DOCTOR DOAN

THE TSUNAMI IN MY MIND: LIVING WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER

By Dr. Andrew P. Doan, MPH, MD, PhD & Julie M. Doan, RN

Some storms you see coming. Others rise from within.

At the height of his career, Navy physician and Johns Hopkins-trained neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Doan was a decorated officer, a father, a husband, and unknowingly in the grip of a hidden mental illness that would upend everything.

The Tsunami in My Mind is a raw, unflinching memoir of bipolar disorder told from the inside. Part gripping narrative, part clinical insight, and entirely human, this book shatters stigma by revealing the truth behind the labels and the cost of silence.

💡 What You’ll Discover In The Book

• The early signs of bipolar disorder are masked by high achievement, and what to look for.
• The seductive power of hypomania, and how it can ruin lives while convincing you it’s saving them.
• What happens when a military doctor experiences a full manic break at sea.
• The science of bipolar disorder: genetics, medications, neurobiology, and breakthroughs in treatment.
• How Dr. Doan rebuilt his marriage, family, and faith after nearly losing everything.
• Lifelines for loved ones and tools for hope, healing, and recovery.

🩺 About the Author

Dr. Andrew Doan is a physician-scientist, Navy Officer, mental health advocate, and expert in addiction and neuroscience. With candor and courage, he shares a story that is as clinically important as it is emotionally gripping.

Andrew P. Doan, MPH, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist specializing in ophthalmology, aerospace medicine, neuroscience, public health, and behavioral addictions related to gaming, media, and personal technology use. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the prestigious The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he studied the neural circuits and molecular mechanisms underlying brain function.

Dr. Doan completed his Internal Medicine internship and Ophthalmology residency at the University of Iowa, followed by a fellowship in Eye Pathology at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute. With a deep interest in the health and psychological resilience of aviators and flight crew, he later completed a second residency in Aerospace Medicine and earned a Master of Public Health from the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute and the University of West Florida.

As a pioneer in the study of digital media and gaming addiction, Dr. Doan has spent over 13 years researching the impact of technology overuse on mental health. He devoted three years to full-time clinical research with psychologists and psychiatrists, ultimately developing one of the first comprehensive medical workshops on video game and media addictions. To date, he has trained over 2,000 healthcare providers worldwide on this growing public health issue.

Dr. Doan serves as an Associate Professor of Surgery (Adjunct) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He is a CAPTAIN in the U.S. Navy and practices full-time comprehensive ophthalmology and aerospace medicine physician.  He has held leadership roles in the U.S. Navy across multiple commands and continues to teach and advocate for healthy digital habits through his YouTube Channel (www.YouTube.com/@DrAndrewDoan), professional lectures, and public outreach.

Having lived through the tsunami of bipolar disorder himself, Dr. Doan brings a unique perspective as both a medical expert and a survivor. His work reflects a commitment to bridging science, lived experience, and compassion to help others navigate the mental health landscape with clarity and courage.

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Preface

I didn’t want to write this book. Not at first.

As a physician, a neuroscientist, and an officer in the U.S. Navy, I had spent most of my adult life controlling narratives, presenting data, projecting competence, and managing outcomes. In my world, vulnerability was often mistaken for weakness. And weakness had consequences.

But bipolar disorder doesn’t negotiate with credentials. It doesn’t care how many diplomas hang on your wall or how well you’ve mastered the vocabulary of neurotransmitters and pharmacokinetics. It doesn’t stop to ask whether your career, reputation, or family can survive the damage. It just moves. Like a silent force beneath the surface, deep, tectonic, and inevitable.

When I finally came undone, I realized something that changed everything: knowledge alone is not enough. I had spent years studying the brain, lecturing on dopamine pathways and circadian disruptions, and designing training programs on behavioral addiction. But none of that had protected me from the wave that eventually took me under. It’s humbling when you realize you are not the expert in your own suffering.

So I began to write, not to reclaim authority, but to surrender it. I wrote to make sense of what had happened to me, and to the men in my family who bore the same invisible scars. I wrote to break the silence that so often surrounds mental illness in immigrant families, military culture, medicine, and even faith communities. I wrote because I didn’t want my children to grow up without a map, without words to name the thing that nearly destroyed their father.

This book is not a textbook, though it includes medical insights. It is not a journal, though it’s deeply personal. It’s not even a conventional memoir. It’s something else, a hybrid of lived experience and clinical understanding, of narrative and neuroscience, of honesty and hope.

I have tried to tell the truth. That includes the truth about how bipolar disorder looks in real life, not just in textbooks or infographics, but in marriages, careers, parenting, and prayer. It includes what it feels like to fly high on hypomania and crash into despair, to manipulate doctors, to deny your diagnosis, to bargain with your own mind. It includes the humiliation of hospitalization, the strange clarity of mania, the dull ache of medication side effects, and the bittersweet relief of stability. It includes the toll on my wife Julie, on our children, on the people who never stopped loving me, even when I was hard to love.

You’ll meet them in these pages. Julie, who has lived every chapter of this story with grace and grit. My father, who once declared himself Jesus Christ because his birthday was December 25th. My brother Tony, whose brilliance and chaos lived side by side. And the younger version of me, ambitious, accomplished, and denying the tectonic chaos forming in my own mind.

