Carrie Fisher’s 2008 bestselling memoir, Wishful Drinking, is a humorous autobiographical work adapted from her successful one-woman stage show of the same name. The book begins as Fisher attempts to reconstruct her own identity after undergoing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for bipolar disorder, a procedure that has damaged significant portions of her memory. Using her signature wit, she recounts her surreal life as a “product of Hollywood inbreeding” (7), born to celebrity parents Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, and her subsequent catapult to global fame as Princess Leia in the Star Wars film franchise. The memoir explores themes of Humor as a Tool for Healing, The Specter of Fame Versus the Authentic Self, and Naming Illness to Defy Stigma.

Before Wishful Drinking, Fisher was already an accomplished author, having written several successful novels, including the semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge (1987), and worked as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctors. The stage production of Wishful Drinking was filmed as an HBO documentary special in 2010, and the audiobook version of the memoir earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album. The book cemented Fisher’s legacy as a candid advocate for mental health awareness, a role for which she received numerous accolades, including Harvard’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism.

This guide refers to the 2009 Simon & Schuster paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of substance use, addiction, mental illness, sexual harassment, suicidal ideation, sexual content, cursing, and illness or death.

Summary

Fisher’s memoir, adapted from her one-woman show of the same name, opens with the author at 52 years old, reintroducing herself to her own life after undergoing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for severe depression. ECT, a psychiatric treatment that uses electrical currents to trigger brief seizures in the brain, has damaged much of her memory, particularly her visual memory. She must rediscover the basic facts of her existence: that she is the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and movie star Debbie Reynolds, that she played Princess Leia in Star Wars, that she was once married to songwriter Paul Simon, that she wrote four novels, and that she has a daughter named Billie. She explains that she chose ECT because her bipolar disorder had intensified her ordinary sadness to what she calls “sadness squared” (13). She frames the book as an effort to reclaim her lost memories and to achieve wellness through disclosure, citing the idea that people are “only as sick as [their] secrets” (15).

Fisher begins by recounts the death of her close friend R. Gregory Stevens, a gay Republican political operative who died in Fisher’s bed from a combination of sleep apnea and Oxycontin use. Greg had flown in from Bosnia, where he was running a presidential campaign, to accompany Fisher to Oscar-season parties in Los Angeles. She explains her ability to joke about the painful experiences in her life, establishing her governing philosophy: “If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable” (17). With that narrative lens in place, she turns to the beginning of her life.

Fisher was born on October 21, 1956, in Burbank, California. Her father, Eddie Fisher, was a famous 1950s crooner, and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, was a movie star best known for the 1952 film Singin’ in the Rain. The media dubbed Reynolds and Fisher “America’s Sweethearts.” Her father’s best friend was the producer Mike Todd, who married Elizabeth Taylor. Eddie served as best man and Reynolds as matron of honor at their wedding. Fisher’s brother, Todd, was named after Mike Todd. About a year later, Mike Todd died in a plane crash. Eddie flew to console the widowed Elizabeth and began an affair with her, leaving Reynolds within the week.

Fisher presents an elaborate chart of her extended family’s subsequent marriages: Reynolds married Harry Karl, a wealthy shoe tycoon who eventually lost all his money and then took all of hers; Eddie cycled through additional marriages. Many years later when Fisher’s daughter, Billie, developed a crush on Mike Todd’s grandson, Rhys, the two of them attempted to figure out if they were related. Fisher joked that they were “related by scandal” (43).

Fisher describes her childhood home as a cold, modern house she called “the Embassy,” and devotes particular attention to her mother’s enormous closet, a hushed space she calls “the Church of Latter Day Debbie,” filled with gowns, wigs, and perfume. She and Todd would retreat into the closet when they missed their frequently absent mother. Fisher describes the ritualistic transformation by which Reynolds became a movie star and the equally ritualistic undressing that returned her to being simply their mother. At 10, Fisher tried on her mother’s golden wig hoping to transform into a beauty, but nothing happened. She decided to develop humor or intelligence instead, resolving to become “someone past caring” (50).

