Archive of August 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

Shoot the Damn Dog

This was the book that started me off on my reading biographies kick.  I didn't know it at the time, but I'd be back for many more...

Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton. Sally worked in the fashion industry in the UK for many years before launching the highly successful Elle magazine in the U.K. in 1985.  Most would probably consider this a fantastic life, and it was filled with many of the trappings of the high life that the very wealthy typically lead.  But behind the successful and public persona was a woman living with severe depression, drug abuse and raging alcoholism.  Few knew or even suspected there were problems.  For this was still in the dark days of mental illness where the general public viewed metal illness as something that one brings on themselves and simply isn't dealing with.

Sally struggles to maintain her public life as well as her marriage and raising her daughter all while the outside world sees nothing but tremendous success.  But the battle with her inner demons and self-medicating with finally leads to an attempted suicide to end the pain.  Unable to cope, Sally can no longer work, raise her daughter and her marriage also crumbles.  Sally survived suicide, wound up in and out of a mental institution for four years, but continued to struggle with alcohol as her primary medication of choice.  Psychiatric also care brought her an endless stream of the available mental health drugs of the day, all to no avail.  Read more…