Bipolar Lawyer Publishes a Memoir That Mirrors Her Disease
An accomplished Los Angeles entertainment lawyer with bipolar disorder has written a memoir that takes readers into her high-flying manic episodes and the inevitable lows that followed.
The author of the book, simply titled Manic, is 48-year-old Terri Cheney. She told the Orange County Register that she has been stable with the help of medication for three to five years. It took seven years to write the book, told in episodic bursts that mirrored her illness. She began writing while in a Los Angeles hospital for depression, she told PhillyBurbs.com, but later worked in cafes, writing in longhand.
Cheney had been an entertainment lawyer with important clients and a six-figure income, the Los Angeles Times reports in its book review. The partners there admired her boundless energy and devotion to the firm, even when she could not come to work because of depression that she kept hidden.
The Register and PhilyBurbs.com liked the jumpy nature of the book, but the Times reviewer was turned off by it.
“The story veers wildly from celebrations of men with green eyes to collecting enough pills to make her sleep forever,” the Times review says. “She is raped in New Mexico, sent to jail for drug possession and describes in horrifying detail the aftermath of electroshock therapy. We move back and forth through time and treatments at lightning speed.”
“It fuels our prurient interest, but we are not allowed to get in deep enough to empathize with Cheney, only to stand back and marvel and admire.”
Cheney says she hopes the book will help others suffering from bipolar disorder. “It’s a sense of identifying with the disease, so that there’s a face on it, so it’s not just this nameless terrifying thing anymore. Knowing that you’re not the only one is really the first step toward healing,” she told PhillyBurbs.com.
