Synopsis

"Part memoir, part exploration of the science behind OCD, The Man Who Couldn't Stop is an obsessive read and one with heart" (People).

Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. David Adam--an editor at Nature and an accomplished science writer--has suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn't Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece, or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts?

Drawing from the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this extraordinary book will challenge the way you think about mental health and illness. Told with fierce clarity, humor, and urgent lyricism, The Man Who Couldn't Stop is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.

-Winner of the Medical Journalists' Association's Tony Thistlethwaite Award
-For readers of Scott Stossel's My Age of Anxiety