During his marriage, George’s wife Brenda swam deeply in alcoholic waters for many years. George was full of pot as well as lots of alcohol much of that time. In the 70s, cocaine became his drug of choice. In his final book Last Words, Carlin wrote that he often had to work to think “consciously” beyond his cocaine fog when at work on stage or during recording projects. After giving up pot and cocaine in the 80s, George turned to a new favorite addiction of wine and Vicodin.

Kelly, the Carlins’ only child, fretted and fumed growing up in the midst of such a household. But, she too became deeply involved in drugs in her teen years. Kelly eventually overcame her addiction and sobered while becoming a writer for films, TV, and the stage.

Kelly chronicled the wonders and terrors of living with George and Brenda in clouds of drug fogs and smogs. In her book called A Carlin Home Companion: Growing up with George, she retold episodes of her father’s sometimes very frightening “flights of consciousness” – in the likes of the two noted below. Surely, George must have experienced many more during his years of heavy drug use.

• Mom and school-age Kelly found Daddy in the bedroom holding a a shattered picture frame with a bleeding hand. George had obviously been “taking something.” “‘Daddy are you okay?’ I asked. My dad took the picture and threw it against the wall, and then collapsed in a pile of tears and rage. Mom quickly sat on him. I then jumped on him, too. He rambled on unintelligibly about his mother, himself, and the world. He was shouting at things that weren’t in the room … I was terrified that he’d lost his mind.”

• “Around eleven in the morning the day after we got home from Havana, my dad rushed into my room and woke me with the words, ‘Kelly, I have something important to tell you.’ Now, these words scared the shit out of me because I was sure he was going to tell me that he was finally leaving my mom. I knew in my heart that it was the only thing that might finally make my mom get some help for her drinking, and so I was ready for it. I sat up in bed and braced myself for the blow of the news, when he said, ‘Kelly, the sun has exploded and we have eight, no – seven and a half minutes to live.’ “… the sun hadn’t exploded, but my dad had completely lost his mind to drugs.”

Losses of Consciousness are very, very common. Drug-related ones - in this age of drugs which are everywhere – are surely the most frequent. They mirror to a greater or lesser degree George Carlin’s experiences.

Furthermore, we contend that kinds of consciousness, states of consciousness, and losses of consciousness need to be studied far beyond those neatly listed in psychiatry and neurology books. There is a wide spectrum of moments to months of Loss of Consciousness which confront human beings, their families and their medical attendants. Physicians and medical investigators like to separate, label, and categorize ills to make them appear quite unique and different. But from the list of ills enumerated above and detailed below, we can gather clues to hidden relationships which exist between all these seemingly diverse human problems regardless of names and labels.
 
There are lessons to be gathered from most every problem/challenge in life from school age to elder years. From cradle to grave, life gives us much to experience and much to learn. Stories and anecdotes have been derided by modern medical practice. Yet we believe that if properly viewed, they can offer treasures to guide our thinking in general – and in particular on the subject of Loss of Consciousness.

It seems that the western world is in the midst of an epidemic of dementia – in a wide variety of forms and guises. Even some transitory “losses of mind,” which were in prior eras taken as part of life, have come to the fore to cause more anxiety and to be medically tested and treated although with little real understanding. Along the way, fear is then added as another layer to patient and doctor worries.

Unfortunately or simply factually, the wonders of technology have afforded little substantive benefit to the large majority of demented humans. Whether their ills are temporary or long-standing, mild or profound in effects, loss of mind affects millions and can be challenging to daunting to overwhelming.

People have lost their minds surely since the beginning of time. How friends and family have dealt with those often disturbing occurrences has varied with time and place. Illness, aging and dying have been honored in most societies over the ages. But today, we are over-anxious about the slightest ill and hurry to get medical attention and intervention in hopes to fight and slay the “intruder.”

Sadly this is the case, even though medics all too often do not understand the people and problems they face when loss of mind occurs in one guise or another. Test and test some more, seek a diagnosis, and “try this remedy” – has been the patterned method for a host of ills in the West for generations.

Likewise, searches for pathology of the brain can go on and on and on. But, true causation is rarely determined because doctors deal with symptoms and signs – effects rather than causes for the most part – the tips of the iceberg, so to speak.

Still, there are mindful ways to approach these problems. Let’s take a simplistic yet holistic view to gain a wider understanding. Along the way, we will find commonality among such problems from fainting and seizure to shock and stroke and dementia.

As mentioned above, we will draw upon the lives of celebrities like George Carlin – people in the news past and present whose stories may be familiar to the reader or can be readily researched online or in the library. We wish to make our review more interesting and poignant, while bringing ideas into real life. So that the reader can almost get a “feel” for the altered states of consciousness to which our fellows are heir.



Amentia or autism appears to be quite common in the present day. Down Syndrome may be the most recognized in this kind of Dementia. Many think of Autism as a “cross to bear.” While it seems common for families with an autistic child to eventually see the affected individual as a blessing, one sent to teach lessons and give love in extraordinary ways.

While Down Syndrome is attributed to a chromosomal disorder, most cases of autism give no clue to any material causation. Mind holds those secrets quite tightly; especially since Mind itself is poorly understood.

The learning disabilities and socialization challenges of Down Syndrome and Autism are relatively well known. Yet, there is no absolute loss of mind in either case and wonders do not cease among those affected – as suggested in the following stories.


Tim Harris is a motivational speaker, business owner, and disability advocate. Even though he was born with Down syndrome, Tim has participated in many endeavors and accomplished many as well. Tim grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, bearing a big heart and contagious enthusiasm. He graduated from Eldorado High School where he was named Homecoming King and Student of the Year. Thereafter, Tim attended Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell, New Mexico and graduated in 2008 with certificates in Food Service. Then, he went on for five years to own and proudly operate Tim’s Place Restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico serving breakfast, lunch, and hugs. Harris is the only person with Down syndrome in the US known to have owned his own restaurant.

Before Tim's Place closed in 2016, Harris told CNN, “My favorite part of the work day is giving out the free Tim Hugs. They are on my menu and most people order at least one. So far, I've given out nearly 40,000 hugs. I even have a counter on the wall to keep track of the total. I guess you can say I'm a lean, mean, hugging machine.”
 
Tim got his own truly memorable hug from President Barack Obama at the White House in 2014 and was  introduced by First Lady Michelle Obama at the opening ceremonies of the Special Olympics World Games in the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of 60,000 people and a world-wide television audience. Tim took his next steps to travel the world with his message of love and inspiration for all! Tim works to break down barriers, get rid of any stereotypes, and inspire the whole world to follow his example and achieve their dreams.  


Rex was born blind in 1995. He had surgery on a cyst in his brain within weeks and was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age seven, he was considered a musical genius. Rex was able to play back complex piano pieces he had heard only once, and then transpose them into other keys or improvise off their themes. He thus became known as one of 50 musical savants in history as he combined blindness, intellectual disability, and prodigious musical ability.

By then, he came to wide attention through television profiles and later his biography published in 2008 written by Cathleen Lewis. It was titled Rex: A Mother, Her Autistic Child and the Music that Transformed their Lives. In 2013, Rex and Cathleen launched their Foundation called Rex and Friends, which supports musical education for individuals who are blind or autistic.  

