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 how she got there. Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone unrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis.
This 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. Cahalan takes
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.
readers inside this newly-discovered disease through the progress of her own harrowing journey, asking what happens when your identity is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back.