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Mind on Fire
Arnold Thomas Fanning had his first experience of depression during adolescence, following the death of his mother. Some ten years later, an up-and-coming playwright, he was overcome by mania and delusions. Thus began a terrible period in which he was often suicidal, increasingly disconnected from family and friends, sometimes in trouble with the law, and homeless in London. Drawing on his own memories, the recollections of people who knew him when he was at his worst, and medical and police records, Arnold Thomas Fanning has produced a beautifully written, devastatingly intense account of madness - and recovery, to the point where he has not had any serious illness for over a decade and has become an acclaimed playwright. Fanning conveys the consciousness of a person living with mania, psychosis and severe depression with a startling precision and intimacy. Mind on Fire is the gripping, sometimes harrowing, and ultimately uplifting testament of a person who has visited hellish regions of the mind.
280 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 31, 2018
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January 25, 2019
Arnold Thomas Manning begins his memoir about bipolar disorder by launching the reader, “you”, into the scene of one of his psychotic episodes that occurred at Heathrow airport in the days after the Indonesian tsunami of 2004. Writing in the second person, Fanning wants you to experience for yourself the extremes of a manic phase, complete with messianic delusions of grandeur and uncontrollable surges of energy. His words guide you to visualize pulling a defibrillator kit off the wall in order to show others just how committed you are to travelling with volunteers to ravaged Sumatra. You’re apprehended and charged with theft, but no matter: you decide to travel instead with young British soldiers to Cyprus, believing you’d make a fine chaplain to their company. But, no, perhaps it’s better to fly to Israel, convert to Judaism, and join the Israeli Defence Forces? Soon the police have had enough of you. They drive you down the motorway and push you out of their van. You’re not dressed for the winter cold, but you’re at the mercy of this relentless energy that surges through you. You walk to London, stopping along the way to do things people just don’t do in public. Your mind is on fire even as your body wears out.
After this riveting introduction, Fanning turns to a more conventional narrative structure. Initially, at least, he does not go all the way back to childhood, but to the point at which changes in his mood first became evident: when he was 20 and his mother died of cancer. Since that time, he had been subject to periods of debilitating depression, usually during the spring and summer. Autumn and winter signalled upswings in mood and energy.
After graduating from university, Fanning, an aspiring writer of short stories and film scripts, had been willing to sacrifice the security of a full-time pensionable job in stage management and, later, steady part-time work in the literary department of the National Theatre, in exchange for the time to write. In his late twenties, he won a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan in the Irish Border Region. He hoped to finish his first full-length stage play there, but his disordered mind had other ideas. Concerned about his moods, he’d consulted a Dublin hospital psychiatrist before leaving for the Guthrie Centre, and the physician prescribed antidepressants, which Fanning discontinued once in Monaghan. Now his moods were cycling rapidly between intense sadness over the death of his mother and “strange, breathless joy.” The words of the Bible’s Book of Revelation “could have been written for me,” he thinks—after all, he is likely the one Christ loves the most. Maybe, given Fanning’s newly appreciated special status as “the Alpha and Omega”, he is even the one best suited to solving the problems of the world.
Over a period of days, Fanning’s behaviour grows increasingly alarming and bizarre. He gets the idea to bring his long-grieving, laconic father to the artists’ retreat to lift the older man out of his own dark moods, but Fanning ends up yelling, sobbing, and hitting his dad as they travel north from Dublin. Later, Fanning will be thrown out of the Guthrie Centre after brandishing a hunting knife at a female guest. He subsequently spends days driving the roads of the Border Region, stopping occasionally to scribble furiously in his notebook. Ultimately he phones 999, and officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary find him weeping in his car. They transport him to hospital where he is diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
One would think that after this, things would be more straightforward. One problem is that it is not easy to find the right combination of psychotropic medications to address the extremes of mood without flattening, even erasing, the patient’s sense of self. Another problem is that those who are extremely mentally ill lack insight into their condition. (They suffer from “anosognosia”.) Once they begin to feel their moods evening out and a quieting of frenetic thoughts, patients often determine (without consulting any medical professional) that they’re well enough to adjust or discontinue medications as they personally see fit. Psychiatric drugs have severe, sometimes intolerable side effects. On one anti-psychotic drug, Fanning experienced persistent, uncontrollable, stiff, jerking movements (“tardive dyskinesia”). It’s hard to be compliant with a drug regimen that renders you a kind of puppet to some seemingly malevolent force. A third, significant problem is that an extremely mentally ill person becomes dependent. Often with no other option but to return to the family home, the patient relies on family members with whom he often has a history of strained, difficult relations. This was the case for Fanning, who had to rely on his father, an artistically talented, but hard and embittered man, who appears to have wrestled with his own undiagnosed mood disorder. Such is the quality of Fanning’s writing, however, that the reader is able to appreciate how this ordeal was experienced by the older man, who was plagued by demons of his own.
Fanning’s memoir is an honest, raw, and brave document. He recalls numerous hospitalizations, time spent in America where he attended artist and writer retreats, lived, worked and had a tempestuous relationship with a well-to-do young Jewish-American artist, and the harrowing period he endured as a homeless person on the mean, dangerous London streets—a form of living hell, if ever there was one. He was endlessly in trouble with the law for public disturbance, indecent exposure, theft—you name it. It took a long time for anyone to recognize that he was, in his own words, not bad but mad, that he needed not punishment but treatment.
