Imagine that you wake overseas one night and think you are in hell. In this darkness you fight oriental demons and dodge laser beams. You are strapped to the bed of a baffling building, tended by people you don’t recognise. Then imagine you are home again, and that you gradually get better on no medication. You take a year off to travel. What would you then think and feel about bipolar disorder and psychosis? Far from being broken you finish a medical degree and study psychiatry, whilst holding on to your secret. Spin forward forty years after a career in community psychiatry. You decide to study and Beyond Bipolar – Ancient Realms New Directions is incepted, about the bipolar spectrum and living with bipolar mood and psychosis from the inside and the outside. The book uses memoir and creative nonfiction to advance theories about the link between the bipolar spectrum and society.
