The second episode in our dark fiction series. Join us as we discuss multiple fictional texts and take a journey through mental illness in fiction. We'll be exploring characters facing diagnosis, treatment, substance abuse, and villainous portrayals of insanity. The books you can look forward to digesting are;
TW and SPOILERS for all episodes, listen at your own discretion.
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Where to find us!
Email: jade@watermelonprose.com
Literature Done Juicy Instagram
Watermelon Prose Instagram
Goodreads
Thanks for tuning in to 'Literature Done Juicy'. Join us next time as we continue to explore the world of fiction through a refreshing lens. Until then, stay juicy!
The second episode in our dark fiction series. Join us as we discuss multiple fictional texts and take a journey through mental illness in fiction. We'll be exploring characters facing diagnosis, treatment, substance abuse, and villainous portrayals of insanity. The books you can look forward to digesting are;
TW and SPOILERS for all episodes, listen at your own discretion.
Need a freelance writer or editor? Head over here
Where to find us!
Email: jade@watermelonprose.com
Literature Done Juicy Instagram
Watermelon Prose Instagram
Goodreads
Thanks for tuning in to 'Literature Done Juicy'. Join us next time as we continue to explore the world of fiction through a refreshing lens. Until then, stay juicy!
You are listening to Literature Done Juicy, a show that explores books in the juiciest way possible. My name's Jade, and on this episode we'll be discussing mental illness and fiction. This is episode two of our first season. Following on from episode one where we discussed the depressing classic, "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
I hope you're as well as you can be, and let's get into it. This episode will feature a variety of texts that fall under the dark fiction umbrella that feature or dissect mental. In the previous episode, we discussed that "The Bell Jar" is riddled with insight into the mind of a young woman suffering from an unexplained mental illness, basically the sad girl Bible.
If you're interested in hearing more about "The Bell Jar" go and check it out. Uh, it's probably one of the best examples of mental illness represented in fiction. I also do a full introduction outlining what this podcast is all about and explaining what dark fiction this season's. Actually is, it was our very first episode, so give it gander if you haven't already.
First of all, what is mental illness and why am I referring to it as mental illness and not as mental health? According to the World Health Organization, mental health is actually a positive thing. Their definition is a state of wellbeing in which every individual realizes his or hers potential. They can cope with normal stresses of life and can work productively and fruitfully, and they are also able to make a contribution to their community.
Mental illness, on the other hand, is more on the negative side, mental. Positive mental health is essentially just being cognitively, emotionally and socially healthy and mental to illness is the opposite. Mental illness has been featured in fictional work since the dawn of time, but became most prominent in Victorian era of fiction, which was between the years of 1837 and 1901.
This was a time where there were becoming an increasingly educated society and it was actually fashionable for physicians to have an interest in mental illness. A lot of people attribute this to investigations over King George II's death after he became mad in 1798, and they thought, Why is the king crazy? Let's figure this all out. The Victorians froth, a mad woman locked up in a tower or attic trope. This woman would usually be hidden away and she would bang on walls or scream and scare the inhabitants who were living down below. Mental illness was poorly understood in our past, but the Victorians actually birthed psychology, and their literature reflects the increased interest in the subject.
One such novel that explores mental illness, which was published in the late Victorian period is Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". It was published in 1847 and portrays a harsh reflection in two mental illness. The novel features a character called Bertha Mason, who is said to have a progressive psychiatric illness.
Bertha is Edward Rochester's, so Jane's love interests first wife. Edward explains to Jane that Bertha behaved appropriately at the start of their relationship, but after the wedding, he discovered that her family had a history of, I quote, idiots and maniacs through three generations. During four years of marriage, he described that he found viral discoveries and when Bertha hit her thirties, her illness became severe.
Edward being the thinker that he is, decided to lock her as a prisoner in his attic and hide a nurse to look after her for 10 years. Jane described Bertha as a savage and compares her to a vampire. Other than these descriptions, Bertha is a very one-dimensional, flattened character. A few years after "Jane Eyre's" publication came another Gothic Classic, and this was the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which was also published in the late Victorian era.
Touted as a novel that successfully depicts mental illness through an ugly self-portrait. We follow a portrait of Dorian Gray, which was painted by artist Basil Hallward. Basil was infatuated with Dorian's Beauty. Dorian probably has the largest ego of any fictional character, and he believes that only beauty and central fulfilment are what matters in life.