Lest you think this memoir documents only distress, I’d have you know there are some lighter bits. Some of Fanning’s behaviours are actually funny. Once, for example, when nurses on a psychiatric ward tell him to stop cursing, he accuses them of being racist: “To me, using swear words is a typically Irish trait; trying to get me to stop is therefore racist, to my thinking.”
Years ago, when I briefly worked in a small gift shop, a disheveled young man entered the building one afternoon. He immediately commenced pacing up and down the length of the room, muttering and sputtering. I noticed his hand was bleeding and said so. He approached the countertop that I stood behind and drops of blood splashed down on the white surface—the colour of the droplets matching the intensity of his agitation. “I have to move! I have to move!” he said to me in desperation as I handed him a tissue. His, too, was a mind on fire, I now see. Years later, Arnold Fanning’s memoir illuminates for me just how intense that fire can be.
After this riveting introduction, Fanning turns to a more conventional narrative structure. Initially, at least, he does not go all the way back to childhood, but to the point at which changes in his mood first became evident: when he was 20 and his mother died of cancer. Since that time, he had been subject to periods of debilitating depression, usually during the spring and summer. Autumn and winter signalled upswings in mood and energy.
After graduating from university, Fanning, an aspiring writer of short stories and film scripts, had been willing to sacrifice the security of a full-time pensionable job in stage management and, later, steady part-time work in the literary department of the National Theatre, in exchange for the time to write. In his late twenties, he won a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan in the Irish Border Region. He hoped to finish his first full-length stage play there, but his disordered mind had other ideas. Concerned about his moods, he’d consulted a Dublin hospital psychiatrist before leaving for the Guthrie Centre, and the physician prescribed antidepressants, which Fanning discontinued once in Monaghan. Now his moods were cycling rapidly between intense sadness over the death of his mother and “strange, breathless joy.” The words of the Bible’s Book of Revelation “could have been written for me,” he thinks—after all, he is likely the one Christ loves the most. Maybe, given Fanning’s newly appreciated special status as “the Alpha and Omega”, he is even the one best suited to solving the problems of the world.
Over a period of days, Fanning’s behaviour grows increasingly alarming and bizarre. He gets the idea to bring his long-grieving, laconic father to the artists’ retreat to lift the older man out of his own dark moods, but Fanning ends up yelling, sobbing, and hitting his dad as they travel north from Dublin. Later, Fanning will be thrown out of the Guthrie Centre after brandishing a hunting knife at a female guest. He subsequently spends days driving the roads of the Border Region, stopping occasionally to scribble furiously in his notebook. Ultimately he phones 999, and officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary find him weeping in his car. They transport him to hospital where he is diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
One would think that after this, things would be more straightforward. One problem is that it is not easy to find the right combination of psychotropic medications to address the extremes of mood without flattening, even erasing, the patient’s sense of self. Another problem is that those who are extremely mentally ill lack insight into their condition. (They suffer from “anosognosia”.) Once they begin to feel their moods evening out and a quieting of frenetic thoughts, patients often determine (without consulting any medical professional) that they’re well enough to adjust or discontinue medications as they personally see fit. Psychiatric drugs have severe, sometimes intolerable side effects. On one anti-psychotic drug, Fanning experienced persistent, uncontrollable, stiff, jerking movements (“tardive dyskinesia”). It’s hard to be compliant with a drug regimen that renders you a kind of puppet to some seemingly malevolent force. A third, significant problem is that an extremely mentally ill person becomes dependent. Often with no other option but to return to the family home, the patient relies on family members with whom he often has a history of strained, difficult relations. This was the case for Fanning, who had to rely on his father, an artistically talented, but hard and embittered man, who appears to have wrestled with his own undiagnosed mood disorder. Such is the quality of Fanning’s writing, however, that the reader is able to appreciate how this ordeal was experienced by the older man, who was plagued by demons of his own.
Fanning’s memoir is an honest, raw, and brave document. He recalls numerous hospitalizations, time spent in America where he attended artist and writer retreats, lived, worked and had a tempestuous relationship with a well-to-do young Jewish-American artist, and the harrowing period he endured as a homeless person on the mean, dangerous London streets—a form of living hell, if ever there was one. He was endlessly in trouble with the law for public disturbance, indecent exposure, theft—you name it. It took a long time for anyone to recognize that he was, in his own words, not bad but mad, that he needed not punishment but treatment.
Lest you think this memoir documents only distress, I’d have you know there are some lighter bits. Some of Fanning’s behaviours are actually funny. Once, for example, when nurses on a psychiatric ward tell him to stop cursing, he accuses them of being racist: “To me, using swear words is a typically Irish trait; trying to get me to stop is therefore racist, to my thinking.”
Years ago, when I briefly worked in a small gift shop, a disheveled young man entered the building one afternoon. He immediately commenced pacing up and down the length of the room, muttering and sputtering. I noticed his hand was bleeding and said so. He approached the countertop that I stood behind and drops of blood splashed down on the white surface—the colour of the droplets matching the intensity of his agitation. “I have to move! I have to move!” he said to me in desperation as I handed him a tissue. His, too, was a mind on fire, I now see. Years later, Arnold Fanning’s memoir illuminates for me just how intense that fire can be.
