Madness: A Bipolar Life

‘Madness - A Bipolar Life' by Marya Hornbacher is a true account of her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood with undiagnosed bipolar. I read this book because I had previously read her first book, ‘Wasted' about the eating disorders she suffered and had felt that her writing style was significantly above the average for personal accounts. I was intrigued to see if her follow up autobiography was as gripping and competently written (which it was). Hornbacher is not just a ‘five minute wonder' capitalising on her ‘screw-up's‘, she is, I suspect, a born writer - insightful, intelligent, perceptive, a true wordsmith, leaving me slightly envious of her gift.. There is always something slightly uncomfortable about reading personal stories; they are after all voyeuristic and I read with the 'car crash' mentality - you want to look but you know you shouldn't.

In ‘Madness' we follow many of the same life events that she wrote about in her debut novel, ‘Wasted' but it does not feel repetitive because she has a new take on things. Previously there was a little too much psychoanalysis going on for my taste, a book clearly of its era, written by a woman who had barely left adolescence, a time when all psychological disorders were believed to be caused by poor parenting and faulty thinking. In ‘Madness' the same life events are reviewed through a new lens, enlightened by her subsequent diagnosis of bipolar, which quite phenomenally no one picked up until her twenties. Bipolar was not considered an illness that children could or would suffer from. Her wild and erratic behaviour was seen as a reaction to her childhood and her eating disorder a sign of her deep distress but they failed to realise that she also had additional problems (many people have the co-existence of different health problems). Many children who have, or develop psychiatric symptoms appear to come from disordered families, it is simplistically enticing to presume that this is the cause of their problems, when in reality the very genes that cause abnormalities in the parents are handed down to the child who, not surprisingly, will often develop similar illnesses. What appears as nurture is in reality nature. Hornbach's father suffered with deep depression and uncontrolled outbursts and several uncles and a Grandfather were also similarly effected and a Grandmother had food issues. She frankly didn't stand a chance.

The book is as fast paced as her mood changes. One really gets a sense of the chaos which the illness inflicts upon her and all in her wake but also witness the amazing creativity and perceptiveness of thought, all be it too rapid and unruly to utilise most of the time. It is an illness that knows no bounds and leads the sufferer to engage in dangerous and self- destructive behaviours unable to exert control and needing to find a release to let out some of the pressure that is building up. It is unfocused and unrestrained but the sheer exuberance, joyfulness and illusory freedom of the sufferer is also highly attractive to others. But there is a darker side where the unpredictability, the dangerous behaviours and the moods mean that individuals are too high maintenance and all too often lose their friends. It is so explosive that it cannot be contained. To spend all of her childhood spinning in and out of different mood states must have been confusing and intolerable at times, especially when no one knew for sure that she could not help it. She binged, purged, starved herself, exercised excessively, took drugs, hardly slept and slept around indiscriminately. I cannot help but feel for her parents who in an era that blamed the behaviour of one's children entirely on parenting, they must have wondered what they had done wrong and how they could rein her in. Her behaviour and constant self-destructiveness and attention seeking activities must have appeared voluntary and self-inflicted when in reality she had little control. Hornbacher had a brain chemistry problem which was independent of their parenting. It was exhausting for all concerned, forcing her to live long periods with the intensity of someone in a constant ‘fight or flight' mode, firing on full cylinders, apparently full of energy but at the same time wearing the mind and body out, leaving her tired of life, quite understandably seeing no future or reason to live.

Hornbacher's account is of interest to anyone who cares about the human being and it's many forms. It would also offer such comfort to those with Bipolar and their family and for parents whose children seem wild and harder to control and contain than the norm. I am never sure that the personal suffering that such disorders cause justify the frequently positive traits but there is no doubt that people who have to endure such conditions often seem to have extra dimensions that benefit us all. I can't say if the cost is too high for I do not have Bipolar.