Due to these beliefs he offers to sell his soul, to ensure that the portrait instead of himself will age. This wishes granted, but never explained as to how or why, and we see the picture aging and visually recording all of Dorian sins. The portrait is Dorian's Double, which is a Freudian concept, basically meaning an insurance against the distinction of self.
Dorian Gray's mental illness was never explicitly explained. Many believed that he may have had an antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder. Antisocial personality disorder is defined by a disregard for other people, whereas narcissistic personality disorder is defined by an excessive need for admiration, disregard for others' feelings, and inability to handle criticism and a sense of entitlement.
Dorian is practically a modern day influencer, thriving from comments of his beauty and just any positive compliment that he can. Within the picture of Dorian Gray, art starts to imitate life. When a lover of Dorian suicides in the novel, her death is purely seen as aesthetic and something that people should strive to when in reality this is completely wrong.
Lord Henry, who is a character and a friend of Dorian states;
"Someone has killed herself for the love of you, I wish that I had ever such an. It would make me in love with love for the rest of my life. The people who have adored me have always insisted on living on long after I have ceased to care for them".
So what Lord Hoary is essentially saying is that he is jealous of Dorian because he can always have this idealistic image of this woman who's suicided over Dorian rejecting her. It's very odd. This person is dehumanized because her suicide's been romanticized and instead of it being recognized as a tragedy, it's just played down and referenced more so as a positive thing for Dorian.
On that note, let's get into some modern reads that encompass mental illness for those who aren't classic lovers but love a good crisis. I'm going to start off with a new favorite of mine, which is called "Sorrow and Bliss", written by Meg Mason. I finished it earlier this year and it was sad, it hilarious.
The humor is dry and self-deprecating, which is very similar to E's style of narration in "The Bell Jar" that we previously talked about, and I love that kind of comedy. The authors in New Zealand are living in Australia, and the novel itself is actually set in the United Kingdom. "Sorrow and Bliss" is an example of a novel that features a character who is living with an undiagnosed mental illness, and she's constantly on the search to find answers as to why she feels the way that she does.
It can be frustrating for those that know that there's something wrong and to feel that nobody has an answer for it. The story itself starts with Patrick, a lovely and selfless man who leaves our protagonist Martha, two days after her 40th birthday. We are then taken back to the beginning where they first met, when Martha was 14 years old, and we follow the couple on from there until we reached that ending point where the novel commenced.
Martha's particular condition isn't named or referred to even when she receives a diagnosis. At the latter end of the book, Meg Mason, the author has stated her decision not to name. The illness was actually a creative one to serve a broader narrative in the work it was done, so Martha's illness becomes less important, and the focus of the story is on how Martha navigates her life and relates to others while she's living with an undiagnosed mental illness.
Martha's relationships to others are varied and include a painful family dynamic with her sister and mother. Failed careers, emotional conflicts on not wanting or wanting children, self-destruction and self-isolation. Martha is essentially the queen of self-sabotage and the reader watches powerlessly as the tentacles of the unknown. Illness penetrates both herself and all of those close to her. It's all consuming, debilitating and relationship. Friends and family move between sympathy to outright annoyance with Martha, and I'm sure that people have experienced something similar, maybe to the same degree or less than examples of when friends continue to complain about something, but then they don't make life changes to fix the problem, and then they expect a different result.
And people start off thinking, oh, that's so bad for you. I'll help you out. But then it begins to evolve more so into. Stop talking about it. I'm done hearing about your problems that you're refusing to fix. Now. I guess imagine that on a larger scale, and imagine hearing that for 40 years of your life, it'd be quite taxing on the friends and family that are around this person.
In situations like this, if you were close to someone with a mental illness and it starts to take a toll on your own health, whether it be physical or mental, it's obviously up to you to decide if this impact is worth the relationship as a. Martha is a perfect narrator. She's self-pitying, but also brutally self-aware, and she's hilariously sarcastic.
Martha, like I said before, is relatable and she says what she's thinking and just doesn't give a fuck. Martha whips out quotes such as this. I've never understood why people think champagne as celebratory rather than medicinal. It's just very dry, but witty at the same. At first, I felt frustrated when Martha was diagnosed and the diagnosis wasn't given.
In this day and age, labels are something that people thrive off. Take the epidemic of TikTok self-diagnosis that's currently blowing up. People on there develop their whole identity around this diagnosis. It consumes them, and then they start to make changes in their own life to fit the mould of that label.
