Smith - Monkey mind: a memoir of anxiety

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Praise for Monkey Mind

In this unforgettable, surprisingly hilarious memoir, journalist and professor Smith chronicles his head-clanging, flop-sweating battles with acute anxiety.... Hes clear-eyed and funny about his conditions painful absurdities.

People (four stars)

This book will change the way you think about anxiety.... Daniel Smiths writing dazzled me.... Painful experiences are described with humor, and complex ideas are made accessible.... Monkey Mind is a rare gem.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Monkey Mind [is] fleet, funny, and productively exhausting.

Ben Greenman, The New York Times Book Review

Youll laugh out loud many times during Daniel Smiths Monkey Mind.... In the time-honored tradition of leavening pathos with humor, Smith has managed to create a memoir that doesnt entirely let him off the hook for bad behavior... but promotes understanding of the similarly afflicted.

O Magazine

Smith does a skillful job of dissecting the mechanics of anxiety as well as placing the reader in his fitful shoes.

Publishers Weekly

Monkey Mind [is] a balance of the devastating and the devastatingly hilarious. As Smith traces his ongoing battle with clinical anxiety, we learn just how disruptive and downright crippling the struggle can beand how difficult it can be to acknowledge and diagnose, let alone begin to understand and treat.

ScientificAmerican.com

[Smith] adroitly dissects his relentless mental and physical symptoms with intelligence and humor.... [An] intimate and touching journey through one mans angst-ridden life.

The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Heres one less thing for Daniel Smith to worry about: He sure can write. In Monkey Mind, a memoir of his lifelong struggles with anxiety, he defangs the experience with a winning combination of humor and understanding.

Heller McAlpin, NPR.org

For fellow anxiety-sufferers, its like finding an Anne of Green Gablesstyle kindred spirit.

New York magazines Vulture.com

[ Monkey Mind ] will be recognized in the years to come as the preeminent first-person narrative of the anxiously lived life.

Psychiatric Times

The book is one mans story, but at its core its about all of us.

Booklist

A true treasure-trove of insight laced with humor and polished prose.

Kirkus Reviews (starred)

I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity. Daniel Smiths anxiety is matched by a wonderful sense of the comic, and it is this which makes Monkey Mind not only a dark, pain-filled book but a hilariously funny one, too. I broke out into explosive laughter again and again.

Oliver Sacks, bestselling author of The Minds Eye and Musicophilia

You dont need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smiths pain in Monkey Mind. His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our timechronic anxietyand it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.

Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding

Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor, and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psychopathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated mnage troisand the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brookss sweaty performance in Broadcast News . Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.

Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss

I dont know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, its clear theres one thing he doesnt have to be anxious about: whether or not hes a great writer.

A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblically

Daniel Smith has written a wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit. I only got anxious in the last part, when I worried the book would end. Of course, it did, but Smiths hopeful last chapters helped me cope.

Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Ask

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Copyright 2012 by Daniel Smith

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition June 2013

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Designed by Akasha Archer

Cover design by David Drummond

Cover photograph Karen Gentry/Shutterstock

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Smith, Daniel, date.

Monkey mind : a memoir of anxiety / Daniel Smith.

p. cm.

1. Smith, Daniel, dateMental health. 2. Anxiety disorders. 3. Mentally illUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

RC464.S59A3 2012

616.85'220092dc23

[B] 2011025971

ISBN 978-1-4391-7730-3

ISBN 978-1-4391-7731-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-7732-7 (ebook)

Authors note: The events described in this book are as real as I could manage. Certain names and details have been changed to protect me from legal and emotional ramifications, which, trust me, arent fun. Also: memory is unstable. We do our best.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for art on the following pages. : Lion tamer, chromolithograph, Gibson & Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio), published c. 1873.

ALSO BY DANIEL SMITH

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity

I dont know what is the matter with him, and the doctors dont know what is the matter with him, and he doesnt know himself what is the matter with him. We all say its on the nerves, and we none of us know what we mean when we say it.

Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.

Vladimir Nabokov, Signs and Symbols

For Joanna

why i am qualified to write this book

About ten years ago, when I was living in Boston, I had a therapist whose office was in a clinic across the Charles River, at the top of a tall hill. The therapist, whose name was Brian, had a beard and moustache the color of ripe mangoes, and in his spare time he acted in community theater. Often the productions Brian performed in had historical settings, and he would groom his facial hair accordingly. Brian was the best therapist Ive ever had, compassionate and patient and wise. But his appearance could be unsettling. One month, as opening night for The Secret Garden approached, he trimmed his beard progressively thinner while he grew his moustache thick, extending it down along the sides of his mouth. It was like getting counseling from General Custer.