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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| da178ef | What in the hell are you doing running around the parking lot at this hour?" he asked. A not unreasonable question." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| a8526fa | freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 180b8ac | 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 | ||
| 6019b70 | Ironically, it is usually the doctors who are the most competent and conscientious who feel the most sense of failure and pain. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 2390449 | On occasion, these periods of total despair would be made even worse by terrible agitation. My mind would race from subject to subject, but instead of being filled with the exuberant and cosmic thoughts that had been associated with earlier periods of rapid thinking, it would be drenched in awful sounds and images of decay and dying: dead bodies on the beach, charred remains of animals, toe-tagged corpses in morgues. During these agitated p.. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 7bf335d | lqd kuntu mlyy'@ b'lfi nwb@i bthj 'w y's klH . | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| b41e103 | It is devastating to have the illness and aggravating to have to pay for medications, blood tests, and psychotherapy. They, at least, are partially deductible. But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| a547dd6 | It was like going on an archaeological dig through earlier ages of one's mind. There was a bill from a taxidermist in The Plains, Virginia, for example, for a stuffed fox that I for some reason had felt I desperately needed. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 7cee5f9 | Decreased sleep is both a symptom of mania and a cause, but I didn't know that at the time, and it probably would not have made any difference to me if I had. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 3f5af19 | ljm`@ blnsb@ l'kthr lns ldhyn `rfthm knt 'fDl snwt Hythm, lm ykn dhlk hw lHl m`y. ljm`@ fy m`Zmh blnsb@ ly knt kfHan fDy`an , w kwbys mtkrr@ mn l'mzj@ l`nyf@ w lmufz`@, ttnwb lmd@ 'sby` w 'Hynan 'shhr , m` mrHin Skhb w `kf@ mtWqd@, w Hms shdyd, w jwlt Twyl@ mn l`ml lshq w lkn lmmt`. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 3f76b6d | For several weeks, I drank vodka in my orange juice before setting off for school in the mornings, and I thought obsessively about killing myself. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 8b23446 | But then as night inevitably goes after the day, my mood would crash, and my mind again would grind to a halt. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 6dfa0f5 | Eventually, the depression went away of its own accord, but only long enough for it to regroup and mobilize for the next attack. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| ca49b0d | My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches' brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes, and I filled page after page with what I am sure, thinking back on it, were very strange responses. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| eee6cfe | It goes on and on, and finally there are only others' recollections of your behavior--your bizarre, frenetic, aimless behaviors--for mania has at least some grace in partially obliterating memories. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 6f5e362 | I did not wake up one day to find myself mad. Life should be so simple. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 3ee1f44 | Having heard so often, and so believably, John Donne's bell tolling softly that "Thou must die," one turns more sharply to life, with an immediacy and appreciation that would not otherwise exist." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 440620e | n lmr ykhrj dy'man mn hdhh ltjry bHss yHyTh bSwr@in 'kbr `n mhy@ lmwt w lHy@. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| df8b79e | lHub k`ml mw'zr, w lHub k`nSr mjdd, w lHb k'd@ llHmy@. b`d kl m bd 'nh mwt fy `qly 'w qlby , `d lHb ly`yd khlq l'ml w ystrd lHy@. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 616edf8 | He was low-key, I was intense; things that cut me to the quick he was able to sail by with scarcely a notice; he was slow to anger, I quick; the world registered gently upon him, sometimes not at all, whereas I was fast to feel both pleasure and pain. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 2f7618b | Within psychiatric circles, if you kill yourself, you earn the right to be considered a "successful" suicide. This is a success one can live without." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 6ca3471 | There were, however, definite advantages to studying invertebrate zoology. For starters, unlike in psychology, you could eat your subjects. The lobsters--fresh from the sea and delicious--were especially popular. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 72c09d1 | Even in my blackest depressions, I never regretted having been born. It is true that I had wanted to die, but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born. | suicide suicidal-thoughts mental-illness | Kay Redfield Jamison | |
