Madness: A Bipolar Life
An astonishing dispatch from inside the belly of bipolar disorder, reflecting major new insightsWhen Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life....
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An astonishing dispatch from inside the belly of bipolar disorder, reflecting major new insightsWhen Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder.In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage -- where bipolar always beckons -- is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.Madness delivers the revelation that Hornbacher is not alone: millions of people in America today are struggling with a variety of disorders that may disguise their bipolar disease. And Hornbacher's fiercely self-aware portrait of her own bipolar as early as age four will powerfully change, too, the current debate on whether bipolar in children actually exists.Ten years after Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, this storm of a memoir will revolutionize our understanding of bipolar disorder.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780618754458 (0618754458)
Publish date: April 9th 2008
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages no: 299
Edition language: English
Madness: A Bipolar Life Marya Hornbacher Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 1, 2009) ISBN-10: 0547237804 ISBN-13: 978-0547237800 I actually didn't finish this book. Marya Hornbacher writes well, and goes into depth about what depression and bipolar, but after th...
Barely 3... It's my fault. I read this after unquiet mind. I but I still feel strongly that the writing style and pacing of unquiet and it's description of bipolar illness is dead on. This one had this coating of creative writing that sorts tainted it for me.... More thoughts to come
Barely 3... It's my fault. I read this after unquiet mind. I but I still feel strongly that the writing style and pacing of unquiet and it's description of bipolar illness is dead on. This one had this coating of creative writing that sorts tainted it for me.... More thoughts to come
I could not put this book down. It is a fascinating account of a lifelong struggle with bipolar illness and the effect it has not only on the person diagnosed but on her friends and family as well. Marya (pronounced MAR-ya) Hornbacher is an incredible writer and I was constantly amazed at the idea t...