BrainBomb: a lurid story of bi-polar illness

Description

'BrainBomb' is a novel telling the lurid story of bi-polar illness from the inside. It is related as an ongoing blog, with flashbacks, and deranged fantasies instigated by insomnia. It details the manic highs and terrifying lows of a condition that is much commoner than society would like to think.

Most importantly, it is about the light at the end of the tunnel.

About the Author

In the 70's he loved the Sex Pistols. In the 80's he loved casual sex and binge-drinking. But in 1987 his mind underwent a meltdown. He found himself in a secure psychiatric ward of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

Book Extract

This felt like the ultimate bad acid trip. One moment I was lounging on my bed, gawking at a Siouxsie and the Banshees poster. Next I was screaming my lungs raw while head-butting Siouxsie Sioux.

The panic attack was so ferocious it had dissolved my sanity. The depression that had reduced me to a hermit had spiralled out of control. Reality was finally slithering from my grasp. My illness had tapered to this point of extreme delusion. I was hysterical; babbling nonsense. I was convinced I was undergoing a metamorphosis. I imagined my mind was emptying of all rational thought.

I dislodged the poster. Instead I turned my attention to the large mirror on the wall, convinced this was a portal to Hell and I was being inexorably sucked in. All semblance of normality or joy, aspirations or happy memories were exposed as being brittle, meaningless nonentities. My feverish internal ramblings were roaring this truth to me: this was what awaited all of us on the other side; this was what the scribes of every religious persuasion had been scratching and scrabbling around for centuries as they had prophesied the nature of Hell.

Part of me was still rebelling against the nonsensical nightmare. But an equally warped notion entered my mind: the only way to counter all this was to smash the mirror; to destroy this vortex, to shatter the gateway to oblivion.

If the cold-blooded shrieking wasn't bad enough, the sight of me smacking my head into a sheet of plate glass scared the living fucking daylights out of my mother and father who had been watching a Two Ronnies video under the impression I'd gone to bed hours before.

Dad desperately tried to keep me pinned to the floor. I squirmed, my face purple with bruising, yelling to be left alone to complete my task, to crack the glass.