Addiction doesn’t just take hold of your habits—it hijacks your identity. It whispers lies, masks pain, and convinces you that numbness is safer than feeling.

Sliding Doors As I started to read Laura Delano’s memoir, (Unshrunk: How The Mental Health Industry Took Over My Life – And My Fight To Get It Back), James Taylor’s lyrics about a friend who killed herself following a breakdown ran through my head: “Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” Fortunately, by a very narrow escape, Laura’s life did not end following the suicide attempt that left her in a coma, and this is a sad book with a happy ending, which finishes on a beam of hope in her description of her life as a mother of small children, and the happiness she has found in sharing her life with her partner, Cooper Davis. Unshrunk begins with a sliding doors moment, when Laura pleads with her parents to allow her to move to Maine to live with her grandparents, a setting she describes with such warmth and vividness that I could just about smell the woodsmoke mingled with the salty sea air. But her parents had plans for her, which often come with the privileged life she was raised in. Elite boarding school, good grades, Debutante Ball, Harvard, being a good sport throughout (and in Laura’s case, sportswoman) – a trajectory that was the norm in leafy Greenwich, Connecticut. It is a social landscape that I know intimately, and it is one that can be very hard to resist and rebel against. Maybe she would have struggled in Maine, and maybe she wouldn’t have – we will never know – but I found it hard not to think that Laura’s expressed need to get away from her life in Greenwich was a cry for help, and a missed opportunity. Through the Looking Glass. At the age of thirteen, Laura began to unravel from the tightly stitched fabric of her family and friends. Her description of the sense of rage, emptiness, and isolation she experienced is difficult to read without flinching, especially for any reader who has ever suffered a breakdown in their teens. She writes of her moment standing in from of the bathroom mirror so clearly we are there with her, observing her watching herself, and her identity, dissolve before her eyes. While many teens hit an ‘identity crisis’ at this very messy age, especially as they begin to individuate from their parents’ expectations, for Laura this developed into a profound mental tectonic shift which she sought to control with drugs and alcohol, and by pushing against invisible but well established boundaries. “Is anything I’ve accomplished actually what I wanted? Do I actually care about the things I’ve always thought I care about? Have I just been brainwashed by them? Did they make me do it?” Her description of this internal struggle remind me of Elizabeth Hardwick’s observation, “Society tries to write these lives before they are lived. It does not always succeed.” Laura describes the vicissitudes of this crisis and how it intertwined with the twists and turns of her mental health care. Painful turmoil followed by steadiness, which in turn was followed by disintegration. She was on a ship tossing about at sea, with no view of the shore and no one to help her navigate her way towards sustained equilibrium. In the early chapters, I felt a nagging absence of anyone who might have taken her under their wing and ask her what was going on inside her. There is no mention of any adult, or even a friend, who was emotionally available to confide in. Her mother takes her to a psychiatrist who diagnoses her and prescribes medication at the first appointment. Laura’s description of her mother silent in the car, the motor running, perhaps breathing a sigh of relief at seeing the prescription note, tells us a lot in just a few words. Laura was still a child, and this seems to have been a key point at which much of her developing identity formation related to her formal relationships with her doctors. My impression is that Laura preserves a great deal of privacy while describing these years, and at times the unknowns are felt, but not seen. Her reserve may be to protect others, or is perhaps designed to allow the narrative to reflect the sense of confusion and disorientation that she herself felt during those young years. Anyone who has written about their experience of mental illness will know how it feels when we lay ourselves bare, just to be dissected by people who know nothing of what we went through. My own view is that no memoirist should be made to feel they have to rip their skin off just for the gratification of the reader, and it is very possible that Laura simply chose to keep the door shut to avoid the voyeuristic gaze. Not Waving but Drowning. An accurate diagnosis can often provide a signpost that tells us we are not lost, and can provide direction. In Laura’s case, however, her initial diagnosis served as a psychiatric shackle that hampered her progress, providing no relief from her distress, and actually contributing to it. Over the next several years, she managed to achieve a great deal academically, while