~~ The following vignette from Cathleen’s book occurred when Rex was four and a half:

It was always the same at Children’s Hospital, where the patients were the innocents. Everyone seemed to be really hurting: the kids, the parents, and even the staff.

Nobody in that waiting room comprehended what they were suddenly witnessing, least of all me. A beautiful little boy, with silken blond hair, had stood up from his seat and, oblivious to anyone’s worries, began to sing. Rex! His voice was pure and sweet, like his face, and the clarity of the tones began drawing the people in the room out of themselves. I watched furrowed brows soften and clenched jaws broaden in wonder.

They could see he was blind, indeed it was impossible to miss by the way he’d stood there with his hands feeling for support and by the way he stood there with precarious balance, his eyes seeming to focus only on the unseen. So the spectators were all the more stupefied as they witnessed something akin to true sight when his voice sang out, angelic and in perfect pitch, “God is so good. He’s so good to me.” As he finished, the whole room broke into applause, amazed and spontaneous, while Rex beamed and clapped for himself, as he so loved to do, pronouncing, “‘God Is So Good’ is a beautiful song!” When he heard more clapping, he repeated for emphasis, “‘God Is So Good’ is a beautiful song!”

I knew from the reaction in the room that I didn’t need to tell Rex quietly, “Sweetie, we need to wait until we get to the car to sing.” I also knew he was in the mood to sing, which meant he’d inevitably launch into another song. Not wanting to impose religion on the room in the form of our church songs, I whispered “Feelin’ Groovy” as a suggestion. But not this time, not in this place. Rex clearly had ideas of his own, and apparently it wasn’t a 1970s carefree kind of day. Ignoring me, he announced decisively, like he was a singer on a stage, “This Little Light of Mine.” Without a moment’s hesitation, he broke into the sweetly moving song, which was one of his Sunday school favorites. As he finished the refrain, “Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine,” the applause was renewed, even more vigorous this time, from patients and staff alike, while Rex smiled broadly, loving it. I glanced around the room to see the most astonishing mixture of smiling faces and moist eyes as his captive audience shook their heads in amazement at this beautiful and unexpected scene.

And with that I knew I’d received the unexpected myself – an unexpected healing. My old ghosts were finally being laid to rest, as my heart that had been battered and bruised in this hospital, on so many occasions, now soared on the light of Rex’s smile.

Let it shine, Rex! ~~


Fainting appears sporadically or just on a once-upon-a-time basis. Stories of fainting don’t make news or find their way into books very often in the present era. But, it seems that 19th century humans experienced them publicly and frequently. One writer has suggested that Victorians – especially women “had a hard time staying on their feet in the 1800s.” All sorts of stressors including wind and weather, but particularly emotional turmoil threw many to the floor. Smelling salts, hardly known today, were usually at hand for such common events as swooning.

Reasons for faints were many and most of them circled around women of that time. Victorians were considered relatively frail and sickly – and “corseted” in many ways. Fainting and seizures held sway among Victorian girls and women who could hardly breathe. “Their hearts couldn’t pump the way hearts are supposed to,” because of the constraints of emotions, behavior, clothing, and cosmetics. As children were to be seen and not heard in that day, society repressed women and they in turn “masked” themselves to the point of being lean, lame, and hysterical.

Although people do not pass out or swoon as commonly as they did generations past, such events still occur to the concern of bystanders and affected individuals. Unless a cause is readily apparent, it is likely the faint one will be brought quickly to medical attention.

The reader most likely has seen or experienced a fainting spell and thus can relate to this kind of loss of consciousness. The author had his own personal experience decades ago as a child. It was summer in South Dakota – hotter and muggier than usual. It was also the day after a fishing trip with father and brother. The trio caught few fish but many chiggers. Dealing with elements and infestation with vermin was more than he could take. As the next day the whole family attended the wedding of a cousin in a Catholic church, midway through the ceremony, the boy “lost it,” keeled over and fainted.

Fortunately, immediate causes for his stress were obvious and he was taken to the family car and allowed to recover. Trips to medical practitioners were very rare during his youth for reasons of limited finances. But that was also the case because in that time nature was given much freer rein to take its course.

Fainting is the least dramatic and deleterious of the experiences we will consider on the spectrum in Loss of Consciousness. But, it still occurs even to the talented and famous.


Carlos Santana collapsed onstage during a concert tour performance in Michigan in July 2022. The Grammy-winning guitarist was about an hour into his performance at the Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkson as he introduced the song “Joy,” from his album Blessings and Miracles. He ironically described the song as “mystical medicine music to heal a world infected with fear” a few minutes before he passed out.

First aid was rendered to the 74-year-old guitarist and he was soon taken to the nearby medical center. His faint was attributed to exhaustion and dehydration. “Just taking it easy,” the Rock & Roll Hall-of-Famer posted to Facebook just after midnight. “Forgot to eat and drink water so I dehydrated and passed out. Blessings and miracles to you all.”

Santana was released during the night from the hospital. He recovered sufficiently to return to perform in September at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Interestingly, Santana had undergone an “unspecified heart procedure” several months earlier. As of 2026, 78-year-old rock legend Carlos Santana has largely recovered and continues his Las Vegas residency and touring.



Academy Award-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix fainted while filming a very intense scene in April 2023 with Patti LuPone in his new film, Beau is Afraid. Writer-director Ari Aster revealed that Phoenix actually ruined a shot by passing out. “There was a scene that was very intense for Patti, and it was a shot that was on Patti, it was not on him and all of a sudden he fell out of frame,” Aster said of Phoenix. LuPone plays his mother in the film. The description of the movie reads: “A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother …”

The incident upset Aster “because it was a really good take. It felt confusing so I went around the corner and he was collapsed…. The point is that he fainted in somebody else’s take, he wasn’t on camera and he was helping them, he was in it for them to the point where he collapsed. It’s very poetic that he collapsed in somebody else’s shot.”

One headline suggested that “Joaquin Phoenix Fainted After Getting Too Emotional …” Known for completely dissolving into his roles, Phoenix may have overdone it in a very intense scene.

 
Wendy Williams piloted one of the top-rated daytime talk shows for more than a decade, attracting loyal followers who tuned in to her bold takes on celebrity gossip. But, things started to go wrong publicly when Williams collapsed live on her  show one day in November 2017. “A lot of people thought that was a joke, me fainting on my set,” she said. “No, that was not a joke. I’m a tall woman, and it’s a long way down.”

Williams explained that she began to feel faint toward the end of her show, while trying to push through. But, her discomfort intensified as she grew hot and dizzy. “It was really scary.”

At the same time, the talk-show host countered speculation that she may have had a stroke or a heart attack. Wendy reported that testing showed she “was low on electrolytes.”

“I’m a 53-year-old, middle-aged woman going through what middle-aged women go through if you know what I mean,” she said. “The costume got hot. All of a sudden right before passing out, I felt like I was in the middle of a campfire. No, I wasn’t stroking out.”   

That single incident was not a game-breaker. But, it may have been a preview of things to come as her TV show was cancelled in 2020. In the bigger picture, Williams had suffered from a number of ills over the years, including Grave’s [thyroid] disease, lymphedema, and drug addiction. More recently, it was reported that she has been struggling to walk and to deal with the effects of early-onset dementia.  

