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Former lawyer and author Zack McDermott has written a bleak but funny account of his free-fall into madness, writes Rosemary Neill
When he was 26, Zack McDermott went from being a legal aid lawyer who defended the mentally ill to an inpatient in a locked psychiatric ward. With his characteristic, edgy humour, the public defender turned author says: “It’s an incredibly lucky thing to have happen to you as a writer — you are a public defender and you get thrown in a psych ward — what more could you ask for?” McDermott’s bipolar-induced psychosis came to a head in late 2009. In an early sign that he was in trouble, he covered the walls of his New York apartment in red texta — his “word equations” were thoughts from his “creative manifesto”.
Then he sprinted through a Manhattan park, convinced he was starring in his own reality television show. He ran across a dog walkers’ park on all fours; interrupted a soccer game by sprinting across the pitch and mooning the players; challenged a group of black men to a rap battle; and darted on to busy roads in front of cars. Eventually he was arrested on a subway platform.
It was cold and he was shirtless, shoeless and sobbing. He was taken to a ward for the mentally ill at the city’s Bellevue Hospital — the young lawyer was being committed but he believed the cameras were still rolling and that the police were fellow actors.
This “psychotic break” was one of three McDermott would suffer during the next 2½ years. In 2010, he ran naked through cornfields. He has endured days when he wore a bib and dribbled, took showers in his clothes, failed to recognise his mother or imagined he was a Jesus-like figure, blowing on the feet of a wheelchair-bound patient in order to cure him.
Each time, he recovered — always with the unstinting support of his mother, Cindy Cisneros-McGilvrey, an earthy, big-hearted teacher from Wichita, Kansas.
McDermott, who is about to visit Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival, has written a critically acclaimed account of his battle with bipolar disorder, Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother’s Love. The title is derived from the...