#illness

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

#family #lithium #manic-depression #medication #mental-illness

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

#depression #manic-depression #mental-illness #family

Oh! This'll impress you - I'm actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is so proud. Keep in mind though, I'm a PEZ dispenser and I'm in the abnormal Psychology textbook. Who says you can't have it all? ↗

— Carrie Fisher

#abnormal-psychology #bipolar #celebrities #celebrity #manic-depressive

However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that "whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger." In fact, I now sometimes wonder why I ever thought it profound... In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#life-challenges #philosophy #life

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

#mental-health #mental-illness #life

What sticks with me now is that this man said he needed to get to a hospital. He probably needed to reach his destination more than anyone else on the bus, yet he lacked the capacity to ride without getting kicked off. Maybe he reached the hospital eventually, and maybe he was connected with social workers and housing specialists who will help him transform his life. But I fear he got on another bus, and another bus after that, without going anywhere at all. ↗

— Susan Nielsen

#going-nowhere #healthcare #hospital #mental-illness #mentally-ill

Sometimes with a flutter of agitated worry that felt like a beetle was trapped inside my ribs. p. 90 ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#love

They won’t put me in an insane asylum because I dance very well and give money to anyone who asks. ↗

— Vaslav Nijinsky

#mental-illness #schrizophrenia #money

I can't describe the feeling when I go down – it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn't good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. There's no caramel anymore. ↗

— John Marsden

#music

Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance... ↗

— Annie Dillard

#stillness #nature