Eventually, Williams was diagnosed with “primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.” That followed upon numerous tests when “she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions.”  

In early 2024, a four-part docu-series appeared on TV. This series followed on a previous documentary which was released in 2021. “Where is Wendy Williams?”centered largely on personal and unsettling scenes of Williams’s declining health as well as her addiction issues. The series featured numerous scenes of the former talk show host unsteady on her feet, belligerent, confused and also drunk.

Producers said ultimately what was filmed and aired was honest and unfiltered, like Williams herself. “It is a painful truth, and it’s a very sad truth,” told executive producer Mark Ford, “but Wendy is one of the most radically honest storytellers in the history of media. Why would this documentary not echo that incredible legacy of openness?”

The filming had to be interrupted when she was admitted to a medical facility for treatment. Wendy was placed under a court-ordered financial guardianship in June 2022 while her dementia was reported to be “alcohol-induced.”

During Williams’s six-month treatment, producers kept in contact with her family and team. They said she appeared healthier, happier and sober. “She is dropping the work and understanding what’s more important to her. And that’s her family.”  

As of 2026, Wendy Williams' health status is in dispute, with conflicting diagnoses. She remains under a court-ordered guardianship established. The case of Wendy Williams, as several others in this book, may give clues as to the cumulative effects of intoxicants. The insidious nature of the development of more oppressive forms of dementia can also be recognized.


Epilepsy has been considered and debated for millennia. Hippocrates called it The Sacred Disease. Jesus Christ encountered it when rebuking a demon out of an epileptic boy. (Matthew 17) Until modern times, the “awesome disease” was long considered The Falling Sickness.

Its sacred nature was noted by the fifteenth century physician Antonius Guainerius when he remarked that, “Thus, when the paroxysm has passed, they very often predict many things to come. The crowd, ignorant of the cause [the unfettered rational soul], believe this is to be effected by the power of the demons.”

Eighteenth century wonders in which large numbers fell into convulsions at the grave of François de Paris at St. Medard supported the association of epileptic seizures with hysteria if not divine or devilish possession. Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754) and many other authorities over the ages related seizures to cycles of the moon – thus the connection also to lunacy.

Over the ages, epilepsy often has been associated with hysteria as well as possession thus inciting general alarm. “It is in the midst of the state of mental anxiety, of instinctive or automatic impulses and of extreme confusion of ideas, that the epileptics, pushed as they say by an invincible force that dominates their will …”

A 19th-century study in France of a large number of “hysterical” patients determined the apparent precipitating causes of fits or seizures: “25 percent had had a sudden fright, 16 percent some kind of emotional shock, 12 percent had been victims of physical abuse, 12 percent had been subjected to sudden feelings of sadness, and five percent began convulsing after seeing other person struck with hysteria or epilepsy.” (Edward Shorter)

Seizures typically harm no one, not even the afflicted one. Nonetheless, the sudden and dramatic onset of convulsions can cause havoc among bystanders as well as affected individuals. Fear itself has long been noted to be a common inciting force for epileptic seizures, especially among children. Until the advent of materialistic medicine, it was customary to look for moral as well as physical causes for such illnesses. “The mental-emotional causes were those which nowadays are called psychic causes; chief among them were strong passions, shock, mental overwork, and, above all, sudden fright.” (Temkin, 1971)

It has been noted that people can be frightened to such a degree as to render them into seizures, into paralysis of limbs, as well as make them speechless. One might also think to add to the list the rare but real occurrence of “being frightened to death.”

Certainly, powerful emotions play significant roles in many “nervous” ills. And epilepsy clearly fits under that label. Still while psycho-somatic medicine has gained some measure of respect in recent times, mental-emotional influences in regard to seizures find minor mention among orthodox circles. So that, “Since we know nothing of the nature of the disease, we cannot establish precise indications …” (Georget, 1823)

For centuries, medical investigators searched – and still do – for pathology in bodies – most especially in the brain. But, they rarely found evidence of their theories since “pathological anatomy has shed little light on the immediate seat of epilepsy.” (Haller, 1837) Modern studies have caused little change in that view. The medical view and understanding of epilepsy has produced little of substantial and practical value. (See the statement by Raymond Adams in Chapter 2.)

So, we may wonder along with those in the likes of Dr. George Ernst Stahl (1659-1734) who viewed the epileptic attack as a purposeful and essentially beneficial reaction of the soul or of “nature.”
 
Seizures have been experienced in all walks of life and even among such notables as Julius Caesar, Caligula, Charles V, Mohammed, and Napoleon – to name a few. Briefly there follow glimpses of the epileptic experiences of celebrities of more recent times.


Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was one of Russia’s greatest novelists. He authored The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky was also one of the most famous epileptics in literary history. He experienced epileptic seizures as a young man, especially during his student years. The novelist recorded several “journal descriptions” of simple partial seizures. He also described triggers, such as the lack of sleep, alcohol consumption or overwork, which brought on his seizures.

His seizure activity worsened during his imprisonment in Siberia to which he was sentenced to four years of forced labor for his Socialist beliefs. By 1853, he was quite debilitated from epilepsy as well as other ailments. Convulsions continued to affect his life, work, and output until his death.

Interestingly, several of the characters in his novels suffered from epileptic seizures. He made note of their symptoms much like his own – tremblings of the body or a loss of consciousness. Dostoevsky also described the sensory auras and the sense of déjà vu many epileptics experience before a convulsion and the intense fatigue they often feel after one.

Dostoevsky’s seizures tended to begin with an ecstatic aura. He wrote that he was grateful for his seizure disorder because of the “abnormal tension” that the episodes created in him, so that he experienced “unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion and completest life…. I would not exchange it for all the joys which life can give.”

At other times, the author regretted the ill he suffered because he thought it had wreaked havoc with his memory. All the same, Dostoevsky was able to create great art out of his disability rather than allow his seizures to define or defeat him.