her personal life continued to be chaotic. While her successes boosted her temporarily, they were too often followed by a sense of profound failure when she was unable to sustain them. The treatment she received from mental health professionals is bewildering at times. Laundry lists of diagnoses, a cascade of contradictory combinations of medications (even some of her medications had medications), and again, the apparent absence of anyone engaging with her meaningfully to talk about her past, her relationships, her needs, her hopes. Laura’s vulnerability lay not just in the fact that she was still an adolescent, but also in her willingness and, indeed, eagerness to meet the expectations of the adults around her. She aimed to be the very best patient possible, and when this compliance wasn’t effective, she inevitably blamed herself. Her inner turbulence reaches a crescendo when she attempts to die in order to escape the escalation of her unhappiness. If it is possible for a description of a suicide attempt to be beautiful, Laura manages to achieve it in the chapter simply titled, Suicide. Some of her most poignant writing is in these passages, describing the familiar rugged beauty of her beloved Maine, and the ‘cosy embrace’ of the family house becoming more distant as she walks the paths she knows so well, carrying her pills and wine. Slumped at the base of the Sisyphean boulder on the coastal path overlooking the limitless sea, death appears the best option. Laura’s disappointment on regaining consciousness in hospital, and discovering she had survived, is palpable. Her father’s familiar reassurance that everything was going to be okay caused her to let out a wail: “surging forth from some animal part of me…Oh, no, no, no: I’m alive….Why. Why. Why, why, why, whyyyyyy?” Her words remind me of Sylvia Plath’s description of one of her suicide attempts, also in a coastal setting, by drowning. Plath wrote, “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” It seems that Laura’s stubborn heart was also not ready to give up. If the reader hopes that the suicide attempt would be a turning point leading to a brighter path, they may be disconcerted when they turn the page and see the title of the following chapter – A Fresh Hell. Laura finds herself caught in the double binds so familiar to many mental health patients who have faced the possibility of involuntary admission, where the choice is not really a choice. The script tends to go something like, “you can come in on a voluntary basis or….” As a woman, she found her doctor trying to deliberately provoke her, and then using her angry reaction as evidence against her. “Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy”(Suzanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted) Hitting rock bottom can, however, provide a change of perspective. As the songwriter Richard Fariña once wrote, “I’ve been down so long it looks like up to me.” For Laura, things gradually changed: the combination of a new treatment approach, sobriety, and perhaps simply maturity as reaching young adulthood enabled her to view herself with a fresh lens. Clearly the status quo was not working, and maybe it had never worked for her. Inspired by her new freedom from alcohol and drugs, Laura boldly took the reins of her recovery and slowly began to blaze a trail for herself without the involvement of mental health professionals. With this change of direction came a new sense of autonomy, allowing her to find a fulfilling role for herself by helping others, and letting go of some of the expectations that had been such an inherent part of her life and her thinking. Laura began to value herself, to define herself by considering her own needs, and allow herself to be vulnerable and connect with people in a meaningful way. Intricately tied in with this transition was a rising wellspring of hope. Even though she wasn’t sure where she was going, she knew at least she was on her own path. Reading the last chapters of her book, there is a sense of her growing identity as an adult, no longer a child, and no longer trying to live the life that had been carved out for her. And Laura is still Laura, a jumble of vulnerability and fury and, I might add, strength: “My life looks completely different now than it once did, but I’m very much the same. I am extremely sensitive and primed to jump right to extreme distrust, even paranoia, when I feel vulnerable. I can still get sucked into the people-pleasing tendencies that have plagued me since youth, and wrack myself with worry if I think I’ve caused disappointment. I often struggle to have difficult conversations with people I rely on. I generally operate from worst-case assumptions. I can be brutally stubborn when I am determined to do something. Intense outrage is a frequent companion of mine- along with intense grief.” Now in the cosy embrace of her own family life, Laura Delano has evolved from a frightened and compliant young teen into a woman who is finally at the helm, no longer caught in the riptide and is now viewing the horizon.

