Life is hard – or maybe it’s just that being human we naturally make it harder. Reflecting back over a particularly difficult year, I should feel blessed to have gained valuable insight into this, my lifelong condition. But blessed in what context? Perhaps, like someone who’s discovered the lifeboats on a sinking ship and now has the means to save…
Tag: mental health
Bipolar disorder affects around one-percent of the population. Its symptoms range from suicidal depression to full-blown mania, where the individual believes him or herself to have godlike powers. Surfing the Edge: a survivor’s guide to bipolar disorder is the testament of three people who’ve experienced the illness first hand and lived to talk about it. The stories are honest and revealing, and…
The brain has been described as the world’s most sophisticated computer. Every day we spend hours uploading information and processing new data without pausing to consider how it all works. Unlike other animals, our brains have evolved the capacity to think logically. Rather than exist in a primitive vacuum, this ability has enabled us to transcend our basic nature and assume godlike powers we can then use to good or bad effect.…
At three o’clock in the morning, I had a revelation. Christopher Hitchens was wrong. It isn’t religion that poisons everything. It’s thinking. Lying awake in the blanket silence, the rest of the household sleeping, the mind tends to go into overdrive. Your entire life becomes the subject for debate, except there’s no-one around to field the questions. I’ve suffered from insomnia for short…