An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison [62]
Time and again, because of both personal and clinical experiences, I found myself emphasizing the terrible lethality of manic-depressive illness, the dreadful agitation involved in mixed manic states, and the importance of dealing with patients’ reluctance to take lithium or other medications to control their moods. Having to stand back from my own feelings and past in order to write in a more cerebral, scholarly way was refreshing, and it forced me to structure and put into a more objective perspective the turmoil I had been through. Often, the science of the field was not only exciting, but it also held out the very realistic hope of new treatments. Although it was, on occasion, disturbing to see powerful and complicated emotions and behaviors distilled into deadeningly dull diagnostic phrases, it was hard not to be caught up in the new methods and findings of a very rapidly progressing field of clinical medicine.
I ended up strangely loving the discipline and obsessiveness that went into developing the countless tables of data. There was something lullingly reassuring about entering number after number, percentage after percentage, into the summary charts; critiquing the methods used in the various studies; and then trying to make some overall sense out of the large number of articles and books that had been reviewed. Much as I had done when frightened or upset as a child, I found that asking questions, tracking down answers as best I could, and then asking yet more questions was the best way to provide a distance from anxiety and a framework for understanding.
Lowering my lithium level had allowed not only a clarity of thinking, but also a vividness and intensity of experience, back into my life; these elements had once formed the core of my normal temperament, and their absence had left gaping hollows in the way in which I could respond to the world. The too rigid structuring of my moods and temperament, which had resulted from a higher dose of lithium, made me less resilient to stress than a lower dose, which, like the building codes in California that are designed to prevent damage from earthquakes, allowed my mind and emotions to sway a bit. Therefore, and rather oddly, there was a new solidness to both my thinking and emotions. Gradually, as I began to look around me, I realized that this was the kind of evenness and predictability most people had, and probably took for granted, throughout their lives.
When I was an undergraduate I tutored a blind student in statistics; once a week he would make his way, with his guide dog, to my small office in the basement of the psychology building. I was very affected by working with him, seeing how difficult it was for him to do the things I so much took for granted and by watching the extraordinarily close relationship he had with his collie, who, having accompanied him to the office, would immediately curl up and fall asleep at his feet. As the term went on I felt increasingly comfortable in asking him about what it was like to be blind; what it was like to be blind, young, and an undergraduate at the University of California; and what it was like to have to be so dependent upon others to learn and survive. After several months I had deluded myself that I had at least some notion, however small, of what life was like for him. Then one day he asked me if I would mind meeting him for his tutorial session in the blind reading room of the undergraduate library, rather than in my office.
I tracked down the reading room with some difficulty and started to go in. I stopped suddenly when I realized with horror that the room was almost totally dark. It was dead silent, no lights were on, and yet there were half a dozen students bending over their books or listening intently to the