April 22, 2019
The Wellcome Book Prize is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and I decided to explore this year's shortlist a bit more. One of the judges of this year's award is Elif Shafak and one of the shortlisted books is Ottessa Moshfegh's “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”. While I'm naturally drawn to reading more fiction than nonfiction, this award encompasses both kinds of writing so it's a good chance for me to read a nonfiction book I probably wouldn't have got to otherwise. The prize centres around new books that engage with some aspect of medicine, health or illness. Arnold Thomas Fanning's “Mind on Fire” recounts his lifelong struggle with mental health issues. He vividly describes the unwieldy chaos of manic episodes where extreme feelings and fantasies lead him to take drastic action as he careens through cities and airports shocking or outright terrifying people along the way. It's powerful how he conveys that to his manic mind he's following a logical course of action, but of course on the outside his actions are insensible. He also discloses the sensations of debilitating depression when he sometimes physically can't move and his thoughts revolve constantly around suicide. He eloquently expresses how all-consuming these states are and that “Within it there is no without it.” This illness not only wreaks havoc on his own health, but severely impinges upon the lives of his family and friends as well. Fanning powerfully documents his heartrending, difficult journey.
Read my full review of Mind on Fire by Arnold Thomas Fanning on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Mind on Fire by Arnold Thomas Fanning on LonesomeReader
March 6, 2019
“all these ideas are swirling around inside your head at once, hurling through your mind, it is on fire, so when you speak it all comes out muddled and confused and no one can understand you.”
Like the other Wellcome-longlisted title I’ve highlighted so far, Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, Mind on Fire explores mental health. Its subtitle is “A Memoir of Madness and Recovery,” and Irish playwright Fanning focuses on the ten years or so in his twenties and thirties when he struggled to get on top of his bipolar disorder and was in and out of mental hospitals – and even homeless on the streets of London for a short time.
Fanning had suffered from periods of depression ever since his mother’s death from cancer when he was 20, but things got much worse when he was 28 and living in Dublin. It was the summer of 1997 and he’d quit a full-time job to write stories and film scripts. What with the wild swings in his moods and energy levels, though, he found it increasingly difficult to get along with his father, with whom he was living. He also got kicked out of an artists’ residency, and on the way home his car ran out of petrol – such that when he called the police for help, it was for a breakdown in more than one sense. This was the first time he was taken to a psychiatric unit, at the Tyrone and Fermanagh Hospital, where he stayed for 10 days.
In the years to come there would be many more hospital stays, delusions, medication regimes and odd behavior. There would also be time spent in America – an artists’ residency in Virginia, where he met Jennifer, and a fairly long-term relationship with her in New York City – and ups and downs in his writing career. For instance, he remembers that after reading Ulysses he was so despairingly convinced that he would never be a “real writer” like James Joyce that he burned hundreds of pages of work-in-progress.
This was a very hard book for me to rate. The prologue is a brilliant 6.5-page run-on sentence in the second person and present tense (I’ve quoted a fragment above) that puts you right into the author’s experience. It is a superb piece of writing. But nothing that comes after (a more standard first-person narrative, though still in the present tense for most of it) is nearly as good. As I’ve found in some other mental health memoirs, the cycle of hospitalizations and medications gets repetitive. It’s a whole lot of telling: this happened, then that happened. That’s also true of the flashbacks to his childhood and university years.
Due to his unreliable memory of his years lost to bipolar, Fanning has had to recreate his experiences from medical records, interviews with people who knew him, and so on. This insistence on documentary realism distances the reader from what should be intimate, terrifying events. I almost wondered if this would have worked better as a novel, allowing the author to invent more and thus better capture what it actually felt like to flirt with madness. There’s no denying the extremity of this period of his life, but I found myself unable to fully engage with the retelling. (Also, this is doomed to be mistaken for the superior Brain on Fire.)
A favorite passage:
St John of God’s carries associations for me. I attended primary school not far from here, and used to see denizens of the hospital on their day outings, conspicuous in the way they walked: hunched over, balled up, constricted, eyes down to the ground, visibly disturbed. We cruelly referred to these people as ‘mentallers’, though never to their faces or within earshot, as we were frightened of them.
Now I, too, am a mentaller.
Originally published, with images, on my blog, Bookish Beck.
June 6, 2018
A memoir that is raw, searingly honest and beautifully written, with flashes of understated, bone-dry humour.
The author went through a turbulent decade while he grappled with - or failed to - mental health issues that were so severe he ended up homeless.
Although the subject is difficult, the book is gripping and vivid and breathtakingly honest - a must-read.
The author went through a turbulent decade while he grappled with - or failed to - mental health issues that were so severe he ended up homeless.
Although the subject is difficult, the book is gripping and vivid and breathtakingly honest - a must-read.
March 6, 2021
An interesting account of the authors personal battle with mental illness and it’s effect on his life.
Harrowing, honest, brutal at times, but real and well written.
This is one of the best autobiographical books about Bipolar that I’ve read.
I wish the author all the best for the future and hope he manages to maintain some control of his illness.
Harrowing, honest, brutal at times, but real and well written.
This is one of the best autobiographical books about Bipolar that I’ve read.
I wish the author all the best for the future and hope he manages to maintain some control of his illness.
