Last night my wife and I watched Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking – the HBO film version of her solo Broadway performance based on her book of the same title. In Wishful Drinking, Fisher recounts the emotional ups and downs of her childhood and career and her struggles with depression and mania, all in a very humorous way.

One thing that struck me, and I’ve noticed this in other situations, is that families are often pretty screwed up and sometimes it’s the most “normal” person in the family, the one who seems to really have it all together, takes the hit and ends up with the bipolar label. Then the family treats that person as the crazy one – the problem. I can’t claim that this is usually how it plays out, but I’ve observed it in a couple cases.

Of course, we’re seeing this all from Carrie Fisher’s perspective, but even if you just look at the facts regarding her parents’ various relationships, you can imagine how much instability she had to deal with growing up. In other words, her subjective view struck me as probably pretty objective.

Wishful Drinking was a good reminder to me that we are all works in progress, that we all need to experience some personal development throughout our lives, that we should cut one another some slack as we all undergo this often painful development process, and that a good sense of humor sure helps.

Scotch photo available from Shutterstock.

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    Last reviewed: 24 Feb 2012