In Small Doses: A Memoir about Accepting and Living with Bipolar Disorder

Frank prose would best describe the style in which Marc Pollard has written about his personal life in this memoir, In Small Doses. He combines aside comments to the reader with a fast paced storytelling of events and their consequences in a unique way, to give the reader some idea of the roller coaster ride a bipolar experiences as a normal existence. By way of introduction to the book, Mr. Pollard wrote: "This memoir takes the reader on a journey as old as a quarter of a century, retracing the harrowing, bittersweet experiences of the author, an adult manic-depressive with a long, fiercely guarded history of childhood depression. In small doses, an evolving "working model" of bipolar disorder begins to emerge while resistance toward diagnosis and medication compliance slowly wears away. The decision to present the subject in an anecdotal fashion reflects the author’s attempt to keep the reader both informed and misinformed. In this way, the reader’s understanding of bipolar disorder should mimic that of the author’s."