April 28, 2019
After his mother died when he was fairly young, Arnold Thomas Fanning had his first experience of depression. It didn’t last for long, but the seeds were sown. Fast forward to a decade later and Fanning was an up and coming playwright with lots of opportunities opening up. But at the same time, he was starting to suffer from delusions about his abilities and this rapidly became mania.
He had just given up a good job to give himself the time to write full time, but things weren’t going well. He was back living with his father who he had a difficult relationship with and he had just left an artist residency in disgrace. Very soon after that he had a total mental breakdown and was admitted into a secure unit where they began to treat him. After release he, went home with a bag of drugs, but there was to be much worse to come.
From there he descended further and further into his mental maelstrom. This book is his raw and brutally honest account of someone going through depression and all sorts of mental anguish. When it was happening he managed to alienate almost all his friends and family, ended up in several institutes and was prescribed a cocktail of drugs that they hoped would help him recover. It did reach the point where he stared into the abyss as he came very close to suicide, but he didn’t quite have the courage to do it that day. Might have been cowardice, but it saved his life that day.
The account is compiled from records and from what others have recounted to him, some of the episodes he has not been able to remember because of the illness. It doesn’t make for any less terrifying reading though. The fact that he has been able to get through his mental illness with a lot of help and write this book is a testament to his strength of character.
Mental health is important, if you are feeling depressed or anxious, then speak to someone who can help. This may be a family member, or you might be better speaking to an independent expert who will be able to help you. Do not ignore it.
He had just given up a good job to give himself the time to write full time, but things weren’t going well. He was back living with his father who he had a difficult relationship with and he had just left an artist residency in disgrace. Very soon after that he had a total mental breakdown and was admitted into a secure unit where they began to treat him. After release he, went home with a bag of drugs, but there was to be much worse to come.
From there he descended further and further into his mental maelstrom. This book is his raw and brutally honest account of someone going through depression and all sorts of mental anguish. When it was happening he managed to alienate almost all his friends and family, ended up in several institutes and was prescribed a cocktail of drugs that they hoped would help him recover. It did reach the point where he stared into the abyss as he came very close to suicide, but he didn’t quite have the courage to do it that day. Might have been cowardice, but it saved his life that day.
The account is compiled from records and from what others have recounted to him, some of the episodes he has not been able to remember because of the illness. It doesn’t make for any less terrifying reading though. The fact that he has been able to get through his mental illness with a lot of help and write this book is a testament to his strength of character.
Mental health is important, if you are feeling depressed or anxious, then speak to someone who can help. This may be a family member, or you might be better speaking to an independent expert who will be able to help you. Do not ignore it.
March 5, 2021
This is such a sad, heartbreaking book, but it's also a book about hope. I think everyone who lives/ works with/ cares for/ knows/ supports someone suffering with mental health problems should read this book.
"Depression is a way of feeling, a way of thinking and a way of being. It is all-consuming, all-encompassing. It is a way of life, the only life, an anti-life. Within it there is no without it. It is numbness, at skin level, and at muscle level, and at cell level. It is also a cold fog that envelops the body from head to toe, freezing in its grip. It is also a physical pain felt throughout the body as well as a mental pain that throbs through the mind." 🖤
"Depression is a way of feeling, a way of thinking and a way of being. It is all-consuming, all-encompassing. It is a way of life, the only life, an anti-life. Within it there is no without it. It is numbness, at skin level, and at muscle level, and at cell level. It is also a cold fog that envelops the body from head to toe, freezing in its grip. It is also a physical pain felt throughout the body as well as a mental pain that throbs through the mind." 🖤
September 13, 2022
Fascinating and insightful. A raw account of the authors decent into madness and road to recovery. I’ve read plenty of books on mental illness but this was the most honest account of the realties of mental illnesses such as bi polar and how as I society we interact and respond. Highly recommend this read, fast paced and written in second person, present tense as “you” are thrown into the whirlwind and experience the highs and lows of the authors world.
May 8, 2022
"recovery feels like this...im still ashamed of my behaviour while ill and would find it difficult to approach everyone i affronted and explain myself, offer apology, seek rapprochement, consequently, many relationships have been lost for good"
rounding this off to ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. reading about the author's personal journey with mental illness is no doubt, a very challenging read but its also a reminder that everyone has their own set of battles. its a difficult topic to talk about in the first place and im so thankful for the author's honest account.
however, it gets to a point where it was too much for me as it gets repetitive ((of hospitalisation & meds)). its just how it works in reality but for a book, i feel like theres so much more that could have been shared to readers as mental illness is not just all of that. its a bit rushing for a relatively short read too, i wished there was more instead of just getting over it.
overall, still quite a decent read about living with mental illness and theres a couple of great reminders here & there which i truly appreciate.
rounding this off to ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. reading about the author's personal journey with mental illness is no doubt, a very challenging read but its also a reminder that everyone has their own set of battles. its a difficult topic to talk about in the first place and im so thankful for the author's honest account.
however, it gets to a point where it was too much for me as it gets repetitive ((of hospitalisation & meds)). its just how it works in reality but for a book, i feel like theres so much more that could have been shared to readers as mental illness is not just all of that. its a bit rushing for a relatively short read too, i wished there was more instead of just getting over it.
overall, still quite a decent read about living with mental illness and theres a couple of great reminders here & there which i truly appreciate.
