The onset of my Manic Depression came as quite a surprise. I was a 24-year-old bon vivant sitting on top of the world. I was the daughter of a father with a big job in sports. I grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family in Westport, Connecticut, an affluent hamlet situated along Long Island Sound. So life was perfect: I had plenty of friends, I was considered good looking and I had money to buy drugs and drink in all the right places with all the right people. My life was indeed unfolding to be perfect, that is, until without warning, the bottom fell out in the guise of a profound depression. I would later be diagnosed with Manic Depression. More than 20 years have passed and when I began to write this story several years ago I found I still had difficulty telling this story: it was hard to look back at the tremendous promise I held in my grasp. It was also scary how it was snatched away in an instant. It sounds dramatic but Manic Depression is a dramatic life-changing event. So when I decided to expose my illness in this book, I knew I wanted to give others hope that people with mental illness can go onto lead normal and productive lives. More over, I wanted to stop the judgment that often comes with mental illness. Even in the most healing of environments, there is far less understanding that I would like to see. I decided to use a simple framework for telling my story - one I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, of which I have been a sober member since 1987. In AA, we tell our stories based on our "experience, strength and hope." Before I delve into the hope part, I'll describe my experience with as much truth as I can recall. As I mentioned, life was perfect until this depression happened without warning. One day the sun was out, the next day I felt as if the shades were drawn shut, without a glimmer of light peaking through. My first onset of depression lasted four months, followed by a long manic episode laced with heavy drug use that led to a brief hospitalization, the first of many stays in psychiatric wards and becoming familiar with a new vocabulary: Lithium and psychosis. For those not familiar with psychosis it's a total divorce from reality. From me, my psychosis manifested in wild behavior, including dissociative episode, panic attacks (despite five years on Lithium, which I now see as a miracle drug) and alcoholic drinking to bring me down from my mania. In describing my experience, I will attempt to plunge the reader into an intrusive view of insanity. Just as when driving past a car accident we want to look away but can't, the reader will be compelled to turn each page to find out where the strength and hope emerged from my madness.