Sliding Doors As I started to read Laura Delano’s memoir, (Unshrunk: How The Mental Health Industry Took Over My Life – And My Fight To Get It Back), James Taylor’s lyrics about a friend who killed herself following a breakdown ran through my head: “Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” Fortunately, by a very narrow escape, Laura’s life did not end following the suicide attempt that left her in a coma, and this is a sad book with a happy ending, which finishes on a beam of hope in her description of her life as a mother of small children, and the happiness she has found in sharing her life with her partner, Cooper Davis. Unshrunk begins with a sliding doors moment, when Laura pleads with her parents to allow her to move to Maine to live with her grandparents, a setting she describes with such warmth and vividness that I could just about smell the woodsmoke mingled with the salty sea air. But her parents had plans for her, which often come with the privileged life she was raised in. Elite boarding school, good grades, Debutante Ball, Harvard, being a good sport throughout (and in Laura’s case, sportswoman) – a trajectory that was the norm in leafy Greenwich, Connecticut. It is a social landscape that I know intimately, and it is one that can be very hard to resist and rebel against. Maybe she would have struggled in Maine, and maybe she wouldn’t have – we will never know – but I found it hard not to think that Laura’s expressed need to get away from her life in Greenwich was a cry for help, and a missed opportunity. Through the Looking Glass. At the age of thirteen, Laura began to unravel from the tightly stitched fabric of her family and friends. Her description of the sense of rage, emptiness, and isolation she experienced is difficult to read without flinching, especially for any reader who has ever suffered a breakdown in their teens. She writes of her moment standing in from of the bathroom mirror so clearly we are there with her, observing her watching herself, and her identity, dissolve before her eyes. While many teens hit an ‘identity crisis’ at this very messy age, especially as they begin to individuate from their parents’ expectations, for Laura this developed into a profound mental tectonic shift which she sought to control with drugs and alcohol, and by pushing against invisible but well established boundaries. “Is anything I’ve accomplished actually what I wanted? Do I actually care about the things I’ve always thought I care about? Have I just been brainwashed by them? Did they make me do it?” Her description of this internal struggle remind me of Elizabeth Hardwick’s observation, “Society tries to write these lives before they are lived. It does not always succeed.” Laura describes the vicissitudes of this crisis and how it intertwined with the twists and turns of her mental health care. Painful turmoil followed by steadiness, which in turn was followed by disintegration. She was on a ship tossing about at sea, with no view of the shore and no one to help her navigate her way towards sustained equilibrium. In the early chapters, I felt a nagging absence of anyone who might have taken her under their wing and ask her what was going on inside her. There is no mention of any adult, or even a friend, who was emotionally available to confide in. Her mother takes her to a psychiatrist who diagnoses her and prescribes medication at the first appointment. Laura’s description of her mother silent in the car, the motor running, perhaps breathing a sigh of relief at seeing the prescription note, tells us a lot in just a few words. Laura was still a child, and this seems to have been a key point at which much of her developing identity formation related to her formal relationships with her doctors. My impression is that Laura preserves a great deal of privacy while describing these years, and at times the unknowns are felt, but not seen. Her reserve may be to protect others, or is perhaps designed to allow the narrative to reflect the sense of confusion and disorientation that she herself felt during those young years. Anyone who has written about their experience of mental illness will know how it feels when we lay ourselves bare, just to be dissected by people who know nothing of what we went through. My own view is that no memoirist should be made to feel they have to rip their skin off just for the gratification of the reader, and it is very possible that Laura simply chose to keep the door shut to avoid the voyeuristic gaze. Not Waving but Drowning. An accurate diagnosis can often provide a signpost that tells us we are not lost, and can provide direction. In Laura’s case, however, her initial diagnosis served as a psychiatric shackle that hampered her progress, providing no relief from her distress, and actually contributing to it. Over the next several years, she managed to achieve a great deal academically, while her personal life continued to be chaotic. While her successes boosted her temporarily, they were too often followed by a sense of profound failure when she was unable to sustain them. The treatment she received from mental health professionals is bewildering at times. Laundry lists of diagnoses, a cascade of contradictory combinations of medications (even some of her medications had medications), and again, the apparent absence of anyone engaging