Fisher writes that she felt relieved by her bipolar diagnosis because it explained her struggles. To soften the blow, she was shown lists of notable people with similar issues, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. She jokes about a “Bipolar Pride Day” parade featuring people with depression in their beds on floats and a manic marching band. Mania, she says, feels like pure confidence, and that losing one’s mind is terrifying at first but oddly tolerable once it happens.

She recounts a psychotic episode triggered by a bad medication interaction that kept her awake for six days. While watching CNN’s coverage of the Gianni Versace manhunt, she believed she was the killer, Versace, and the police simultaneously. Hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai, she heard nurses calling her crazy. Her brother tried to admit her to a locked ward, but there was no room available. When the head doctor arrived to evaluate her, she made an obscene remark and couldn’t stop swearing. She was admitted and signed the commitment papers with her left hand, writing the word “shame” instead of her name.

Her first drug experience came at age 13, when her mother found marijuana left by renters in their Palm Springs house and suggested they experiment with it together in the safety of their home, hoping it would keep Fisher from less controlled, more dangerous experimentation. Fisher took it from her mother’s underwear drawer and smoked it with her friend, May, in a backyard tree house. She used marijuana for six years, and eventually shifted to hallucinogens and opiates.

Concerned about her escalating use, her mother called Fisher’s hero, Cary Grant, who had taken LSD under medical supervision in the 1960s. Star-struck yet candid, Fisher spoke with him for an hour. Fisher and Grant bonded over their shared dislike of Chevy Chase, her co-star in Under the Rainbow.

Years later, Fisher’s father attended Princess Grace’s funeral in Monaco and approached Grant, claiming his daughter was addicted to acid. Grant called again, mortifying Fisher. They discussed her father’s limited presence in her life and Grant’s post-divorce parenting challenges. After Fisher sent him a bottle of wine from his birth year as a thank you, he rang a third time to confess he disliked wine. When she finally encountered him in person, she got nervous and fled. Upon hearing of his death years later, she felt profound loss.

Fisher reflects on enduring nightclubs, a gay husband, and multiple rehabs. If hardship breeds strength, she quips, she should be able to lift a hospital. She warns never to say, “BRING IT ON!” (141) because challenges will oblige.

After Greg’s death, Fisher experiences post-traumatic stress but doesn’t recognize it at first. Friends note she has stopped talking and chain-smoking constantly, and they persuade her to see a grief counselor. Fisher finds the counselor’s stock condolences absurd.

Weeks later, her 13-year-old daughter, Billie, announces she wants to be a neurologist specializing in schizophrenia. Fisher jokes that if Billie chose grief counseling instead, they would see each other more. She describes Billie as pretty—resembling Fisher’s mother—and a straight-A student who can write and sing. Fisher took a job writing a travel column centered on trips taken with her daughter called, “Travels With Billie,” including a Las Vegas trip where she failed to win at a slot machine bearing her mother’s face.

Fisher recounts awkward moments watching films with Billie that include references to oral sex and reflects on her own sexual education at 15, when gay dancers in her mother’s show screened a pornographic film for her. Billie later switches her ambition from neurology to comedy. Fisher tells her she has excellent material: a mother with bipolar disorder and addiction, a gay father, a tap-dancing grandmother, and a grandfather who used speed. Laughing, Billie understands that Fisher is telling her humor will save her.

Hoping to give Billie ordinary memories, Fisher learns to cook and discovers she’s good at it. Living next door, Reynolds initially reacts as if Fisher is breaking a family code—offering to send their cook, Mary, to make chicken crêpes for Billie instead—but eventually reframes the skill as a family trait inherited from her side.

Fisher treats her one-woman show, “Wishful Drinking,” and this book as a detailed personal ad so any future partner knows exactly what to expect. She offers her fan mail as wry proof of its success:  a 41-year-old fan proposes marriage and discloses his ailments, past pornography use, sexual history, and love of Duran Duran and Star Wars. Fisher quips that she wants to grow old with someone rather than because of them.

Fisher offers several hard-won aphorisms: Resentment mostly harms the person who holds it; calling oneself both “alcoholic” and “addict” is like saying one is from both Los Angeles and California; her grandmother used to note that flies land on both the good and the bad, and that crying means less urination; and no tongue piercing will compensate for lack of skill.

Before a difficult therapy session with her daughter, Fisher tells a priest friend it will be hard. He reminds her she has done hard things before. At 52, she sees herself as a threshold guardian, modeling survival for others. She attributes gaps in her narrative to electroconvulsive therapy, aging, or an overfull brain. Echoing Sherlock Holmes’s notion of limited mental capacity, she jokes that something lodged in memory seems to crowd out new information, leaving her easily lost, forgetful with names, and prone to misplacing belongings. Forgetting parts of her stage show led her to write everything down.

The one piece of her past that exists permanently in her brain is Princess Leia’s hologram speech from Star Wars, which she can still recite verbatim, from General Kenobi’s Clone Wars service to the plea to deliver R2-D2 to Alderaan. She wryly suggests this speech is likely the reason she used drugs. The chapter ends with a page of playful, faux newspaper headlines about Fisher and her family.

Fisher expresses frustration with the ongoing social stigma surrounding mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder. She likens living with the disorder to combat, with survival depending on immense courage, resilience, and strength. She asserts that navigating the daily challenges of bipolar disorder should be a point of pride, something worthy of recognition rather than shame.