Book #28, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
Well, as you can deduce from the title, this is a memoir by a man with bipolar disease (is that the correct term? He used it interchangeably with "disorder", so I'm just going to go with it) and his family who nearly all had it too - his father and brother have it, and his mother had severe depression and hallucinations (without the manic episodes of bipolar disorder). His sister is the only one who didn't have it.
I would say this is an excellent resource to try to learn what it's like - obviously it's not very well understood, since it's still kind of a mystery even to the medical field, and his attempts to describe the hypomania, the mania, and the depression cycles is a lot easier to follow than most descriptions I've read. (A lot of times those are just...lyrical poetry and weird rushing thoughts I guess, they're trying to capture what it's like I know, but I just end up sitting there thinking "I don't know what any of this is supposed to mean" and it goes on for pages and pages and I get confused and bored and then I feel like a horrible person for not understanding something that obviously I won't understand unless I am actually bipolar.) Anyway! It's also not as depressing as one might think; no suicides (not even any attempts if I remember right, though he comes close plenty of times) and even though some terrible things happen, in the end they survive and they have their lives and they stay a family that loves each other. Man, you don't get that very often even in memoirs about people who DON'T have severe mental disorders.
Mostly though, it's a chronicle of him running away from his illness (and consequently, his family). That's a little hard to read and understand, when his family needs him because Dad is manic and Mom doesn't know what to do and the author goes off to South America because he's afraid to go home because it might make HIM crazy too. So instead he goes crazy somewhere else. Yeah I don't know, but that's the point I think, and he finally finishes running and goes home. And after some more disasters when he goes off his meds, because he doesn't like them and he feels fine and maybe he's "grown out of it" (yep his actual words), then he finally learns, with the rest of his family, that the disease is part of him and it's not going away, and if he just takes his pills he'll be fine and they'll all be fine and in the end they're all happy, they have families, they see each other all the time and it just made me feel good that for once a book was written and was a success that was about a family with huge problems that didn't get all dysfunctional and angry and hate-filled.
Anyway, as learning about bipolar disorder goes, it's interesting. His wandering and running away gets tedious after a while - I know, it's a memoir, obviously he's gotta be honest...but man, I can be honest too and say I didn't understand like any of the stuff he did. (And not all of it was done while manic or depressed - some of it was just being young during the 70's and I will never understand the 70's guys, never ever.) Anyway, there is also a lot of swearing in it, just so you know, because it's full of people with extremely high emotions and violent mood swings, and well, they're always yelling. You know.
Total book count: 28/75 - 37.3%
Total page count: 8032/22500 - 35.7%
Up next: Man, before I tried to read Boone I was 4 books ahead of schedule, and now I've been 1-2 books behind schedule ever since. Stupid Boone ruined everything. Anyway, still plowing through The Magic Mountain, but probably a few months out on that - I started Elven Star, but left it in my office today (d'oh) so I won't be reading that this weekend. And The Soulkeepers on my Kindle, but it's getting kind of lame so I'm not sure how likely I am to finish that. I'm 30% done; if it's still lame at halfway I'll bail. And I'm going to start something short and fast so I can get myself caught up!
I would say this is an excellent resource to try to learn what it's like - obviously it's not very well understood, since it's still kind of a mystery even to the medical field, and his attempts to describe the hypomania, the mania, and the depression cycles is a lot easier to follow than most descriptions I've read. (A lot of times those are just...lyrical poetry and weird rushing thoughts I guess, they're trying to capture what it's like I know, but I just end up sitting there thinking "I don't know what any of this is supposed to mean" and it goes on for pages and pages and I get confused and bored and then I feel like a horrible person for not understanding something that obviously I won't understand unless I am actually bipolar.) Anyway! It's also not as depressing as one might think; no suicides (not even any attempts if I remember right, though he comes close plenty of times) and even though some terrible things happen, in the end they survive and they have their lives and they stay a family that loves each other. Man, you don't get that very often even in memoirs about people who DON'T have severe mental disorders.
Mostly though, it's a chronicle of him running away from his illness (and consequently, his family). That's a little hard to read and understand, when his family needs him because Dad is manic and Mom doesn't know what to do and the author goes off to South America because he's afraid to go home because it might make HIM crazy too. So instead he goes crazy somewhere else. Yeah I don't know, but that's the point I think, and he finally finishes running and goes home. And after some more disasters when he goes off his meds, because he doesn't like them and he feels fine and maybe he's "grown out of it" (yep his actual words), then he finally learns, with the rest of his family, that the disease is part of him and it's not going away, and if he just takes his pills he'll be fine and they'll all be fine and in the end they're all happy, they have families, they see each other all the time and it just made me feel good that for once a book was written and was a success that was about a family with huge problems that didn't get all dysfunctional and angry and hate-filled.
Anyway, as learning about bipolar disorder goes, it's interesting. His wandering and running away gets tedious after a while - I know, it's a memoir, obviously he's gotta be honest...but man, I can be honest too and say I didn't understand like any of the stuff he did. (And not all of it was done while manic or depressed - some of it was just being young during the 70's and I will never understand the 70's guys, never ever.) Anyway, there is also a lot of swearing in it, just so you know, because it's full of people with extremely high emotions and violent mood swings, and well, they're always yelling. You know.
Total book count: 28/75 - 37.3%
Total page count: 8032/22500 - 35.7%
Up next: Man, before I tried to read Boone I was 4 books ahead of schedule, and now I've been 1-2 books behind schedule ever since. Stupid Boone ruined everything. Anyway, still plowing through The Magic Mountain, but probably a few months out on that - I started Elven Star, but left it in my office today (d'oh) so I won't be reading that this weekend. And The Soulkeepers on my Kindle, but it's getting kind of lame so I'm not sure how likely I am to finish that. I'm 30% done; if it's still lame at halfway I'll bail. And I'm going to start something short and fast so I can get myself caught up!