Madness: A Bipolar Life
by Marya Hornbacher
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Book Reviews of Madness: A Bipolar Life
Book Review: Brutally Honest
Summary: 5 Stars
Madness 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.
The book 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 Hornbacher'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.
Book Review: An Insighful perspective of Bipolar I Disease
Summary: 5 Stars
[...]
Madness: A Bipolar Life, written by Marya Hornbacher, is an extremely well written title that relates her struggle with Bipolar Disorder I - sometimes termed Manic Depression. She suffered from the disease since she was about four years old. In spite of her manic episodes, her manic elations, her depressions, her self mutilations, her hyper sexuality, her anxiety, her compulsive buying of unnecessary things, her myriad hospitalizations, and the several misdiagnosis reached by several of the doctors that treated her; she was able to achieve a tremendously outstanding work as a writer.
Every time she was hospitalized, or went into one of her manic episodes or depressions, she was treated with different medications or given distinct doses of the same medications. The truth is that, as she states in her epilogue, the first medication designed specifically to treat Bipolar Disorder is still waiting, and in her particular case, she has been treated with Lamictal, Tegretol, Geodon, among others. However, she is still struggling with her disease, and probably will fight it during her whole lifetime. That is: Forever. Of course, she has periods of remission from her bipolar disorder and becomes quite functional.
I consider this title an utterly important one especially for those suffering from the disease or who have a relative, a friend or an acquaintance that suffers from it. It gives the reader a more realistic perspective of what goes into the minds of the sufferers of Bipolar Disorder I, and the reasons why they sometimes refuse to take their medications or act in unbelievable manners. The book also pinpoints the important factor that the family, spouses, and friends become in understanding and helping the sick ones.
Is I have mentioned before, Marya is a gifted and brilliant writer and I cannot wait to read her first title, Wasted, which deals with her ordeal with Anorexia and Bulimia.
Definitely worth the read!
Book Review: Insightul!
Summary: 4 Stars
MADNESS: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
May 15, 2008
Amazon Rating 4/5 stars
I normally don't read non-fiction, except I am fascinated by psychologically minded books such as this one. MADNESS is a memoir by a woman who suffers from bipolar disorder (what at one time had been known as manic depression) but was not diagnosed until much later in life. Because of this belated diagnosis, Marya obviously was not treated for a disorder that could have been kept under control if caught in time. Instead, Marya was diagnosed with something totally different, and because of that she had been given medications that actually harmed her.
Her symptoms throughout the years came and went, but as she describes what she has gone through, she gives a good example of what a person afflicted with Bipolar I disorder goes through, and what their loved ones and friends deal with day to day. Marya had the severe form of Bipolar disorder, and because it was left untreated for so long, her life was one horrific hell on earth. With manic highs and lows, she went from one relationship to another, bingeing on food and money, and began to resort to acts such as cutting, one of the few ways she felt in control of her crazy life.
I found MADNESS a fascinating and insightful look into the life of a person with bipolar disorder, and having friends and family members of friends afflicted with it, I found this book very helpful in allowing me to understood a lot more of what having bipolar disorder is all about. Marya brings the reader into her madness, and shows us the pain she has gone through and her journey to the road of recovery.
Marya Hornbacher, despite the hellish life she has led, is a gifted writer and it shows what any one can do, no matter what their state of mine is in. This is not her first book, and I hope it is not her last.
Book Review: Wasted with a new title
Summary: 2 Stars
I have read both of Marya's books and while I do believe she has suffered from both a mental illness and eating disorder, I find parts of it to be either exaggerated or written for creative flow. Also, in a way it is like the same book twice as she covers the very same years she covered in her previous novel Wasted. Only here we hear nothing of her problems being realated to being bulimic or anorexic but rather she was bipolar from the age of 5 and no one knew.
What I find to be unbelievable is her recall verbatim from the age of 5. Who really can remember their childhood or even last year that vividly? Also, being in a state of disorientation begs the question again of how believable the incidents are in the novel.
I find that as in Wasted Marya tends to blame society, the health care system anyone but herself for the problems she has faced last time she wrote it was her against the diet industry, against the culture of being thin equates with beauty now it's the healthcare industry not recognizing mental illness for what it truly is a life debilitating illness with no real cure.
The most disturbing concept she brought forth that compelled me to review this is her theory of being bi-polar by age 5 and that by age 10 or 11 the psychiatrists she had seen couldn't see that, I am sorry there are reasons why a child is not given a psychological diagnosis a child's mind is still growing and developing and to suggest giving psychoactive drugs to a 10 year old is not only irresponsible but dangerous. I have a feeling this is not the last we will hear of Marya as mental diagnosis can and do change, I would not be surprised if she were to develop other personality disorders along the way.
Book Review: in the troubled mind
Summary: 5 Stars
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...