It was annoying that I couldn't slap an identity onto Martha, and I guess there lies the whole point of what Meg Mason was trying to. A good diagnosis is a validation of what person has been experiencing throughout their life. However, it's a difficult process and one that can take months or even years to obtain a Spanish article.
In a 2022 psychological academic journal states, the diagnosis is actually a double edge sword due to it naming the problem, but also labeling the person. Martha even discusses labels with her mother within the novel and she states, but the thing about labels, They're useful when they're right, because then you don't give yourself the wrong ones, like difficult or insane or psychotic or a bad wife.
From my experience during my career in the criminal justice sector in Australia, specifically Victoria, I've seen a lot of the mental health system, and I've also seen a lot of people before they make it into the mental health system, there are many frequent flyers who become frustrated with their experiences.
Some people believe that their medication isn't working. Some believe that the psychologists that they're seeing don't get them. Others believe their GP isn't taking their concerns seriously. And then on top of that, there just aren't enough beds to admit people into voluntary care, let alone involuntary care.
So, and bliss gives an inside look into one's woman's experience of living with a mental illness and seeking a diagnosis. It's an accessible and delightfully dry, humid read going into it, I honestly thought, Ugh, here's another overcooked, tired, sad girl trope. But I was pleasantly surprised and very wrong.
After receiving diagnosis, the next step for people is usually recovery and recovery from mental illness rarely occurs in a straight line, a novel and film that portrays This is "The Silver Linings Playbook" written by Matthew Quick. I mentioned the movie because I love that adaptation and I honestly believe it's superior.
But we'll discuss the novel predominant. The novel focuses on two characters who are receiving very different forms of recovery. One is our main protagonist who's called Pat Peoples, and I can't deal with that name. It's the most ridiculous name I've ever heard, and he is said to have bipolar disorder.
Pat Peoples, it's so dumb, has recently been released from a psychiatric facility after brutally attacking his wife's lover. Upon his release, he is still obsessed with reconciling with his ex-wife, even though it's been four years and she's been having an. Or she had an affair and that's who he beat up. Pat also has an unshakable belief in happy endings, hence the title of the Silver Linings.
He's always looking for the positive in. The second character who is going through recovery is Tiffany. Tiffany has a husband who has recently died, and she is said to have either borderline personality disorder or potentially depression, but both mediums, so the book and the novel make it very unclear to her a diagnosis.
Tiffany is battling with a different type of mental illness to Pat and has also been receiving a different type of treatment. She has been receiving treatment through doctors and psych appointments in a public domain as well as taking medication, whereas Pat commenced involuntary treatment in a facility and then he has begun treatment apps side in the public domain with a psychiatrist and also medication.
This is a great reflection on how two people can receive. Recovery techniques and that there's not one textbook recovery plan for each person. In Australia, the most used psychological therapies available are cognitive behavioral therapy, which is C B T. And this examines how a person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can get stuck in unhelpful patterns.
There's also interpersonal psychotherapy, otherwise known as I P T, and this examines how a person's relationships and interactions with others affects their own. Thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. And another really popular one is Dialectal Behavioral Therapy, which is known as D B T. And it's generally a therapy used for people living with borderline personality disorder, but sometimes can be helpful for other psychological issues.
Then on top of that, in Australia, and this can be used either alone or in conjunction with therapy. The following medications are the most commonly used antidepressants, antipsychotic medications, mood stabilizers, and anti-anxiety medications. Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but it demonstrates the various treatments available and how they can be tailored to an individual specific.
In Australia, asylums are no longer in existence and are not an available treatment option. An ABC article, which was published in 2016, outlines that the current community care system is not completely adequate. It states that the closure of asylum has not been matched with the necessary levels of community care, and in some ways, the mentally ill or worse off than they were before.
Many mentally ill have ended up homeless or in the care of family members who often struggle to give them the care that they need. What has happened is the burden has shifted from the. And into the private sphere, back onto the families. This goes back to what I was saying, how I myself has witnessed the mental healthcare system in Victoria, and I've been exposed to various different aspects of it.
And a huge, huge, huge problem is that there's just a lack of beds, and I guess asylums would have solved that issue to some degree. What are the most famous asylums in my state, which is the state of Victoria, is the Aradel Mental Hospital, which is located in a. The ADA opened its gates in 1860 and it was originally opened to relieve the prison system, and they only housed those that were thought to be criminally insane.
