Madness Pill
Regular price
€33.99
A01=Justin Garson
Amphetamines
Antipsychotic drugs
Author_Justin Garson
Behavioral health
Biography
Category=DNBB
Category=DNBT
Category=JM
Category=PDX
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
History
Medical experiment
Medical treatment
Medication
Mental health
Mental illness
Nonfiction
Psychiatry
Schizophrenia
Science
Product details
- ISBN 9781250337962
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 135 x 208mm
- Publication Date: 18 May 2026
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.
Cantered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fuelled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder’s dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.
JUSTIN GARSON, Ph.D., is a philosopher and historian of science at the City University of New York. He's written numerous scholarly books and articles on biology, mind, and madness, including Madness: A Philosophical Exploration. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and children.
