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When Marya Hornbacher published her acclaimed first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have a piece of shattering knowledge: the underlying reason for her distress. At age 24, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disease there is.
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is William Styron's true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless facade lay a dangerous secret - for the better part of her life, Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal". In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty.
An electrifying true story of one young woman's nightmarish descent into the hell of schizophrenia and her courageous battle to rejoin the real world, such is the story of Lori Schiller. Once she had it all - a loving family, devoted friends, intelligence, and opportunity. Then at age 15 she began to suffer from symptoms of schizophrenia, hearing voices that began to take over her life. At 23, she committed herself to a private mental institution and spent the next 7 years waging a war against the voices that urged her to kill her family, her doctor, herself. This account of a journey into and out of madness is at once gripping, heartening, and ultimately triumphant.
Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
Bipolar is one of the most commonly diagnosed emotional/psychiatric condition and diagnosis tends to come when one is in one's late teens or early 20s. And yet almost nothing has been written about it from eye level and a young person's perspective. Welcome to the Jungle fills that gap with its upfront, empowering approach to the challenges of being diagnosed bipolar. Both humorous and immensely honest, it offers a true "in the trenches" perspective young listeners will trust.
When Marya Hornbacher published her acclaimed first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have a piece of shattering knowledge: the underlying reason for her distress. At age 24, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disease there is.
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is William Styron's true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless facade lay a dangerous secret - for the better part of her life, Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal". In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty.
An electrifying true story of one young woman's nightmarish descent into the hell of schizophrenia and her courageous battle to rejoin the real world, such is the story of Lori Schiller. Once she had it all - a loving family, devoted friends, intelligence, and opportunity. Then at age 15 she began to suffer from symptoms of schizophrenia, hearing voices that began to take over her life. At 23, she committed herself to a private mental institution and spent the next 7 years waging a war against the voices that urged her to kill her family, her doctor, herself. This account of a journey into and out of madness is at once gripping, heartening, and ultimately triumphant.
Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
Bipolar is one of the most commonly diagnosed emotional/psychiatric condition and diagnosis tends to come when one is in one's late teens or early 20s. And yet almost nothing has been written about it from eye level and a young person's perspective. Welcome to the Jungle fills that gap with its upfront, empowering approach to the challenges of being diagnosed bipolar. Both humorous and immensely honest, it offers a true "in the trenches" perspective young listeners will trust.
In this magisterial study of the relationship between illness and art, the best-selling author of An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison, brings an entirely fresh understanding to the work and life of Robert Lowell (1917-1977), whose intense, complex, and personal verse left a lasting mark on the English language and changed the public discourse about private matters.
Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison---who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with writerly elegance and passion---could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. In spare and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled severe dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia.
"I was frustrated," says Erin Callinan about the genesis of her critically-acclaimed memoir Beautifully Bipolar. "I could no longer sit back while conversation surrounding mental illness was negative, scary, insulting, and inaccurate. I have a voice, and I have a story. I felt a passion, and I went with it. I just started writing: no judgments, limits, or rules." Her purpose: To challenge people to address and remove the stigma associated with mental illness.
Wendy K. Williamson shows the effects of bipolar disorder on the mind, body and soul of those who suffer from it. Despite Wendy's struggles, this is a not a book that brings the listener down, rather a road map for wellness and a vastly informative, yet entertaining, guided tour of bipolar disorder for those who don't understand it. With her perceptive self-awareness, the author is equal parts comedienne and educator, and she tells the unbelievable highs and lows of her story with a clear, grounded candor.
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
We have learned much about depression, but what about its opposite? Why hasn't the human emotion that lifts us, inspires us, drives us on, and makes life worth living been discussed and celebrated? In this outstanding book, best-selling author Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison explores exuberance in all its unrestrained, joyful energy, and shows how its unique vitality is essential to our existence.
Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.
From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual". With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at 14, alcohol poisoning at 16, blacked-out sexual experience at 19, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at 22.
For many years people have held the belief that bipolar disorder only affects adults, but recent findings suggest that having a bipolar child is not only possible, it is actually more and more common these days. While adults generally treat the disorder with the help of medication, therapy and pharmaceuticals, the same approach cannot really be taken with children, especially younger ones, and that's precisely why the Bipolar Survival Guide for Children by Heather Rose was written.
Does religious experience come from God, or is it just the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on brain research on Carmelite nuns that has attracted major media attention and provocative new research in near-death experiences, The Spiritual Brain proves that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. The authors make a convincing case for what many in science are loathe to consider: that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.
Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. This was it - his big dreams were finally coming true. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.
In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit. Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. "But it isn't all sweetness and light sabers."
I downloaded this title today, so I'd have a copy when I return the borrowed paper book version I have. It quickly became apparent that there are parts missing, so I began reading along and this is certainly *not* the Unabridged version.
