The Dairy Queen in Canada, just over the border from Glacier National Park in Montana, has special significance for Melody Moezzi 06L/06MPH. She visited there several times a week while working at the park during summer break from college in 1999. Each time, she ordered a large chocolate M&M Blizzard but ate just a few bites.
Read MoreThe Huffington Post: How News Can Make You Happy →
I hear it all the time, from doctors, teachers, lawyers, hairdressers, accountants, you name it: “I don’t follow the news. It’s too depressing.” While I understand the sentiment, I find its consequences far more depressing than even the gloomiest of newscasts.
Read MoreThe Huffington Post: Girls’ Night Out? Count Me Out →
While I’ve enjoyed plenty of evenings out with female friends, I’ve never especially appreciated any outing billed specifically as a “girls’ night out” (GNO). The whole concept — including its male counterpart, the “guys’ night out” — just seems strange to me. Perhaps it’s because self-segregation has always struck me as silly, or perhaps it’s because being an Iranian-American Muslim bipolar feminist rarely affords me the luxury of fully self-segregating anywhere. Whatever the reason, I’ve grown to hate these gatherings and avoid them whenever possible.
Read MoreThe Huffington Post: U No Read, Me No Write →
As disheartening as it is to admit, I know that many “readers” don’t actually read, at least online. Still, until recently, no editor ever encouraged me to write for the skimming, scanning, browsing, not-actually-reading “reader.”
Read MoreChai: Haldol and Hyacinths - An Inspirational and Powerful Memoir (Review by Mehwish Qureshi) →
“Courageous” is the word that came to my mind when I read Melody Moezzi’s novel. On January 26, 2014, CHAI, co-sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), held its quarterly book club meeting at the East Columbia Branch Library, to discuss “Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life” by Melody Moezzi. For this specific book club meeting, we had the luxury of having the author Skyping in to meet us and talk about the book.
Read MoreThe Huffington Post: Mental Health Ought to Matter More Than Uniforms →
As part of its bid to become the least productive United States legislature ever, the current 113th Congress is managing to hold up yet another worthy piece of bipartisan legislation. Senate Bill 162, introduced by Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) as the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Act, would authorize grants to “improve the treatment of mentally ill individuals in the criminal justice system” within state, local and tribal governments.
Read MoreNew York Journal of Books: Haldol and Hyacinths Review (Review by Christopher Doran) →
Intelligent, accurate, entertaining, culturally relevant, and a little sassy are words not usually put together in one sentence to describe a book about mental health. They do, however, nail Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life by Melody Moezzi.
Read MoreThe Huffington Post: What Really Matters to the Iranians? →
Even before the details of the temporary deal between Iran and the P5+1 group were released on Saturday, many Iranians were already celebrating. Just the idea of an agreement — any agreement — between Iran and the United States was enough to bring tears to the eyes of this Iranian-American, and I wasn’t alone. Iranians all over the world took to social media to express their elation at the first formal agreement between the U.S. and Iran in over 30 years. I received Facebook and Twitter messages from across the globe, all striking the same tone as this tweet from @PrrrsianKitten, who lists her location as “Wonderland”: “I’m so happy, I keep crying and laughing. This is such a great day/middle of the night/evening!”
Read MoreKings River Life Magazine: Haldol and Hyacinths Review (Review by Lorie Lewis Ham) →
Melody Moezzi is many things. She is an activist, lawyer, author, speaker, and an Iranian American. Unfortunately, it is her bipolar disorder that has largely defined her life.
Read MoreThe Huffington Post: America’s Mental Hospitals: Where Smoking Buys You Sunshine →
Imagine a place in the United States where most everyone smokes, where smoking is in fact encouraged, where cigarettes are used as rewards, and where at times, you may even be denied outdoors unless it’s for a smoke. I know it sounds crazy in this day and age of “no tampering with smoke detectors” in lavatories and smoke-free bars that such a place could exist, but it does. Crazier still, this smokers’ paradise exists — in fact thrives — within establishments charged with the very task of combating insanity, namely, our mental hospitals. And while we’re on the topic of insanity, it’s worth noting here that this includes correctional facilities, as prisons are now this country’s largest mental health facilities.
