“After graduation in June of 1984, I moved to Manhattan. My first stop was a psychiatrist, who in less than our first fifty-minute session again diagnosed me with depression.”
“Most nights, I'm good for only four or five hours of sleep. That leaves the other 20. I have to fill them some way.”
“I think, when it comes to psychiatry, that a lot of people are overmedicated. I think when it comes to ECT a lot of people go through too much. I think there's a lot of guesswork in psychiatry.”
“In total, I was diagnosed with depression by eight psychotherapists and psychiatrists over a period of thirteen years. Diagnosed wrong. Absolutely wrong. My accurate diagnosis was manic depression, or what we call bipolar disorder today.”
“My ever-present mania meant I was never phased by staying up twenty hours a day or by the different time zones. I was Superman.”
“I think almost all manic depressives exhibit some kind of criminal behaviour, even if it's something as minimal as shoplifting, but then they often go on to bigger and better things - in my case, it was fraud.”
“I couldn't sleep for nights on end, as my brain felt like there were thoughts colliding within it; I obsessed over small details, from saving pennies and polishing each one of them to washing my clothing over and over in the washing machine.”
“The little depression I experienced during my manic-depression was not like depression as anyone else had ever described it. It was very violent and angry, and I was full of rage. I wasn't lying in bed.”
“Manic depression is a type of depression, technically, and it's the opposite of uni-polar. Manic depression is also called bi-polar disorder. Some people don't like to call it that because they think it makes it sound too nice, when the reality is if you have manic-depression you have manic-depression.”
“Friends and family were convinced I was functioning just fine because I was efficient, productive and successful - who wouldn't be working twenty hour days? I had everybody fooled with my illness.”