The Madness Pill - by Justin Garson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia.

In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity--specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.

Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder's dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.

Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.

Review Quotes

"... echoing Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks... Thoroughly readable science that rests on solid archival discoveries."--Library Journal, starred review

"An enlightening biography of a titan of neuroscience and a fascinating guide to how mental illness takes shape in the brain."
--Robert Kolker, author of the #1 NYT bestseller Hidden Valley Road

"A fun, fast-paced, fascinating account of one of the most influential figures in the rise of biological psychiatry. Garson's book will leave readers reflecting on what it means to suffer, go mad, and be human."--Laura Delano, author of Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance

"A timely, gripping, and deeply informed narrative about the search to understand and treat psychosis, the most unsettling of psychiatric conditions. It's a problem on many minds, as mayors and governors across the country struggle to shape meaningful mental health policies. Driven by his own father's battle with paranoid schizophrenia, Garson offers us invaluable illumination."
--Daniel Bergner, author of The Mind and the Moon: My Brother's Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search For Our Psyches

"A page-turning biography of a complex giant in the field of biological psychiatry but it is also so much more. The legacies of the fascinating and fateful experiments told in this book still shape psychiatry today."
--Anne Harrington, author of Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

About the Author