Madness, by Marya Hornbacher, is one of the few personal accounts of bipolar disorder I’ve read that covers the escalating unfolding of the disorder from such an early age (4 years old) to the present. The book covers just about every aspect of the struggle with bipolar disorder – early failures to diagnose it, misdiagnosis, clueless and competent psychiatrists and therapists, stressors, triggers, the tendency to self-medicate, hospitalizations, hyper-sexuality, the terrible side effects of many of the medications used to treat depression and mania, bipolar and career, alcoholism, self-mutilation, relationship dynamics, lack of insight (not realizing when a manic episode is settling in), and the highly productive and invigorating hypomanias that often convince those with bipolar disorder that nothing’s wrong. Her narrative functions almost like a textbook case study of bipolar disorder.
Madness has a solid chronological structure that leads the reader through the escalating and exhausting mood cycles Hornbacher experienced. She is a highly skilled writer who keeps the narrative progressing at a quick pace while revealing dazzling insights about the disorder, about people, and about life in general along the way.
What I found particularly helpful about the book is Hornbacher’s descriptions of how her mood episodes began so seemingly innocent enough. One day, life seems to be just fine and then over the course of several days, weeks, or months becomes wonderful – everything is clicking and Hornbacher’s energy and joy seduces all those around her – and then, just as suddenly, her world crashes in on her. People who haven’t experienced this, don’t know what it’s like. They wonder why people with bipolar disorder can’t tell when their moods are cycling or why a loved one didn’t step in sooner. I think Horbacher’s accounts can help people gain a better understanding.
As co-author of Bipolar Disorder For Dummies and as someone who’s “married to bipolar,” I could relate to just about everything in Madness. Hornbacher does an incredible job of taking the reader on the roller coaster ride that is bipolar disorder, revealing the wreckage that bipolar leaves in its wake, and filling those who battle it in their own lives with an appreciation of the positive aspects of the disorder and hope for a better future.
Order your copy of Madness: A Bipolar Life on Amazon.com.
that was the first book about bipolar disorder that I read and boy is it a doozey!
Marya swept me along with her long frantic sentences and then I crashed into her short phrases when her depression got the better of her.
I was moved how she was so open and put down so many facts. I hope she is ok now!
I am now reading Electroboy. Good thing they didn’t meet! lol
In her latest book, Madness: A Bipolar Life, Marya Hornbacher is surprisingly able to describe in amazing detail almost her entire life despite frequent lapses into abysmal depression opposed to periods of over-achiever super success, which would invariably spiral upward into full-blown psychotic manias.
Anyone familiar with bipolar illness will recognize the repeated roller-coaster cycling and the difficulty in finding and maintaining a stabilizing medicine combination.
Madness is difficult to put down. As you turn the pages to find that one day she is a successful, wealthy, on-top-of-the-world, happily married editor, and the next a miserable, shuffling, robe-wearing, stringy-haired patient in a mental institution with little or no grasp of reality… though, all the while, you know she is very real. You can never doubt the authenticity of the person behind the sometimes audacious and sometimes pitiful behavior.
Somehow, through all of it, she hangs onto a thread, and with that thread, she is able to weave an incredible life. In Madness Marya retrieves it all well enough to share her story with the world.
I, for one, am grateful that she did.
Hi, I recently wrote a memoir about my early experiences right before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and it is somewhat similar to the Madness book, but I focus on a shorter amount of time and go into detail about the intense experience prior to knowing how to name it with a diagnosis. It is called Insanity: A Love Story and can be found at Amazon.com or via the link