In the tradition of Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire and Hadley Freeman's Good Girls, this is an intimate, deeply researched story of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) by the celebrated Smithsonian editor, memoirist, and essayist.
Before I can tell you about the shock treatment, I should tell you about the horse tranquilizer.
Ted Scheinman struggled with depression his whole life, but never like this. At thirty-five years old, he'd tried nearly everything. As antidepressants, therapy and powerful sedatives like ketamine proved ineffective, his mental health continued to deteriorate, along with his relationships and any hope of a happy life. Only one medical option remained: electroconvulsive therapy.
Like most people, Ted felt a shiver down his spine. ECT occupies a singular place in our cultural memory. For decades, many patients were famously subjected to it against their will - and even today, many associate it with horrifying images of convulsing bodies. But Ted had a bigger fear: if ECT didn't work, he might be lost forever.
Jolt: My Electric Journey Out of Darkness follows Ted's descent into and emergence from major depression as he undergoes ECT. The electricity proved remarkably successful, but at great cost: Ted's memory began failing him, and he was now missing episodes going back 18 months or more. In order to understand the relationship between memory and mental health, he investigates the history of this most controversial of treatments - which he credits with saving his life, and which, he discovers, saves tens of thousands of lives each year. But how many more could be saved if we understood the treatment better?
What emerges is both an inquest into the nature of mental health and a beautiful, funny, and philosophical memoir about what we're willing to sacrifice to have a chance at life.
PRAISE FOR JOLT:
'A fascinating and hopeful consideration of a controversial treatment, as well as a brilliant meditation on memory and identity, Jolt belongs on the same shelf as classics by Donald Antrim and William Styron.' - SCOTT STOSSEL, the Atlantic
'A beautifully written chronicle of what it's like to manage life-long depression and the hard choices mental illness forces on its sufferers... His most impressive artistic feat is that he has written a book about devastating depression that is warm, hopeful, and threaded with humor.' - CHRISTIE TATE, New York Times bestselling author of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life
'Profoundly moving... By taking up the urgent work of demystifying ECT, he combats decades of stigma about a treatment that saves lives.' - VINCE GRANATA, author of Everything Is Fine
'Told with kindness, insight, and grace-as well as with a unique sense of humor - this book has enriched me.' - JEFF HOBBS, New York Times bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
'This gorgeous, generous book is a celebration of the human spirit.' - MEG KISSINGER, award-winning author of While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
'Jolt isn't just a rich and fulfilling report on the brain and the ways it can sometimes betray us, but a beautiful and heart-wrenching portrait of family, parentage, and what it is to crawl out from beneath the weight of expectation and attempt to remake yourself.' - HANIF ABDURRAQIB, New York Times bestselling author of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
'Wise, funny and harrowing, this is the extraordinary telling of an extraordinary life, of a boy who lost his self, and a man who found his soul. Not since William Styron's Darkness Visible has an American author so honestly plumbed the truths of his own mental illness.' - JEFF MACGREGOR, writer for the New York Times
