3. 16 Science of Mind
mentally ill, then who isn’t? And
also: If you’re not mentally ill,
then who is?”
In his twenties, Vonnegut had
three psychotic breaks culminat-
ing in hospitalization where he
was treated for what doctors at
the time believed was schizophre-
nia. With his family’s support,
medication, and a focus on art
and writing, he started to assim-
ilate back into society. Many
people in his situation might
have accepted the role of victim,
but Vonnegut chose to construct
meaning consciously in his ex-
periences for himself—and ulti-
mately for other people. In 1975,
he authored The Eden Express,
a chronicle of his battle with
mental illness. The memoir was
widely acclaimed for its firsthand
portrayal of what it feels like to
be mentally ill.
Then, at the age of twenty-
eight,hetookanotherboldriskand
applied to twenty medical schools.
He was rejected by nineteen
of them, but was accepted to
Harvard Medical School in 1979.
It was another fourteen years, a
marriage, and two children later,
before he would have another
mental break—a situation that, in
hindsight, he had been forestalling
by self-medicating with alcohol.
This final episode would impact
not only his medical practice
and his first marriage, but ulti-
mately his view of the world by
forcing him to let go of his own
notion of self-will.
Now some twenty-five years
since his last break, it is this shift
in perception that compelled
Dr. Vonnegut to write this
second memoir as a follow up
to The Eden Express: “[The first
book] sort of left the inaccu-
rate impression that recovery has
something to do with willpower
and strength. Looking back so
many years later, I now see that
willpower doesn’t have much to
do with who gets well and who
doesn’t.”
It was his acknowledgment of
his own alcohol addiction and
a lifetime of treating patients
with mental illness that beat the
notion of willpower out of him.
The grace and honesty Vonnegut
gleaned from the halls of Alco-
holics Anonymous, a penchant
for creativity, and a humor and
wit are the trail of breadcrumbs
that led him back to sanity.
Choices
There is a compelling duality
in Dr. Vonnegut’s choices and
determination that make his par-
ticular journey through darkness
so incredibly relatable. Even in
his most manic of moments, he
clung to a self-described desire to
save the world. When the course
of his life is plotted out before
him, he acknowledges that he
always felt compelled to do his

4. April 2011 17
best. Part of this may be attrib-
uted to his Vonnegut legacy, self-
described as being “raised by
wolves.”
Vonnegut reflects on his
childhood self as a preoccupied,
overserious kid with a genetic
disposition toward mental illness
playing against him. His mother,
grandmother, and sister all
suffered from mental illnesses, so
he grew up believing that crazy
was part of the “norm.” At the
same time, his parents were strong
idealists doing their part to change
the world. His father struggled
to make his mark on society as
an author, grappling with such
themes as individual significance.
And while they hobnobbed
with counterculture personali-
ties like Jack Kerouac and spiritual
writers such as Dan Wakefield, his
mother built bomb shelters in the
crawl space under the house.
At the tender age of ten,
Vonnegut told his mother that
he wanted to kill himself. His
mother’s reply: “Bright young
people like you are going to save
the world.”
Vonnegut says this statement
had a profound effect on him.
“I was a lonely child—probably
messianic, bipolar—and it seemed
to me that the world was really
pretty awful. So my mom’s
answer was a pretty good answer.
Later on, when I could under-
stand what my father was writing
about—meaning of life kind of
stuff—I thought okay, this is the
family business.”
As a result, Vonnegut’s life
story is rife with examples of
him taking on roles where he
could try to make a difference.
“It sounds really twisted, but
there was always that sort of
a thought, and it was the trail
of breadcrumbs that made it
possible for me to get back.”
He graduated with a BA
in religion from Swarthmore
College, where he studied to be
a Unitarian minister. During
the Viet Nam War, he applied
for conscientious war objector
status and then moved to British
Columbia to start a commune
with an earnest intention to
“save the world.” It was here, in
the backwoods of Canada, that
he experienced his most devas-
tating psychotic break. One of
the steps to his recovery was an
ability to witness the events of
his own life with a detached con-
sciousness. After his hospital-
ization, this detachment helped
him to write The Eden Express,
which not only was hailed for
its stark honesty, but was also
acclaimed as an obituary for the
counterculture of the ’seventies.
That lifetime drive to con-
tribute also played a role in
his choice of medicine: “I had
always thought I would end up
as a pediatrician. With kids,

5. 18 Science of Mind
there was this longer horizon.
It was so much more hopeful to
me.”
Yet, while this amorphous
trying to do good in many ways
saved his life, it was also a curse.
He explains in his memoir that
being Kurt’s son, an ex–mental
patient, a Harvard graduate, and
a doctor were all things that in
and of themselves do not make
a life, but by adding up enough
things, it felt as if they almost
added up to something.
So while Vonnegut continued
hispursuitofhopethroughaccom-
plishment, he was often plagued
by self-doubt—particularly when
it came to his personal relation-
ships: “I was constantly playing
a role, asking myself, ‘Is this the
way a normal, good husband or
good father behaves?’ At the same
time, I was watching myself trying
to make a difference and thinking
nothing really matters.”
His struggle to prove himself
worthy would finally take its
toll on his health and marriage.
At this point, he was heavily
self-medicating his disease with
alcohol and anti-anxiety med-
ications. In an all-time ironic
moment, he was named one of
Boston’s most respected pedia-
tricians the same week he was in-
stitutionalized with a psychotic
break in the hospital where he
was an attending physician.
With humor and wit, he ac-
knowledges this experience as
the ultimate lesson in humility,
forcing him to come to terms
with his ego and self-judgment.
“When you’re mentally ill,
it feels hopeless. You feel com-
pletely unable to take care of
yourself and you are willing
to do anything to get out of it.
Even during the last breakup—
the key event which got me
locked up—I was trying to jump
through a third-story window.
I was just desperately trying to
stop the horrible things that
were going on.”
Vonnegut says that while
there are many different kinds
of mental illness, both acute
and chronic, they all involve an
inability to care for one’s self.
“Everybody with mania thinks
that a lot is depending on them,
so there are two things you have
to realize: You’re not alone, and
you’re not in charge.”
This realization led him to the
halls of Alcoholics Anonymous:
an experience that he says was
like coming home. “I loved
AA. I got a huge relief. I wasn’t
welcome a lot of places: Work
didn’t want me back; wife at
the time wasn’t real happy. I
could go to AA meetings, and
it dawned on me I had new
ambition. I saw a person up
there trying to tell the truth to
save their own life. There was
no narcissism. They were just

