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Journeys into Bipolar Mania
By Suzanne V. Brown, Ph.D.
ISBN: 978-1-78382-070-2
Published: 2014
Pages: 94
Key Themes: Mental Health, Memoir, Bipolar, Mania, Manic Depression
Description
Nightmares & Bliss is Dr. Suzanne Brown’s second book, a memoir about her experiences ascending into the heights of bipolar mania. Suzanne’s first book, Blue Hills Diary: Mystical Journey into Mania was written sixteen years earlier when she was in the throes of a manic high.
In contrast, Nightmares & Bliss attempts to answer those questions bipolar manic-depressive people have about their far-flung experiences. This story documents Suzanne’s over-the-top manias resulting in four traumatic hospitalizations. Suzanne shares her developing episodes, her addictions to self-medicate, and her many ventures beyond the veil, including meaningful coincidences, mystical experiences and dramatic shifts of consciousness.
Nightmares & Bliss is one book for people who want to better understand the bipolar person’s varying dimensions of awareness, bizarre choices, and inner psyche.
About the Author
Suzanne V. Brown, Ph.D. was born outside of Portland, Oregon USA in late January, 1952. Formally schooled in Psychology (Virginia Tech, Johns Hopkins University), she left JHU shortly before receiving her Ph.D. to make her mark in the business world selling large computer systems for Hewlett-Packard (top 2% in the country) and telecommunications with IBM (National Accounts’ Manager). True to the intense, goal-oriented nature of mania and after fourteen years of the business world, she completed her Ph.D. dissertation with St. Johns University (Louisiana). It was also about then when Suzanne joined Dr. (hon.) Rhea A. White of the Exceptional Human Experience (EHE) Network to investigate accounts of anomalous experiences of all kinds. These experiences, when honored, can create whole new worldviews and begin a spiritual awakening process. Suzanne finally understood that all of her experiences—from the odd to the outrageous—were destiny markers on her Life’s Journey. It was shortly after this revelation she wrote Blue Hills Diary. Within a few months, the intensity of writing this book would catapult her into full-blown mania. Since that time, she has been overwhelmingly urged to publish it. Today, Suzanne works as a drug addiction clinician and lives in the Phoenix, Arizona area.
Book Extract
Prologue
“Life is our spiritual Journey back Home.” I wrote those words to begin the Prologue of my first book, Blue Hills Diary: Mystical Journey into Mania. Those words are as powerful to me today as they were then. Blue Hills Diary was written over fifteen years ago and then published in 2012.
Journeys into Bipolar Mania is a complement to Blue Hills Diary although you do not have to read the first book before they read this, my second book. I received many requests for more information regarding my hospitalizations, what it was like for me to experience manic episodes, including their progressions and consequences. I also wanted to address stigma and health care treatment of those with mental illness. Most important, I wanted to give another voice to those who have experienced odd, anomalous, even cosmic experiences outside of the realm of the everyday perceptions. I do not propose a way to do or be. I merely want to share several of my own exceptional or anomalous experiences. I will ask the question at each turn: What indeed are we tapping into when we have our manic episodes?
Mystical experiences of a cosmic nature are common with people ascending to manic heights. My work with Rhea A. White, Ph.D. (Hon) of the Exceptional Human Experience Network gave us some clues regarding these otherworldly experiences. Before she passed away in 2007, Rhea and I discussed many of these experiences which came to the Network as written accounts or EHE Autobiographies. As I became more convinced I would be living with Bipolar I disorder for the rest of my life and would need to treat it, I met with others who had come to the same conclusion, and some who have not yet decided what they will do.
This is my memoir story of manic episodes and subsequent hospitalizations. I was already into my early 30s and held against my will for the first time in a dark, tiny room on a pallet on the floor. To this day, I do not know why I was held; what I had done to take me to that place.
Thus begins the story of my manic-depressive episodes
— the story of my alcohol and cigarette addictions
— the story of my mystical re-membering of Home.
This is my Journey of Hope.
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