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 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 own 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.
Hornbacher’s account of her heroic struggles to escape from the insanity of bipolar disorder and her honesty and insight into her bizarre behaviors makes a fast-paced, gut-wrenching story that causes the reader to not only better understand those who suffer from this illness, but cheer with the hope that Hornbacher expresses when she experiences good results as she strives to take her medications, exercise, do yoga, use light therapy, participate in group therapy sessions, and listen to her therapist. Whether she can maintain this tenuous balance depends upon whether she can keep her swinging moods under control.
A brilliant writer, Hornbacher chronicles the often humorous but 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, 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.” But it’s no joke that she has successfully chronicled an illness that has contributed to her brilliance as well as her sufferings in a way that allows the reader to understand and feel compassion for those who have been afflicted with bipolar disorder, and offers direction to those who might help.
Marya Hornbacher is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated national bestseller Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, a book that remains an intensely read classic, and of the acclaimed novel The Center of Winter. An award-winning journalist, she lectures nationally on writing and mental health and lives with her husband in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Madness: A Bipolar Life
Marya Hornbacher
Houghton Mifflin
222 Berkeley Street
Boston, MA 02116
2008
ISBN: 978-0-618-75445-8
$25.00
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