| df8fa81 | when I was told either to lower my sights or to rein in my enthusiasms | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 81520f7 | Yet however genuinely dreadful these moods and memories have been, they have always been offset by the elation and vitality of others; and whenever a mild and gentlish wave of brilliant and bubbling manic enthusiasm comes over me, I am transported by its exuberance--as surely as one is transported by a pungent scent into a world of profound recollection--to earlier, more intense and passionate times. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 021c017 | here is, for me, a mixture of longings for an earlier age; this is inevitable, perhaps, in any life, but there is an extra twist of almost painful nostalgia brought about by having lived a life particularly intense in moods. This makes it even harder to leave the past behind, and life, on occasion, becomes a kind of elegy for lost moods. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 9fcab05 | My thoughts were so fast that I couldn't remember the beginning of a sentence halfway through. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| eed6dec | I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| b89021a | Many wish to believe that the odd is not so odd, the bizarre not so bizarre, and there is little changing of minds once they are set. There are only so many ways to understand the strange and disordered. The Greeks imagined gods to explain what they themselves could not. It is human nature to invent reasons for why the mind shatters, hope plummets, or the will to live dies. Scientific explanations are complicated and, for many, less humanly.. | science pseudoscience mental-illness | Kay Redfield Jamison | |
| b03dd10 | There was a fine-tuning of Richard's and my temperaments during the years we lived with his heart disease, lymphoma, and lung cancer. Before, our differences had triggered sporadic tension; now our basic natures served us better. Our sensibilities and quirks evolved into something more shared and complex, more mingled. | illness relationships love | Kay Redfield Jamison | |
| 09d5b05 | We put our faith in things great and small. We assign to them meaning they may actually have, or meaning that we need for them to have in order to carry on. | meaning life | Kay Redfield Jamison | |
| dc98722 | Pills cannot, do not, ease one back into reality; they only bring one back headlong, careening, and faster than can be endured at times. Psychotherapy is a sanctuary; it is a battleground; it is a place I have been psychotic, neurotic, elated, confused, and despairing beyond belief. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 489330d | No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| e74e6df | Even so, what I read often disappeared from my mind like snow on a hot pavement. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 2f02e93 | People say, when I complain of being less lively, less energetic, less high-spirited, "Well, now you're just like the rest of us," meaning, among other things, to be reassuring. But I compare myself with my former self, not with others." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| d23569b | I kneeled without ecstasy, prayed without belief, and felt as a stranger. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 2042fe2 | Try not to let the fact that you can't read without effort annoy you. Be philosophical. Even if you could read, you probably wouldn't remember most of it anyway. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 5ac8c3d | This was not why I had gotten a Ph.D., and I was beginning to understand Bob Dylans lines "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift." Only it was twenty-three years, and I was still pulling a lot of night shift as well." -- | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| ebfc6f5 | It was one of those still, clear moments when you realize that you haven't understood anything at all, that you have had no real comprehension of the other person's world. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 3c23f96 | but there is an extra twist of almost painful nostalgia brought about by having lived a life particularly intense in moods. This makes it even harder to leave the past behind, and life, on occasion, becomes a kind of elegy for lost moods. I miss the lost intensities, and I find myself unconsciously reaching out for them, as I still now and again reach back with | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| aa369a7 | he slowly put down the hamburger he was eating, stared straight into my eyes, and, without missing a beat, said rather dryly, "That explains a lot." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 787758c | I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no--and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I suppose I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated. | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 7409327 | am reminded of Byron's wonderful description of the rainbow that sits "Like Hope upon a death-bed" on the verge of a wild, rushing cataract; yet, "while all around is torn / By the distracted waters," the rainbow stays serene: Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien." | Kay Redfield Jamison | ||
| 1026963 | So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; worn death "as close as dungarees," appreciated it--and life--more; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly lear.. | Kay Redfield Jamison |