with her meaningfully to talk about her past, her relationships, her needs, her hopes. Laura’s vulnerability lay not just in the fact that she was still an adolescent, but also in her willingness and, indeed, eagerness to meet the expectations of the adults around her. She aimed to be the very best patient possible, and when this compliance wasn’t effective, she inevitably blamed herself. Her inner turbulence reaches a crescendo when she attempts to die in order to escape the escalation of her unhappiness. If it is possible for a description of a suicide attempt to be beautiful, Laura manages to achieve it in the chapter simply titled, Suicide. Some of her most poignant writing is in these passages, describing the familiar rugged beauty of her beloved Maine, and the ‘cosy embrace’ of the family house becoming more distant as she walks the paths she knows so well, carrying her pills and wine. Slumped at the base of the Sisyphean boulder on the coastal path overlooking the limitless sea, death appears the best option. Laura’s disappointment on regaining consciousness in hospital, and discovering she had survived, is palpable. Her father’s familiar reassurance that everything was going to be okay caused her to let out a wail: “surging forth from some animal part of me…Oh, no, no, no: I’m alive….Why. Why. Why, why, why, whyyyyyy?” Her words remind me of Sylvia Plath’s description of one of her suicide attempts, also in a coastal setting, by drowning. Plath wrote, “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” It seems that Laura’s stubborn heart was also not ready to give up. If the reader hopes that the suicide attempt would be a turning point leading to a brighter path, they may be disconcerted when they turn the page and see the title of the following chapter – A Fresh Hell. Laura finds herself caught in the double binds so familiar to many mental health patients who have faced the possibility of involuntary admission, where the choice is not really a choice. The script tends to go something like, “you can come in on a voluntary basis or….” As a woman, she found her doctor trying to deliberately provoke her, and then using her angry reaction as evidence against her. “Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy”(Suzanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted) Hitting rock bottom can, however, provide a change of perspective. As the songwriter Richard Fariña once wrote, “I’ve been down so long it looks like up to me.” For Laura, things gradually changed: the combination of a new treatment approach, sobriety, and perhaps simply maturity as reaching young adulthood enabled her to view herself with a fresh lens. Clearly the status quo was not working, and maybe it had never worked for her. Inspired by her new freedom from alcohol and drugs, Laura boldly took the reins of her recovery and slowly began to blaze a trail for herself without the involvement of mental health professionals. With this change of direction came a new sense of autonomy, allowing her to find a fulfilling role for herself by helping others, and letting go of some of the expectations that had been such an inherent part of her life and her thinking. Laura began to value herself, to define herself by considering her own needs, and allow herself to be vulnerable and connect with people in a meaningful way. Intricately tied in with this transition was a rising wellspring of hope. Even though she wasn’t sure where she was going, she knew at least she was on her own path. Reading the last chapters of her book, there is a sense of her growing identity as an adult, no longer a child, and no longer trying to live the life that had been carved out for her. And Laura is still Laura, a jumble of vulnerability and fury and, I might add, strength: “My life looks completely different now than it once did, but I’m very much the same. I am extremely sensitive and primed to jump right to extreme distrust, even paranoia, when I feel vulnerable. I can still get sucked into the people-pleasing tendencies that have plagued me since youth, and wrack myself with worry if I think I’ve caused disappointment. I often struggle to have difficult conversations with people I rely on. I generally operate from worst-case assumptions. I can be brutally stubborn when I am determined to do something. Intense outrage is a frequent companion of mine- along with intense grief.” Now in the cosy embrace of her own family life, Laura Delano has evolved from a frightened and compliant young teen into a woman who is finally at the helm, no longer caught in the riptide and is now viewing the horizon.

The panel denied parole for Christopher Thomas, convicted in a fatal drunk-driving crash. Family members of the victim testified about the emotional impact of the death; the board cited the pending mandatory release and strong victim opposition in voting to deny.

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The Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority (OAA) instructed state agencies to submit separate 2024–25 annual reports per awarded project by 11:59 p.m. Nov. 17 via the OAA grants portal, reviewed for compliance and requiring e-signature by an agency head or designee. Staff demonstrated each portal section and answered questions on character limits, led

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