I'm surprised this book hasn't gotten more attention. This was a beautifully written heartbreaking yet still humorous book. Even though the topic matter (a psychotic break) is a heavy subject, there's plenty of humor injected throughout the story that made it a joy to read.

This is an impressive memoir on mental illness and a mother who would do anything for her son. McDermott provides a fascinating and unnerving glimpse into his own mind during a psychotic break. In addition to his experience living with mental illness, he also shares perspectives on the prison industrial complex and the deeply flawed judicial system he witnessed as a public defender in New York, as well as growing up poor in rural America. There is much to unpack in this book, and I was impressed with how well it was all tied together.

I’ll tell you, my socks were officially knocked off. The better to run and keep up with this guy. Never mind, I'll grab my pogo stick, whee! It's faster and more fun. But it's not a whee for Zack, a public defender in New York, who ran through the city half naked, talking to strangers who he was convinced were part of the reality show he was starring in. That manic run led to his first stay in the psych ward and the diagnosis of bipolar.

I don't know where to start. This is a phenomenal account of a man's voyage through insanity and back. Actually, I'm sort of manic myself when I think of this book. It was an intense read that has me going all boing boing boing with glee. Maybe it sounds weird to be all boing boing and bouncy about a guy going through hell. But I’m not celebrating his craziness, I’m celebrating his story and the way he tells it. I love everything about it: The way he pulled me into his life and kept me captive. The way he’s self-effacing. His energy and passion and perseverance. And I’m just blown away by his honesty, wit, and self-awareness, as well as his willingness to put himself out there. I feel totally privileged that he let me hang around in his head. I think it’s also his New York style that appeals to me—it’s sophisticated, direct, funny, and has what I call an East Coast vibe. He has been a stand-up comic, and I happen to think that good comedians are basically geniuses. And on top of all this, he’s a great writer.

Watching him go off the rails was super upsetting for me, but so what? Imagine how he feels. His fear of what he might do, his terror at his skewed reality, his stays in hospitals with scary patients and padded rooms, his taking meds (most with nasty side effects) in the hope of silencing the demons—all of this is unfathomable. With each new episode, he gets better at trying to head it off. As I read along, I was rooting for him to beat the clock: Come on come on, get the meds before you go insane again! He calls in his saintly, loving mother and together they weather the storm. His mom, wow, she’s always there and she’s one cool dude-ette.

His stays in the psych wards are brutal. He even compares them to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:

“My initial certainty that I was being videotaped was buoyed by the fact that the place looked exactly like the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: white walls, inmates wandering around drooling, belligerent patients tackled and injected.”

He also says:

“Regaining sanity in a mental hospital is like treating a migraine at a rave. People screamed all day and night.”

After taking meds that start calming his mind, he wants to resume regular life. Easier said than done. Friends treat him weird. This is the sad part, the sad truth: If he had cancer, everyone would be sympathetic. Because it’s mental illness, they act scared, distant, nervous. People pour out the sympathy if a friend’s body is betraying them, but it’s a whole different story if it’s their mind that is betraying them.

Another reason I like this memoir is because I’ve never heard anyone explain so well what it feels like to be psychotic. He happens to be really really good at describing his breaks with reality. I’ve always been interested in mental illness, and I’ve had to care for people who have had psychotic breaks, so this was actually a cathartic read for me as well.

But besides the story of his mental illness, Zack also talks passionately about his work. He is the best kind of lawyer: he helps the big-time underdogs—especially those who have mental illness and end up in prison because they can’t function, let alone navigate the system. He is relentless, and sometimes his energy and passion turn him into an obsessive insomniac that leads him right into a psychotic episode. He describes a few of his tough cases, making interesting and sobering comments about our judicial system. I got a up-close look, and the picture isn’t pretty.

Zack’s early life was as a poor person in Wichita, Kansas. His father, and later, a step-father, were disasters, but his mom was wonderful. Zack paints a vivid picture of how rough their lives were. His mom, too, ended up helping the underdog—she teaches young gangsters how to read. Zack describes her with much affection. She was there beside him during every one of his episodes. What I ended up realizing was that not only do I love Zack’s story and the way he told it, but I also love how cool (and good) both he and his mother are.

You may be wondering about the intriguing title. Zack’s mom nicknamed him Gorilla because he had so much black hair on his back when he was born. Zack at some point nicknamed her the Bird. Love the book title, love the nicknames.

In fact, I loved every minute of this book. It stirred me up and made me hop onto my pogo stick. I hope this memoir gets more visibility. Right now it’s one of my favorite secret gems.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy.

This memoir is incredibly compelling, engaging and even a bit sad. There's nothing funny or lighthearted about a psychotic break, but the author Zach manages to inject a lot of humor into his experiences. This book will make you laugh, cry and laugh again because the situation is real, and could happen to any person. The way that Zach talks about his disease is relatable and understandable. Highly recommend.

