In Candid New Memoir, Lost And Broken, Congressman Adam Smith Opens Up About The Stigma Of Mental Illness

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best book magazine in the UK“, congressman Adam Smith has released a new book sharing his experiences with chronic pain and crippling anxiety, Lost And Broken.

Adam Smith

One morning in April 2016, congressman Adam Smith woke up and seriously considered that he might never be able to get up, a struggle millions of Americans know all too well. With crippling anxiety, chronic pain, muscle atrophy and a confusing cocktail of medications, Adam Smith wasn’t sure what was worse, getting up or staying in bed.

My life terrified me. I had been fighting some combination of these battles for just over three years at this point, and I didn’t think I could do it for one more day.

-Adam Smith

Smith had achieved success by every measure, with a long, distinguished career in Congress, and a wife of 20 years he was happy with, and were raising two great kids together. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, his body and mind broke down. He didn’t know if he could meet his responsibilities as a husband and father, let alone maintain his breakneck professional schedule. Every day became a relentless struggle to just keep moving, and Smith soon realized he couldn’t will himself well — he needed help.

Adam Smith is the member of Congress for the 9th District of the State of Washington. He was reelected to his 14th term in 2022 and has been the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee since 2011. He served as chair of the committee from 2018–2022 when the Democrats controlled the majority in the U.S. House.

Lost And Broken

In his unflinchingly honest new memoir, Lost and Broken, Smith shares how he got to this lowest point in life, and how slowly, painfully and unevenly, me managed to find his way back to a calmer mind, and living free of chronic pain and medication.

For more than six years, Smith searched for the right diagnoses and treatments for his mental and physical pain, in which he involved more than a hundred different health care providers. Through this memoir, he shares his experiences and distills the valuable lessons he learned to empower readers to seek the help and treatments they need. But first, he says, the stigma surrounding mental health must be eliminated.

That stigma makes it far harder for people facing mental illness to take the first step we all need to take. Get help. Seek treatment. It really does work. There are treatments that work and that can dramatically improve your mental health.

-Adam Smith

Find more from Adam Smith now:

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/482GzOc

Lost and Broken: My Journey Back from Chronic Pain and Crippling Anxiety

Publisher: HCI Books

Release Date: May 30, 2023

ISBN-10: 0757324622

ISBN-13: 9780757324628

Trade Paperback, 224 pages

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