Most Popular Books by Susannah Cahalan

''My first serious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming days and weeks, I would never again be the same person ...'' Susannah Cahalan was a happy, clever, healthy twenty-four-year old. Then one day she woke up in hospital, with no memory of what had happened or how she had got there. Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone unrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis, undergoing rages and convulsions, hallucinating that her father had murdered his wife; that she could control time with her mind. Everything she had taken for granted about her life, and who she was, was wiped out. Brain on Fire is Susannah''s story of her terrifying descent into madness and the desperate hunt for a diagnosis, as, after dozens of tests and scans, baffled doctors concluded she should be confined in a psychiatric ward. It is also the story of how one brilliant man, Syria-born Dr Najar, finally proved - using a simple pen and paper - that Susannah''s psychotic behaviour was caused by a rare autoimmune disease attacking her brain. His diagnosis of this little-known condition, thought to have been the real cause of devil-possessions through history, saved her life, and possibly the lives of many others. Cahalan takes readers inside this newly-discovered disease through the progress of her own harrowing journey, piecing it together using memories, journals, hospital videos and records. Written with passionate honesty and intelligence, Brain on Fire is a searingly personal yet universal book, which asks what happens when your identity is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back. ''With eagle-eye precision and brutal honesty, Susannah Cahalan turns her journalistic gaze on herself as she bravely looks back on one of the most harrowing and unimaginable experiences one could ever face: the loss of mind, body and self. Brain on Fire is a mesmerizing story'' -Mira Bartók, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Palace Susannah Cahalan is a reporter on the New York Post, and the recipient of the 2010 Silurian Award of Excellence in Journalism for Feature Writing. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, and is frequently picked up by the Daily Mail, Gawker, Gothamist, AOL and Yahoo among other news aggregrator sites.

Shortlisted for the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian * The Telegraph * The Times "One of America''s most courageous young journalists" and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire investigates the shocking mystery behind the dramatic experiment that revolutionized modern medicine (NPR). Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, healthy, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry''s labels. Forced to remain inside until they''d "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan''s watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan''s explosive new research shows in this real-life detective story, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors?

Susannah Cahalan hade ett liv som många drömmer om. En lägenhet i Midtown Manhattan och ett jobb som reporter på prestigefyllda New York Post. Men en dag vaknar den då 24 år gamla Susannah Cahalan upp ensam på ett sjukhus, bunden till sängs, övervakad och oförmögen att tala eller röra sig … Under månaden som kommer omkullkastas Susannahs liv fullständigt. Kollegor, pojkvän, föräldrar, läkare och psykologer och inte minst Susannah själv – alla står maktlösa inför den totala personlighetsförändring hon genomgår med paranoid misstänksamhet, hallucinationer och aggressivitet som följd. Vem var främlingen som tagit över hennes kropp? Vad hade hänt med hennes hjärna? I denna gripande självbiografi får vi följa Susannah Cahalan steg för steg när hon lägger pusselbitar för att förstå vad som egentligen hände under den månad av hennes liv som försvunnit ur hennes minne för alltid fram till diagnosen som räddade hennes liv.

“Shines a light on one of the twentieth century’s most amazing untold life stories. ... An essential read—and an unforgettable trip.” —Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road “Cahalan details a piece of lost but fascinating history, the story of a woman who embodied an era of freedom, experimentation, and psychedelic adventure. Meticulously reported and beautifully crafted.” —Susan Orlean The untold story of the woman who played a critical role in bringing psychedelics into the mainstream—until her audacious exploits forced her into the shadows—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire Rosemary Woodruff Leary has been known only as the wife of Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor-turned-psychedelic high priest, whose jailbreak captivated the counterculture and whose life on the run with Rosemary inflamed the government. But Rosemary was more than a mere accessory. She was a beatnik, a psychonaut, and a true believer who tested the limits of her mind and the expectations for women of her time. Long overlooked by those who have venerated her husband, Rosemary spent her life on the forefront of the counterculture, working with Leary on his books and speeches, sewing his clothing, and shaping—for better and for worse—the media’s narrative about LSD. Ultimately, Rosemary sacrificed everything for the safety of her fellow psychedelic pioneers and the preservation of her husband’s legacy. Drawing from a wealth of interviews, diaries, archives, and unpublished sources, Susannah Cahalan writes the definitive portrait of Rosemary Woodruff Leary, reclaiming her narrative and her voice from those who dismissed her. Page-turning, revelatory, and utterly compelling, The Acid Queen shines an overdue spotlight on a pioneering psychedelic seeker.

