Afterword

A Personal Roadmap
Being of a scientific nature I kept a record of my episodes.

Depression and Bipolar Book List
An extensive list of books available on depression and bipolar disorder sorted into subject categories.

Bipolar Book Reviews
My personal reviews of books recently published on bipolar disorder and aimed at the patient.

Education
One of the most useful things you can do to prevent further episodes is to educate yourself about the illness. For those in the USA, NAMI offers the Peer-to-Peer Recovery Education Course. I highly recommend this free experiential education course for anyone with a serious mental illness. Find out if it is offered by your local NAMI affiliate. (I am involved in providing the course in my local NAMI.) Other similar consumer-taught recovery courses offered by non-profits in the USA include Bridges and the WRAP program from Mary Ellen Copeland.

Mood Music
Sad songs and mad songs. Sad songs for those melancholy moments and mad songs to assure us we are not travelling this road alone.

Resources on the Net
A selection of resources on the Net that deal with bipolar disorder and mental health: portals, chat rooms, support organizations, books, suicide hotlines.

About the Author
Peter Newman was born and raised in Birmingham, UK. He studied engineering and got himself a nice quiet telecomms job in London. During a particularly acute manic episode he applied to Cambridge to do a PhD and was rather surprised to find himself accepted. He moved to Silicon Valley, California, to make a modest contribution to the growth of the Internet (mostly by investigating techniques that didn't work, thus saving others the bother). He is now rather lost and wondering what to do next. Suggestions please by email to: webmaster@lucidinterval.org.

For Elizabeth:
Who put me back
On the straight and narrow,
So well, and so often,
And who taught me to keep my balance.
To My Parents:
For always being there.
I'm sorry, you can't go home until you're better.

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