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A review by ollieander
I Don't Want To Be Crazy by Samantha Schutz
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
"I Don't Want to Be Crazy" is a memoir about experiencing overwhelming anxiety, coping with it, and living with it regardless. Samantha Schutz does a great job of explaining anxiety, panic attacks, etc. I feel like this book would be helpful to hand to anyone who "just doesn't get it" and can't sympathize properly with such disorders. As much as you want to reason someone through an episode, that's just not how it works. Anxiety can be is a dysfunction in extreme cases that some people don't treat the same as something physical, although, Schutz makes it very clear it can be inhibiting. Very inhibiting.
The reasons this memoir got a 3.5/5 stars isn't because it was actually missing anything, which might sound silly to say. It had a bit more than it needed, because a life is a lot of little pieces that add up instead of a concise story or solution. (Which unfortunately leaves a bit of wanting in a reader.)
Yes, there could have been more dramatic language and revelations, but that would have taken away from the every day of the panic and experience. As much as I wanted the book to end with some sort of conclusion, or say the events/experiences got repetitive, those things lent to the realness of what she was writing.
Anxiety/panic disorders don't "end" necessarily. It's not a clean cut happy ending, there can be remission and relapse, or it can just go on until you die. As much as this memoir doesn't punch you with an ending that knocks your socks off, it feels like a life lived and an experience shared. This memoir is ongoing, as is the condition, and I respect that.
The reasons this memoir got a 3.5/5 stars isn't because it was actually missing anything, which might sound silly to say. It had a bit more than it needed, because a life is a lot of little pieces that add up instead of a concise story or solution. (Which unfortunately leaves a bit of wanting in a reader.)
Yes, there could have been more dramatic language and revelations, but that would have taken away from the every day of the panic and experience. As much as I wanted the book to end with some sort of conclusion, or say the events/experiences got repetitive, those things lent to the realness of what she was writing.
Anxiety/panic disorders don't "end" necessarily. It's not a clean cut happy ending, there can be remission and relapse, or it can just go on until you die. As much as this memoir doesn't punch you with an ending that knocks your socks off, it feels like a life lived and an experience shared. This memoir is ongoing, as is the condition, and I respect that.