Before I can tell you about the shock treatment, I should tell you about the horse tranquilizer.
Ted Scheinman has struggled with depression through his whole life, and gone to great lengths in his search for relief. As antidepressants prove less and less effective, he turns to the powerful sedative ketamine to no avail. When his mental health continues to deteriorate, taking his relationships and quality of life with it, only one medical option remains: electroconvulsive therapy.
Like most people, Ted felt a shiver down his spine. ECT occupies a unique place in our cultural memory, with patients famously subjected to it against their will and horrifying images of it frequently appearing on our screen. Some can scarcely imagine anything worse; some would prefer to die. For Ted there is an even bigger concern beyond the fear and the pain: if this doesn’t work, there’s nothing else left to try.
Jolt follows Ted’s descent into and emergence from major depression as he undergoes ECT. Along this journey, he investigates the medical history of this most controversial of treatment to answer one pressing question: if ECT is so horrific, why do doctors continue to recommend it today? He discovers that as well as crediting it with saving his own life, it is considered responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives each year.
Jolt is beautiful, funny, philosophical and ultimately hopeful memoir, which also raises big questions about memory, mental health, and the treatment of depression.
Ted Scheinman has struggled with depression through his whole life, and gone to great lengths in his search for relief. As antidepressants prove less and less effective, he turns to the powerful sedative ketamine to no avail. When his mental health continues to deteriorate, taking his relationships and quality of life with it, only one medical option remains: electroconvulsive therapy.
Like most people, Ted felt a shiver down his spine. ECT occupies a unique place in our cultural memory, with patients famously subjected to it against their will and horrifying images of it frequently appearing on our screen. Some can scarcely imagine anything worse; some would prefer to die. For Ted there is an even bigger concern beyond the fear and the pain: if this doesn’t work, there’s nothing else left to try.
Jolt follows Ted’s descent into and emergence from major depression as he undergoes ECT. Along this journey, he investigates the medical history of this most controversial of treatment to answer one pressing question: if ECT is so horrific, why do doctors continue to recommend it today? He discovers that as well as crediting it with saving his own life, it is considered responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives each year.
Jolt is beautiful, funny, philosophical and ultimately hopeful memoir, which also raises big questions about memory, mental health, and the treatment of depression.
Reviews
Like some cockeyed modern version of Dante's Virgil, Ted Scheinman takes the reader on a vivid journey through his descent into a depressive inferno and his ascent back out of it. Only Scheinman's a lot funnier-imagine Virgil with the self-lacerating wit of Carrie Fisher or Augusten Burroughs. 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.
A beautifully written chronicle of what it's like to manage life-long depression and the hard choices mental illness forces on its sufferers. In this generous and deeply compelling memoir, Scheinman probes his family history with compassion and insight-without a whiff of victimhood. His most impressive artistic feat is that he has written a book about devastating depression that is warm, hopeful, and threaded with humor.
Profoundly moving. An expertly narrated coming-of-age story, wrenchingly poignant, but also keenly comedic in showing how absurdity and sorrow live side by side. Though depression is often called a disease of silence, Scheinman has illuminated the crevices that the illness strains to hide. By taking up the urgent work of demystifying ECT, he combats decades of stigma about a treatment that saves lives.
Sometimes the most personal narratives reveal the deepest universal truths. Jolt is such a story. Told with kindness, insight, and grace-as well as with a unique sense of humor-this book has enriched me. To read it is to become a more thoughtful friend, parent, and person in the world. Even in moments of complex struggle, the quiet wisdom coursing through the story inspires and changes you.
How rare to find a writer as gifted as Ted Scheinman who is willing to take readers into the deepest and darkest corners of his life and emerge with such hope. This gorgeous, generous book is a celebration of the human spirit. You are in for a great treat.