Acceptance of manic depression

Throughout the book, Kay Jamison struggles to accept her own manic-depressive illness. This is made more difficult by the fact she is a psychologist who specializes in treating mood disorders. She freely admits to her persistent denial that she has a life-long psychosis that could kill her, and to her fixation on the earliest days of her illness when the emotional highs were energizing, enlightening and powerful. Not unlike the alcoholic who seeks always to recapture the magic of the early days of drinking, she has a very difficult time letting go of what she describes as her own addiction to the ecstatic highs her disease produces.

Her description of the first manic episode she experiences in high school gives an idea of why it is so difficult later to accept that she has a potentially lethal disease:

"At first, everything seemed so easy. I...