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Madness: A Bipolar Life | 
 enlarge | Author: Marya Hornbacher
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $11.47
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 1978
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 299
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0618754458
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.8950092
EAN: 9780618754458
ASIN: 0618754458
Publication Date: April 9, 2008
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Product Description
An astonishing dispatch from inside the belly of bipolar disorder, reflecting major new insights
When 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 From the Inside Looking Out July 7, 2008
Having recently entered into the confusing world of having a child diagnosed with bi-polar, trying to tease out a distinction between mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction, watching different psychiatrists prescribe different medications, along with the child being a hostile patient, i.e. doesn't want to talk about what's going on---this book is a brilliant insight into what's going on inside a rapid cycle bi-polar head. I recognized some actions of my son throughout this book and finally got a sense of what it must be like inside his brain. This book gave me a new appreciation for the pain he is trying to hide or run away from. And also gave me insight into how I can better be there for him in his mental illness while not enabling his addictive behavior. This illness is not fun and there seems to be a lot of differences in how to treat it, especially as the field of study on bi-polar appears to be expanding and new treatments are on the rise but not consistently throughout the psychiatric profession.
Marya Hornbacher has done a great service for me by writing in such vivid prose her ongoing dilemma. Admittedly, my reading on bi-polar is not exhaustive, but this is the first book I've read that truly captured the tyranny of this illness. Ms. Hornbacher is a truly gifted writer. I do not envy her the ongoing struggle she faces, but she sure dug deep to write this. Throughout the the painful descriptions of behavior and feelings shines a courage that lifts my hopes for my own son.
 truthful but discouraging June 24, 2008
I have a daughter who was diagnosed with early onset bipolar at age 11. She is now 22 with a 20 month old child and alcoholic (probably bipolar but won't seek help)husband. Marya's book was written with graphic discriptions of manic and depressive episodes. You can really feel her pain. This book should be great for someone who doesn't realize the trauma and pain that goes with this disorder. I was left with a sad, discouraged feeling. Although there are brief times of remission, I already felt that there is no way out of this nightmare. Maybe Marya meant the book to be that way as this is a serious illness with no cure just treatment sometimes effective and sometimes not.
Excellent June 18, 2008
Excellent book. Riveting and exciting look at the life of a very manic bipolar woman. Easy to read but hard to put down.
Madness is very insightful June 16, 2008
I have seen what Bipolar can do to people. This was really an eye opener.
Insight into Bipolar thinking June 3, 2008
Being the mother of a daughter who has bipolar disorder, I found this book to be very helpful in my quest for understanding of this very serious illness. It is written in first person narrative and is very intense. I wonder what will happen next each time I read a chapter.
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