This is in between more impressive feats such as writing a novel, pursuing her masters degree, and lecturing at universities.īut despite effectively demonstrating her instability, Hornbacher doesn’t give much insight into the inner workings of bipolar disorder. She rages, breaks things, doesn’t sleep, moves constantly around the country, and babbles on endlessly to people. She is hospitalized several times a year. Then she drives dripping wet to her husband’s office and acts so erratic that he has her psychiatrist escort her out of the building and eventually into a hospital. Them she realizes she hasn’t taken a shower, takes a shower, while still wearing the dress. In one scene, she leaves the house without clothes on, realizes it, goes in and puts on a dress. Hornbacher clearly shows just how confused - or as she puts it, “fucking nuts” - a bipolar sufferer can be. As with her eating disorders, Hornbacher ignored the diagnosis for as long as possible, descending into an ugly hole of self-destruction.ĭespite its subject matter, Madness is an entertaining read. Everything else - starving herself, drinking, cutting, throwing up - was just a means to control the roller coaster of her moods. The book picks up where Wasted leaves off, covering the last 10 years of Hornbacher’s life, when she discovers that her real problem all along has been bipolar disorder. Now, a decade later, Hornbacher has written a follow-up: Madness: A Bipolar Life. Some have called Wasted a “triggering” book for anorexics, who can find it all a little too vivid, like a good description of a glass of whiskey might make an alcoholic want to drink.) Hornbacher, who was 23 when she wrote the book, hadn’t yet gotten distance from being sick, and that, combined with copious research, made Wasted a particularly unflinching look at anorexia and bulimia. The book stands out in its ability to dig inside the mind of someone with an eating disorder. In 1998, Marya Hornbacher wrote Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, about an eating disorder so severe, she whittled herself down to 52 pounds and was given a week to live.

Marya hornbacher