A busy 24 hrs.
A NY Times review, in which Dwight Garner says I pace the psychiatric stage like a cross between George Carlin and Gregory House. I have to share space with Allen Frances’s Saving Normal but on the other hand the review ran on the front arts page, so I’ll settle.
A Nature review (probably need a subscription, but I’ll post in the reviews page soon. By David Dobbs, who calls BOW a “splendid and horrifying read.” It’s a nice, chunky review.
A Q&A at atlantic.com. Which is really funny, or something like funny, because I had no idea it was a Q&A. I kept wondering why the writer, Hope Reese, was asking me questions that seemed intended to get me to recite my book, when she could get all that by reading the book (which she clearly had done) and spare herself the transcribing. Answer: she wasn’t writing an article. She was going to write what I said, verbatim. Whoops. I am definitely more House than Carlin, that is, more growly than funny, and I say some pretty intemperate things, like “They should just take the damn thing [the DSM) away from them [the APA]. But only a couple are embarrassing.
A blog post at newyorker.com that I thought would convince people that I really don’t think disease is a biochemical category, but I was wrong.
A nice interview on CBC, public radio in Canada, to be broadcast later in the month.
And best of all, lots of happy-for-me emails from friends and family. My self-loathing is at an all-time low today.
Your book sounds Very interesting. I really want to read it. I would ask you not to dismiss binge eating disorder as simply a “night spent with Ben and Jerry’s”, however. That is rather dismissive, but worse than that, it completely ignores the real hell, havoc & physical assault that continual bingeing hits a person with. I know this because I have suffered a bingeing disorder for many, many years. It wasn’t a drug that helped me stop bingeing. Even therapy, which has been so helpful for me didn’t really stop the bingeing. It was only when I began a low carb diet that I could break my addiction to sweets. Once that happened, the compulsion to binge also went away. I never wanted drugs for my bingeing disorder. I tried Naltrexone; it was horrible. I don’t like drugs. They have bad side-effects & deeply worry me in terms of long term effects. They also are expensive. I’m happy that I could quit bingeing w/low carb (it’s 2 years now, so the jury, I guess, is still out as to whether or not I will permanently stay away from bingeing, but I sure hope so! Bingeing is pure hell). And that is my point. It’s Not just a night with Ben and Jerry’s, or being “bad” and having one cookie too many, or a donut or going off a diet. Bingeing is a true compulsion and it’s torturous. Bingeing made me physically ill and lead to bulimia, in my desperate attempt to just Stop the addictive need to gorge on sweets. Bingeing on sweets was also Very Expensive! I wish I had saved that money. I guess I saved Myself, though, by finally realizing that low carb was something to try.