Product Description

Writing a prize-winning play, spending a week doing nothing but build Lego constructions, and sinking all his savings into wildly impractical money-making schemes - these are just some results of the periods of intense creative energy Brian Adams has experienced throughout his adult life. As a sufferer of bipolar disorder, Brian Adams has been hospitalized several times with debilitating depression and undergone electric shock treatment, and gained and lost 11 jobs. This account provides an insight into how it feels to experience bipolar disorder.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #550980 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Brian Adams first trained as a baker, then worked in youth and community services for many years.

Customer Reviews

The Pits and The Pendulum
A great book - a very honest account of bipolar illness. The story of this man's life is told in a humerous way with plenty of criticism of the public service in which he has spent some time working - I found this made his account more real and was enjoyable reading. The author does not wallow in self-pity and is not self-obsessed - he tells his story in a straightforward way which makes him much more real to the reader.

Well worth reading.

Humorous Desolation
I read this book a few months ago and have thought about it quite a lot since...a sign of a good book. Well-written, humorous and intelligent...but it's main impact for me was a conveyance of the bleak and devastating impact manic depression can have on life as it repeatedly wrecks jobs and relationships for an intelligent, sociable and energetic man. I detected no personal vanity or glamourisation of a mental health crisis...I thought it was so good I lent it to a few folk, some of who have experienced bipolar. All feedback has been positive.It's readable. The book ends with Brian sliding into depression again. Brian, you've written a great book and I hope you can take some long-lasting comfort from it's success.

A good impression of Manic Depression
I am a sufferer of BPD (Manic Depression sounds so much better) and bought this book to glean another insight from another first hand perspective of how this disease affects others.

Brian has achieved what I think he has set out to do, which I feel is to convey a sense of MD to others without all the physcho-babble you usually get in articles and celebrity columns ("Oh I've had a bad day today it must be Manic Depression" claims Z-List 'celebrity' etc...).

Brian conveys the highs and lows quite well throughout the book but seems to delve quite quickly into the institutional side of his life - these episodes have obviously been a large chapter of life as him but the way they were written I'm afraid were quite rambling and slightly un-coherent; and thus I feel the book had been 'padded out' maybe.

The manic cycles which make up this afflication are easily relateable even if you don't experience them and I feel this was definately the books leading edge and because of that, definately worth a read.