Mind Without a Home: A Memoir of Schizophrenia

by Kristina Morgan

Overview

This book brings readers straight inside the tortuous nature of the disease of schizophrenia, chronicled in short, journal-like chapters that narrate the author’s incredible story.

Experience the inner world of a woman with schizophrenia in this brutally honest, lyrical memoir.Have you ever wondered what it is like in the mind of a person with schizophrenia? How can one survive day after day unable to distinguish between one's inner nightmares and the everyday realities that most of us take for granted? In her brutally honest, highly original memoir, Kristina Morgan takes us inside her head to experience the chaos, fragmented thinking, and the startling creativity of the schizophrenic mind. With the intimacy of private journal-like entries and the language of a poet, she carries us from her childhood to her teen years when hallucinations began to hijack her mind and into adulthood where she began abusing alcohol to temper the punishing voices that only she could hear.This is no formulaic tale of tragedy and triumph: We feel Kristina's hope as she pursues an education and career and begins to build strong family connections, friendships and intimacy-and her devastation as the insistent voices convince her to throw it all away, destroying herself and alienating everyone around her. Woven through the pages of her life are stories of recovery from alcoholism and the search for her sexual identity in relationships with both women and men. Eventually, her journey takes her to a place of relative peace and stability where she finds the inner resources and support system to manage her chronic illnesses and live a fulfilling life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616494605
Publisher:	Hazelden Publishing
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Kristina Morgan is a first-time author, living in Arizona with her life partner. She is currently working, and managing her co-occurring disorders, schizophrenia and alcoholism, with medication and Twelve Step recovery.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Description of Schizophrenia xiii

Prologue (September 1993) xv

Family 1

Institutions 49

Women 93

Transitions 141

Descent 185

Reclamation 233

About the Author 247

Editorial Reviews

"The author does an amazing job of capturing her mental illness and presenting it to the reader as if we were seeing into her mind….the author has a truly amazing story to tell and I'm glad I read it. Not many people with schizophrenia are able to accomplish what Morgan has, and her story is inspiring and thought-provoking."
--Book Hooked Blog

"Morgan opens her heart and pours it all out on the page allowing the reader personal insight into the disturbing elements of a disease that is so often misunderstood. Mind Without a Home is naked, transparent, and disturbing in its blatant reality. A true eye-opener. "
--My Bookshelf Blog

"Inventive, jaggedly lyrical and disturbing."
--Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

A poet's anguished memoir about her struggles with schizophrenia and alcoholism. Morgan grew up in a handsome family in which "Dad look[ed] like Burt Reynolds, Mom like Elizabeth Taylor." But trouble brewed just beneath the surface. Work kept her father away from home while alcohol kept Morgan's mother distant from her daughters. Through a series of chronologically ordered vignettes, Morgan reveals how emotional dysfunction, mental illness, and alcohol and drug abuse fractured her family. In her early teenage years, the author experienced hallucinations that included visits from people she called "the Suits." At age 15, she overdosed on a cocktail of pills so that she could join them. For a time, alcohol helped still the voices "from the other realities;" then Morgan became addicted and eventually dropped out of college. Meanwhile, her middle sister battled on and off with drug addiction while her younger sister sank irretrievably into both substance abuse and mental illness. Morgan continued to be in and out of mental institutions for psychotic breaks that doctors believed were manifestations of dissociative identity disorder. A correct diagnosis of schizophrenia, along with the medication that helped her manage her illness, did not come until she was able to get over her own fear of telling the truth about her condition. Yet through all the personal turmoil--which also included coming to terms with her own bisexuality and watching her mother die of alcoholism--Morgan learned how to cope with her alcoholism, finish college and harness a powerful imagination to write poetry and earn an MFA. Liberated from fear and filled with love for a God, who "sen[t] sparrows" that let her "forget about the mud," she found a peace that was all the more meaningful for its fragility. Inventive, jaggedly lyrical and disturbing.

Kirkus Reviews