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For the more than 2 million people with bipolar disorder, life can be a constant struggle to manage the extreme swings in mood and energy. For the subset with a severe form of the disease called bipolar I, achieving that balance can be even more difficult. Marya Hornbacher's new from-the-trenches memoir, "Madness: A Bipolar Life," offers a disturbing glimpse into the mind of someone with that condition.
"Madness" finds Hornbacher alternately drunk, hospitalized, starving, compulsively shopping, screaming, crying, cutting and combinations thereof.
What is your goal with "Madness?"
I want to show [people] that it's scary but it's not foreign. These people are people. Don't back away.
My great hope was to bring someone both inside the mind of someone with bipolar and inside the mind of a regular person with a mental illness.
What are the biggest misconceptions about people with mental illness?
The idea that this is about character, that it's not really an illness and it's a character flaw.
I'd invite all those people who believe that to an anatomy-of-the-brain class, and they can learn that it is a brain disease! It's not about being a bad person or committing sin.
It's really backwards and anti-modern to think that you should just be able to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
Now there's a caveat to that: As soon as you know you have bipolar, you better take your meds. Those are your bootstraps.
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