Hyper
A Personal History of ADHD
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The first book of its kind about what it’s like to be a child with ADHD, Hyper is a “haunting narrative that explores the world’s most scrutinized childhood condition from the inside out” (Nature) that also illuminates the history of how we came to medicate more than four million children today.
Among the first generation of boys prescribed medication for ADHD in the 1980s, Timothy Denevi took Ritalin at the age of six and suffered a psychotic reaction. Thus began his long odyssey through a variety of treatments. In Hyper, Denevi describes how he made his way to adulthood, knowing he was a problem for those who loved him, longing to be able to be good and fit in, and finally realizing he had to come to grips with his disorder before his life spun out of control. Using these experiences as a springboard, Denevi also traces our understanding and treatment of ADHD from the nineteenth century, when bad parenting and even government conspiracies were blamed, through the twentieth century and drug treatments like Benzedrine, Ritalin, and antidepressants. His insightful history shows how drugs became the treatment of choice for ADHD, rather than individually crafted treatments like the one that saved his life.
Thought provoking and deeply intelligent, this is a remarkable book both for its sensitive portrait of a child’s experience as well as for its thorough exploration of a remarkably complex and controversial mental condition and its treatment. “There’s much to be learned in Hyper, about pushing boundaries and respecting them, about parenting, and about the special kind of triumph that can come as a result of hard-earned self-knowledge. Denevi has written a book about a condition that has been studied for a long time, but, truly, it hasn’t been talked about like this” (BookPage).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this searching memoir, Denevi shares his story of growing up in the 1980s as a guinea pig during the medical panic over ADHD. As he points out early in the book, our fascination with ADHD may have reached a new pitch, but the disease was identified in 1902 and remains a problem experts treat as a moral failure as much as a neurological disease. Denevi skillfully weaves historical anecdotes into his personal account, tracing the change from the early theory of "Minimal Brain Damage" to our currently imperfect, if more humane narrative. As an introduction to the history of ADHD, the book is excellent, but the more conflicting findings of contemporary research are dealt with only glancingly. Denevi's story sometimes reads like a tale of common teenage angst, as youthful struggles with irrational authority figures such as his cruel third-grade teacher, Ms. Kovalenko flow into his attempts to adjust to the Darwinian social world of teenagers. The action is rendered adroitly, but for a memoir there is an odd lack of personal reflection. Denevi's perspective doesn't illuminate much about thinking or feeling through ADHD, inadvertently mirroring the frustration he found living with this elusive, poorly understood condition.
Customer Reviews
Great read
Informative and entertaining