June 26, 2018
"Mind on Fire" is Arnold Thomas Fanning's frank and unflinching account of living with bi-polar disorder. Beautifully written, Fanning's personal memoir is compulsive, intriguing and at times very, very moving.
January 15, 2019
Well written book that gives a real insight into the life of a person suffering from mental illness and trying to get the help he needs. Very moving piece that helps to understand the reason for some people with mental health issues. Would recommend.
July 18, 2023
While I wasn't as blown away by Fanning's account of his bipolar disorder as I was by Jamison's "An Unquiet Mind," it was interesting and touching. Even in a country with universal health care, people with mental illness often do not get the treatment they need. Fanning was often on the streets, hungry and cold, because he had no money and nowhere to go. Fortunately, he was able eventually to manage his illness with medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, but no one should have to go through what he went through.
August 29, 2023
Mind on fire is the harrowing account of mental illness as endured by its author. The malfunction of comprehension, erratic bursts of energy, emotional upheavals and untethered missionary zeal lead our protagonist into many truly appalling situations. In recalling his real life experiences the author creates a picture that reflects clearly the truth of his impaired consciousness and the utter sadness of his plight. What happens is sad. It's sad for him and sad for everyone. This is not a story of madness like "One flew over the Cuckoos nest" where the meaning of mental illness is challenged. This is the story of a deeply deluded man who suffers in extreme ways and who regularly gets himself ground to a pulp in the ever churning gears of human society. His troubles don't exactly begin with a medical prescription for anti-depressants but it occurs to me that this prescription triggers an initial manic episode which launches him into an ongoing world of cognitive and emotional imbalances. There were instances of deep unhappiness in his late adolescence associated with the death of his mother but there was nothing in the writers history to suggest his troubles were innate. His use of these antidepressants in mixing them with alcohol and marijuana was unwise. To prescribe these drugs to young people in the belief they won't mix them with other drugs is unrealistic. The book mostly concerns a decade of broken relationships, psychiatric wards, homelessness, neglect, physical beatings, suicide attempts and in short all the trappings of mental illness. There is great consolation in the authors eventual recovery but you can't help wondering if all of this could have been avoided. You could argue that his life was made more colorful and his experiences deeper and richer but when weighed against his suffering it is not such a good argument. The bravery of the author in telling his story truthfully gives this book its sharp definition and substantial emotional impact.
October 7, 2021
Arnold Thomas Fanning has penned one of the most daring, honest, and affecting mental illness mental pictures.
This book will grip the reader and make them learn why three out of four people with mental illness have undergone stigma; so inhumane it will either make a mental disorder worse or never be divulged out of fear.
I admit I had to sit this book down numerous times because it is very triggering.
Arnold's life story is so intense that it reads like an award-winning drama, but you see just how ugly this world is when you close the book. So, remember when you see a mentally ill person, or you are sick mentally, many recover, never get better, or their illness worsens, but we are beautiful and unique.
I highly recommend and thank Fanning for his undaunted testimony. Perhaps, one day I'll have the nerve to share my life writing with readers.
Like me, a lover of neuroscience or even adult psychopathology case studies, you may find this book intriguing.
Fanning writes in a way that places you precisely where he's at every moment, can see the madness, smell the air, and feel what he felt.
This book will grip the reader and make them learn why three out of four people with mental illness have undergone stigma; so inhumane it will either make a mental disorder worse or never be divulged out of fear.
I admit I had to sit this book down numerous times because it is very triggering.
Arnold's life story is so intense that it reads like an award-winning drama, but you see just how ugly this world is when you close the book. So, remember when you see a mentally ill person, or you are sick mentally, many recover, never get better, or their illness worsens, but we are beautiful and unique.
I highly recommend and thank Fanning for his undaunted testimony. Perhaps, one day I'll have the nerve to share my life writing with readers.
Like me, a lover of neuroscience or even adult psychopathology case studies, you may find this book intriguing.
Fanning writes in a way that places you precisely where he's at every moment, can see the madness, smell the air, and feel what he felt.
July 17, 2019
I am in awe of this man and his writing. If he reads these reviews I thank you Arnold! I do not suffer from a mental illness but I am in contact with quite a few people who do. This book has given me the opportunity to understand "from the inside" what some of them may be going through. It has also reinforced the fact that being a friend and sticking around even when there is not much response, is the best thing one can do. And finally it has shown that recovery is possible even when the sufferer and those around them feel it is impossible.
I was encouraged by the fact that in many of the author's hospital stays he received compassionate care. We hear a lot of negative things about mental health care - and of course some of them are true. But I am pleased to hear about the other side of the story. Those who work as nurses, doctors and therapists of all kinds deserve much admiration and gratitude.
I was encouraged by the fact that in many of the author's hospital stays he received compassionate care. We hear a lot of negative things about mental health care - and of course some of them are true. But I am pleased to hear about the other side of the story. Those who work as nurses, doctors and therapists of all kinds deserve much admiration and gratitude.
March 21, 2019
Brilliant. A book about the author’s fight with mental illness but written in a startlingly visceral way, such that you are presented with the brutal reality of what it means to live with mania & depression. Highly recommend.