Read MoreWHYY's Radio Times: Interview with Melody Moezzi (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane) →
Author MELODY MOEZZI writes there aren’t high profile advocates for her medical condition, “Silence and humiliation rule our playing fields. While others down performance-enhancing drugs and play on grass or Astroturf, we down antipsychotics and play on quicksand.” Moezzi was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder after years of struggling with delusions, melancholia and hallucinations. She attempted suicide. Having a supportive community with this unpredictable condition was bad enough, but Moezzi is an Iranian-American born in 1979, the year of the revolution, and the social stigma and stereotypes made her life especially difficult. The activist and attorney’s new memoir is “Haldol and Hyacinths: a Bipolar Life.”
Read MoreThe New York Times One-Page Magazine (One Sentence Review by Tyler Cowen) →
"Iranian-American story with a feminist bipolar twist." -- Tyler Cowen
Read MoreMIND Reviews: Haldol and Hyacinths (Review by Brian Mossop) →
A fine line separates creativity and madness. Bipolar disorder teeters along that line, with patients experiencing moments of impulsive thought, which can yield bold insights or quickly descend into confusion or rage.
Read MoreBipolar [bp] Magazine: Bipolar & Sleep Disturbance: We Can’t All Be Prince →
Several months before my first psychotic break, I made a decision. At the time, I thought it was a bright idea, which wasn’t surprising given the fact that, at the time, I also thought I was incapable of anything but bright ideas.
Read MoreThe Daily Beast: One Woman’s Battle With Bipolar Disorder (Haldol and Hyacinths Excerpt) →
United by helplessness, fear, fragility and common enemies, the Cottage E residents of November 2005 weren’t much different from those in myriad other residential psychiatric facilities across the country. We were, however, quite extraordinary as compared to our “normal” counterparts on the outside. There was Compass (I never learned her real name), a middleaged schizophrenic teacher who’d stabbed herself in the jugular with, you guessed it, a compass. To her, I recommended dickies, turtlenecks and antipsychotics
Read MoreMuslimah Media Watch: An Interview with "Haldol and Hyacinths" Author Melody Moezzi (Interview by Azra Thakur) →
I recently read Melody Moezzi’s new memoir, Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life. In the book, Moezzi bravely portrays her diagnosis with bipolar disorder, focusing briefly before her mental illness is diagnosed through to a point when she receives an accurate diagnosis and treatment. While much of the book hauntingly illustrates the incredible highs and lows associated with the illness, Moezzi also depicts life outside the disorder: her relationship with her supportive family, her love for her unwavering husband, and decision to pursue writing as a career as she completed her law and public health programs.
Read MoreIndyWeek: Haldol and Hyacinths Review (Review by Chris Vitiello) →
"There are plenty of respectable reasons to kill yourself, but I've never had any." So opens Raleigh author Melody Moezzi's memoir, Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life. Raised in a vibrant Islamic-American community in Dayton, Ohio, Moezzi felt loved and supported, never more so than when a physical illness landed her in the hospital at 18 and her hospital room filled with flowers and get-well wishes. But when her bipolar disorder surfaced, leading to a suicide attempt, sanitarium visits and a stunning array of mood stabilizers and antipsychotics, Moezzi's community turned colder. By turns truth-telling and humorous, Haldol and Hyacinths recounts the ways that psychological illness is judged or disbelieved along cultural and social lines. Ultimately Moezzi finds healing and inspiration in perseverance, embracing aspects of her condition while pushing through others: "Here is the problem with madness. How do you sort out the ocelots from the creative breakthroughs, or the elephants from the nail-biting cessation? You don't."
Read MoreThe Herald Sun: Author chronicles mental illness, Iranian and American roots (Review by Cliff Bellamy)
Melody Moezzi once tried to commit suicide in a psychiatrist's office, and had hallucinations in which Joseph Stalin and her fourth-grade teacher were participants. How she struggled to understand her bipolar illness and became an advocate and spokesperson for mental illness is the subject of Moezzi's compelling memoir, "Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life."
Read MoreParade Picks: Savings, Reads, and Great TV →
In her defiantly frank memoir, Iranian-American Melody Moezzi reveals that the worst part of being bipolar wasn’t the meds or hospital stays but the stigma. Iranians, she says, “prefer to sweep [mental health issues] under our prettiest Persian rugs.”
Read MoreAJC: 'Haldol and Hyacinths' a report from the frontlines of bipolar disorder (Review by Gina Webb) →
One of Melody Moezzi's biggest gripes about being bipolar is that nobody rewards it. "If you have cancer, you get flowers, visitors and compassion. If you have a mental illness, you get plastic utensils, isolation and fear. If you survive cancer, people consider you a hero and inspiration, and they tell you so."
Read More