Susannah Cahalan ist jung, attraktiv, frisch verliebt, eine aufstrebende Journalistin – und gerät über Nacht in den schlimmsten Albtraum ihres Lebens. Innerhalb kürzester Zeit erkrankt sie schwer, leidet an Wahnvorstellungen und wird binnen weniger Wochen zum Schwerstpflegefall in der Psychiatrie. Vollgepumpt mit Medikamenten wird sie ans Bett gefesselt und vegetiert vor sich hin – dem Tod näher als dem Leben. Doch ihre Familie gibt nicht auf bis endlich der renommierte Neurologe Souhel Najjar hinzugezogen wird. Er findet heraus, dass Susannah an einer erst vor kurzem entdeckten Autoimmunerkrankung leidet, in deren Verlauf der Körper das eigene Gehirn angreift und Symptome wie Schizophrenie, Autismus und Wahnvorstellungen erzeugt. Einmal richtig diagnostiziert, sorgen die geeigneten Medikamente rasch und dauerhaft für Genesung und Susannah gewinnt ihr Leben zurück. Ihre Schilderung des Leidensweges ist eine bewegende und aufregende Geschichte über Familie, Liebe, Hoffnung und darüber, wie sich ein perfektes Leben innerhalb kürzester Zeit in eine Katastrophe verwandeln kann. Ein fesselndes Buch, das man nicht aus der Hand legen kann, bis die letzte Seite verschlungen ist.

Uma jovem jornalista com uma carreira promissora em Nova York se vê aprisionada em sua própria insanidade com uma doença que nenhum médico consegue diagnosticar. A rotina no jornal onde ela trabalha é substituída por inexplicáveis alucinações, surtos e ataques de paranoia - os mesmos sinais atribuídos a casos de possessão. Poderia se tratar de um episódio de House, mas é a história de Susannah Cahalan, que escreve com impressionante riqueza de detalhes o período de terror em que se transforma em desconhecida para si mesma e seus familiares. Sem poder contar com a memória para escrever sua reportagem mais difícil, Susannah recorre aos próprios rascunhos do período em que esteve doente, além de relatos de médicos, familiares, namorado e documentos para construir um drama psicológico sobre os caminhos misteriosos e assustadores do nosso próprio cérebro.

Mi cerebro en llamas cuenta la asombrosa lucha de una mujer por recuperar su identidad, arrebatada por una extraña y cruel enfermedad autoinmune.

Autobiografisch verslag van een 24-jarige Amerikaanse vrouw, die door een zeldzame auto-immuunziekte van de ene op de andere dag ernstig psychisch en later ook lichamelijk ziek werd.

One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak. A wristband marked her as a "flight risk," and her medical records--chronicling a monthlong hospital stay of which she had no memory at all--showed hallucinations, violence, and dangerous instability. Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her inexplicable descent into madness and the brilliant, lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn''t happen. A team of doctors would spend a month--and more than a million dollars--trying desperately to pin down a medical explanation for what had gone wrong. Then, at the last minute, celebrated neurologist Souhel Najjar joined her team and, with the help of a lucky, ingenious test, saved her life. He recognized the symptoms of a newly discovered autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks the brain, a disease now thought to be tied to both schizophrenia and autism, and perhaps the root of "demonic possessions" throughout history.

Den amerikanske journalisten Susannah Cahalan var 24 år da hun brått mistet både språk og hukommelse. Hun hallusinerte, fikk kraftige vrangforestillinger og voldsomme anfall, men ingen skjønte hva som var galt. Var det tidlig demens, psykose eller schizofreni? Ved hjelp at et dyktig legeteams grundige arbeid fikk Cahalan til slutt en diagnose og frisknet til. Dette er hennes fortelling om den skremmende opplevelsen, om veien inn i og ut av galskapen.