This Thursday I’m going to be on WTF with Marc Maron. Here’s a preview.
Daniel Smith (DSM-IV-TR 300.02: Generalized Anxiety Disorder) is an author, journalist, and editor.
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“I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity. Daniel Smith’s anxiety is matched by a wonderful sense of the comic, and it is this which makes Monkey Mind not only a dark, pain-filled book but a hilariously funny one, too. I broke out into explosive laughter again and again.”
—Oliver Sacks, bestselling author of The Mind’s Eye and Musicophilia
“Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.”
—Aaron T. Beck, father of cognitive therapy
“I don’t know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, it’s clear there’s one thing he doesn’t have to be anxious about: Whether or not he’s a great writer.”
—A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblically
“You don’t need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smith’s pain in Monkey Mind. His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our time — anxiety — and it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.”
—Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding
“Daniel Smith has written a wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit. I only got anxious in the last part, when I worried the book would end. Of course, it did, but Smith’s hopeful last chapters helped me cope.”
—Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Ask
“As a fellow sufferer, I balked at reading Monkey Mind, fearful that a book about anxiety might send me over the edge. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor, and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psychopathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated ménage a trois—and the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brooks’ sweaty performance in Broadcast News. Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.”
—Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss and Man Seeks God- More about the book
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Well that was cathartic. I plan to send this podcast to all the people in my life I wish I could talk to and tell them ‘THIS! This is what my brain is doing all the god damned time. This is why I hate you sometimes and hate everyone else all the time and why I have sabotaged my entire life.’
I was listening with mounting excitement, thinking to myself ‘this is me. but this guy has it together now, so he’s going to get to the bit where he fixed himself’, but that point never came. Because, as I have been aware all along, it’s up to me to do the work. Forever. Which fucking sucks. But that’s stiff shit.
I’m going to get that book.