Quotes & Sayings About Manic Depression

It's difficult. I take a low dose of lithium nightly. I take an antidepressant for my darkness because prayer isn't enough. My therapist hears confession twice a month, my shrink delivers the host, and I can stand in the woods and see the world spark. — David Lovelace

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again. — Kay Redfield Jamison

My manic depression was ravaging my life, but because nobody could see it, many people thought it was a figment of my imagination. — Andy Behrman

Love is not enough. It takes courage to grab my father's demon, my own, or - God help me - my child's and strap it down and stop its mad jig; to sit in a row of white rooms filled with pills and clubbed dreamers and shout: stop smiling, shut up; shut up and stop laughing; you're sitting in hell. Stop preaching; stop weeping. You are a manic-depressive, always. your life is larger than most, unimaginable. You're blessed; just admit it and take the damn pill. — David Lovelace

It's a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can't doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can't wait to start looking. — Terri Cheney

In our family "whim-wham" is code, a defanged reference to any number of moods and psychological disorders, be they depressive, manic, or schizoaffective. Back in the 1970s and '80s - when they were all straight depression - we called them "dark nights of the soul." St. John of the Cross's phrase ennobled our sickness, spiritualized it. We cut God out of it after the manic breaks started in 1986, the year my dad, brother, and I were all committed. Call it manic depression or by its new, polite name, bipolr disorder. Whichever you wish. We stick to our folklore and call it the whim-whams. — David Lovelace

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way - then because they also have depression, I think they're more in touch with human suffering. — Nick Flynn

The world of manic depression is a world of bad judgment calls. — Carrie Fisher

I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result. — Temple Grandin

I've had this problem since I was in my 20s. They don't call it manic depression anymore. They call it a bipolar disorder, and I'm a Type 2. — Ned Beatty

I've got to that point in life when there's very few thrills and lots of pills seems we all end up this way. As we wait for our final day. But there's one thing about the pills I take. My manic episodes have taken a break — Stanley Victor Paskavich

I'm a classic eccentric, living at the extremes of high mania and low mood. There's no middle ground, only madness and sadness. — Fennel Hudson

You know how most illnesses have symptoms you can recognize? Like fever, upset stomach, chills, whatever.
Well, with manic depression, it's sexual promiscuity, excessive spending, and substance abuse - and that just sounds like a fantastic weekend in Vegas to me! — Carrie Fisher

You can have manic-depression without having an ounce of creativity. — Patty Duke

The depressed person is mired in the past; the manic person is obsessed with the future. Both destroy the present in the process. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

I read it as if it had been written by someone else, although it was my own experience being recounted.

The endless questioning finally ended. My psychiatrist looked at me, there was no uncertainty in his voice. "Maniac-depressive illness." I admired his bluntness. I wished him locusts in his land and a pox upon his house. Silent, unbelievable rage. I smiled pleasantly. He smiled back. The war had just begun, — Kay Redfield Jamison

She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something 'would' happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, 'would not' happen. — Roman Payne

Few things are strong enough to survive that deadly clash of mania and depression. Certainly not love. Love is far too fragile: it is a picture window, just begging to be shattered. — Terri Cheney

I wish I had never got manic depression. When I was in junior high, I didn't know what was the matter with me. It was as if I'd died or something. Now that I go to a clinic and get the right kind of medicine, I am not as depressed as I used to be. — Daniel Johnston

PERIODIC MOOD-CHANGES We have already spoken of the affective concomitants of common migraines - elated and irritable prodromal states, states of dread and depression associated with the main phase of the attack, and states of euphoric rebound. Any or all of these may be abstracted as isolated periodic symptoms of relatively short duration - some hours, or at most two or three days, and as such may present themselves as primary emotional disorders. The most acute of these mood-changes, generally no more than an hour in duration, usually represents concomitants or equivalents of migraine aura. We may confine our attention at this stage to attacks of depression, or truncated manic-depressive cycles, occurring at intervals in patients who have previously suffered from attacks of undoubted (classical, common, abdominal, etc.) migraine. — Oliver Sacks