November 5, 2022
It's always really interesting to hear vivid accounts about people's lives, especially the unique way they perceive the world and think. It's also very difficult reading, hearing another person's suffering and being almost like inside of their head while their mind is on fire.
Sometimes, I think maybe we've gone far enough, or too far. What separates humans from other animals, supposedly, is that we have the ability (or curse) of self-consciousness - to be painfully aware of our own existence and mind's contents that we can't deal with it. Accounts like Arnold Thomas Fanning's, unfortunately, are not all that rare. You'd think that, being in the 21st century and all, we'd have less stressful lives and have better mental health than those that lived centuries ago. Counterintuitively, this is not the case.
This is all too much. Don't people realise that as mind-blowing as it is to have a little device that can connect us to anyone else with a little device on Earth is a hell of a lot to get your mind round? We have 40+ hour work weeks for huge companies that are so huge it makes you feel insignificant, easy travel which means we are just travelling further from the people we'd prefer to be with the most, a world that is creating plutomaniacs (I'm not one to talk), a world where everything is a machine always in motion, so even if you do stop once, for one second, just for a moment's peace of mind, you fall behind, and you miss something you really wish you hadn't have missed.
I study psychology. A lot of people that study psychology do it so that they can help and understand people with mental health issues. But I don't think it's the right approach to have to help and support people with mental health issues AFTER they've been diagnosed. Blimey, by the point many people seek help, they've had a breakdown or have been so bent and broken that they can't fathom doing anything else other than having to speak to a professional about their most personal thoughts. This service is undoubtedly essential for many people, but hey, here's a thing, how about we build a better world so that people aren't writhing in agony from stress, depression, and anxiety every day?
Fanning does have bipolar disorder (though it didn't make this explicitly clear, because he kept denying it too), so preventative measures might only have a small effect in many cases where there is a diagnosis of a mental health condition, such with its severity. It's shocking how dismissive some doctors are with Fanning's condition. He's told he has unhealthy dependent attachments, particularly a dependent relationship with his Father that has to be fixed and that he really needs to come to terms with his Mother's death. He's told this coldly by doctors: you were given a bad set of cards, we all have our problems, you need to learn to deal with this better. Duuuude, this man is delusional, manic, and suicidal, and you're telling him to just deal with it? Get a job, he's told. Move back to Ireland. Move to America. Break up with your girlfriend. Fix things with your Dad. Fanning is pulled in many different directions and his mind seems to take the position that all is happening at once. The world is hard enough for most people to navigate, let alone if you're struggling with your mental health.
Back to considering how humanity has potentially gone too far. Too fast-paced. Too judgemental. Too much pressure for high-achievement. Too few jobs. Too much news to have see on the TV and social media all the time. Too many drugs.
It's like we're blindly following the sunken time fallacy - too many humans have done their suffering to turn back now. This only makes sense if we assume that we're going to suffer considerably less in the future,and the lives people have lived in the past justifies the lives and deaths of those in the future for eternity. And we just keep getting more and more stuff, and it is making it physically easier to live our everyday lives, but we are now better educated and aware than ever before, we are painfully aware that humanity is so expansive, it is terrifying.
It's like H. P Lovecraft's concept of cosmicism - that there is knowledge so powerful that if it is discovered, it would drive people to insanity. Well, psychosis might be the mind turning inwards and finally understanding and seeing something most others can't. And it's so terrifying, shocking, unbelievable, that the mind is never the same forever after. This is why I also think that aliens might not exist - Fermi's paradox is not really a paradox at all. There comes a certain point where the mind can't comprehend it's own contents, and that eventual ability to understand and be self-aware results in the extinguishing of that civilisation.
Sometimes, I think maybe we've gone far enough, or too far. What separates humans from other animals, supposedly, is that we have the ability (or curse) of self-consciousness - to be painfully aware of our own existence and mind's contents that we can't deal with it. Accounts like Arnold Thomas Fanning's, unfortunately, are not all that rare. You'd think that, being in the 21st century and all, we'd have less stressful lives and have better mental health than those that lived centuries ago. Counterintuitively, this is not the case.
This is all too much. Don't people realise that as mind-blowing as it is to have a little device that can connect us to anyone else with a little device on Earth is a hell of a lot to get your mind round? We have 40+ hour work weeks for huge companies that are so huge it makes you feel insignificant, easy travel which means we are just travelling further from the people we'd prefer to be with the most, a world that is creating plutomaniacs (I'm not one to talk), a world where everything is a machine always in motion, so even if you do stop once, for one second, just for a moment's peace of mind, you fall behind, and you miss something you really wish you hadn't have missed.
I study psychology. A lot of people that study psychology do it so that they can help and understand people with mental health issues. But I don't think it's the right approach to have to help and support people with mental health issues AFTER they've been diagnosed. Blimey, by the point many people seek help, they've had a breakdown or have been so bent and broken that they can't fathom doing anything else other than having to speak to a professional about their most personal thoughts. This service is undoubtedly essential for many people, but hey, here's a thing, how about we build a better world so that people aren't writhing in agony from stress, depression, and anxiety every day?
