Lithium Jesus: A Memoir of Mania

Charles Monroe-Kane is a natural raconteur, and boy, does he have stories to tell. Born into an eccentric Ohio clan of modern hunter-gatherers, he grew up hearing voices in his head. Over a dizzying two decades, he was many things—teenage faith healer, world traveler, smuggler, liberation theologian, ladder-maker, squatter, halibut hanger, grifter, environmental warrior, and circus manager—all the while wrestling with schizophrenia and self-medication.
 
From Baby Doc’s Haiti to the Czech Velvet Revolution, and from sex, drugs, and a stabbing to public humiliation by the leader of the free world, Monroe-Kane burns through his twenties and several bridges of youthful idealism before finally saying: enough. In a memoir that blends engaging charm with unflinching frankness, Monroe-Kane gives his testimony of mental illness, drug abuse, faith, and love. By the end of Lithium Jesus there may be a voice in your head, too, saying “Do more, be more, live more. And fear less.”

By the time you get to my age, you’ve experienced fear.
A man with a gun. An acid trip gone wrong. A serious car accident.
Holding a loved one’s hand in the ICU.
But there is something singular about the fear that comes from hearing voices.
Voices no one can hear but you.

—excerpt from Lithium Jesus, © The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.