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| Madness: A Bipolar Life (Unabridged) | 
| Author: Marya Hornbacher
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $14.68
You Save: $13.27 (47%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  41 reviews
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B00188ABLQ
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Riveting October 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this book in 2 days and felt the rush and lows - if you or someone you love has bipolar, depression, PTSD, or even is just plain crazy as as a loon you can hear Marya's voice that imperfection is ok...if anything i learned that much. My favorite quote in this book is this:
"But if you're not trying to be perfect then how do you know if you're doing things right"?
Addiction Feeding Bipolar September 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Marya Hornbacher has poured her heart and soul onto every page of this horrifying account of bipolar disorder beginning in childhood.
However, the entire story demonstrates the loopholes in conventional psychiatry that almost exclusively focuses on treating the mind while leaving the body and spirit out of the equation.
This memoir demonstrates how intertwined addiction and bipolar are and how hard it is to treat one without treating the other. Although Hornbacher overcame anorexia, her eating addiction just became less extreme and she traded starving herself for drugs and sex. The addict within her wanted her to be mentally ill so it would have an excuse to perpetuate itself.
Within the medical journals, within metaphysics books, there is so much information on techniques for healing from mental illness, yet conventional psychiatry focuses almost exclusively on psychopharmacology. This is ironic, because if you have a chemical imbalance to begin with, you are going to be more sensitive to side effects than the average person. Although for those who have bipolar disorder, medication is often a necessary part of the mental health equation, it should not be the entire equation. There are so many ways to help balance brain chemistry. Meditation, nutrition, exercise, and deep breathing are just a few of them.
Hornbacher did end up with an exceptional psychiatrist who never gave up on finding a way to get through to his patient. What returned Hornbacher to functionality was a combination of such elements as medication, light treatment, and nutrition.
 A Poor Book for Voyeurs September 6, 2008
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is not literature, even though the author poses as a writer. This is a girl's diary, and a bad one as that.
Marya, more as good marketer than a good writer, gives us voyeurs what we want: a peep hole into the life of someone extreme, a lifestyle that most of us, in our boring 9 to 5 lives, maybe would like to taste once in a while. We live in a world of celebrities, of gossip, of tabloids paying millions of dollars for the pictures of a newborn. Marya was very lucky to carve a niche, as the troubled teen who cuts herself, has promiscuous sex and a wild life. Who wouldn't want to peek into that? Had she tried to make a herself a name with a non-fiction book, she wouldn't exist as an author today.
But literature this isn't. The book is totally monotonous in its maniac self-absorption. Bipolar? Where is the depression? Where is the self-analysis that comes with a reflexive mood? Not there. It is just a succession of very superficial daily happenings, one after the other, and their superficial effect on the author. In order to build the story, the impressions she brings from her childhood sound totally fake and constructed. Who the heck remembers vivid feelings when you were a 8 year-old?
This is a lost opportunity for a reflection on the existential and philosophical aspects of bipolar disorder, on the role of the bipolar person in the world. Again, this is just a diary.
 Wasted with a new title August 27, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have read both of Marya's books and while I do believe she has suffered from both a mental illness and eating disorder, I find parts of it to be either exaggerated or written for creative flow. Also, in a way it is like the same book twice as she covers the very same years she covered in her previous novel Wasted. Only here we hear nothing of her problems being realated to being bulimic or anorexic but rather she was bipolar from the age of 5 and no one knew.
What I find to be unbelievable is her recall verbatim from the age of 5. Who really can remember their childhood or even last year that vividly? Also, being in a state of disorientation begs the question again of how believable the incidents are in the novel.
I find that as in Wasted Marya tends to blame society, the health care system anyone but herself for the problems she has faced last time she wrote it was her against the diet industry, against the culture of being thin equates with beauty now it's the healthcare industry not recognizing mental illness for what it truly is a life debilitating illness with no real cure.
The most disturbing concept she brought forth that compelled me to review this is her theory of being bi-polar by age 5 and that by age 10 or 11 the psychiatrists she had seen couldn't see that, I am sorry there are reasons why a child is not given a psychological diagnosis a child's mind is still growing and developing and to suggest giving psychoactive drugs to a 10 year old is not only irresponsible but dangerous. I have a feeling this is not the last we will hear of Marya as mental diagnosis can and do change, I would not be surprised if she were to develop other personality disorders along the way.
uncalled for August 18, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
I did not like the way this book was written at all. I also thought she was just rambling on and on. She allowed herself to live in so much madness for so long because she would not listen to her Dr.s advise and when she knew one of the Doctors were not giving her the right treatment by knowing she was indeed drinking to much or even drinking while taking meds at all then dismissing it altogether she did not seek someone else to treat her even though she knew her drinking was way out of control and it helped her mania become worse. She went through a lot as well as putting her family through a lot. Mostly it was because she would not do what she needed to do to get well and live a close to normal life that she could for so many years.
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