Ted Scheinman can pinpoint the exact moment his mental health struggle began. As a three-year-old in upstate New York, he was playing with a new Batman toy in the bathroom when a splash of water landed on the figure’s boot. This minor event triggered a cascade of distressing thoughts, culminating in a profound, childish conviction: “I am going to die.” T ed Scheinman can date the origin of his depression with laser accuracy. Aged three, and returned to his home in upstate New York clutching a Batman toy that he’d won, it was the day he went to the fair. He would want to become a playwright, scheinman had a vivid imagination; in a few years. There was a whoosh – and the unthinkable happened. Enlarging spot that for young Scheinman triggered several rapid thoughts, the last of them being: “I am going to die.”, water landed on Batman’s pristine boot in a darkening. After the novelist Austen. (His younger sister acquired the name a few years later, they were there in utero: his mother assumed he’d be a girl and planned to name him Jane. What does Scheinman think she was trying to tell him? “If you could make meaning out of this … you would have power over it. You picture yourself convulsing more than you will, you go on this table. In any case, Scheinman can recall lying on the hospital bed, the squeeze as the blood-pressure cuff tightened around his left ankle, the prick of the needle administering general anaesthetic, and the pervading sense of relaxation bordering on euphoria as he tried to count down from 100 in line with the anaesthetist’s instructions.
Now 41, the Smithsonian magazine senior editor reflects on this trajectory in his memoirJolt: My Electric Journey Out of Darkness. The book documents his life as a depressive, tracing his path from early childhood to 2020, when he was 35 and finally reached a breaking point. By that time, he felt he was in a much darker place than he had ever experienced, describing himself as the lowest piece of dirt on the Earth. He sought electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which he viewed not as a final option, but as his only hope for survival. Affected neurons fire simultaneously and repeatedly, triggering the release of neurohormones and neurotransmitters (such as dopamine), in those seconds. “It’s such a dramatic thing, right.
The memoir serves as a travelogue from the other side of the tunnel, offering an unexpectedly amusing account of a treatment often shrouded in stigma. ECT, which involves passing an electric current through the brain to induce a brief seizure, is frequently depicted in pop culture as a harrowing ordeal, mirroring scenes fromOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestorThe Bell Jar. Scheinman recalls his primary anxiety was not the horror of the procedure, but the possibility that it would prove entirely ineffective.
His mother, who was a professor of 18th-century English literature at Colgate University, encouraged him to document the process, famously telling him before his 2021 admission to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington DC, “Write this down! He remembers exclaiming “Oh boy!” and waking with a headache.
This is great material.
While some might find the sentiment clinical, Scheinman viewed her encouragement as a form of support. She had long been familiar with the treatment; she was friends with people who had benefited from it and kept a correspondence with Alan Bennett, who once described the effects of ECT on his own mother as a miracle. He turned on the tap, to add sound effects and drama. They’re perhaps not the words many mothers would offer a child about to embark on ECT. “It might sound sort of clinical or heartless,” Scheinman says, “but it was the opposite.”. In 2006’s Untold Stories, describes the effects of ECT on his own mother as “a miracle”, and she held a correspondence with Alan Bennett who. In turn, implied a solution, perhaps the extremity implied an ending that.
Scheinman admits that while the process of writing the book—which involved extensive interviews with relatives and scouring old medical records—was grueling, it provided deep insight. On May 12, 2021, he underwent his first treatment. Although attaching electrodes to his temple felt frightening, the sense of intense need for relief outweighed his fear. Between his initial treatment and the following five months, he received 11 unilateral and 14 bilateral sessions. He says, “but the fear almost felt distant because I was pathetically hopeful”, having the electrodes attached to his temple was scary.
Over the course of the outpatient treatments, his condition began to shift. Friends noticed the change before he did. Reflecting on the experience, he maintains his status as a depressive, adhering to the diagnostic standards of the DSM, but notes, “I’m still myself! I just feel less trapped by myself.” About a year later, he unpacked his hospital bag, remaining ready to return to the treatment if necessary, though he currently focuses on a strict regimen of physical movement and music as part of his wellness plan. You get up after however many treatments and walk out a changed or restored person … I was attracted to the sheer apparent extremeness of this treatment.”, and if you’re lucky.
The memoir also explores the complexities of his childhood, including his father’s infidelity and the complicated, often blurred boundaries between him and his mother. Scheinman, who once spent his childhood feeling marooned between his intellectual precocity and his emotional development, now expresses a desire to provide a more delineated childhood for any future children of his own.
Today, Scheinman is proactive about mental health advocacy. He has informally coached others considering the treatment and is volunteering with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He speaks of living fully again, noting, “I feel like my sense of adventure is back.” Through his work, he hopes to destigmatize a procedure that fundamentally altered the course of his life. For that matter, literary references are never far from view in Jolt – or in Scheinman’s life. Fittingly, on our video call, Scheinman sits before a row of bookcases, bookishness pervades Jolt and. Or at least, a sense of agency within the illness. Of course, the reader knows where this memoir is leading – and maybe, somewhere in his head, that’s how Scheinman felt, too, from Jolt’s title on.