I know the empathy borne of despair; I know the fluidity of thought, the expansive, even beautiful, mind that hypomania brings, and I know this is quicksilver and precious and often it's poison. There has always existed a sort of psychic butcher who works the scales of transcendence, who weighs out the bloody cost of true art. — David Lovelace

I have not been an easygoing guy. I think it's called bipolar manic depression. I've got a rich history of that in my family. — Ben Stiller

It gets harder as times go by, because memory is the first casualty of manic depression. When I'm manic, all I remember is the moment. When I'm depressed, all I remember is the pain. The surrounding details are lost to me. — Terry Cheney

One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you're living with this illness and functioning at all, it's something to be proud of, not ashamed of.
They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication. — Carrie Fisher

I was diagnosed with ADD - see also: raised on sugary cereals and cartoons - and manic depression. So I was prescribed Ritalin for the ADD, and for the manic imbalances I was prescribed mostly benzodiazepines, which I loved, and antidepressants. — Pete Wentz

My recovery from manic depression has been an evolution, not a sudden miracle. — Patty Duke

I certainly didn't understand something that I learned later from Dr. Kay Jamison, the author of An Unquiet Mind, about her own manic-depression. She has written that it is a lethal illness, particularly if left untreated, or wrongly treated. — Katharine Graham

I feel . . . low," I say, looking away. "Like, literally low. Flat. It's not . . . sad, exactly. I mean, sad too, obviously. But that's a different feeling, I guess."

She nods. "There's a reason it's called 'depression' and not 'chronic sadness' or 'manic sorrow.'" She picks up a foam stress ball and squeezes it, leaving imprints of her fingers. "Depressions like these are holes left behind by a physical force. With mental depression, the force can be chemical or situational or both, but it doesn't just make a hole--it presses you into one that feels impossible to escape. — Kate Hart

I fight manic-depression, and I have been able to live battling that sadness that I get sometimes. — La India

But no matter what the dictionary says, in my opinion, a problem derails your life and an inconvenience is not being able to get a nice seat on the un-derailed train. Given that, I've had three and a half problems. A dead guy in my bed, substance abuse, and manic-depression. — Carrie Fisher

Despite popular opinion, there are no important parallels between Madonna and Monroe, who was a virtuoso comedienne but who was in secure, depressive, passive-aggressive, and infuriatingly obstructionist in her career habits. Madonna is manic, perfectionist, workaholic. Monroe abused alcohol and drugs, while Madonna shuns them. Monroe had a tentative, melting, dreamy solipsism; Madonna has Judy Holliday's wisecracking smart mouth and Joan Crawford's steel will and bossy, circus master managerial competence. — Camille Paglia

Bipolar illness, manic depression, manic-depressive illness, manic-depressive psychosis. That's a nice way of saying you will feel so high that no street drug can compete and you will feel so low that you wish you had been hit by a Mack truck instead. — Christine F. Anderson

Evidence is strongly suggesting Bipolar Disorder - previously known as Manic Depression - may be dramatically increasing in modern society. — Gordon Parker

There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge - the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc. - on a scale none of us had ever witnessed. — Chinua Achebe

I've been accustomed to mysteries, holy and otherwise, since I was a child. Some of us care for orphans, amass fortunes, raise protests or Nielsen ratings; some of us take communion or whiskey or poison. Some of us take lithium and antidepressants, and most everyone believes these pills are fundamentally wrong, a crutch, a sign of moral weakness, the surrender of art and individuality. Bullshit. Such thinking guarantees tradgedy for the bipolar. Without medicine, 20 percent of us, one in five, will commit suicide. Six-gun Russian roulette gives better odds. Denouncing these medicines makes as much sense as denouncing the immorality of motor oil. Without them, sooner or later the bipolar brain will go bang. I know plenty of potheads who sermonize against the pharmaceutical companies; I know plenty of born-again yoga instructors, plenty of missionaries who tell me I'm wrong about lithium. They don't have a clue. — David Lovelace

Compared to bipolar's magic, reality seems a raw deal. It's not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it's the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity - the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don't understand, we say. They just don't get it. They'll never be artists. — David Lovelace