6. April 2011 19
simply doing their job up there.
I adopted that. I wanted to be
somebody who tries to tell the
truth because it is important to
me, not because it is important
to someone else.”
Authentic Self
In his essay “Self-Reliance,”
Ralph Waldo Emerson identifies
each person’s connection with
the Divine: “Trust thyself: every
heart vibrates to that iron string.”
The iron string is one’s
internal compass, the creative
spark and intuition that can act
as a personal guide. Vonnegut’s
internal compass seems to be his
ability to express his authentic
self through art and writing.
In his memoir, Vonnegut says
his father bequeathed him two
important gifts: being able to pay
attention to an inner narration
and creating something (music,
painting, or writing) as a way to
get out of being stuck.
“When mental illness came
along, I knew enough about art
and literature and religion and a
whole bunch of other stuff that
this, too, I saw as part of a very
serious quest with which I would
do my best,” he explains. “Part
of what saved my life as I was
listening to voices and everything
was completely whacked was the
thought: If I can remember this
and tell this story well, maybe I
will survive.”
He may not be in the same
place he was when he wrote The
Eden Express, but he fully believes
he would not have gotten better
without writing and painting.
“I can’t say exactly what it does,
except that once you’re somebody
who has painted a painting, you
can’t be a person who has never
painted a painting before. That
becomes a circumstance that is
as determinative as any kind of
genetics.”
To punctuate this point,
Vonnegut looks around his home
office, which is filled with a col-
lection of his own watercolors, in-
terspersed with artistic examples
from his famous father and those
of his own eight-year-old son.
“I honestly think that without
writingandpainting,Kurtwould
have been just another broken
vet who drank himself to death,”
explains Vonnegut. For both
father and son, a driving force
holding back the darkness was
a conviction that you can always
do something better. “You don’t
have to stay stuck in it.”
Vonnegut doesn’t presume to
tell others how to find that inner
creative, but he firmly believes
anyone can draw or write, and
this therapy is often prescribed
in his medical practice.
“I give out books that teach
kids how to draw. There may
be nothing I can do about a
kid’s asthma as a result of his

7. 20 Science of Mind
parents’ smoking, but I can
give him something to draw,”
he explains. “When one of
my teenage patients is strug-
gling, there is always something
to do: Exercise, try talking to
somebody, diet…something.”
Then, laughing, “And if I really
want them to think I’m crazy, I
tell them to write a poem or do
a painting!”
A New Voice
Afteralifetimeofself-discovery and
caring for others, Dr. Vonnegut
is now turning his conviction to
contribute to a new role—that
of patient and medical advocate.
Like many people, Dr. Vonnegut
grew up thinking that mental
illness was caused by other people
or society treating you badly.
Even though he saw the effects
of mental illness on his family,
he believed it wouldn’t happen
to him because he was stronger.
Now as a physician, he believes
that mental illness is a disease like
any other.
“I don’t want people to look
at the mentally ill as if they
somehow brought it on them-
selves,” explains the doctor.
Instead, his goal is to change the
dialogue and ultimately the per-
ception and acceptance of people
with mental disorders.
To do that credibly, he needed
to share his story. “I feel like
there is a whole crowd of people
behind a curtain sort of pushing
me out on a stage saying, ‘You’re
one of us; you go out there, you
talk,’” he jokes. Yet in a way, his
memoir bravely pulls back that
curtain in the hope that it will
bring the issue of mental illness
into the spotlight. He does this
not as someone once diagnosed
with schizophrenia, but as a
doctor who has grown increas-
ingly discouraged by the growing
bureaucracy of medicine and a
more pronounced social stigma
associated with mental illness.
“Treating a mental disease is
like [treating] every other disease.
In our society, we teach people
to read and write. This is what
society does. In my opinion, this
is also something a society does:
If you’re mentally ill, we take care
of you.”
Vonnegut freely admits that
he doesn’t know how to fix the
problem, but when it comes to
his patients, he does advocate
a system of preventive care,
saying the best way to prevent
mental-health problems in kids
is to address the mental-health
problems in their parents. As a
physician, he understands the
role of educating families so they
can best cope with—and even
prevent—conditions that can
contribute to mental illness—
just as you would educate
families on the prevention of
diabetes and obesity. “It’s just all

8. April 2011 21
predictable. If you could prevent
those unfortunate circumstances,
then you’d have a much healthier
bunch of people.”
But for today, Dr. Vonnegut
would be happy if change would
start with one person at a time:
“If people can be more open
and generous to themselves,
it will make them more open
and generous to other people.
I would be happy if people did
not have such a black-and-white
picture of the mentally ill and
not mentally ill.”
To order Just Like Someone
Without Mental Illness Only
More So, by Mark Vonnegut,
visit scienceofmind.com
or call DeVorss & Company
at 800-382-6121.