Fisher performed in her mother’s nightclub act from age 13 to 17. After their last show together at the London Palladium, Reynolds insisted Fisher attend drama school in England. In 1973, Fisher enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, which she describes as some of the best times of her life. She credits the voice exercises she learned there with preparing her for Princess Leia’s dialogue, noting that George Lucas’s only directions to the three leads were “faster” and “more intense” (79). She was told to lose 10 pounds despite weighing 105 and learned that Lucas had decreed there was no underwear in space. Instead of a bra, she wore gaffer’s tape under her costume. She tells friends that no matter how she dies, she wants it reported that she “drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra” (88)—a nod to Lucas’s claim that undergarments would be a hazard in zero gravity. She catalogs the vast array of Princess Leia merchandise that bears her image, from a PEZ dispenser to an $800 life-size sex doll.

Fisher describes her 12-year relationship with Paul Simon. She notes that they dated for six years, were married for two, divorced for one, then got back together and dated again before eventually breaking up for good. She adapts Samuel Johnson’s line about remarriage being “the triumph of hope over experience” (94), calling remarrying the same person “the triumph of nostalgia over judgment” (94). She cites lyrics from Simon’s songs that reference her, including “She Moves On,” “Allergies,” and “Hearts and Bones,” and notes she took no alimony from Simon, framing the songs he wrote about her as her alimony instead. She married Simon at 26, divorced at 28, and entered rehab at 29, joking that she agreed to be admitted for “research” for her novel, Postcards from the Edge (1987).

Fisher addresses her substance use directly, noting that her brother Todd had the identical childhood but never developed addiction, concluding “it’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it” (99). While in rehab, she received a book deal after a publisher read a funny interview she had given to Esquire magazine. She wrote Postcards from the Edge, and later its screenplay, flying frequently between New York and Los Angeles. The film’s production schedule strained and eventually ended her relationship with Simon. She identifies what she calls her “three and a half problems”: a dead man in her bed, substance abuse, manic depression, and being left by a man for a man, as Bryan Lourd left her for a man named Scott when Billie was one year old.

Fisher traces her psychiatric history from her first therapist at 15, who failed to diagnose her, through her second doctor at 24, Dr. Barry Stone, who identified her as bipolar. Insulted by the diagnosis, she stopped seeing him and married Simon a week later. Two years after that, she overdosed because the quantity of drugs necessary to numb herself had reached a lethal level. She describes her bipolar disorder as a mood system that functions like weather, independent of her circumstances, and names her two moods: “Rollicking Roy,” the manic high, and “Sediment Pam,” the depressive who “stands on the shore and sobs” (121). “Pam” stands for “piss and moan” (120). After a year of sobriety, with drugs no longer masking her symptoms, she found her best therapist, Beatriz Foster, who finally helped her confront the disorder directly.

Fisher recounts a psychotic episode caused by a bad medication interaction, during which she stayed awake for six days and believed everything on television was about her. She was hospitalized and admitted to a locked psychiatric ward, signing her commitment papers with the single word “Shame” (130). After publicly disclosing her mental illness on Diane Sawyer’s show, she began receiving awards for mental health advocacy. She argues in her Author’s Note that living with manic depression requires tremendous courage and should be a source of pride, not shame.

Fisher describes raising her daughter, noting that Billie has “tons of material” for comedy: “Your mother is a manic-depressive drug addict, your father is gay, your grandmother tap-dances, and your grandfather shot speed!” (148). Fisher adds that Billie’s ability to find humor in their family’s dysfunction will save her life. She frames the book as a radically detailed personal ad, reasoning that no future partner can claim ignorance of her history. She acknowledges gaps in her memory from ECT, aging, or information overload, but notes that the Princess Leia hologram speech from Star Wars is the one thing she has never been able to forget, despite all her treatment. She ends the novel by declaring, “I can’t forget that stupid, fucking hologram speech! That’s why I did dope!” (156).