Book Review: Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So
I’ll cut to the chase: I loved this book. Five stars. Two thumbs up.
When I read books, especially psychiatry books that I write about on Shrink Rap, I often read more carefully and sometimes more critically. I was so immersed in reading “Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So” that I didn’t stop to think, I just went on the journey.
Mark Vonnegut is a pediatrician and the son of my favorite author when I was in junior high school. His memoir is a poignant and candid account of his struggles with, well, life in general, and life with a psychotic illness in particular. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder — who knows? (I’ll vote for bipolar disorder.) Some illness where he had three episodes in his twenties, then another episode 14 years later.
Thorazine and lithium and megavitamins and psych wards. Xanax and alcohol and how humiliating it is to be psychotic on a stretcher in the ER hallway of the hospital where he works. Divorce and remarriage. First and second families. Childhood as the son of a financially struggling, not-yet-famous eccentric writer, and adulthood as the son of an icon. Vonnegut is a hippy, a mainstream doctor, a middle-aged softball player, then finally a guy who accidentally poisons himself with wild mushrooms. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
