Agents in My Brain: How I Survived Manic Depression [Paperback]

Bill Hannon (Author), Karen K. Dickson (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0812693469 | ISBN-13: 978-0812693461 | Edition: 1

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. It is this feature that sets the book apart from all other accounts of manic depression. Agents in My Brain is essential reading for anyone who has encountered manic depression on either a first-or second-hand basis.

"A vivid and often poignant portrayal of what it is like to grapple with the realities of manic depressive disorder". -- Timothy Twito, M.D.

"Agents in My Brain is an outstanding piece of work. I am manic-depressive myself, and Bill Hannon's book really tells it like it is". -- M.A.L.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hannon is brave indeed to have written this memoir of his struggle with the manic depression which has afflicted him since high school. But bravery alone doesn't redeem the repetitive and unsophisticated prose that impedes his story. Until 1976 and his senior year in his Washington State high school, Hannon describes himself as "still super-jock, super-brain, and super-smooth compared to now." His mother suffered from manic depression from 1955 to her death in 1981, and Hannon believes his father's possessiveness (Hannon wasn't allowed to date) came from loneliness. Hannon goes on in detail about his life before the illness first manifested itself as an inability to concentrate and trouble swimming, followed a few months later by a manic episode while on a six-week trip to Israel. He was hospitalized there before being moved to another hospital in Seattle. Hannon's struggle lasted for years, and he often faults his early doctors for not prescribing antidepressants and for not discussing his illness with him. He succeeds in making them seem incompetent, but more background on the different pharmaceuticals that became available during the course of his treatment would have been both more convincing and more helpful. An afterword by a psychiatrist and a list of symptoms offer some background.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company; 1 edition (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812693469
• ISBN-13: 978-0812693461
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,479,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars View of bipolar phenomenon from inside out., February 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Agents in My Brain: How I Survived Manic Depression (Paperback)

This is a groundbreaking book. Agents In My Brain is a study of bipolar disorder from the INSIDE looking out. No one else could have written this book except one who has experienced this bizarre form of human consciousness, based on little understood chemical imbalances in the brain's ecology. Hannon takes you into a delusional world that could only be imagined by the surrealists. To Hannon-or anyone experiencing bipolar effects-it is not a fantasy. It is real. Hannon is a successful walking experiment. The experiment involves psychopharmacology, tweaking the chemical biome within the brain's neural network to regain effective, holistic harmony. Some have criticized Hannon's shoot from the hip style and his less than subservient manner in relation to doctors. The "God Complex" won't work on this insightful "nut case." He's the man, he was there. He's more than a patient; he's a hardcore explorer in the lethal wilderness of insanity and he's back, scars and all, to tell about it. It's must reading for anyone dealing with bipolar phenomena (I don't like the words "illness" or "disorder" because it implies some "normal" mental state as defined by the sober [and sometimes not too sane] judges of mainstream mental health). I would also recommend this book to anyone interested in the nature of human consciousness in general, whether from an artistic point of view, or a psychological one. Hannon shows that whether you are crazy or not depends first on the kind of chemistry set you're playing with, then how you conduct the experiments. It's way out, black sheep stuff. If you want to learn something you don't already know, go for it.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Agents in My Brain, February 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Agents in My Brain: How I Survived Manic Depression (Paperback)

I knew nothing about manic depression. This book opened my eyes to a disease that is hard to image for most people. Mr. Hannon brings his feelings and thoughts to his readers and in a very remarkable way, he is able to share his painful daily struggles. I would highly recommend this book to all University psychology classes and in particular to Medical Schools. Mr. Hannon's personal insight could help physicians make an earlier diagnosis and positively impact the lives of others that become afflicted with this disease.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great insight into manic-depression, February 6, 2000

By 

Pamela (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Agents in My Brain: How I Survived Manic Depression (Paperback)

I have a friend who is bipolar. I'd read "A Mood Apart" a few months ago, which gave me some good information. But Hannon's book provides real insight and understanding for a nonbipolar person about what this condition must be like. The list of symptoms at the back of the book is also very useful in identifying what may seem like eccentricities of M-Ds. This book, along with "A Mood Apart" or "The Unquiet Mind" will take anyone who wishes to understand the topic a long way down that road. If I could have a magic wish in regard to this book, however, it would be for a better style of writing. At times, it reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions," but I think that may have been unintentional.