The Mad Road

"I would like to thank myself for the miracle of my being here today." These are the words Dawn spoke before members of the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drug Advisory Committee hearing in 2006, before she described her prescription drug related experience - an alarming ordeal that began five years earlier... With a successful and coveted career in the music touring industry, a blossoming new relationship, and her beloved dog Simon by her side, Dawn sets off for a sunny vacation in Florida between tours. But when she is prescribed an anti-anxiety pill for a minor problem, her charmed life quickly spirals into mania, insomnia, religious preoccupations, impulsive actions, grandiose behaviors, suicidal ideation, and psychosis. The world altering events of September 11 further propel a delusional Dawn into a full-blown paranoid, psychotic war - and she is brutally taken into custody, involuntarily committed to a mental crisis institution, and pharmaceutically drugged even more. In riveting detail, Dawn takes the reader on a wild and terrifying ride of insanity. As the drugs are flushed from her system, she begins to regain control over her life and flourish. Despite all challenges that present, Dawn shares her harrowing story to shed light on the dark epidemic of pharmaceutical drug-generated violence, suicide, homicide, and terror in the name of mental health. A mental health psychopharmacology memoir, The Mad Road is a fully forthcoming account spanning over two decades of a life entrapped in the mental health system. Medications, involuntary commitments, police and medical transgressions filled with psychosis, diagnosis and madness are described in harrowing detail; bolstered by medical records, police reports and full color photo images. Clarity comes in the form of education, connection that leads toward a path of political activism, meetings with elected representatives, plus a testimony to the FDA. A well-documented timeline of violence, tragedies, weaponization and warnings are substantiated by resources and pictures. The power of unconditional love, humanity, empathy, and will-to-live is driving throughout with clear purpose: to help generate a safer, healthier, more stable society. The Mad Road is a story of truth that will open your eyes, break your heart, lift your soul and make you think. And it just may inspire you to believe in yourself too.