A world without prejudice, stigma, and discrimination against those who have or are thought to have mental illness would be a better one for everyone. What so-called normal people are doing when they define disease like manic depression or schizophrenia is reassuring themselves that they don't have a thought disorder or an affective disorder, that their thoughts and feelings make perfect sense. — Mark Vonnegut

Far too many doctors-many of them excellent physicians-commit suicide each year; one recent study concluded that, until quite recently, the United States lost annually the equivalent of a medium-sized medical school class from suicide alone. Most physician suicides are due to depression or manic-depressive illness, both of which are eminently treatable. Physicians, unfortunately, not only suffer from a higher rate of mood disorders than the general population, they also have a greater access to very effective means of suicide. — Kay Redfield Jamison

That manic depression, far from being a liability was an advantage. It was a selected trait. If it wasn't selected for, then the "disorder" would have disappeared long ago, bred out of the population like anything else that didn't increase the odds of survival. The advantage was obvious. The advantage was the energy, the creativity, the feeling of genius, almost, that Leonard felt right now. There was no telling how many great historical figures had been manic-depressives, how many scientific and artistic breakthroughs had occurred to people during manic episodes. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The point about manic depression or bipolar disorder, as it's now more commonly called, is that it's about mood swings. So, you have an elevated mood. When people think of manic depression, they only hear the word depression. They think one's a depressive. The point is, one's a manic-depressive. — Stephen Fry

I now know for certain that my mind and emotions, my fix on the real and my family's well-being, depend on just a few grams of salt. But treatment's the easy part. Without honesty, without a true family reckoning, that salt's next to worthless. — David Lovelace

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The doctor's words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention, this was the message my clouded mind received. To escape the confines of the hospital, I once again disassociated myself from my emotions and numbed myself to the pain ravaging my body and mind. I acted as if nothing was wrong and went back to performing the necessary motions to get me from one day to the next. I existed but I did not live. — Alyssa Reyans

On the one hand, I was happy to have a proper diagnosis. Aside from a trust fund and a royal title, that was really the only thing I'd ever wanted in life. On the other hand, I was offended to learn that my brain was defective. Or, I suppose I should say, "differently abled."
One thing I was not was surprised. Four generations of manic depression on my mother's side of the family. Three of autism on my father's side. Drug addict uncles, a pyromaniac cousin, a couple of schizophrenics and suicides, several flesh-and-blood geniuses, and a pecan farmer. You just cannot mix those raw ingredients together and then stick them inside my mother for nine months and expect something normal to come out. It's a wonder I wasn't born with a set of horns. — Augusten Burroughs

I'm heavily medicated yet happily manic, I've been stuck on hypo mania for years. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Losing even a single night's sleep can precipitate a manic episode in people with bipolar disorder who have otherwise been stable (Malkoff-Schwartz et al. 1998). In parallel, sleep deprivation can improve the mood of a person with depression, although only briefly (Harvey, 2008). — David J. Miklowitz

[ ] manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's dicourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin. — Terri Cheney

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. — Andy Behrman

In our secular world, we no longer see eternal paradise as a carrot at the end of the stick of life, but try to cram as much as possible into our relatively short time on the planet instead. This is, of course, a futile endeavour, doomed to failure. It is tempting to interpret the modern epidemics of depression and burnout as the individual's response to the unbearable nature of constant acceleration. The decelerating individual - who slows down instead of speeding up, and maybe even stops completely - seems out of place in a culture characterised by manic development, and may be interpreted pathologically (i.e. diagnosed as clinically depressed). — Svend Brinkmann

I had developed manic depression [bipolar disorder] ... and the main symptoms the constant voice in the head telling you to kill yourself. — Sinead O'Connor

He doesn't have anything like wisdom of age or hindsight. He's a biased historian of self, an emotional revisionist. We all are, for the most part. — Marc Maron

Suddenly I wanted to get better. Mania wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't creative or visionary. It was mean parody at best, a cheap chemical trick. I needed to stop and get better. I'd take whatever they gave me, I pledged silently. I'd take Trilafon or Thorazine or whatever. I just wanted to sleep. — David Lovelace

