right did I have to my own despair, with such genuine suffering before me? I looked around me at the pockmarked children, and all I could think was, a six-figure lifestyle drove me to suicide. It's chemical, I told myself. I didn't choose to be manic depressive." (pg. 111)
"But mostly I long for sustenance - a sense of fullness, an absence of ache. It's a primal hunger, that goes beyond food: what I really crave is normalcy." (pg. 203)
"Well, if it wasn't for my manic depression, there would be no me for him to marry, period. I'd be some other person entirely. I wouldn't have those flashes of brilliance he so admired, that made him want me in the first place. I wouldn't have the volatility that maddened but intrigued him. Alan hated ordinary. That's just what I would be." (pg. 217)
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) This book gives good insight into the differences of treatment and services provided in various mental health facilities in the U.S.
