Ruby Wax’s memoir opens in a psychiatric unit where she is undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, a treatment for depression delivered via a large headset that stimulates nerve cells in the brain. For Wax, “it feels like Woody Woodpecker and his cartoon pals are gangbanging in my head”. After 12 years of relative calm, the “Big Dip” had crept up and hit her hard. “Depression is the black hole of diseases, where you sit helpless as your mind hammers you with accusations,” she notes. “Your thoughts attack like little demons biting chunks of your brain. It’s hard to stay alive and listen.”
I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was recounts this spiral into mental illness, which began while she was researching a new book about her search for meaning and self-fulfilment. We follow Wax as she goes on a month-long silent retreat near San Francisco and volunteers at a refugee centre in Greece. While visiting a monastery in Yorkshire, she finds she can no longer contain the “typhoon of mental torture” blowing through her mind. And so she takes a train back to London for “my latest adventure. Not a journey to find meaning, but a journey towards a fully fledged breakdown.”