Fanning does have bipolar disorder (though it didn't make this explicitly clear, because he kept denying it too), so preventative measures might only have a small effect in many cases where there is a diagnosis of a mental health condition, such with its severity. It's shocking how dismissive some doctors are with Fanning's condition. He's told he has unhealthy dependent attachments, particularly a dependent relationship with his Father that has to be fixed and that he really needs to come to terms with his Mother's death. He's told this coldly by doctors: you were given a bad set of cards, we all have our problems, you need to learn to deal with this better. Duuuude, this man is delusional, manic, and suicidal, and you're telling him to just deal with it? Get a job, he's told. Move back to Ireland. Move to America. Break up with your girlfriend. Fix things with your Dad. Fanning is pulled in many different directions and his mind seems to take the position that all is happening at once. The world is hard enough for most people to navigate, let alone if you're struggling with your mental health.
Back to considering how humanity has potentially gone too far. Too fast-paced. Too judgemental. Too much pressure for high-achievement. Too few jobs. Too much news to have see on the TV and social media all the time. Too many drugs.
It's like we're blindly following the sunken time fallacy - too many humans have done their suffering to turn back now. This only makes sense if we assume that we're going to suffer considerably less in the future,and the lives people have lived in the past justifies the lives and deaths of those in the future for eternity. And we just keep getting more and more stuff, and it is making it physically easier to live our everyday lives, but we are now better educated and aware than ever before, we are painfully aware that humanity is so expansive, it is terrifying.
It's like H. P Lovecraft's concept of cosmicism - that there is knowledge so powerful that if it is discovered, it would drive people to insanity. Well, psychosis might be the mind turning inwards and finally understanding and seeing something most others can't. And it's so terrifying, shocking, unbelievable, that the mind is never the same forever after. This is why I also think that aliens might not exist - Fermi's paradox is not really a paradox at all. There comes a certain point where the mind can't comprehend it's own contents, and that eventual ability to understand and be self-aware results in the extinguishing of that civilisation.
October 9, 2019
This is a powerful and moving account of one man’s struggle with manic depression. I wondered about 5 stars because it is so real and raw and he really doesn’t hold back or try to paint himself as sympathetic. It’s a real warts and all exposé of himself. You see that this clinical diagnosis can be so restrictive and recovery is almost like that of a heroin addict except this is mental illness not drug addiction.
But while it took guts to write and publish I didn’t overly love how it was written. The sentences were staccato accounts of how he got from A - B and didn’t flow. He was trying to stick to fact too much so it read like a police statement more than a narrative.
It shows though how much support this sort of mental illness needs and the rewards that investing in people who are bipolar can achieve. It’s horrifying how quickly he slipped into homelessness and was just sheer good luck that he didn’t die on the streets.
Interesting aside: I was also in the audience of the teachers club when Michael D Higgins was there.
But while it took guts to write and publish I didn’t overly love how it was written. The sentences were staccato accounts of how he got from A - B and didn’t flow. He was trying to stick to fact too much so it read like a police statement more than a narrative.
It shows though how much support this sort of mental illness needs and the rewards that investing in people who are bipolar can achieve. It’s horrifying how quickly he slipped into homelessness and was just sheer good luck that he didn’t die on the streets.
Interesting aside: I was also in the audience of the teachers club when Michael D Higgins was there.
June 20, 2019
"Depression is a way of feeling, a way of thinking and a way of being. It is all-encompassing... It is numbness, at skin level, and at muscle level, and at cell level... It pulses through the body, each pulse worse than the last... Endless. Unmerciful. Indifferent. Brutal."
A raw, painfully honest and beautifully written memoir from an author and playwright. I was blown away by the writing, and the descriptions of how depression feels within the body and mind. You're taken on a very emotional and turbulent journey with the author as he battles bipolar disorder over a 10 year period. His mental health issues became so severe that at the lowest point he lost everything, even becoming homeless. Memoirs like this one offer hope by showing that recovery and happiness in life is always possible with the right professional help and support.
Although not always easy to read, I found this memoir fascinating- the book is gripping, vivid and gives real insight into depression, mania and psychosis. Recommended for anyone with an interest in mental health.
A raw, painfully honest and beautifully written memoir from an author and playwright. I was blown away by the writing, and the descriptions of how depression feels within the body and mind. You're taken on a very emotional and turbulent journey with the author as he battles bipolar disorder over a 10 year period. His mental health issues became so severe that at the lowest point he lost everything, even becoming homeless. Memoirs like this one offer hope by showing that recovery and happiness in life is always possible with the right professional help and support.
Although not always easy to read, I found this memoir fascinating- the book is gripping, vivid and gives real insight into depression, mania and psychosis. Recommended for anyone with an interest in mental health.
May 15, 2021
I am in awe of this author. I cannot imagine how someone who has suffered as much as he has, who has literally 'lost his mind,' can recover to the extent that he can write such a lucid, honest and insightful book about his experiences.
It has made me re-examine my beliefs about mental illness, and fills me with hope for those who suffer. I have recommended this book to so many people because I just cannot describe the many ways in which it has added to my understanding and changed how I interact with those who have mental health problems-and I thought I was pretty good before reading it!
Could be core curriculum reading for all doctors in training.
It has made me re-examine my beliefs about mental illness, and fills me with hope for those who suffer. I have recommended this book to so many people because I just cannot describe the many ways in which it has added to my understanding and changed how I interact with those who have mental health problems-and I thought I was pretty good before reading it!
Could be core curriculum reading for all doctors in training.
