THE MAN WHO COULDN'T STOP

An engrossing first-person study of obsessive-compulsive disorder from within and without.

“An Ethiopian schoolgirl called Bira once ate a wall of her house,” writes acclaimed British Nature editor and writer Adam in the opening of his account of OCD. “She didn’t want to, but she found that to eat the wall was the only way to stop her thinking about it.” Bira, who had eaten over half a ton of mud bricks by the time she was 17 and finally sought medical attention, was found to have only “moderately-severe” OCD because she spent a mere two hours per day thinking about and then eating a wall of her house—the average OCD sufferer can spend six hours per day thinking odd thoughts and then four hours acting on them. What lends especial weight to Adam’s remarkable study of what psychiatrists consider the fourth most common mental disorder and the World Health Organization ranks as the 10th most disabling is Adam’s admission that he, too, suffers from OCD, having been plagued for over 20 years by an irrational fear of contracting AIDS. Far from being fastidiously punctual or a tad “anal” around the house, Adam demonstrates that OCD is a serious, crippling condition capable of rendering the daily life of the afflicted virtually unlivable. “OCD,” writes the author, “dissolves perspective. It magnifies small risks, warps probabilities and takes statistical chance as a prediction, not a sign of how unlikely things are.” Repeatedly transfixed by a bizarre thought, which turns into an obsession, the OCD sufferer cannot find relief until compulsively acting on that obsession. Adam delves deeply into OCD’s possible causes, its varieties—whether obsessed with contamination from dirt (Lady Macbeth) or disease (Howard Hughes), an irrational fear of harm or irrepressible need for symmetry (Samuel Johnson)—and treatments, breaking down this complex condition in easily accessible layman’s terms.

Well-researched, witty, honest and irreverent, Adam’s account proves as irresistible as his subject.