Hurry Down Sunshine: Author Deals With Manic-Depressive Teen Daughter~

Usually manic-depression or bipolar disorder strikes in the early twenties or later, but in the case of Sally Greenberg of Greenwich Village, New York it struck at the tender age of fifteen. Fortunately in the beginning of summer. Her writer father, Michael Greenberg, penned a very moving, captivating memoir of the scary experience that I ate up in two days, though it's not a lightweight book. Like so many of you I have questions about what causes brain chemicals to misfire, dopamine in this case, and plunge a harmless person into the throes of insanity that brings harm to themselves and possibly others. There are no answers in Hurry Down Sunshine as is to be expected, only insidious questions about how to deal with it when it strikes. About how it might have happened...or didn't on grave reflection. It's also a loving memoir of a broken family coming together again for Sally.

She finally cracked up in 1996. Not one to use alcohol, drugs or nicotine, she was a good daughter who struggled for years to learn to read (dyslexia isn't mentioned, but she required special ed teachers) and so when she finally could read, she lived to read as well as write volumes of Sylvia Plath-like poetry. Months before insanity hit she barely slept and just wrote, read and listened to classical music at home. Greenberg describes it all in engaging detail as he and his wife, the caring stepmother, realize something's very wrong with Sally and must take her to the hospital after midnight. They don't want anyone to know their daughter is crazy.

At first it seems like a horrible mistake to have given control of Sally to the seemingly rude and domineering doctor in the sanitized psych ward. They can't even see her until she's out of isolation and then are devastated when they do. The anti-psychotic drug is the first of many she'll need to take and adjust to as her family gathers, from near and far, to support her. Her biological mother, older brother away from home, grandmother, all come in bewilderment and pain as they contend with her illness. Once she's released with goals for her to undertake, Greenberg tries Sally's anti-psychotic drug to discover something of what she's going through and it frightens him, but the outpatient doctor knows when Sally's medication can be played with, when Sally is ready for less of one, more of another. Hurry Down Sunshine fascinated me with its colorful portrait of life in a psych ward for the often-waiting family who are surrounded by other patients besides their loved one. It also took place in the Greenberg apartment and sometimes around the village, but never in Sally's school since it's not written by her. While I was most interested in what happened with her, I enjoyed getting to know the author, her very concerned father who stops everything to visit her everyday and stresses out with his feelings for not only his daughter, but his ex-wife, wife, mother, son and a slightly crazed brother he's been looking after and who suddenly wants him out of his life.

What a summer that was for them all! Actually Greenberg consolidated some events for dramatic purposes and to keep it interesting. I was certainly kept entertained until I finished. Greenberg's daughter gave him permission to use her name for his book, but some other names have been changed for privacy. It's probably not spoiling anything to tell you that her drugs seem to return her to normal, but in the postscript we learn that she'll have a long recurrence of psychosis after graduating high school, attending college and marrying.

Drugs only cover up or keep at bay the problem in the manic-depressive brain and I find this frustrating. Sally must take sleeping pills and use sunscreen and sunglasses as well. A neighbor has this problem, the extremely sleep-deprived one, and she refuses sleeping pills and anti-depressants, which is great, but she's forbidden to supplement with melatonin or to get tanned. Once she tried the latter and turned purple! I hoped to learn from the book why melatonin is forbidden, but didn't. It seems like it's the sleep cycle and the ability to dream at night that needs to be put right to get brain chemistry working better and it won't happen if you just knock yourself out with pills. Having recently read Healing Night by a clinical psychologist who focuses on sleep disorders and recommends melatonin supplementation, I do wonder.

Anyway, Hurry Down Sunshine is an endearing novel by a writer compelled by his daughter's illness to research the author James Joyce's psychotic tendencies in order, perhaps, to understand himself as a father, like Joyce, of a manic-depressive daughter. It's not a book to read again, I don't think, not for me because I'm not dealing with his situation and it's rather heartbreaking really. A great read once, though.