The first inmates actually were sent to the facility in 1865. It took about five years to become fully open. Not very long after that, they then started putting people suffering from mental illness into the asylum, and people could have the following conditions such as postnatal depression, epilepsy, autism, down syndrome.
So people suffering from these conditions were housed alongside inmates. Who were thought to be criminally insane. The mental hospital was in operation for nearly 130 years, and it closed its doors in 1993. It housed a thousand patients and 500 staff members at its height. The reason that the Arrowdale asylum closed was due to the de-institutionalization that occurred in Victoria.
So in 1981, the Richmond report argued for the de-institutionalization of people with mental illness, and they uncovered the various abuses that were actually perpetrated against those individuals being held in these institutions. De-institutionalization in Australia commenced in 1992, but it was inadequately funded and poorly orchestrated.
There are reports of mentally ill people living on the. Unmedicated hungry and dying. And this actually prompted two inquiries by the Australian Health Minister's Advisory Council Task Force, and also alongside them the National Inquiry into the human rights of people with mental illness. Created a report on the issue.
Even straight after the closure of all the asylums, it was very apparent that they needed something to happen in terms of where these people with a mental illness can go and where they can receive treatment. The Aradel Mental Hospital itself was basically a town. It had its own market gardens. Orchards vineyards and a piggery.
There was also galls, however, and a morgue and a graveyard, which was also located on site, and this was obviously due to the criminally insane and the mentally ill bean house there together, there was a total of 63 buildings and the courtyards were walled with these walls that were called Haha walls.
These walls were used in early Victorian asylums. From the outside, they appear to be like low walls that give this idea that you are not actually imprisoned, but if you jumped over the walls, there's this deep trench and it's impossible to escape the trench. So you'd just be stuck down there. During Ara Dale's operation, which was like I said, 130 years, over 13,000 inmates, patients and staff members died, there certainly leaves an emotional mark on the building.
And some even say that Aradale is one of the most haunted places in Australia. Back to the Silver Linings playbook. The novel focuses on Pat and his therapist's relationship, more so than Pat and Tiffany's giving more of an air that Pat is focused solely on his ex-wife and doesn't even realize that Tiffany, his love interest is right in front of him.
Now this is very meta, but in one of his therapy sessions, pat discusses his dislike of the voucher. Pat states that he doesn't like "The Bell Jar" because the novel teaches kids to be pessimistic. He believes that it teaches them that there's no hope at the end and there's no silver linings, and he doesn't believe that teenagers should be taught that.
His therapist states that life's hard and that children need to be taught how hard life can be. Pat's confused by this and asks why, and his therapist responds saying that people need to be sympathetic to. If they're not, they won't be able to understand that. Some people have it harder than that they do, and that a trip through this world can be wildly different depending on what chemicals are raging through one's mind.
It's just very interesting and funny to see the reference, especially because Pat himself is going through a mental illness and then he's hating on probably the best representation of mental illness in a fictional work. Uh, it's just, yeah, very. Once people receive a diagnosis and they receive treatment, they basically can just go on living their life in whichever form that that comes around in.
Some people find the mentally ill scary, and this is due to stereotypes that have been created mainly through horror movies in the horror genre. So we are gonna start discussing the novel "Misery" by Stephen King, which is an amazing one and one of my favorites by the author, but it does loosely link mental.
With evil people with a mental health illness are usually stigmatized as being violent and in general, not very nice people. The horror genre is one that has historically conflated mental illness with evil acts reflecting a broader fear of the unknown. It does become gray when people believe that a person must have a mental illness to be able to commit crimes that a regular person would not.
Misery's main antagonist Annie Wilkes is erratic and unpredictable. Although Annie fits into the mentally ill equals evil equation. Many critics believe that her portrayal is an extremely accurate one and that her mental illness is merely a feature of her personality, not the cause for her heinous acts.
I'll give a brief description of the plot of "Misery". After a car crash, Paul Sheldon is rescued by Annie Wilkes, who says that she's his biggest fan. He's taken to a cabin where she's caring for him and things start to take a dark turn, so she has a rigid moral code that she lives by, and little things such as swearing set her into rages.
She's unpredictable and has variety of mood swings ranging from very, very ecstatic and happy to incredibly angry and violent. Her depiction as a monster evokes the controversial history within the horror genre of vilifying characters who exhibit to neurotic abnormality, leaving little room for the viewer to feel any sympathy or advocacy for any.
