An Inspiring Recovery: How I Found Sanity

Spies were watching Neil from outside his fraternity house. The ex-girlfriend on the other end of the phone was an imposter. A delivery truck was a message from God.

Nineteen-year-old Neil McCarthy had the world at his feet—an engineering major, athlete, and musician at Carnegie Mellon University—when he experienced a psychotic break during the summer after his sophomore year. This led him to embark on a decades-long journey to find a sense of belonging and an oasis of sanity from his mania, psychosis, depression, insomnia, and anxiety. Neil left no stone unturned in his quest for sanity. Combining all the benefits of Western medicine with Eastern spirituality, naturopathic medicine, and a variety of therapies brought Neil much of the wellness he craved.

Neil left Pittsburgh that summer to spend a month under his parents’ care in his home state of Rhode Island. While home, Neil discovered some of his deepest traumas. He also worked with a doctor who helped him realize that he could still live a “full and rewarding life.”

Neil was soon hit with the reality that recovery would not be a simple process. Doctors changed. Diagnoses changed. Jobs changed. Insomnia was his foe for most of his adult life. But Neil persisted. Eventually, he realized that while medications could help mitigate his symptoms, the real healing had to come from within him. In his own words, “I did not need to hide from tasks that caused me pain. Instead, I met them head-on.” During his recovery, Neil encountered a variety of mental health treatments, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which furthered him down the path toward sanity.

While focusing on the recovery process, this raw memoir chronicles Neil’s thirty-year journey toward well-being. He has proved that it is not only possible to live a prosperous life with mental health challenges, but also to inspire others along the way.