The following is a brief excerpt from his book The Idiot. It gives the reader the sense of Dostoevsky himself as well as his character who experiences a seizure. Prince Myshkin is said to represent unselfish light. He is naive and otherworldly. Parfen Rogojin, who stands for the world of darkness, stalks the prince as he returns to his hotel.

~~~ On the first landing, which was as small as the necessary turn of the stairs allowed, there was a niche in the column, about half a yard wide, and in this niche the prince felt convinced that a man stood concealed. He thought he could distinguish a figure standing there. He would pass by quickly and not look. He took a step forward, but could bear the uncertainty no longer and turned his head.

    The eyes – the same two eyes – met his! The man concealed in the niche had also taken a step forward. For one second they stood face to face.

    Suddenly the prince caught the man by the shoulder and twisted him round towards the light, so that he might see his face more clearly.

    Rogojin's eyes flashed, and a smile of insanity distorted his countenance. His right hand was raised, and something glittered in it. The prince did not think of trying to stop it. All he could remember afterwards was that he seemed to have called out:

    “Parfen! I won't believe it.”

    Next moment something appeared to burst open before him: a wonderful inner light illuminated his soul. This lasted perhaps half a second, yet he distinctly remembered hearing the beginning of the wail, the strange, dreadful wail, which burst from his lips of its own accord, and which no effort of will on his part could suppress.

    Next moment he was absolutely unconscious; black darkness blotted out everything. He had fallen into an epileptic fit.

    As is well known, these fits occur instantaneously. The face, especially the eyes, become terribly disfigured, convulsions seize the limbs, a terrible cry breaks from the sufferer, a wail from which everything human seems to be blotted out, so that it is impossible to believe that the man who has just fallen is the same who emitted the dreadful cry. It seems more as though some other being, inside the stricken one, had cried. Many people have borne witness to this impression; and many cannot behold an epileptic fit without a feeling of mysterious terror and dread. ~~~


Jerzy Kosinski was born in Poland in 1933. After the 1939 Nazi invasion, he became separated from his parents and roamed the roads and forests of his homeland. The young boy lived in fear of the invaders as well as Polish peasants who were sometimes hostile to him. His experiences resulted in rendering him mute for five years. He recovered and graduated from the University of Lodz, and then continued his studies in Warsaw and the Soviet Union. Inevitably, he immigrated to the United States in 1957 and worked as a truck driver and paint scraper until he completed a doctorate in Hebrew letters from Columbia University.

Jerzy Kosinski authored novels in the likes of Steps, Blind Date, Being There, and The Painted Bird. The latter were made into films. Reflecting his harsh experiences during World War II, his works were often depressing and disturbing.

In his final years, Mr. Kosinski was in deteriorating health as a result of a heart condition. He also had suffered seizures and became depressed by his growing inability to work. He apparently feared he might succumb to a stroke and become a burden to his wife and friends. Kosinski committed suicide at the age of 57 in 1991 in his Manhattan apartment.

Robin Williams said of him, “Jerzy Kosinski killed himself; supposedly, the reason was he just didn’t want to become a vegetable, he didn’t want to lose his sharpness. There’s that fear – if I felt like I was becoming not just dull but a rock, that I still couldn’t spark, still fire off or talk about things, if I’d start to worry or got to be afraid to say something…. If I stop trying, I’d get afraid.” (Robin Williams will reappear later in this book.)


Ronnie Spector (1943-2022) was born Veronica Yvette Bennett in New York and grew up in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan. By her teens she was singing with her sister and cousin becoming the lead singer of the Ronettes. The 1960s vocal trio helped transform the model of female pop groups with hits like “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You.” With high-piled hair, tight outfits and seductive looks, the three young Ronettes “weren’t afraid to be hot. That was our gimmick.”

They sang with powerful voices of street-smart romance over the swelling “wall of sound” production of Phil Spector. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said, “They could sing all their way right through a wall of sound. They didn’t need anything.”

The Ronettes disbanded in 1967 while Ronnie became Mrs. Spector and endured Phil’s erratic and controlling behavior until 1974. Ronnie eventually recounted the abuse she endured while married to Mr. Spector, who was sentenced to prison for the 2003 murder of a woman at his home.

Throughout the 1970s, in an attempt to rebuild her career without her ex-husband, Ms. Spector collaborated with Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. But she didn’t find major success again until 1986, when her duet with Eddie Money, “Take Me Home Tonight,” reached No. 4 on the Billboard singles chart and earned her a Grammy nomination.

“Every song is a little piece of my life,” she said in 2007. “I’m just a girl from the ghetto who wanted to sing.”  

In her memoir, Ronnie told of turning to alcohol to deal with Phil Spector’s abuse: “I’d get drunk so I could go to rehab, just to get out of the house.” While her drinking persisted for years as she dealt with the ups and downs of her life and singing career. Ronnie had wake-up calls along the way until she took control of her life:

“I’d only had a couple drinks but all of a sudden I felt really dizzy. I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to mix pills and alcohol, but when those drinks hit three days’ worth of pills I’d been taking, it was just too much. By the time I got down to the street, I could barely stand up. I finally just dropped the crutches and lay down on the sidewalk. It was scary. I wasn’t just drunk – I’d been smashed often enough to know that this was something different. That’s when I started to panic.

“Then, slowly, my body started shaking. All of a sudden I felt like I was losing control of my arms. They just started jerking around on their own, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop them. A few seconds later my entire body doubled up and began twisting itself in painful contortions that I had no control over. Finally, my eyes rolled way back into my head, and I passed out there on Santa Monica Boulevard.

“I had just had my first alcoholic seizure.”


Margaux Hemingway had it all – from an outsider’s view. She was six feet tall with a remarkable face and a radiant presence. Margaux also had the Hemingway name. Not yet out of high school, she got a million-dollar contract as a model.  

She lived her life and traveled in her grandfather’s footsteps. But relatively rootless, Margaux had no real home, claiming a “very, very dysfunctional family.” She was constantly on the go and she loved visiting new places. “Her friends were her home,” and they were scattered all over the world.

Alcohol also became her friend to the point of addiction. In 1988, Margaux entered the Betty Ford Clinic. She told People magazine shortly afterward, she had been stunned by her rapid elevation to celebrity. “I drank to loosen up. I never thought then that alcohol would become a problem. In my grandfather's time it was a virtue to be able to drink a lot and never show it. And like him, I wanted to live life to the fullest, with gusto.”

Twice married and twice divorced, living solo, she was still unsettled going into her 40s. Much speculation holds that she envied her younger sister Mariel for her success as a TV star. Moreover, Margaux was aging in a profession that pays for youth  and tends to ignore many after they reach their forties. The bulimia that Margaux had battled on and off since adolescence seemed to have staged a comeback.  

Lacking connection with her famous family, she tried and tried to connect with God. So, she seemed to bounce between Spirit and spirits. Her spiritual preoccupation made her, a friend said, “the hardest person to ground. She was out there. Half of her mind seemed always to be elsewhere.”

Eventually, though sober, Margaux was caught in thoughts of suicide as well as frightening seizures. In July 1996, Margaux Hemingway apparently took her own life at age 41 — the fifth to do so in four generations of Hemingways, and on the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of her grandfather's death. The coroner's report ascribed her death to “acute phenobarbital intoxication.” (More on Ernest Hemingway and his family will follow.)  


