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A powerful, breathtaking memoir about a young man's descent into madness, and how running saved his life.
“Voluntary or involuntary?” asked
the nurse who admitted J. M. Thompson to a San Francisco psychiatric hospital
in January 2005. Following years of depression, ineffective medication, and
therapy that went nowhere, Thompson feared he was falling into an inescapable
darkness. He decided that death was his only exit route from the torture of his
mind. After a suicide attempt, he spent weeks confined on the psych ward,
feeling scared, alone, and trapped. One afternoon during an exercise break he
experienced a sudden urge. “Run, I thought. Run before it’s too late
and you’re stuck down there. Right now. Run. ”
The impulse that starts with
sprints across a hospital rooftop turns into all night runs in the mountains.
Through motion and immersion in the beauty of nature, Thompson finds a way out
of the hell of depression and drug addiction. Step by step, mile by mile, his
body and mind heal. In this lyrical, vulnerable, and breathtaking memoir, J. M.
Thompson, now a successful psychologist, retraces the path that led him from
despair to wellness, detailing the chilling childhood trauma that caused his
depression, and the unorthodox treatment that saved him. Running Is a Kind of
Dreaming is a luminous literary testament to the universal human capacity to
recover from our deepest wounds.
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