Stop Paddling/Start Sailing [Paperback]

...an intriguing weaving together of anecdote, science, popular song, memory, poetry etc. I hope it reaches a wide audience.

...not just informative but life altering. Everytime I sit down and reread it I pick up on more new ideas...

I found your book extremely interesting and uplifting: the mixture of personal experience, story and plain advice...

Stop Paddling/Start Sailing is an amazing book. The concept was born out of a period of hypomania when the author, unable to sleep, imagined a very different way of looking at his life and life in general.

These imaginings give rise to the central theme of a journey on the river of life. The main story is overlaid on the fantasy journey, bringing real people and events in, to tell of times spent in and out of psychiatric wards.

Roger makes no attempt to write an autobiography detailing each and every high and low - mania and depression. He instead focuses on 3 of the episodes that landed him in hospital during the year before and after his diagnosis. You may be surprised to hear Roger say that being diagnosed Manic Depressive or has he now refers to himself, a Bipolar Person, was one of the best days of his life. He says this because, after two decades of no-one being able to put a name to his psychological problems he could at last focused on understanding and self-managing the disorder.

This book has been described as a gentle introduction to bipolar disorder. It goes some way beyond this as it also gently introduces the idea of using memetics (a bit like genetics but relating to thoughts) as a tool that can be used alongside other self management techniques. This is a big step away from the wisdom of a few years ago when psychiatrists would tell patients it was all about finding the right combination of drugs.

It is suggested that memetics can dispel thoughts & feelings such as, "it all depends on me" and the other extreme "I can't do anything about it" and thus be one more idea for reducing the likelihood of future mood swings.

There is a brief mention of self management training from MDF the Bipolar Organisation for which the author continues to be grateful.

This is a book designed to be read more than once, passed around friends, perhaps relatives and health professionals who may benefit from seeing bipolar from the survivors' perspective.

It is very pleasing to hear about Stop Paddling / Start Sailing being read as far away as California and Australia. Book reviews continue to be sent in and we now have quite a collection on our stoppaddling web site.

Readers are likely to gain the most from this book by setting a couple of hours aside in a quiet place and reading it in one go from cover to cover. It is deliberately short enough to be read all in one go.

Throughout this book Bi-polar disorder may be referred to as Manic Depression or MD which are common terms in the UK.

This book is unusual with its mix of story and logical advice. Parts of Roger's life are told as a short fantasy then expanded to reveal experiences, events and interactions in and out of mental health centres. He is diagnosed as suffering from Manic Depression (MD), which perhaps surprisingly allows him to make sense of his life. Roger utilises knowledge of memes together with self help tools to manage MD with respect to his career and family life. By omitting most detail of manic and depressive episodes the book is made compact and something that can be read repeatedly to fully appreciate that the world really can be seen in a very different way. Although primarily of interest to those involved with mental health issues, (sufferers, carers & health professionals) people with no direct connection with mental health have related with many of the book's ideas.

Roger Smith now works as a self employed bipolar recovery adviser, having since his diagnosis: attended a self management course, trained to facilitate these courses, trained to be a stress adviser, qualified as a facilitator for Wellness Recovery Action Planning and written numerous articles on mental health recovery and wellbeing.
At the time of writing Stop Paddling / Start Sailing, at age 44, Roger had been suffering from bipolar disorder (MD) for about 25 years. Since his realisation that recovery is not only about taking the right medication, he has not had time off work or needed any more than routine visits to his GP.
Roger continues to work with MDF the Bipolar Organisation, he is a trustee at South Lincolnshire Mind and a founder member of SUSTN = Service User Survivor Trainers Network.
Roger is passionate about Bipolar Recovery and is pioneering the course, Stress Advice for Bipolar Employees, STABLE(tm), as a way of helping others avoid future episodes.

"Life is..." How often have we heard a sentence start with these two words? "Life is a minestrone.", "Life is a bowl of cherries.", "Life is a box of chocolates." and so on. Sentences like this intrigue and may amuse but they do not seem to say a lot that helps us understand life.

At the other extreme biographies and autobiographies have been written that try to explain individual lives. They do just that, they tell us about an individual, but only a fraction of the book will be applicable to the reader's life.

Another attempt at describing human life is the text book that tells us what the author has discovered by a combination of reading and living. For me the trouble with these text books is that they are usually too long and it can be difficult to apply this kind of "science" to real life.

An alternative to this is to put experiences and conclusions to date in the form of a short easy to read story and then where appropriate add explanations. I have read several books of this type and found they moved me. My intention is to tell my story in this style by putting my life initially in a fantasy world where unnecessary detail can be left out.

In telling my story I hope to better understand myself and have the reader, say, "Yes, I see what he means." But as well as these obvious objectives I am also hoping my book will show those waiting to write a book about life that it is not necessarily difficult.

My biggest challenge was not what to put in but in deciding what to leave out to keep it short and to make the important points stand out. In doing this I remembered a story I heard about a lady on a management training course who was asked to write the story of her life in just four short chapters. She wrote something like this:

"Chapter 1: I walked down a road and fell down a hole. It was a deep hole. It hurt. It took a long time to climb out.
Chapter 2: I walked down a road and fell down a hole. It was a deep hole. It hurt. I recognised the hole. It didn't take so long to climb out.
Chapter 3: I walked down a road. I saw that same hole. I walked around the hole.
Chapter 4: I walked down a different road.
The End"

When I first heard that story I was with a group of students and we all were struck by it and said that it was amazing that it is so concise and yet says so much.

What this story shows is that you can say a lot about your life in a very few words. These words will not tell the reader a great deal about your life, but will probably have them asking for more information - like "What sort of hole?" And "What sort of other road?"