Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Book 178: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

I felt I had to read this book, if only to understand Fisher's life a little better. We all know her as Princess Leia from Star Wars, but she was so much more than that. 

Nearly a year ago, Fisher died at age 60 after having an apparent heart attack on a plane, and her mother Debbie Reynolds died the day after of a stroke. Her later autopsy showed that she had had a variety of drugs in her system. I found myself thinking how tragic this was, but also, how consistent with reality. 

In Wishful Drinking, Fisher wrote about how she had struggled with the lethal combination of mental health and drug addiction. After years of therapy, treatment, and institutionalization, she finally decided to try electroconvulsive therapy, and in the book she discussed what impact it had on her memory. The book was a short one (I finished it in a day) but in it Fisher delved into her relationship with her mother and father, "inbred" Hollywood, her husbands, her daughter, and her addiction to alcohol and drugs, which she used to bring herself "down" or "up" depending on her manic state. And damn it, she was funny. 

I wrote my thesis for my master's degree on dual diagnosis mental health and substance abuse, so for me, this book was equal parts disturbing and enlightening. It isn't often that someone with these issues has a platform from which to tell the world the weird, embarrassing, unpleasant truth of being truly messed up. I know now why people said Fisher was a beacon for mental health and substance abuse awareness. She didn't sugar coat the garbage roiling around inside her head; she talked about it. She told people. And that is very, very important.

Fisher's stream-of-consciousness writing style was difficult to follow at times, but it was also genuine. She wrote as she spoke, and it was easy to imagine her telling the stories of her life in her animated way. I'm glad I got to know her a little better through this book. 

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