Gorilla and the Bird is so much more than just a memoir about Zack McDermott's mental illness. This beautiful book is also a powerful statement about the strength of a mother's love with equally powerful statements about the American judicial system, racial prejudices, the lasting impact of parental neglect, and the importance of mental health awareness and acceptance woven throughout the text.

Zack McDermott's memoir begins with the story of his first psychotic break, during which he (nicknamed Gorilla by his mother, whom he nicknamed the Bird) ran rampant through New York City with the belief that he was being filmed for a pilot for a reality show and that everyone he encountered was part of the show. Throughout the rest of the book, he describes his overwhelmingly stressful career as a public defender, his childhood with a fiercely devoted mother and mostly absent father, the battles his mother fought in order to pursue her passion for educating disenfranchised people (mostly gang members) and the bonds she formed with her students, the clients he represented who had the cards stacked against them almost from birth, and the ways he dealt with his Bipolar Disorder and psychotic breaks, which included stays in psychiatric hospitals.

There are so many elements to this book that kept me from being able to put it down unless I had to. First and foremost, mental health awareness is one of my most passionate causes. Although I have never experienced anything close to what McDermott has experienced, I have lived with depression for several years now. My depression is under control with medication, but I found myself relating to much of what McDermott says about suicidal thoughts and the stigma surrounding mental illnesses. For example, he says:

I’ve never stood on a subway platform and not thought about what it would be like to throw myself in front of what’s coming. But I found myself standing a few inches closer to the edge, listening a little more closely to the question that the train was asking of me. I knew I wasn’t going to stick my neck out on my own, but what would I do if a kid on a scooter bumped me from behind? I was pretty sure I would tighten my core and push back with the full force of my hamstrings at the first brush of contact. But I was less sure than I’d ever been. So I guess I was approaching something like fairly suicidal. But do you get to claim that if you’d never cut, jump, or load the gun? Feels a bit dramatic.

I have never read another comparison that better explained my own thoughts when I was at my lowest points, prior to seeking help. Furthermore, when he says:

For all the lip service people in my office pay to the notion that mental illness is no different than cancer or diabetes, I couldn’t help but think that Teresa from the immigration unit probably wouldn’t have been sent packing after returning from chemo if she'd forgotten her note. Would they even have asked her for a note or would her new short hair and the fact that she was standing upright be proof enough that she was fit for duty? The note rule didn’t feel like the fulfillment of a bureaucratic requirement; it felt like a request for proof of sanity.

McDermott made an incredibly important point about the way mental illnesses are viewed by others. His book is one that brings valuable awareness to the idea that mental illnesses are still viewed differently from nearly all other illnesses, despite the fact that they are no more of a choice than anything else that manipulates some aspect of our internal chemistry.


Another important element to Gorilla and the Bird that made me want to shout its virtues from the rooftops is the Bird herself, McDermott's mother.

Wow.

As a mother myself, I understand the depth of the love she has for her children, and I know why she was willing to drop everything in her life to be there for McDermott when he needed her. But, my goodness...the Bird has to be one of the strongest women I have ever encountered in a work of nonfiction. McDermott doesn't necessarily write about her with overflowing praise, but by simply telling his readers about the things she did for him and the passion she has for helping her students in the classroom AND in life, readers can't help but see that the Bird is a truly remarkable woman with a backbone of steel and a heart of gold. This isn't to say that she's perfect. The Bird has flaws and makes a few bad decisions along the way, just like anyone else, and McDermott never tries to portray her as the perfect mother. However, readers still get the sense that there could never have been a more perfect mother for McDermott than the Bird.

Throughout his discussions of his own mental illness and the Bird's dedication to helping others (especially him), McDermott also makes important points about our country's justice system. As a public defender in New York city, McDermott's clientele includes illegal immigrants, drug addicts, repeat offenders, homeless people, and those with mental illnesses...just to name a few. McDermott's choice to pursue his particular line of work, which pays much less and involves much more stress than his classmates in law school who pursued private law instead, put him in a very unique position with his clients. Through the students of his mother's that he knew when he was younger and his own experiences with mental illness, McDermott is able to see the injustices of his clients' situations in a way that many of his colleagues can't. His empathy for people that many others would immediately write off is incredibly admirable and caused me to look at our justice system in a different way myself.

While telling his story, McDermott approaches the difficulties he has faced with a sense of humor that makes readers chuckle...and then immediately feel guilty for doing so...but the fact that he is able to talk about his journey in such a way proves that he has chosen to laugh at himself instead of lash out at everyone around him, as many others might have done. Meanwhile, he has used his story to help bring awareness to a wealth of different issues.

Just...read this book. Not only is it absolutely fascinating, but it's incredibly enlightening and compelling. Read it. Go on. READ IT!

His mother nicknamed him gorilla when he was a child, because he had a very hairy back. He called her the bird. This is a story of the devastation of mental illness, it is also a story of a mother's fierce, abiding love for her child. Mental illness ran in their family, but Zack had no clue the havoc this would cause in his own life. A public defender, overworked, overburdened, way to many people, with too many problems, the mentally ill, all came to rest on his shoulders. To relieve his stress, he drank, smoked pot, and taken together it was more than his mental state could bear. He broke. Years, in and out of various hospitals, we get an inside look at private institutions and state run institutions. A look at a young man suffering terribly in what should be the prime of his life.

