What I Lost to Shock Therapy—And What I Got Back
The Atlantic · Ted Scheinman ·
The treatment forced me to ask: Without the stories of who I’d been, who might I become?
The treatment forced me to ask: Without the stories of who I’d been, who might I become?
The art therapist said to draw an emotional biography of your illness. The nurses gave the patients only four colors of crayon. After some deliberation, I drew my girlfriend in blue, then used red and orange to make the fires in California. I sketched my sister, Jane, rocking an approximation of her baby, Theo—whom I’d never met—in her arms. All of the faces were coming out wrong: angry and put upon, as if to say, I cannot sanction what he’s doing with my likeness.
It was my third day in the psych ward, and I knew vaguely that my first electroconvulsive-therapy treatment was scheduled for the next day. But on the ward, the concept of time tended to blur. All I could say was that at some point, a nurse would affix electrodes to my temples and a doctor would begin inducing seizures. They’d keep zapping me until my agitated depression began to recede. And if those seizures didn’t work? I might have to get pretty comfy in art classes like this one.
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