November 30, 2021
A compelling and brilliant read that avoids cliches, hysteria and sentimentality. It cleverly navigates the unravelling of a mind, so that it is disorientating and illuminating simultaneously - not an easy thing to do. Although the book delves deep into the madness it seemed to skim over the recovery process - I would have liked more details about that.
I didn't expect this to be easy to read and would recommend it for those currently suffering with a mental illness, those that have in the past and for those trying to make sense of one i.e. friends and relatives. It's a wonderful, inspiring read that will stay with me for a long time.
I didn't expect this to be easy to read and would recommend it for those currently suffering with a mental illness, those that have in the past and for those trying to make sense of one i.e. friends and relatives. It's a wonderful, inspiring read that will stay with me for a long time.
January 17, 2020
It's a brave account, but I would have found it much more interesting and authentic if the author had let us know in much more detail about his childhood, his parents' characters, the dynamics and relationships within the family and any other important character in his childhood. He says very little about the facts and his feelings at the time and without them we can't look at the causes.
I'm also surprised that it took so long for him to go into talking therapy and that he didn't learn about his condition even when he's depressed at his father's home unable to move much.
I'm also surprised that it took so long for him to go into talking therapy and that he didn't learn about his condition even when he's depressed at his father's home unable to move much.
March 13, 2021
I found it a challenging read in places in a good way. The narrative comes across as very honest and unflinching even of emotions, thoughts and experiences that are uncomfortable and distressing reading. The book focuses on his mindset at the time, changing emotion, thoughts, shifting ideas and plans at paces reflective of his mind with a real sense of immediancy. Personally, I found many of his descriptions of feelings/thought processes really reasonated, particularly those that are hard to put into words.
April 25, 2024
I have read many Wellcome prize books. This wasn't one of the best, but its content was still fascinating.
This is a vivid account of bipolar - the irrationalness of the mania, and the complete shutdown of the depressive episodes. The power of the brain to drastically alter our behaviours and perception of the world fascinates me.
The author also explains well the awfulness of choosing between the absence of feeling with the lithium treatment, and the symptoms of his mental illness.
There is a memorable quote which describes depression : "Within it, there is no without it". Amen.
This is a vivid account of bipolar - the irrationalness of the mania, and the complete shutdown of the depressive episodes. The power of the brain to drastically alter our behaviours and perception of the world fascinates me.
The author also explains well the awfulness of choosing between the absence of feeling with the lithium treatment, and the symptoms of his mental illness.
There is a memorable quote which describes depression : "Within it, there is no without it". Amen.
May 22, 2025
Gosh- what a privilege to return to the world of the literate with this. An account of a young Irish writer’s intertwistings with bipolar disorder. Felt like I was standing in the hard shoulder of his mind’s motorway: The noise and emptiness both conveyed with such italicisation (word?). Also struck by the relationships both maintained and destroyed. A lot to reflect on in the behaviour of background characters. Made me reflect on the type of bystander I’d like to be. Short book but full of things to think about.
October 18, 2019
Great book describing - realistically - what it is to have bipolar disorder. While I am glad Arnold appears to be ‘healed’ and in recovery, I’m not convinced such a thing is possible beyond managing symptoms better and taking steps to having fewer episodes. The long path to finding the right combination of treatments is sadly highly accurate. I would recommend this to friends and family who want to understand the illness better
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 4, 2019
A peek into the mind of someone who lived on the edge of sanity and life. This is a first-hand story about the depths of depression, mania and delusion, where you very much identify and bring in your own wonderings of your mind - hopefully not taken as far.
Amazing look into how society, family, friends and institutions handle mental health as well. No doubt everyone would learn from reading this book and living Fanning’s 10 years of madness through these pages.
Amazing look into how society, family, friends and institutions handle mental health as well. No doubt everyone would learn from reading this book and living Fanning’s 10 years of madness through these pages.
April 8, 2023
This book was so exhausting to read…..but I don’t mean that in a bad way. What he went through WAS exhausting, to him and everyone around him. I really appreciate this book having been written and it really opened my eyes to the agony that so many of our overlooked neighbors and acquaintances are going through. I learned a lot. Saying I enjoyed this book wouldn’t sound right, but I really, really liked and appreciate it.
February 19, 2024
Fanning describes in detail his experience with madness--specifically mania and psychosis. A promising playwright. He has long struggled with occasional depression, which started after his mother's death when he was 20.
The book describes in detail his descent into madness. It is bone chilling. At the same time, he ultimately emerges and returns to good health.
Since his descriptions of his madness sound a lot like Bipolar Disorder, it seems improbable that it simply disappeared.
The book describes in detail his descent into madness. It is bone chilling. At the same time, he ultimately emerges and returns to good health.
Since his descriptions of his madness sound a lot like Bipolar Disorder, it seems improbable that it simply disappeared.
June 25, 2019
What a beautifully contagious book.
It's an eye-opening account of the author's 'madness' (a term I dislike, but choose to use based on the title), and his bravery to fight for contentment. I'm truly humbled by this book, and absolutely recommend.
This is a page turner to make you feel and be a fuller person.
It's an eye-opening account of the author's 'madness' (a term I dislike, but choose to use based on the title), and his bravery to fight for contentment. I'm truly humbled by this book, and absolutely recommend.
This is a page turner to make you feel and be a fuller person.
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