Or at least that is not how it felt at the time. But ‘I’ is not quite the right word, because the person who did these things, mechanically and without pause, and with a calm determination, was not me. I say that ‘I’ did these things, because I must use the first person pronoun if I am to take full responsibility both for what happened that night, and for the toll it took on those around me. It was in this close and unexpected mirror that I fixed myself, eye to eye, scried the throb of the right carotid, and drew the blade across my throat. When sitting, you could see your face in it clearly. Near the front rim of the tub, there was a large rectangular chrome plate that operated the drainstop. I soon saw that the knife would not accomplish this quickly-it had been dulled by overuse-and so I turned my attention elsewhere.
That is what I tell everyone who asks, and sooner or later everyone asks (it was my psychiatrist’s first question) why I didn’t call them, or someone, anyone for help on that March evening in 2014 before I took the largest carving knife from the kitchen drawer, locked myself in the bathroom, climbed in the tub, ran the water, and set about slicing my radial and femoral arteries. Eye opening, emotionally wrenching, and at times very funny, Voluntary Madness is a riveting work that exposes the state of mental healthcare in America from the inside out.There is no time. Vincent applies brilliant insight as she exposes her personal struggle with depression and explores the range of people, caregivers, and methodologies that guide these strange, often scary, and bizarre environments. She decided to get healthy and to study the effect of treatment on the depressed and insane "in the bin," as she calls it.Vincent's journey takes her from a big city hospital to a facility in the Midwest and finally to an upscale retreat down south, as she analyzes the impact of institutionalization on the unwell, the tyranny of drugs-as-treatment, and the dysfunctional dynamic between caregivers and patients. Out of this raw and overwhelming experience came the idea for her next book. On the advice of her psychologist she committed herself to a mental institution.
Suffering from severe depression after her eighteen months living disguised as a man, Vincent felt she was a danger to herself. The journalist who famously lived as a man commits herself-literallyNorah Vincent's New York Times bestselling book, Self-Made Man, ended on a harrowing note.
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