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The Story Of A Young Courageous Man Who Persevered Over Ocd And The Harvard Doctor Who Broke All The Rules To Help Him
William Morrow
April 2009
On Sale: April 1, 2009
256 pages
ISBN: 0061561533
EAN: 9780061561535
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
"Time equals progression— progression
equals death." The equation is logical. But few of
us think of each moment and each physical movement as
comprising a path to our certain end. Surely such torture
would drive us mad. But for Ed Zine, who suffers from a
debilitating form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),
this statement is a mantra that holds him
prisoner—figuratively and literally.
Ed's OCD tells him, illogically, that if going forward in
time moves him closer to death, reversing the action will
carry him away from it, and if he can hold back the
progression of time he will not age. If he doesn't age, the
people he loves will never die. This obsession, triggered by
the horrific experience of having secretly witnessed his
mother's death at the age of eleven, keeps him trapped in a
nightmare of perpetual rewinding rituals. Walking from his
bed to the bathroom takes seven to ten hours and 16,384
precise, but necessary, movements forward and backward, with
each step and turn having potentially dire, even fatal,
consequences—or so his OCD convinces him. The tens of
thousands of exacting rituals stop him from showering
altogether for two years, as he lives isolated in the chaos
of a basement littered with refuse and human waste. But the
filth in which Ed lives and the placement of the things he
hoards—from a tiny ball of lint to an unopened bar of soap
to an unwashed pair of sweatpants—all represent important
placeholders of time in the grand scheme of irrationally
keeping his loved ones alive and well. It would be
a full year from their first meeting before Ed would come to
fully trust world-renowned OCD specialist, Harvard
professor, and decorated Vietnam War hero Michael Jenike
enough to allow him to enter the dark prison created by his
isolating obsession. Breaking the rules of traditional
medicine, Michael, who was carrying emotional scars from his
own traumatic past, from the loss of too many young men Ed's
age with whom he served in the war, would travel many long
hours from Boston to Ed's home, and spend countless hours
treating him. Finally, with all treatments exhausted, and
all hope lost, the unconditional friendship between Ed and
Michael remains. The bond of honor that intertwines their
lives enables Ed to use his amazing mind to break down OCD
and heal himself as a way to reward Dr. Jenike for his
compassion.
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