A firsthand look at schizoaffective and bipolar disorder.
In an absorbing debut memoir, journalist Rensin recounts in chilling detail his “superior and specific epistemological access to the lived experience of being mad.” Distinguishing his own psychosis from a popularized conception of mental illness as “diffuse unhappiness and attendant social struggles,” he describes the violent episodes and “agitated emptiness” that led to repeated hospitalizations and often frustrating encounters with “nearly two dozen therapists”; the multiple medications (four different pills, twice a day) that keep his symptoms in check; and, most emphatically, his “particular way of being in the world.” Although he sees psychosis as “a medical problem and a social problem and a personal problem, a problem of health-care policy and criminal justice and housing and labor,” Rensin does not intend his memoir “to educate or enlighten.” Rather, he began writing because he believed “in a magical way, that by doing so, I could consign going mad to the past; turn it into an area of my expertise but not an area of my experience.” That goal, he has come to realize, is unrealistic: Even though medication has helped him to function, he is cognizant always of the possibility of a breakdown, a fear “very near but out of sight, like something waiting to attack.” A bipolar mood episode, he reveals, does not rise up suddenly, and “psychosis comes and goes without warning.” He constantly worries that he is getting worse: unusually sensitive, prone to tantrums, “rude, unable to read tone, and impulsive and forgetful and disorganized.” While he claims not to want “to change anything,” his historical overview of psychiatry, examination of the vagaries of diagnosis and therapy, and stark depiction of his own visceral experiences offer unique insight into the meaning of madness.
An intimate look at a tormented mind.