THE CHALLENGE OF LIVING LIFE AS BOTH A BIPOLAR AND AN ALCOHOLIC.

Jane S. is one of the 60-percent (or more) of “manic depressives” (persons severely bipolar) who are also alcoholics. Her bipolar life story covers forty-seven years of sobriety and forty-five years on lithium therapy, how her illnesses have interacted, and particularly how much of the shape of her life — and her achievement of her life's goals (including, for the last forty-seven years, sobriety) — has been shaped by her bipolarity.

This book is important reading for those dealing with “manic depression,” either in those close to them or in themselves, and even more for those who suffer from both of Jane's diseases. Her memories include, literally, the good (paying cash down for her first Mustang, though that was because she didn't know how to work a bank account), the bad (the sailboat she was on being boarded by the Coast Guard off Maryland), and the ugly (hearing her head being dribbled like a basketball outside her side-room in the hospital) — and the very good, the white-light dream that began her recovery from alcoholism. She is believed to have been on lithium therapy for her condition longer than anyone else in the United States.