The vast variety of mental disturbances and perturbing thoughts that Annie exhibits ostracized her from her audience and then further solidifies hers. The villain Addie's mood towards Paul fluctuates spontaneously, again between excessive adoration and then explosive rage. Although Annie is extremely observant and perceptive, she's incapable of making logical connections between herself and the reality of her surroundings.
She basically just exists in the comfort of her own delusion. One of these delusions is when Annie first encounters Paul Sheldon, he has really severe injuries. But then Annie is ecstatic to have met her most favorite author in the whole entire world. He's in so much pain, which he's suffered from his injuries.
However, her joy is just overly excessive. All that she can focus on is the fact that this author is in her house, not the fact that Paul is in a lot of pain and should essentially be like hospital. Annie Wilkes is very emotional and she seems unable to keep her emotions under control. Her happy mood changes to a severely depressed condition often, and changes in periods of happy and depressive moods become more and more frequent.
As the novel goes on in the time of her elevated mood, Annie becomes less and less capable to control herself. And she goes joyous out of sheer trifold that don't really correspond with the scope of the happiness that she's experiencing. In the middle of the novel, the reader discovers that Annie Wilkes has faced allegations for murdering babies.
There is actually currently a trial being heard in the United Kingdom, and at time of recording this episode, which was in the middle of January, the trial had yet to be heard as jurors were calling in sick, and some of them didn't. So unsure about what the outcome will be once this episode's been posted at the end of Jan.
Start of Feb. But I'll go over the details of the trial and well, what we know so far, there has been some alleged murders of seven babies and then attempted murder of. 10 others between 2015 and 2016. The alleged complainant is a 32 year old female nurse whose name is Lucy Lety. The circumstances surrounding the charges are that Lety would inject air into the healthy baby's line, causing air embolisms in the blood vessels, and then subsequently, So, yeah, at the moment there is a current trial, sadly, of someone who's very similar to Annie Wilkes and what Annie Wilkes did to babies during her stint as a nurse.
"Misery" is full of dark content and dark themes, and the fact that Annie Wilkes is someone who is potentially suffering from a mental illness and then also a terrible, terrible person makes the story even darker. Author, Stephen King has stated that he wrote to misery during a very dark period in his life where he was actually having substance abuse issues, specifically with dope.
He stated in an interview that Annie Wilkes was actually representation of his drug problem, his number one fan, and he said that, God, she never wanted to leave. There's a little bit of a pattern in terms of authors writing about dark subject matter when they themselves are going through dark periods in their.
Stephen King was one in terms of his drug use and possibly subsequently mental illness, and the next author that we are about to discuss was actually in a similar boat as we were just speaking about substance abuse. Let's focus on unhealthy depictions of characters coping with mental illnesses via the use of drugs and alcohol.
What book could be better than "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" by Ottessa Moshfegh. It was marked as a red flag book by the ever reputable Buzzfeed, so you know it's gonna be good. This book is one of those books that you are gonna see scattered all over social media for those that post about literature, and then also for those that wanna epitomize that sad hot girl trope that we've discussed in the episode previous to this.
For those of you who are not familiar with the text, we follow an unnamed, egotistical female narrator who finds a willing psychiatrist to prescribe her any drug she wants and to enable her to essentially sleep for a whole year straight. She's a pop, pilling, privileged main character who is emotionally and verbally abusive to her best friend, and she is the epitome of the ugly side of depress.
Living in her mind, you can understand the bitterness that consumes someone due to their illness, and you can also slightly understand why she's such a horrible person. However, the way that she treats her friend and some of the others around her is pretty appalling. Her best friend is called Riva, who we witness.
Through the eyes of our nasty narrator, and due to this, we learn the most about reader's life. The unnamed, privileged female only allows the reader to learn glimpses of what she's had to live through, and due to the fact that she's either sleeping or high, we only get a little bit of a look into what the going through, whereas Riva is basically her only company and Reva likes to talk a lot.
So we learn a lot about what Reva's going through. Reva is also dealing with her own struggles. Her mother is dying of cancer. She has an eating disorder, and she obviously clings onto a toxic friendship with without nareda to handle all of this stress and pain. She drinks a lot of alcohol. Alcohol is reba's crutch, and then prescription drugs are a narrator's crutch.
These two women allow the reader to identify the unhealthy ways to cope with mental illness. I also believe that ju the imbalance of the information between the two characters. It's definitely Riva who's our main protagonist even though she's not the one that we gain the perspectives from this quote from our narrator really demonstrates what a country she is and also I guess what Reva's going through.