Elton John (born 1947) is known for his chart topping songs as well as his charity work and AIDS foundation. But, he is not generally known for having suffered from epileptic seizures in his early career. Once fame arrived, Elton became addicted to drugs and alcohol. The star started using cocaine to help him “break out of his shell.” His unhealthy lifestyle eventually led to an overdose. “I was consumed by cocaine, booze, and who knows what else. I apparently never got the memo that the Me generation had ended.”

Things got worse when he started to suffer from epileptic fits. “I came very close to dying. I’d have an epileptic seizure and turn blue and people would find me on the floor and put me to bed, and then 40 minutes later I’d be snorting another line.”

“I was a drug addict and self-absorbed. You know, I was having people die right, left and center around me, friends. And yet I didn’t stop the life that I had, which is the terrible thing about addiction. It’s that – you know, it’s that bad of a disease.”

Elton eventually confronted his drug and alcohol-induced epilepsy getting help for his addiction in 1990. Looking back on his career, Elton still finds it remarkable that he did not die in his young years.


Actress Brooke Shields shared in a recent interview that she had a “grand mal seizure,” which she attributed to drinking too much water. While preparing for her one-woman show, “Previously Owned by Brooke Shields,” the actress, 58, said she consumed so much water that her sodium levels dipped to a dangerously low level.

At the hospital, doctors confirmed that Shields “had too much water,” she said in her Glamour 2023 Women of the Year interview.

“I flooded my system, and I drowned myself. And if you don’t have enough sodium in your blood or urine or your body, you can have a seizure.”

In describing the event, Shields said she was “frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue. The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on.”


The writer now shares a close-to-home story which occurred in his own life long ago during medical school. A few years into marriage, my wife and I were busy most days with school and work. Problems, however, arose as Kathy, trying to do things perfectly, went to work early and left late. She was nursing in the city of Houston, in the middle of the huge Texas Medical Center and at Michael Debakey’s Methodist Hospital. She was assigned to the Medical Intensive Care Unit – a high-stress environment by itself.

In previous years, Kathy had begun to see psychologists and psychiatrists for her emotional problems and inadequacies. Her psychiatrist in Houston said she had “endogenous depression” and put her on medication. Kathy’s emotional challenges included mood swings, phobias and low self-esteem. Her medications were changed  frequently. “Try this.” “Try that.”

Still, she was not totally repressed. On the spur of the moment, Kathy had the nerve to walk up to a celebrity in a crowded restaurant to ask for an autograph. On the other hand, she was afraid to ask the apartment house neighbor to loan her a cup of sugar. The “public” Kathy was usually bright, smiling, and gregarious, while the “private” Kathy was bogged down in fears and guilts. Instead of adjusting to the hospital unit and her job, Kathy became more anxious and compulsive. She went to work earlier and stayed later. She limited her breaks and lunch time to keep up with her patients.

Things boiled over when her mother visited us during our first spring in Houston. I came home one late afternoon during Elaine’s stay to find that Kathy had experienced a seizure while the two of them were waiting for lunch to be served at a restaurant. They didn’t think to bother me as they were rushed to one of the many emergency rooms nearby. The ER physician proceeded to do the typical protocol of “skull series [xrays], EEG, and brain scan” and call in a neurologist. While all results were “within normal limits,” she was sent home with a prescription for Dilantin [anticonvulsant] and a follow-up appointment at the neurologist’s office.

Sadly, the neurologist had only taken the sketchiest of histories from mother and patient. He did not gather that K. was a stressed, compulsive intensive care nurse and under psychiatric care while taking an antidepressant and a tranquilizer. He had no idea that prior to Kathy’s seizure, she had not eaten for many hours. Kathy had the persistent sense that she was overweight and needed to watch her intake, at one point joining Weight Watchers. All the while, she probably weighed less than a hundred pounds.

Eventually, Kathy was able to get a more “expert” opinion by consulting her psychiatrist. That gentleman surmised that Kathy had gotten herself into a hypoglycemic state which, in conjunction with her medication, precipitated the seizure.

I wasn’t present when Kathy had her seizure. But apparently while waiting with her mother for lunch, she first got a little shaky and acted “funny.” Within moments, Kathy slid back in her chair, rolled her eyes, and “sputtered” briefly. Before her mother could get past her own shock, Kathy dropped to the floor, let out a noise, and rolled over. Quickly, a call for an ambulance went out while Elaine came to hold Kathy in her arms. Kathy was then quiet as in a sleep for several minutes. When ambulance attendants appeared, she was awake but groggy and wondering what was going on around her.

Kathy never had a recurrence without ever taking any anti-convulsant drug in the remaining years we were together. Even in later years, she experienced no further seizures while going through many changes of medications prescribed by psychiatrists, undergoing several surgeries, and experiencing three failed marriages. More than a dozen years ago, we spoke by telephone. Asked how she was doing while taking hundreds of dollars of psycho-therapeutic drugs each month, Kathy responded, “I feel pretty good, but I can’t balance my checkbook.”

 
Concussions are almost as common occurrences as faintings. They are happening every day in all sorts of places where the human body – not just the brain – meets resistance to its movement. Recent news has brought us stories of celebrities and politicians dealing with the effects resulting from fast moving men meeting immovable objects.


A few years ago, Dick Van Dyke was on the mend after scary circumstances surrounding his single-car crash in Malibu. Dick was injured on March 2023 after colliding with a gate while the city was experiencing consistent rain. “The airbags did not deploy, so I just had a face plant right in the steering wheel and it just made me a little dumber,” he told a reporter.

Van Dyke also pointed to two stitches he had on his bottom lip. Regardless of  his injury, Van Dyke said he was doing “pretty good, just sore all over. I’m 97 ― all my friends are dead.” Despite his age, the Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner continued to make headlines as a Kennedy Center Honoree, then “The Masked Singer,” and most recently as an injured driver.

Van Dyke is now remarkably active after turning 100 on Dec 13, 2025. He maintains a routine of gym workouts three times a week, yoga, and stretching. Dick has experienced age-related physical declines including stiffening, vision issues, hearing loss, and “game leg” limitations. But, he keeps a positive outlook, continues to sing, and stays creatively engaged.


Also in the winter of 2023, there was recurring news of a trial brought by retired optometrist Terry Sanderson against actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Sanderson claimed that Paltrow had crashed into him on the ski slopes at Utah’s Deer Valley Resort. Sanderson sued Paltrow for $300,000 for the incident which happened in February 2016.

Sanderson said he suffered four broken ribs, a concussion and lasting brain damage that affected his daily life and personal relationships. At the same time it was alleged that Sanderson, aged 69 in 2016, had been in ailing health before the accident, including dementia and partial blindness.

Apparently because of legal wrangling the lawsuit was not filed until January 2019. Sanderson claimed that Paltrow had been skiing “out of control” when she hit him from behind, knocked him down, and then landed on top of him. Sanderson said that after the collision, Paltrow got up and skied away and did not offer any help. He initially sought more than $3.1 million but amended his claim to $300,000. Paltrow repeatedly denied running into Sanderson and countersued for $1 and her legal fees.

Ms. Paltrow said she was on a family vacation with her children and friends at the ski resort when Sanderson smashed into her from behind and delivered a full “body blow.” She added that Sanderson apologized to her and they parted ways. A friend of Sanderson, who supported his version of the episode, claimed to be the only eyewitness while Paltrow’s family was nearby. A ski instructor who soon appeared at the scene reported that he had to “yank” Sanderson off the ground. The instructor who had been working with her children then told her she could leave.

The jury took a little more than two hours to conclude that Sanderson was “100% at fault” for the 2016 crash. Paltrow wished him well after the verdict. Sanderson summarily decided that the suit had not been a good idea.

