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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Cabell County Public Library | 616.89 LOW | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A riveting memoir and a fascinating investigation of the history, uses, and controversies behind lithium, an essential medication for millions of people struggling with bipolar disorder.
It began in Los Angeles in 1993, when Jaime Lowe was just sixteen. She stopped sleeping and eating, and began to hallucinate--demonically cackling Muppets, faces lurking in windows, Michael Jackson delivering messages from the Neverland Underground. Lowe wrote manifestos and math equations in her diary, and drew infographics on her bedroom wall. Eventually, hospitalized and diagnosed as bipolar, she was prescribed a medication that came in the form of three pink pills--lithium.
In Mental , Lowe shares and investigates her story of episodic madness, as well as the stability she found while on lithium. She interviews scientists, psychiatrists, and patients to examine how effective lithium really is and how its side effects can be dangerous for long-term users--including Lowe, who after twenty years on the medication suffers from severe kidney damage. Mental is eye-opening and powerful, tackling an illness and drug that has touched millions of lives and yet remains shrouded in social stigma.
Now, while she adjusts to a new drug, her pursuit of a stable life continues as does her curiosity about the history and science of the mysterious element that shaped the way she sees the world and allowed her decades of sanity. Lowe travels to the Bolivian salt flats that hold more than half of the world's lithium reserves, rural America where lithium is mined for batteries, and tolithium spas that are still touted as a tonic to cure all ills. With unflinching honesty and humor, Lowe allows a clear-eyed view into her life, and an arresting inquiry into one of mankind's oldest medical mysteries.
Author Notes
Jaime Lowe is a writer living in Brooklyn. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and her work has appeared in New York magazine, Esquire , Sports Illustrated, Maxim, Gawker, The Village Voice , LA Weekly , and on ESPN.com. Lowe is the author of Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB , a biography of Ol' Dirty Bastard, a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
Lowe (Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB, 2008) deconstructs her decadeslong battle with bipolar disorder and the drug that brought her sanityat the cost of her physical health.Until the day she learned it was slowly destroying her kidney function, lithium was nothing less than the author's elixir of life, the one thing that could tame the mania that had afflicted an adolescence obsessed with messianic beliefs and the secret location of a tunnel to Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch. Those delusions, in addition to the haunting aftereffects of sexual molestation endured years before, landed Lowe in the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute with a seemingly endless supply of lithium-filled Dixie cups. Initially resistant to medication, she relented and slowly began to recover. "Once it was explained that this was an element in everyone's body and that I just needed more, the three pink pills in the Dixie cup didn't seem so bad," writes the author. Buoyed by lithium's stabilizing power, the author managed to navigate college and set her sights on a new career as a magazine writer in New York City. With an apartment and an entry-level gig at House Garden secured, life seemed to be going so well that the idea of tapering off lithium didn't seem to be far-fetched. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a terrible idea, and Lowe embarked on one of the most self-destructive periods of her life. In analyzing her illness, the author dives deep into not just her personal relationship to lithium, but the experiences of others as well. She chronicles her globe-trotting odyssey of self-discovery to the great salt flats of Bolivia, which contain more than half of the world's lithium supplies, and beyond. In the end, her often chaotic chronicle operates as an earnest memoir of personal triumph and an illuminating expos of a type of medication that continues to be a source of great debate. A moving exploration of mental health and the efficacy of available treatment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
At 15, Lowe began hallucinating and stopped eating and sleeping. She was hospitalized, diagnosed as bipolar, and prescribed lithium, which is the focus of her memoir. Describing her unremarkable childhood, she lists eating pancakes, climbing trees, listening to Michael Jackson, and going to the beach, somewhat defensively cataloging evidence of her normalcy. But can her eventual bipolar episode be described? Lowe's stunning introduction proves that it can: music pulsating in syncopation with my anxiety . . . feeling the chorus like combat and clouds crashing as she saw the waves of sound cascading from speaker to skin and tasted them. She believes her high-school autobiographical piece on bipolarity functioned somewhere between a confessional and a PSA. Not so this readable, moving, and accessible account of her episodic madness and lithium-maintained stability that will keep readers engrossed with her often painful, sometimes funny story, whose well-researched information on this age-old malady complements her enlightening journey.--Scott, Whitney Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
In "Mental: Lithium, Love, and Losing My Mind," Lowe's skills as a rock journalist are on full display - her writing is fast-paced, glossy and chock-full of New York names. This story too follows the onset, diagnosis and treatment of the author's bipolar disorder, but the book's stated aim - to be both memoir and journalistic exploration of the history and uses of lithium - is never realized. The result is a memoir that seems bent on dodging the usual memoir clichés, but in doing so, overcorrects, falling prey to the solipsism it tries to avoid. There is very little in the way of scene or reflection, and this absence robs the book of both narrative pull and any emotionally revelatory power. The research-driven passages feel like Wikipedia entries, summary and brief; additionally, there are a number of points at which the reader would welcome supporting evidence for the author's sometimes overly broad claims, such as the assertion that lithium is "usually the first medication tried with bipolar patients" and is "effective for most of them," both statements difficult to prove. The narrator herself stops taking lithium when it causes kidney damage, prompting a personal quest in which she travels to the world's natural lithium sources; however, this more concerted investigation of the element and its uses doesn't begin until more than twothirds of the way through the book. While authors are rarely responsible for the design, title or marketing copy of their books, "Mental" promises to delve into both personal experience and substantive research. Instead, the book - which is filled with photographs of the author, clip art and too-clever chapter titles - reads more like a rock bio than a memoir or a work of serious journalism. Coupled with misleading language, inadequate sourcing and a shaky sense of its own intentions, "Mental" never adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