On a single page several paragraphs were chopped in half. The book, which has four parts, has been whittled down to three. Someone, somewhere, has a very loose definition of unabridged.
Still, I'm enjoying what I hear. I just wonder what I'm going to miss from the continuation of the audiobook.
38 of 40 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
This book is five stars, but the audiobook is roughly half of the paper book. Well done, read by Jamison herself, but leaves out a lot of what makes the book great. You still get the core of the story, and it makes sense, but you loose all the little details and other pieces that make this a wonderful story.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful
Richly written description of the very difficult life lead by a suffering manic-depressive. I highly recommend this book. Its not just a study on the illness, you get this great insight from a brilliant woman and its a riveting story of her life.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful
The first book I read by Jamison was "Manic Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression" that she wrote with Frederick Goodwin. 1262 pages. Although huge and technical, it is surprisingly readable. (I skipped all the parts comparing the drawbacks of different studies) It's the bible of bipolar disorder.
So this book was quite a change, a short and very personal book. I'm glad I heard it aloud and I'm glad she read it herself. I disagree with the people who found her voice dull and unemotional. That's what therapists sound like. If you listen carefully, you can hear the tiniest cracks in her voice when she talks about the losses in her life. Not unemotional. Dignified and subtle and heartbreaking.
One thing she says in the book that might interest Audible listeners is that she lost her ability to read when she was on a high dose of lithium. She'd read a paragraph, have no idea what it said, then have to read it again. And again. She had to have her boyfriend read aloud to her. Lowering her dose apparently helped improve her reading, enough to read and distill shelves full of difficult technical articles into "only" 1262 pages. A heroic accomplishment.
Most bipolars I've talked to say they have problems reading books - they can handle articles. They're not all on lithium, and those that are are not on high doses. I think it's a consequence of the disorder. Thank goodness we have Audible for popular books. I'd love it if Audible would offer her magnum opus, but it's an absurdly huge technical book with a limited audience. Maybe Amazon will loosen up on its "read out loud" feature so it's available not just on physical Kindles but on phones, pcs and macs.
16 of 17 people found this review helpful
What would have made An Unquiet Mind better?
To say nothing of the outstanding work and writing style of Dr. Jamison, this is a piss poor audiobook. I happened to have my paperback version (bought the book to stick notes in for a class I am in) on me when I was listening to the final parts, and I decided to try and follow along with her narration. I was shocked and disappointed to find that the narration skipped over parts of the book, sometimes mere sentences, other times multiple paragraphs of material. Upon further analysis, the parts skipped were typically detailed descriptions or otherwise not all that "necessary" information...but this shouldn't be something left up to audible to decide- why aren't they letting the listener hear the ENTIRE book? I feel seriously shortchanged by this, and I wonder how often they do it with the other books on this suddenly suspect website...
13 of 14 people found this review helpful
The end was truly beautiful. Every single word in this book reminds me of my own struggle with manic depressive illness.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful
I give her a lot of credit for writing about herself. This book has potential to help a lot of people. Her voice is mundane, howerver.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful
I am extremely humbled by the author's story and journey through life while enduring the sufferings of Manic Depressive Illness. I found it incredibly inspiring to hear this through the voice of the author, knowing that reading in itself had at one point been a mentally painful struggle.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
What disappointed you about An Unquiet Mind?
Whole chunks of the book are missing. I bought the audiobook to help me stay concentrated as I read the actual book and it's not helping because I have to stop and figure out where its being read from. Whole paragraphs skipped. Very upsetting.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
It helps one to understand the nature of the illness and the havoc it can cause. Not a pretty picture but it leaves the reader with hope.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I listened to it all in one day and not one point did I stop listening.
It was incredibly insightful, and moving for someone with bipolar
I cried at the end!!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Perfectly captivates the beauty of suffering and the endless pain of feeling more than a human can ever handle on its own.
No matter what year it was written it still captures every single aspect of this mental illness and its struggles and what a true battle it is for all of us.
I'm eternally greatful for her ability to put it into words, into sentences that make sense about the madness that I was condemned to live in.
Made me feel less alone for that moment.
Thank You, Kay R. J.
Firstly this is a clear account of the effects of bi polar disorder but...
The delivery is flat and matter of fact and I didn't feel much of the emotion the writer must have experienced.
I obviously finished it, but am going to go back and listen to it again now. So much information and raw emotion on an incredibly sensitive topic. Thank you for making the way I feel less 'off the scale'.
Insightful, in particular as it covers Kay's life with manic depressive illness since her teens, along her path of becoming educated and on to how it has both impacted and benefitted her professional development as a clinical and research psychiatrist.
The three words that come to mind are reality, clarity and hope. I enjoyed this story very much.
Some parts were struggle to hear, because the book is so amazinly good. Explains so good about the effects that bipolar disease can have on one's life.
insight into the mind of someone with manic depression. listened to it all within 24 hours.