It is quite interesting that Dr. Sanderson was dealing with some degree of dementia at the time of this incident. His altered state of mind seems to have contributed to the accident as well as to the unwise determination to sue Ms. Paltrow. The skiing accident added a concussion, bodily trauma, and broken ribs to his already shaky health and altered state of mind.


In March 2023, US Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell suffered a concussion and was hospitalized for observation and treatment after a fall at a hotel. Leader McConnell tripped and fell at a dinner event at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, D.C. McConnell was first elected in 1984 to the U.S. Senate. The 81-year-old man is the longest-serving Senate Republican leader in history.

McConnell had undergone triple bypass heart surgery in 2003. In 2019, McConnell also had surgery after injuring his shoulder in a fall at his Louisville, KY home. The following year, he brushed off questions regarding his health after he appeared in public with bruised and bandaged hands.

A few weeks after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s fall and concussion, he appeared to freeze on two occasions before the press. In July, McConnell froze at a news conference on Capitol Hill, going silent for 20 seconds, before being escorted away from the cameras. On the second occasion in Covington, Kentucky, he stopped for more than 30 seconds after he was asked whether he would run for re-election. A spokesperson said, “Leader McConnell felt momentarily lightheaded and paused during his press conference today.”

McConnell returned shortly afterward and continued his news conference, telling reporters, “I’m fine.” But was he, and is he?

Interestingly, Senator McConnell stepped down from Republican leadership in February 2024. “Aides insists the decision has nothing to do with McConnell's health. But, it came following a series of mental and physical falters over the last year – including two freezing episodes.”

Even into 2025, McConnell was still experiencing falls and minor injuries secondary to them – while still “feeling good.” Despite efforts to cover, evidences of his mental-physical slippage are quite apparent to simple observation. McConnell’s recent health has faced scrutiny, although doctors previously found no evidence of stroke, seizure, or Parkinson’s. He is finishing his term and not seeking reelection.


Stroke – or apoplexy – has been described for centuries before modern attempts to explain it relying on the materialistic bodily systems view of humans. Interestingly in distant times, people were known to succumb to apoplectic “fits.” As early as 1600, the notion of “apoplexy” appeared in dramas written by Shakespeare and others. In the 18th century, Johann von Goethe wrote of his father’s stroke laming his right side and interfering with his speech.

In those times, strokes were thought to be due to abnormal humors, thick blood, and melancholy (depression). In the modern era, medics focus almost entirely on physical causes for apoplectic effects. Strokes, whatever their true cause, have gotten the attention of notables like Charles Dickens, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Della Reese, Dick Clark, Gerald Ford and many others in modern times.

Today, strokes are often thought to be illnesses as dire as cancer even while the large majority of stroke victims recover. Their ills are usually caused by decreased blood flow to the brain or by bleeding into the brain tissue. The former cause is far more common and leads this viewer to believe that most strokes and TIAs are do to much subtler causes than generally considered by the medical community. Nonetheless, there are significant numbers of stroke patients who experience “real” physical disturbances in their brain tissue.


Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1888–1969) was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and politician. He gained political prominence on his own, but much more so through his sons. Kennedy married Rose Fitzgerald who bore him nine children, among them President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Senator Ted Kennedy. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he made a fortune as a stock and commodity investor and later through a wide range of businesses across the United States including Hollywood studios. Kennedy was appointed the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934. Kennedy later served as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940.

In the midst of his son’s political lives in December 1961, he was playing golf with his niece Ann Gargan. She noted that after picking up his ball on the 16th green, he became faint, lost his balance, and was driven home. He remained unresponsive in his bed until being taken to a hospital. His stroke – said to be an intracranial bleed – resulted in arm and leg paralysis, inability to speak except for guttural sounds, a face frozen with his mouth drooping to one side.

Interestingly at some point in his latter years, Kennedy had told family that the one fate he most feared was being incapacitated, unable to exercise control. So, his worst fear was realized as he appeared almost imprisoned in his body. There was desperate recognition in his eyes, but he was unable to communicate in words. Although “Nooo! Nooo! Nooo!” pored from his mouth for years. He could express anger as well by throwing things with his left hand.

Kennedy had round-the-clock nurses to tend him and deal with his frustrations. He eventually could read The Times and watch TV. He was often angry, flustered, and crying. But, he still had his say, and wouldn’t cooperate with rehabilitation efforts such as speech therapy and other programs. He hated it when forced for a time to walk with a brace. Kennedy did regain the ability to understand others and develop a jargon type of speech.

Joseph Kennedy survived the assassinations of sons John and Robert between which he began to have seizures. Kennedy seemed to bounced back until the tragedy at Chappaquiddick in 1969. Thereafter, he became blind, couldn’t get out of bed and lost his appetite, dying in that same year.


Patricia Neal (1926-2010) was an Academy Award winner in 1964 as well as a noted television and legitimate stage actress. At the peak of her success while working on a film in Hollywood in 1965, Patricia Neal (age 39) suffered a series of strokes that left her paralyzed and speechless. The first occurred while Patricia soaped the shoulders of her 8-year-old daughter then sitting in the bathtub:

§§ A pain shot through my head. Maybe I overdid it today, I thought. I shouldn’t be bending. I stood up.
“Mummy, what’s wrong?” Tessa asked, a bit frantically. I thought, but she had special antennae.

The pain grew more intense and I staggered into our bedroom. Roald was on his way with my martini. “I’ve got the most awful pain,” I told him. “I think there’s something wrong.”

He helped me to the bed. “I’ve been seeing things, too,” I said.

“What sort of things?” He asked. I couldn’t tell him; I had forgotten.

“Is the pain only in one place?”

“Yes.” I pressed my hand to my left temple. “Right here.”

I was aware that he reached for the bedside phone. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating. The last thing I remember thinking was, I have children to care for. I have another inside me. I can not die. §§

At the time, Patricia had three children and one on the way. She was three months pregnant then. After suffering three strokes – two of them in the hospital, Ms. Neal considered herself “as one dead. Gone.” That while the UPI put her obituary on the wires so that it was published by several newspapers.

No one believed she would survive, as a team of six doctors operated on her for seven hours. They opened her skull and found an aneurysm as the cause of the stroke. Thereafter Ms. Neal’s right side was paralyzed. Even worse, she was left with maddening double vision. “I had no power of speech and my mind just didn’t work.”

It was days before she spoke her first sentence. “My mind is wrong.”

“The fog of consciousness that held you prisoner from the outside world was, in fact, a blessing in disguise. First, you’re like a soul with no body, but the soul is drugged. Then the soul awakens into a body you cannot command. You are a prisoner in a private hell. Everybody is just pushing you around. They push your arms and your legs, your body. They say thing, shout things, look at you with expectations, and you don’t know what they want.”

“Each minute brings new reminders of the terrible gaps between you and every single thing you have taken for granted all your life. Brushing your teeth, swatting a fly from your face, getting a drink of water, going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

“‘My mind is gone,’ I would say over and over, ‘It’s so evil.’ But I had not lost my mind. If I had, things would have been easier.”

It took weeks before Neal came out of a coma. After three months, Patricia was able to muster enough strength to hold a press conference before returning to her family home in England. Her husband, the writer Roald Dahl, then devised a rigorous program of tricks, games and puzzles to improve her memory and speech along with other rehabilitation efforts. “From the moment I got back from the hospital, neighbors would begin to come for an hour at a time and virtually reteach me to live. I was not allowed to sit and stare.”