This is told in a very humorous, and self deprecating manner. Some of the things he does, think when in the midst of a manic epidode, are funny, and I felt okay laughing because of the way he was Tell ng his story. Scary for him too, but his mom was always there, if not in person, then a phone call a way. She grounded him, loved him, talked to him, and helped him, along with his psychiatrist to find ways to recognize when he was on the edge. So while parts of this were very poignant, other parts were very hopeful.

I admire this young man, able to tell his story, make his private ordeal public. Admire his mother, who pulled him out of himself, time and time again. Lastly, this is a novel of hope, daring to love, to risk oneself, put oneself out there, not knowing what would happen. Good stuff here, stories like these make us aware of the huge, personal cost of mental illness.

ARC from Netgalley.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/art-matters-when-books-can-save-your-life_us_59a95ba2e4b0d0c16bb52451

✪ For a selfless/driven legal aid attorney with aspirations of showbiz greatness, breaking down is fun to do—until it’s not. Zack McDermott’s riveting Gorilla and the Bird, a remarkably written (and lived) memoir about hard beginnings, bad genes, delusions of grandeur, and epic mother love, casts a mordant, sometimes heartbreaking spell that holds us rapt.

As a public defender in New York City, Zack McDermott worked with seemingly crazy people every day at Legal Aid, little knowing that he was on his way to a psychotic break himself. Soon he’d covered the walls of his apartment with marker scrawl and fully taken on his stand-up comedian persona, Myles. Convinced that he was in a Truman Show-style reality show, he ended up half-naked and crying on a subway platform. That’s when the police showed up to take him to Bellevue mental hospital.

McDermott takes readers on a wild tour through his life: from growing up with a no-good drug addict father and a Superwoman high school teacher mother in Wichita, Kansas “a baloney sandwich throw from the trailer park” to confronting his demons via multiple mental hospital stays and finally getting medication and developing strategies that would keep his bipolar disorder under control. His sense of pace and ear for dialogue are terrific. Despite the vivid Cuckoo’s Nest-style settings, this book is downright funny where others might turn the subject matter achingly sad. It’s a wonderful memoir that should attract those who don’t normally read nonfiction.

(An explanatory note: “Gorilla” is McDermott’s nickname and “The Bird” is his mother’s; she’s the real hero of this book.)

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"...there is a real, and very important, distinction between sanity and lucidity"
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I have long been fascinated by stories about mental health and the myriad ways our brains can betray us. It always seemed to me to be the ultimate betrayal - when you cannot trust yourself to be yourself, what on earth can you trust? In this amazing story, Zack transitions from a successful Public Defender helping those who cannot help themselves to a man suffering from a psychotic break who cannot be trusted to take care of himself. The transition is a startling one - it happens in the flip of a page (in reality, several weeks), and the shift is both inexplicable and terrifying. As the book unfolds, his family and childhood history are gradually explained and the shift seems less inexplicable - but never any less terrifying.

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"It all felt too good. I knew I was flying too close to the sun. But that's the problem with feeling good - nobody ever says 'I feel really good. No, like really, really good. I need to stop feeling this good - time to change something here.'"

"'You will be okay' means you're in an abyss right now, and I got nothing for you. You never get step-by-step instructions for emerging from the abyss."
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Zack's journey (he's the eponymous Gorilla) is brutal and heart-breaking. Equally so is the effect that it has on his mother (the Bird). The ups and downs are a roller-coaster ride into, through, and out of hell, as Zack undergoes commitment at multiple facilities - each of which is a hell of its own. This is not a tale for the faint of heart; it is stark and depressing and scary to see how someone's brain can turn on them and take them down such a long dark tunnel. It took tremendous courage to write this memoir - courage that Zack and his mother obviously have in spades, since they've survived thus far. It's a darkly beautiful testimony to survival and the strength that people find within themselves when life derails their carefully constructed world so completely, leaving a trail of devastation a mile wide behind it... Here's hoping they both manage to regain - and, most importantly, retain - their footing along the way.

This memoir is great; it's compelling, engaging, it's funny and sad and then a little sadder too. There's nothing funny about a psychotic break, yet Zach writes with such humor, empathy and disdain for himself that you laugh, and cry with him, and for him. This could happen to anyone, it's a disease. Zach could easily be someone I knew from college so there was nothing foreign about it (other than a psychotic break); it was like reading about a friend, horrified that my friend was going through this. I walked away with a new understanding and a lot of empathy for people who struggle with being bipolar; it's a tightrope of managing medication and self care, knowing when to walk away, when to sleep and when to medicate. It could easily be me or anyone instead of Zach, it's a crap shoot. I wish Zach the best in life and a long career as a writer.