Agents My Brain: How I Survived Manic Depression

A few brave souls in the public eye, such as Patty Duke, Kay Redfield Jamieson, and more recently, Margot Kidder, have come forward to reveal something about themselves that they had tried very hard to keep hidden — the fact that they suffer from a mental illness called "manic depression". Also known as "bipolar disorder", this illness is only dimly understood by the population at large and, unfortunately, misconceptions abound. In this compelling autobiography, Bill Hannon offers an engrossing first-hand account of living with a serious mental illness and the disturbing delusions and paranoias which rendered him incapable of holding a job or accepting help from his friends and family. From his earliest manic episode during a high school trip abroad to his struggles with mis-diagnoses and the frightening side-effects of prescribed drugs, Hannon guides the reader into a world in which crossword puzzles are coded messages from the C.I.A. and a scrap of masking tape on a car windshield means that his conversations are being monitored. Never before has an author described his own manic episodes in such fascinating and insightful detail as Hannon does in Agents in My Brain.