Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So_ A Memoir - Mark Vonnegut [0]
(Painting by Mark Vonnegut)
Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Vonnegut, M.D.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vonnegut, Mark.
Just like someone without mental illness only more so: a memoir / Mark Vonnegut.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33977-9
1. Vonnegut, Mark. 2. Pediatricians—Massachusetts—Boston—Biography. 3. Schizophrenics—Massachusetts—Boston—Biography. 4. Children of celebrities—Massachusetts—Boston—Biography.
I. Title.
RJ43.V66A3 2010
618.92’8980092—dc22 2010009765
[B]
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1
The other day I found the final version—along with several drafts—of the note below:
Dear Santa,
Can you please get me the large set of Pickett’s Charge (soldiers, horses, cannons, fences, trees, and a hill)?
From Oliver
Living with a seven-year-old who asks Santa for a 470-piece Civil War battle replica play set is a great joy and privilege. Yesterday he asked me, “So what happened to the slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation?”
This book is dedicated to all seven-year-olds … and their seven-year-olds and their seven-year-olds and so forth and so on.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Note on the Title
Introduction
chapter 1
A Brief Family History
chapter 2
Raised by Wolves
chapter 3
The Coming of the Orphans
chapter 4
Hippie
chapter 5
Retooling
chapter 6
Bow Wow Boogie
chapter 7
Medical School
chapter 8
Man’s Greatest Hospital
chapter 9
Crack-up Number Four
chapter 10
Coming Home
chapter 11
Honduras
chapter 12
Not Right for Here
chapter 13
Short Chapter …
chapter 14
The Myth of Mental Wellness
chapter 15
Bricks and Lobsters
chapter 16
The Rope
chapter 17
There’s Nothing Quite as Final as a Dead Father
chapter 18
Mushrooms
About the Author
A Note on the Title
When I talk to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and other patient support groups, I take questions at the end. At one talk I was asked, “What’s the difference between yourself and someone without mental illness?”
At another talk I was asked, “How do you make the voices be not so mean?”
I wish I knew.
Introduction
I’ve gotten used to it, but very little about my life has been likely. In my early twenties I stopped being able to eat or sleep. I heard voices, went up against locked doors, was given a lot of medication, and lost my confidence that going crazy was something that happened to other people. It would have made perfectly good sense for me not to have done well and maybe have ended up killing myself after x number of relapses. Everyone would have adjusted. But I recovered enough to be able to think about what I would have wanted to become if it wasn’t for the sixties and mental illness. I wanted to be a doctor and applied to twenty medical schools. It was a round number.
It would have been utterly unremarkable for all twenty to have said no. That the one that said yes was Harvard is either a miracle or a very funny joke.
Luck and circumstances make us as different from who we might have been as cats are from dogs and birds are from bugs. There must be a point in paying attention to what goes on. My father’s fame falls into the one-in-a-zillion category. Had I told someone after my first series of breaks that I might go to Harvard Medical School, they would have upped my meds and canceled my dayroom privileges.
I’ve had the bad luck to get sick four times and the remarkable good luck to get better again each time. None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick. At my best I have islands of being sick. At my worst I had islands of being well. Except for a reluctance to give