At the same time, Reva would shop at my apartment with a bottle of wine from time to time and insist on keeping me company. Her mother was dying of cancer. That among many other things, maybe not want to see her. As you can see, she's just selfish and doesn't really care about others. She's very focused on herself, very self-involved.
It's unclear whether or not it's the drugs. That do this to her, her depression that's doing it to her, or whether or not she's just a horrible person. Alcohol and drug useful under the umbrella term of substance abuse, which according to the diagnostic and Statistic, manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-5 for short, these are defined by recurrent use of a particular substance despite its negative impact on the individual's occupation, interpersonal, and social function. A vast number of studies have also intrinsically linked alcohol abuse and major depressive disorder. Major depressive disorder affects an estimated 22% of patients who also abuse alcohol and estimated 40% of those that abuse drugs. Literature also suggests that the more a person drinks, the more they're likely to develop major depressive disorder.
And it is also known that diagnosing depression separately from alcohol abuse is very challenging because the existence of one condition perpetuates the other. So it's very hard to separate the two. Globally, alcohol use and abuse are responsible for 11% of suicides and scarily 66% of suicides in college and university students.
So this is a global thing. 66% of suicides in young adults. That are going to college or university. Their suicides are from alcohol abuse, suicide risk in persons with a dual diagnosis of alcohol abuse and depression is actually 10 times greater than the risk in persons who do not abuse alcohol. At the moment, I'm actually doing a year of not drinking.
So I think alcohol free 2023 is the little slogan that's being used for it. Not that I'm an alcoholic, just simply that I binge drink a lot and I'm trying to focus more so on my physical health. And I've also noticed that when I drink, it affects my mental health as well, and it's just not really. For me, on top of the friendship with Riva, our narrator also engages in a toxic romantic relationship.
And I use the term romantic extremely loosely with a man called Trevor. Trevor basically uses our narrator for sex, but she is also horrific. She does vindictive things to him, so if he won't come over to have sex with her, she'll threaten to kill herself. They are both as toxic as each other, and the substances that she's taking and the alcohol that he drinks exemplifies.
Now at the end of the book comes very left field. For some, I won't go into specifics, but it ends in a way that's not upbeat or happy, which is very in tune with the novel itself and it's open to interpretation. However, I believe that the ending demonstrates the idea that life will go on even if someone goes into this self-induced prescription coma.
Life will just keep on happening. when you wake up, not much will have changed. And if they have, it's just cuz people are gonna go on without you and continue their lives. The ending also demonstrates that bad things can happen to good people and they do a lot of the time. It's just something that's a part of life, sadly.
And this nihilistic ending reflects how the author herself actually stated she was feeling at the time of writing the novel. In an article titled The Painter on the Street, mosh VG states that she wrote my year of Rest and relaxation when she herself was experiencing depression. She also stated, at this time it was nine 11 and her cousin was working in the towers.
When the event occurred, she had seriously considered suicide if she had found out that her cousin didn't survive. But luckily for her cousin and for Mosh Beg, they were not actually working in the building that day. Mosh Beg then goes on to describe that after that event, she just noticed that everything was carrying on as normal, and she slowly began to do the same until she settled back into being alive.
Okay, so time for the wrap up.
We know that Victorians were known for their interest in mental illness and they actually birthed psychology. We discovered that diagnosis's are important but shouldn't shape who you are as a person, and that the rotor discovery diagnosis can be long and arduous and affect those that are around you.
We've also discussed that all recovery is different and that there are so many different options to mix and match depending on the person and the illness. We discussed that horror has been responsible for combining mental illness and evil and violence due to this fear of the unknown, and that Annie Wilkes, although she is evil, just because she has a mental illness, doesn't mean that that is why.
We also discussed that authors writing these dark texts actually can be suffering from something behind the scenes, whether or not it's mental illness or a drug or alcohol abuse problem. We also found out that drugs and alcohol make mental illness worse and are not healthy coping mechanisms, which I think would be slightly obvious, but it's obviously a crutch that a lot of people turn to.
I've been one of those people and it's just something that. I hope you learn something new. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review and don't forget to follow our socials in the description box for even more refreshing content. The next episode's focus is on Go, or more discovering. The controversial Spanish novel tender is The Flesh by Augustina Baka.
It's not something that you wanna miss. Stay juicy, and I look forward to chatting to you next time. Bye.