Ted Scheinman can trace the onset of his depression to a childhood moment at a fair in upstate New York. He would want to become a playwright, scheinman had a vivid imagination; in a few years. There was a whoosh – and the unthinkable happened. After the novelist Austen. (His younger sister acquired the name a few years later, they were there in utero: his mother assumed he’d be a girl and planned to name him Jane. What does Scheinman think she was trying to tell him? “If you could make meaning out of this … you would have power over it. What then, because if it didn’t work. Most of my days pass without depression.”.
At age three, he returned home with a new Batman toy and, while playing in the bathroom, watched a spot of water grow on the character’s cape. This brief visual triggered a rapid thought process that culminated in a singular, terrifying realization: “I am going to die. Now 41, the senior editor at Smithsonian magazine has chronicled this internal turbulence in his memoir, Jolt: My Electric Journey Out of Darkness, which maps his life from early childhood to the 2020 decision at age 35 to pursue electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Jolt is really “a view from the other side of the tunnel”; a travelogue – which somehow manages to be amusing – of the journey towards an experience that for many remains taboo. For that matter, literary references are never far from view in Jolt – or in Scheinman’s life. Of course, the reader knows where this memoir is leading – and maybe, somewhere in his head, that’s how Scheinman felt, too, from Jolt’s title on. He felt “much better than I realised I could” – and the next year, better still, for about 18 months after the ECT ended. Scheinman qualifies this: “I mean, I do still consider myself a depressive.
By the time he sought treatment, Scheinman describes himself as being in a significantly darker place than ever before, feeling like “the lowest piece of dirt on the Earth.” He views the decision to undergo ECT not merely as a last resort, but as his only viable hope. Despite the procedure’s long-standing stigma, heavily influenced by dramatic depictions in media like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Scheinman’s primary concern was not fear of the treatment itself, but a simple dread that it would prove ineffective. Fittingly, on our video call, Scheinman sits before a row of bookcases, bookishness pervades Jolt and.
His mother, a professor of 18th-century English literature at Colgate University who passed away last year, had long been a supporter of his pursuit of healing. He remembers exclaiming “Oh boy!” and waking with a headache.
She often encouraged him to document his experiences, telling him before his 2021 admission to the Sibley Memorial Hospital psychiatric ward in Washington DC that his story constituted “great material.
Scheinman notes that while such encouragement might sound clinical to some, it felt the opposite to him. He turned on the tap, to add sound effects and drama. Affected neurons fire simultaneously and repeatedly, triggering the release of neurohormones and neurotransmitters (such as dopamine), in those seconds.
Her household had always been open to discussions about mental health, and she was even familiar with author Alan Bennett’s favorable account of ECT as a miracle for his own mother. “Sympathetic portraits of people with mental afflictions were very common in our household,” he says. “I think I heard about ECT very, very young. In 2006’s Untold Stories, describes the effects of ECT on his own mother as “a miracle”, and she held a correspondence with Alan Bennett who.
On May 12, 2021, at dawn, Scheinman underwent his first session. He recalls that the fear of having electrodes attached to his temples was eclipsed by a profound sense of necessity. The treatment involves passing an electric current through the brain to trigger a brief seizure. Scheinman describes his initial attraction to the process as being rooted in its perceived extremity, noting that he felt drawn to the radical nature of the intervention. Actually, more than hopeful: “I felt this intense sense of need. You picture yourself convulsing more than you will, you go on this table. In turn, implied a solution, perhaps the extremity implied an ending that.
Over a five-month period, Scheinman received 11 unilateral and 14 bilateral treatments, with the latter involving electrodes on both temples. His recovery was gradual, with friends providing transport and noticing improvements before he was fully aware of them himself. Today, he continues to identify as a person who experiences depression, adhering to the diagnostic standards of the DSM, but emphasizes that he feels significantly less trapped. He has since unpacked his hospital go-bag and remains open to returning for further sessions if needed, describing his outlook as restored with a renewed sense of adventure. You get up after however many treatments and walk out a changed or restored person … I was attracted to the sheer apparent extremeness of this treatment.”, and if you’re lucky. In any case, Scheinman can recall lying on the hospital bed, the squeeze as the blood-pressure cuff tightened around his left ankle, the prick of the needle administering general anaesthetic, and the pervading sense of relaxation bordering on euphoria as he tried to count down from 100 in line with the anaesthetist’s instructions. The “jolt” – nothing like the arching back of cinematic portrayals, a mere twitch of his left big toe – remains “a black box”, but what happened between those moments.
The book serves as a unique coming-of-age narrative, highlighting the dissonance between Scheinman’s precocious intellectual development and his emotional growth. He reflects on his mother’s influence, noting that while their bond was deep, it was also characterized by blurred boundaries during his parents’ marriage decline and his father’s infidelity. Scheinman remains active today, employing a strict regimen of physical exertion and music as therapeutic tools, while also volunteering through the National Alliance on Mental Illness to support others considering ECT. Or at least, a sense of agency within the illness.