But this isn’t just my story. It’s also about the millions of people living with bipolar disorder in silence. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 2.8% of U.S. adults experience bipolar disorder each year (NIMH, 2023). That number doesn’t capture the ripple effects of the families, friends, colleagues, and children impacted by the condition. Nor does it reflect the stigma that keeps so many from seeking help.

Bipolar disorder is treatable, but it is not curable. Treatment requires more than medication and psychotherapy. It requires understanding. Patience. A reframing of what it means to be sick, and what it means to heal. That’s one of the goals of this book: to show that recovery isn’t about eliminating all symptoms, but about building a life that can manage them. A life anchored in self-awareness, support, and grace.

Each chapter blends narrative and explanation. Some chapters dive into specific aspects of bipolar disorder: sleep, psychosis, medication resistance, rapid cycling, trauma, and more. Others reflect on relationships: how mania affects marriage, how mental illness shapes parenting, how culture and silence can be just as damaging as the illness itself. I’ve included clinical references where relevant, not to impress, but to empower. You deserve to understand the science behind your suffering. And you deserve to know that you’re not alone.

If you’re reading this as someone living with bipolar disorder, I hope you find language here that makes you feel seen. I hope you feel less ashamed of your high highs and low lows. I hope you understand that you are not broken, even when your mind betrays you.

If you’re the spouse, parent, sibling, or friend of someone with bipolar disorder, I hope this book helps you make sense of what often feels senseless. Your love matters. Your support saves lives. But you cannot carry this alone, and you shouldn’t have to.

If you’re a clinician or mental health professional, thank you for the work you do. I hope this book offers insight into the lived experience of your patients, especially those who seem high-functioning, articulate, and resistant to treatment. Sometimes the most dangerous place to be is just below the diagnostic threshold.

And if you’re reading this out of curiosity, with no personal connection to bipolar disorder, thank you, too. Understanding mental illness, even when it doesn’t touch you directly, is an act of compassion. And compassion is the soil in which healing grows.

I don’t have all the answers. I still live with bipolar disorder. I still take medication, go to therapy, and navigate the delicate balance of ambition and rest. But I am alive. I am well. And I am not hiding anymore.

This book is my offering. Welcome to the tsunami.

Dr. Andrew P. Doan

June 2025

Prologue: Tsunami Without a Name

At first glance, hurricanes and tsunamis may seem alike, both unleash immense power, both can tear through the lives of those in their path. But beneath the surface, they are fundamentally different. A hurricane is seen from afar. It’s tracked. Predicted. The wind builds, the clouds roll in, and the warnings come. There’s time to prepare, to board up, and to seek shelter.

A tsunami is silent at first. Deep beneath the ocean floor, an earthquake erupts. You don’t see it happen. The surface may look calm. Sometimes the sea even pulls back, revealing the sand as if offering a moment of peace. But then the wave rises, suddenly, violently as a massive tsunami, gaining speed and height until it crashes ashore with no mercy, destroying everything in its way.

That’s what bipolar disorder is like for me.

It builds invisibly, deep within. There are subtle signs, an odd energy, bursts of brilliance, sleepless ambition, but no clear warning for the uninitiated. The surface of my life may seem still. Then, the waters recede. I feel invincible. And then the wave hits, a manic crescendo of risk-taking, grandiosity, restlessness, and eventually, collapse.

In my family, I wasn’t the only one with a quake within. My father and brother also lived with bipolar disorder. Though never formally diagnosed as such, they both may have been rapid cyclers, experiencing four or more manic and/or depressive episodes in a single year. For more than two decades, they were hospitalized nearly every year. The pattern was unmistakable. The cost, immeasurable. Most people with bipolar disorder will experience around ten manic episodes in their lifetime. We surpassed that easily. The Doans have always been overachievers, academically, professionally, and even in psychiatric instability. If bipolar disorder were a competitive sport, we’d have medals, a trophy case, and maybe a Netflix documentary. In our family, the waves didn’t just come, they had a season pass.

I believed I could manage bipolar differently. I studied the brain at one of the most respected institutions in the world, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where I earned both my M.D. and Ph.D. through the premier Neuroscience Department. I had access to the latest research, deep knowledge of neural circuits, pharmacology, and behavior. I thought I could understand the illness well enough to outthink it. Control it. Use the fire without getting burned.

I refused medication. I convinced myself I could harness the manic energy: to create, to build, and to succeed, while keeping the chaos at bay. My wife Julie warned me that my brain may burnout. I was convinced I was like an undying nuclear reactor. But even a neuroscientist can drown in his own mind.

The tsunami finally broke through. I spiraled into a manic break that nearly cost me everything: my marriage, my career, and my life. In that moment, degrees, titles, and knowledge meant nothing. I was not the doctor anymore. I was the patient. And I was losing.

But by grace, I was spared.

I survived. And now I write this book as both a physician and a man who’s lived through the seismic catastrophe of unbridled mania. I want to illuminate what bipolar disorder really is. Its science, its patterns, and its soul. I want to speak to those who live with it, those who love someone who does, and those simply trying to understand.

This is a story of pain, of learning, and ultimately, of hope.

Because the tsunami in my mind may have knocked me down, but it did not take me under.