Monkey Mind A Memoir of Anxiety Author:Daniel B Smith An uplifting and insightful memoir of living with anxiety?the most common psychiatric complaint in the United States?and one man?s unswerving quest to overcome it. ? The first of its kind: More than 40 million American adults suffer from anxiety, yet there has never been a memoir about it. Daniel Smith candidly recounts his own hilarious and hea... more »rt-wrenching story: his first severe episode of anxiety at the age of sixteen; his first job, as a fact-checker at The Atlantic Monthly, which nearly drove him to distraction; and his romantic struggles to keep the love of his life. Through drugs, through psychoanalysis, through self-imposed isolation and cognitive therapy and Zen meditation, he finally learns to make peace with the workings of his restless mind and becomes the husband and father that he wants to be. ? Hope at last: Though Smith is unflinching in his description of anxiety?s toll?insomnia, headaches, nausea, constant emotional turmoil?this is far from a sob story. After all, he says, anxiety is first and foremost a disease of absurdity, the human mind?s wild imaginings of implausible ways things might go wrong. Through knowing humor and personal anecdotes delivered with a biting insight that calls to mind David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Monkey Mind empowers readers to ?declaw the experience? so they can learn to live with?and laugh at?their anxiety. ? Out in the open: What Darkness Visible did for depression and The Year of Magical Thinking did for grief, Monkey Mind will do for anxiety, giving readers a way to talk about, confront, and ultimately quell their demons.« less