Manic depression's touching my soul. I know what I want, but I just don't know how to go about getting it. — Jimi Hendrix

For some reason the word "chronic" often has to be explained. It does not mean severe, though many chronic conditions can be exceptionally serious and indeed life-threatening. No, "chronic" means persistent over time, enduring, constant. Diabetes is a chronic condition, but measles is not. With measles, you contract it and then it is gone. It can sometimes be fatal, but is never chronic. Manic depression, in other words, is something you have to learn to live with. There are therapies which may help some people to function and function for the most part happily and well. Sometimes a talking therapy, sometimes pharmaceutical intervention helps. — Stephen Fry

I'm a happy-go-lucky manic-depressive. It does get very deep and dark for me, and it gets scary at times when I feel I can't pull out of it. But I don't consider myself negative-negative. I'm positive-negative. — Tim Burton

It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse with no experience of a bit between its teeth. My mother taught me to gentle it; gave me the discipline and love to break it; and- as Alexander had known so intuitively with Bucephalus- she understood, and taught me, that the beast was best handled by turning it toward the sun. — Kay Redfield Jamison

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. — Andy Behrman

When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you. — Marya Hornbacher

Bipolar disorder, manic depression, depression, black dog, whatever you want to call it, is inherent in our society. It's a product of stress and in my case over-work. — Adam Ant

Manic depression - or bipolar disorder - is like racing up to a clifftop before diving headfirst into a cavity. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the psychic equivalent of an extreme sport. The manic highs - that exhilarating rush to the top of the cliff - make you feel bionic in your hyper-energized capacity for generosity, sexiness and soulfulness. You feel like you have ingested stars and are now glowing from within. It's unearned confidence-in-extremis - with an emphasis on the con, because you feel cheated once you inevitably crash into that cavity. I sometimes joke that mania is the worst kind of pyramid scheme, one that the bipolar individual doesn't even know they're building, only to find out, too late, that they're also its biggest casualty. — Diriye Osman

It's not a visitation by angels, but a weakening in the blood
a magical orange grove in a nightmare — Robert Lowell

Manic depression is a frustratin' mess. — Jimi Hendrix

Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It's fun and it's frightening as hell. Some patients - bipolar type I - experience both extremes; other - bipolar type II - suffer depression almost exclusively. But the "mixed state," the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression's paranoid self-loathing. — David Lovelace

Manic depression is the result of the sum of repetitiveness in life and expecting a different result. — Pieter Swaenepoel

The intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up ... moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable reactions to what life has dealt ... even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I finally came to terms with manic depression and lithium. I've taken lithium regularly for the past few years and have had no further bouts with manic depression. — Charley Pride

And then the horror sets in. All that time I wasn't crazy; I was, in fact, crazy. It's hopeless. I'm hopeless. Bipolar disorder. Manic depression. I'm sick. It's true. It isn't going to go away. All my life, I've thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I've always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I'd be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone — Marya Hornbacher

I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was once known as manic depression. The information was naturally frightening; up to 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide, and rates may even be higher for those suffering from bipolar II. — Ayelet Waldman

At least when I was an adult, I had a name for what was wrong with me: manic depression. It's easier to make sense of things - even very disturbing things like sexual acting out and suicidality - when there's a big, fat label slapped on top. But as a child, I knew nothing. I had no diagnosis. All I had was a vague and gnawing awareness that I was different from other children, and that different was not good. Different must be kept hidden. — Terri Cheney

I feel like schizoid is a precursor to schizophrenia or manic depression. I feel like I'm manic. I have parts of schizoid, parts of Asperger's. I'm a smorgasbord of neuroses. — Jim Shaw

Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Aware adults with autism and their parents are often angry about autism. They may ask why nature or God created such horrible conditions as autism, manic depression, and schizophrenia. However, if the genes that caused these conditions were eliminated there might be a terrible price to pay. It is possible that persons with bits of these traits are more creative, or possibly even geniuses. If science eliminated these genes, maybe the whole world would be taken over by accountants. — Steve Silberman

I get happy and I get sad,
just like anybody else
but they call this a disorder. — Casey Renee Kiser

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. — Andy Behrman