Crazy Or Not Here I Come

“I would like to thank myself for the miracle of my being here today.” These are the words Dawn spoke before members of the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drug Advisory Committee Hearing in 2006 before she described her prescription drug-related experience—an ordeal that began five years earlier… With a successful and coveted career in the concert tour arena, a blossoming new relationship, and her beloved dog Simon at her side, Dawn sets off for a sunny vacation in Florida between tours. But when she is prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for a minor problem, her charmed life quickly spirals into mania, insomnia, religious preoccupations, impulsive actions, grandiose behaviors, suicidal ideation, and psychosis. The world-altering events of September 11 further propel a delusional Dawn into a full-blown paranoid, psychotic war—and she is brutally taken into custody, involuntarily committed to a mental crisis institution, and drugged even more. In riveting detail, Dawn takes the reader on a wild and terrifying ride of insanity. As the drugs are flushed from her system, she begins to regain control over her life and eventually flourish, and now she shares her harrowing story to shed light on the dark epidemic of pharmaceutical drug-generated violence, suicide, homicide, and terrorism.

This writing I’ve done is about a very ordinary guy who’s gone through a very extraordinary experience. The events that transpired during this journey inspired me to share the experience. The need to write this book became more and more obvious as time went by. This book is written from the perspective of a man experiencing something but not knowing what that experience is and the journey that follows. This topic was forced upon me almost ten years ago but has forever changed my life in ways that are truly remarkable. This experience may have happened to you, but you just never knew what you went through, or you may be going through it right now. Either way, this book is intended to let you know you’re not losing your mind, you’re not going crazy, and you’re not alone. Trust in yourself and enjoy the ride!

Skinny or Not, Here I Come is part memoir, part self-help book. It is a true story detailing the inner thoughts of a young girl with an eating disorder and how these thoughts evolved into her adulthood. The author describes all of her many different experiences with counseling and the life events that fueled her eating disorder. She outlines the strategies, belief systems (including Christian faith), and motivating factors that helped her to finally begin a journey of recovery.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a professor shares the lessons he's learned—about living in the present, building a legacy, and taking full advantage of the time you have—in this life-changing classic. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull over the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have . . . and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

SPECIAL PREVIEW! Everyone has heard a different version of what happened that night at MacCallum College. Haley was already in bed when her roommate, Jenny, arrived home shell-shocked from the wild Conundrum House party. Richard heard his housemate Jordan brag about the cute freshman he hooked up with. When Jenny formally accuses Jordan of rape, Haley and Richard find themselves pushed onto opposite sides of the school’s investigation. But conflicting interests fueling conflicting versions of the story may make bringing the truth to light nearly impossible--especially when reputations, relationships, and whole futures are riding on the verdict. Maria Padian offers a kaleidoscopic view of a sexual assault on a college campus. Wrecked will leave readers thinking about how memory and identity, what’s at stake, and who sits in judgment shape what we all decide to believe about the truth.

From the bestselling author of the classic book on ADD, Driven to Distraction, a memoir of the strange upbringing that shaped Dr. Edward M. Hallowell's celebrated career. When Edward M. Hallowell was eleven, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, alcoholic mother, abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behavior from those around him, and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control. The voice turned out to be right. Now, decades later, Hallowell is a leading expert on attention disorders and the author of twenty books, including Driven to Distraction, the work that introduced ADD to the world. In Because I Come from a Crazy Family, he tells the often strange story of a childhood marked by what he calls the "WASP triad" of alcoholism, mental illness, and politeness, and explores the wild wish, surging beneath his incredible ambition, that he could have saved his own family of drunk, crazy, and well-intentioned eccentrics, and himself. Because I Come from a Crazy Family is an affecting, at times harrowing, ultimately moving memoir about crazy families and where they can lead, about being called to the mental health profession, and about the unending joys and challenges that come with helping people celebrate who they are. A portion of the author's proceeds of this book will go to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).

For their twelfth birthday Willow's mom is planning a combined birthday party for Willow and her twin brother, Winston--boys and girls will both be invited for a Halloween masquerade, but soon the games threaten to get out of hand.

Fed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and the humiliating job in his father's grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O'Donnell has accepted his aunt's invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg. With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.