Patricia gave birth to Lucy Neal Dahl 5 1/2 months after the stroke. Neal was able to return to work two years later in the film The Subject Was Roses for which she received an Academy Award nomination. In 1978, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center dedicated the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. Neal became a champion in the rehabilitation field and a worldwide symbol of hope to stroke victims.


Sharon Stone, the actress made famous by her role in Basic Instinct, has led an extraordinary life. She arose from a small town in western Pennsylvania – like Patricia Neal in Kentucky – to become a highly paid model and a movie femme fatale. Along the way, Sharon has also encountered all kinds of personal and health challenges.

Her memoir, The Beauty of Living Twice, begins as she retells days in 2001 in the hospital “bleeding into her brain.” She experienced a very unusual form of stroke caused by the rupture of her vertebral artery. Ms. Stone was not new to medical ills and surgeries, but this one put her through the mill before, during, and after.

During the filming of Basic Instinct in 2001, coworkers thought Stone was doing drugs. But she believed that behavior they were seeing was actually early signs of the stroke she would barely survive almost a decade later.

“I was clearly having some mini seizures … I would go like this. [She tilts her head back and flutters her eyes.] I used to tell people I was having them, and nobody would believe me.”

“I kept saying, ‘I’m not taking drugs and I don't know why this happens to me.’ So when this [stroke] happened, there was a little bit of ‘Ohhh.’”

Then – “Without warning, it was as if Zeus himself hurled a bold of lightning directly under the back right-hand side of my head. I was airborne, flying over the back of the sofa, smashing into the coffee table … and that as my head bounced off the floor, bearing the brunt of my fall.”

Stone lived through an incorrect diagnosis, exploratory brain surgery where the cause of the bleeding was not found. Finally after nine days, bleeding from her vertebral artery was discovered, followed by placement of 23 coils to embolize (clot) the rupture in a seven-hour surgery. Then, there were many days in the ICU.

When finally released from the hospital, “I was walking, a ragged, tilted walk, my right leg dragging a bit, the left side of my face distorted and low, no feeling from the knee up in my left leg. I was talking, not knowing I was stuttering, not realizing that the walls didn’t really have blocks of colors on them. I’d lost directional hearing in my right ear and so much weight. I was now a whopping size two, at five feet, eight and a half inches. As the sun hit my face outside of the hospital, I felt small, thin to my core. It was hard to stand but standing felt good.”

“It took about two years for my body to absorb all of the blood that had blown into it.” Over that time, Stone lost her short-term memory as well as some long-term. She couldn’t see straight, stuttered for a few months, and struggled with hearing on one side. Stone felt “lost, wondering, sleeping, devastated.” Until her little son told her “no more jammies, mama.”

Eventually, Sharon decided that the stroke was a gift because, “I had lost track of myself.”

So, she reached for the light. “We can look into that light. We can carry that light, be that light, and know that we are not digital, we cannot be replaced by that because we are the one thing that matters more. Call it what makes your heart sing; but call it with love, because that will lift you, cleanse you, and save you. It is the beauty of living twice.”
 

Randy Travis is a country music legend who has sold over 25 million records, won multiple awards, and is considered one of the top country singers of all time. In 2013 at age 54, he suffered cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease) and flat-lined (cardiac arrest). Randy was revived but remained in a coma, having suffered a stroke which led to emergency surgery “to relieve pressure on his brain.”

Travis spent over five months in the hospital before beginning rehabilitation. The stroke having left him aphasic: his ability to speak and communicate was disturbed. Despite these challenges, he made significant progress in his recovery. Over ten years out now, Travis is still working hard to regain his speech and mobility. Finding new words, or putting two words together can be a real challenge for him.

The progress for Randy Travis has also included regaining the ability to sing “Amazing Grace,” which he performed at his induction to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. He also made a surprise appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in 2017.

Some stroke victims such as Travis are able to regain their singing abilities to a greater degree than regular speech. Singing and music have been therapy for Travis. His wife Mary has also mentioned other important therapies for Randy. “Environment and stimulation. As far as just going out and living your life, that’s when things start coming back to you. That’s when words start showing up, because the best therapy is living. The best therapy is getting out there and doing what you enjoy. Music.”

That is one of the reasons Randy Travis continues to appear at performances of artists near his home in Tioga, TX. “He loves the music,” says Mary Travis. “We go see people that are playing close by, or wherever we’re passing through. Any time we can hear music, there’s an extra skip in the heart. Of course he loved singing and playing the music, and always will. We love now to go hear other people play music, because the music is his soul. That’s what he gave to the world. And now the world likes to give it back to him.”


John Fetterman, six-foot-eight lieutenant governor, was on his way to a campaign event days before Pennsylvania held its primary election for U.S. Senate in mid-May 2022. In the car, his wife noticed the left side of his face drooping and his words starting to slur. She insisted that they reroute to a nearby hospital. There doctors retrieved the blood clot in a cerebral vessel thought to have caused a stroke. That same day, he underwent the implantation of a pacemaker and defibrillator. Fetterman had previously been diagnosed and treated for atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm) and cardiomyopathy.

Fetterman spent nine days in the hospital and three months off the campaign trail. Still, Mr. Fetterman easily won the Democratic nomination while in the hospital. Then his speech became less fluent; at times, he had difficulty finding the right word, or pronouncing it once he found it. He struggled with comprehending spoken language, and had to use closed-captioning devices for interviews and campaign events. Nonetheless, Fetterman went on to defeat his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Interestingly in the previous year, Senators Christopher Van Hollen and Ben Ray Luján suffered strokes; both returned to work. And, Fetterman joined them in the U.S. Senate in January 2023.
 
John Fetterman’s stroke left him with a physical impairment and serious mental challenges, including suicidal thoughts and loss of motivation.. A few days into the new job, Fetterman was hospitalized after feeling lightheaded while attending a daylong Senate Democratic retreat in Washington. Medical testing showed no sign of another stroke.

So, he has plodded on for meetings, meetings, and more meetings – plus public appearances back home. Ultimately, Fetterman was laden with depression which forced him to be hospitalized for six weeks at Walter Reed Army Medical center. But, the big man has carried the extra burdens with panache. He has showed that mental ills can be managed in the midst of public scrutiny and media attention. He uses technology for auditory processing issues and continues bearing a pacemaker. In November 2025, Big John published called Unfettered on his mental challenges.



Jamie Foxx is an actor and musician, comedian and impressionist. Foxx is best known for his award-winning portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 film Ray. He has long given the outward appearance of vibrant health until … He was rushed to an Atlanta hospital on April 11, 2023, while shooting a movie called Back in Action. Various sources over the following days gave differing reasons for his collapse. Details of his illness continued to be guarded many months after he appeared to suffer a stroke on the movie set. Doctors remarked that the 55-year-old almost died. “He’s very lucky to be alive.”

Foxx had been open about his health in decades past. On occasion, he talked about his struggle with substance abuse. He also recalled being hospitalized when he was a teenager to Oprah Winfrey.“I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even say, ‘Take me to the hospital,” he said. “It happened to me when I was 18, and I had 11 months of harsh flashbacks, and then when I was 26 I had a flashback just like that – and another one when I was 32, and that was the last one, but I always worry about it coming back.”

