About this title: In her trademark wry and self-revealing voice, the bestselling author of "Wasted" tells her new story of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and takes readers inside her own desperate attempts to control her violently careening mood swings.
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Description: Very good. Very minimal damage to the cover (no holes or tears, only minimal scuff marks), in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, minimal to no highlighting/under. read more
Description: Good. Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket not necessarily included minimal wear to binding, majority of pages undamaged, minimal to no highlighting/underlining of text, no missing p. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
"This was my first Marya Hornbacher book. I purchased it because my daughter-in-law was just diagnosed as bipolar.
I fell in love with Marya and her writing style. She is brilliant as she conveys her experiences being bipolar with wit and honesty.
She does talk at length about her anorexia, but this book is about bipolar, not eating disorders.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about the complexities of the bipolar mind. It will teach you what to expect, how to tackle the disease or disorder and and give you hope as well as entertain you at the same time."
"Let me just start out by saying that I absolutely adored Wasted. Madness just didn't measure up.
The whole time I was reading it, I felt like I might as well be reading about an entirely different person. In Wasted, Hornbacher seemed to define herself by her eating disorder--she was truly intimate with the disorder and she let her audience know this unflinchingly, sometimes making it seem like a best friend and other times like a worst enemy. With Madness, though, the eating disorder is skimmed over. It's mentioned, of course, but if I hadn't known any better, I would have thought that it was just some phase Hornbacher went through instead of the life-crumbling whirlwind described in Wasted.
But while Hornbacher seemed totally in tune with her eating disorder in Wasted, almost enough to seem a little proud of it, the same cannot be said of her new disorder in Madness. It seemed like she suddenly felt like she had to make bipolar disorder responsible for EVERYTHING in her lifetime and just dismiss everything else (i.e. anorexia, bulimia) as a side effect of bipolar. I think that with her new diagnosis, Hornbacher lost all perspective of who she was.
This brings me to another issue: since Hornbacher seems to have lost all sense of self, the depth of the writing is severely affected. Hornbacher does the same thing over and over again in this book: she's crazy, she parties, she drinks, she gets hospitalized. The 'craziness' itself did nothing for me. In Wasted, I could feel Hornbacher spiraling out of control. (i.e. She finds out she's pregnant and throws herself down the stairs, she binges insanely and is unable to stop herself, etc.) In Madness, the craziness is shallow, for lack of a better word. There are only a few instances where she truly demonstrates this insanity, and even those parts feel a little depthless. (i.e. She overdoses on her medication and her husband has to take her to the hospital once again.)
And much as I hate to say it, some of this felt a little bit exaggerated. Specifically, her behavior during her manic episodes. I never once remember her acting like this during Wasted. She seemed like your run-of-the-mill crazy person, or at least the run-of-the-mill crazy person the way they are depicted on comedy television. (i.e. Laughing at things that are not funny, rambling on about nothing, etc.) This was part of what I meant by the depthless craziness. It could just be due to the meds she was taking but that somehow seems a little hard to believe--even when she was hospitalized at 52 pounds in Wasted, she still seemed to retain some sense of reality. She had enough sense to know she needed help at least. She never had that kind of sense in Madness and it continually frustrated me and even rang a little bit untrue.
Final verdict: Three stars. Marya's prose is still brilliant and there were some parts that definitely merited praise. But unless you're specifically looking for a book on bipolar disorder, skip Madness and pick up Wasted instead."
"Like Wasted, this is a compelling look at a difficult subject. After struggling with terrible eating disorders for most of her life, Hornbacher realized that they were in fact caused by an even greater underlying problem: she has the most severe form of bipolar disorder it is possible to have. Having gone untreated for so long, it proved resistant to medication, and she was plagued by repeated bouts of madness after Wasted was published.
In this book, she takes an unflinching, but ultimately hopeful look at her condition, and in the process gives what must be one of the clearest descriptions of madness ever written.
Note for the squeamish: the book starts on a particularly gruesome note, but really does get easier to read."
"At the age of 24, Marya Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I bipolar disorder. This realization of why she thinks and behaves the way she does did not come at the outset of her disease. Rather, it came after years and years of cycling through incessant mania and debilitating depression. Hornbacher recalls moments from her childhood, such as her terrible insomnia and inability to stop jabbering flying from topic to topic with no coherent train of thought. She tried to poke fun at herself as all the other children in her class labeled her crazy, but it was clear that while Hornbacher knew she was different, she could never quite figure out what it was that made her so. Hornbacher also had an interesting home life - with parents who were violently fighting one minute, and lovingly playing Scrabble with her the next. It is unclear from Hornbacher's stories what her parents were able to recognize in their daughter as unusual and what they engdendered as a result of their own erratic behavior. As she grows older, Hornbacher's episodes become more severe. She begins starving herself at a young age and develops anorexia/bulimia (the subject of her memoir, Wasted). To alleviate her internal suffering, Hornbacher turns to cutting - one time getting so out of control that she nearly kills herself and is rushed to the hospital. Once there, the doctors seem intent on labeling her as depressed - a common diagnosis for girls with eating disorders. But, the medications only seem to make Hornbacher more crazy. In response, the doctors increase her levels of medication. Hornbacher turns to her own brand of medicine, and within years she becomes a full-blown alcoholic. Her condition prevents any medication which may have worked, from having any noticeable effect. Finally, Hornbacher receives her proper diagnosis, but it is years before the realization of her illness sets in, and before she curtails her destructive and suicidal behavior. Madness is an interesting memoir. Repeatedly I found myself thinking, "Ugh! This woman is SO ANNOYING! She's self-absorbed and self-destructive. She is ruining the lives of those who are trying to help her and never listens to her doctors (even the ones who are intelligent enough to get the diagnosis and the med levels correct)." But, then I had to remind myself that these behaviors are the direct result of her mental illness. In this way, I found Hornbacher's memoir amazingly honest. She did not pepper her stories with much self-reflection, and while frightening, it was refreshing to read this type of book from the perspective of someone who isn't deluded into thinking that she now has all the answers, or that she will lead a stress-free wholly positive life now that she has her diagnosis in hand. The issues raised by this book are numerous, but in particular I found interesting Hornbacher's memories of her childhood. People are quick to belive that children are "resilient," that they don't experience trauma like adults do, that they don't remember or internalize, that they simply can't suffer from depression, bipolar, or schizophrenia. Hornbacher's memories suggest otherwise. They suggest, at the very least, that there are indicators that the disease that may manifest at quite an early age. The question being whether treatment on children is safe or effective, and if anything can be done to prevent the progression of the disesase. Hornbacher's experience also emphasizes the relation between eating disorders, cutting, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, and other destructive behviors and mental illness - they feed on each other in ways that often make it difficult to detemine the origins of a given problem. Madness is written as a memoir - it is Hornbacher's story - it is not a clinical examination of bipolar disorder - and it does not answer many questions that I had about the history of bipolar treatment and the state of bipolar disorder in our country today- in terms of the research that is being done, the medication available to people, and how therapy can be used, if at all, to deal with the symptoms. But, what this book does do is open a window into an often misunderstood disease and ignite a dialogue that will hopefully lead to answers and more efficient diagnoses."
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