Recently, it was reported that, “Jamie suffers from high blood pressure, which doctors say can cause clots in the brain leading to a stroke. Doctors believe this was a long time coming, and really, if they hadn't acted fast, Jamie might well have been a goner.” Foxx apparently underwent surgery due to a “brain bleed,” but details have not appeared in the media.

Prior to his health scare, Jamie allegedly suffered “an absolute meltdown” during movie production in England, “going ballistic” on several members of the crew and leading to the firing of two directors and his own personal driver…. Jamie was said to have “absolutely been troubled throughout the shoot.”

Slowly through various media, bits and pieces of Foxx’s ordeal surfaced. Foxx broke his silence on May 3, when he took to his Instagram account and published a post, saying, “Appreciate all the love!!! Feeling blessed.”

On May 15, it was discovered that Jamie was no longer in an Atlanta hospital but was undergoing physical rehabilitation treatment at a facility in Chicago. “The rehab centers pretty much address any motor or any cognitive or language impairment that can potentially result from a condition like a stroke or brain injury.”

So, Foxx was largely “Missing In Action” until December 2023, when he received the Vanguard Award for his performance in The Burial at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Cinema and Television. That marked his first public appearance since his “medical emergency.”

During his acceptance speech, he talked about his recovery. “I couldn’t do that six months ago, I couldn’t actually walk to [the stage]…. It feels good to be here. I cherish every single minute now, it’s different. I wouldn’t wish what I went through on my worst enemy because it’s tough when it’s almost over, when you see the tunnel. I saw the tunnel, I didn’t see the light. It was hot in that tunnel too, I don’t know where I was going.”

He continued, “I have a new respect for life, I have a new respect for my art. I watched so many movies and listened to so many songs trying to have the time go by. Don’t give up on your art, man, don’t give up on your art. When you realize that it could be over like that.”


To this investigator, concussion is a lesser manifestation of physical shock. One that usually resolves quickly over time. But, shock can come in so many forms and levels of severity. Shock is not just physical in cause and expression. In the present day, when the word Shock appears it is more than likely to relate to soldiers in combat who eventually fight further battles with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Still military or civilian, any human being can experience shock.

Symptoms of shock regardless of cause may include a wide manner of reactions, anxiety, mood disturbances. And those problems are surely as common in the civilian as in the military population. Military medicine in the current time is quite aware of shock syndromes – often label Traumatic Brain Injury – and attuned to its soldiers. Shock effects occur frequently in all populations, but for many reasons are more likely to be passed over or misunderstood in civilian life.

We must also repeat that most patients experiencing shock syndromes show no documented evidence of brain injury, per se.


Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was considered to be  in the same league with American writers like Whitman, Melville, and Twain. He also participated in major events of the 20th century: World War I, the Lost Generation in Paris, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cuban Revolution. Along the way, Hemingway was said to suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) as the result of numerous concussions in his life. His ultimate dementia was complicated by alcoholism as well as diabetes and hypertension. These ills affected Hemingway’s day-to-day life, interactions, relationships, and possibly his later literary works.

Hemingway was a boxer as well as a football player as a young man. But he did not experience a major concussion until World War I, when in Italy an enormous Austrian trench mortar bomb exploded within a few feet of Ernest. It killed a soldier standing between him and the blast. It blew the legs off another, and propelled Hemingway several feet and covered him in earth.  

In Paris in 1928, after a bout of drinking with friends, Hemingway came home late. He proceeded to accidentally pull a cord attached to a crippled skylight which fell on his forehead, resulting in his second major concussion and a famous scar.

There followed a fall from the flybridge of his fishing boat while off the coast of Cuba, then a serious car accident in London when is head hit the windshield requiring 57 stitches. Ernest experienced three more concussions during World War II. A German antitank round blew him off a motorbike —involving a blast injury as well as blunt trauma. There was still another motor vehicle accident in Cuba. Finally, he and his fourth wife survived 2 plane crashes in Africa during their 1954 safari. Thereafter cognitive decline began to appear.

After the World War II concussions and the plane crashes. Hemingway described the symptoms, such as persistent headaches, irritability, hearing changes, and double vision. Hemingway eventually passed through periods of depression, feeling he could not work because of injuries in his early life and mental difficulties later in life.

Electro Convulsive Therapy surely added to the several problems weighing on his mind and body. Hemingway famously underwent 20 (twenty) rounds of ECT at Mayo Clinic to treat him for depression in 1961. He then lost some of his memory as a result, and wrote “It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient,” shortly before committing suicide in that year.  

There are further points of interest from the angle of Hemingway’s family, as noted in Margaux’s case above. Ernest’s father committed suicide by shooting himself with the Colt pistol that his own father had carried in the Civil War. His brother committed suicide, even as two of his sisters did the same. Hemingway also wrote of his grandfather Hall on his mother’s side who attempted suicide. His first wife’s father also committed suicide.

Hemingway predicted his own suicide on a number of occasions, practiced and rehearsed that moment as a morbid form of entertainment for friends in Cuba. He’d place the butt of his Mannlicher shotgun on the floor, the barrel in his mouth, and click the trigger with his big toe, and then grin at his guests.


US Army Captain Montalvan (1973-2016) was once a tall imposing presence, known as “the terminator.” But, he inevitably lost that aura to the point that he was forced to lean on a cane. Curious people could discover some of the numerous physical and psychological wounds he suffered as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among other horrors, he had there experienced seeing children murdered and fellow soldiers blown up right in front of him.  

During a raid of an enemy house in Iraq, Luis suffered what was called a traumatic brain injury and nearly died. But his brain injury was not immediately diagnosed, nor was the severity of the injury to his legs known. He continued to serve in the Army. Only after years of various struggles and battles in Iraq did Luis decide to leave the military. Upon his honorable discharge from the Army, he returned to the state of New York.

But in some ways, his struggles were just beginning. His physical and psychological wounds were little recognized. Pain at several levels consumed his time and energy Until Tuesday. Luis only began to put the pieces together, when a golden retriever named Tuesday became inseparable from his side. In a seeming miracle, Tuesday gave him freedom, even from some of his worst fears. Luis believed that Tuesday gave him back his life. It was Tuesday’s personality that “broke my shell and set me free.” The happy, loving canine seemed to save Luis’s life …

Before Tuesday appeared, Luis spied snipers on rooftops, lacked the courage to walk to the nearby liquor store, took twenty medicines a day for pain and agoraphobia. Simple social encounters sent him into crippling migraines. His equilibrium was so disturbed that he often fell. Stairs became a challenge for him. Pills and rum allowed him some level of escape.

Life and hope returned for years with the appearance of Tuesday, his faithful friend and service dog and healing companion. Then, Luis Montalvan was able to write his best-seller Until Tuesday.

But despite his rebirth thanks to Tuesday, pain and struggle recurred. Details are lacking as in early 2016, Luis’s right leg was amputated above the knee. And he died at a hotel in El Paso, Texas, later that year; his dog was not with him when he died. Autopsy suggested Montalvan died by suicide from overdose of pentobarbital.



THE Rolling Stone, Mick Jagger developed acute traumatic stress disorder after his fashion designer lover L'Wren Scott hanged herself in March 2014. As a result, Jagger’s emotional shock forced the Rolling Stones to cancel live shows in Australia and New Zealand.

Doctors told Jagger, “Don’t go on stage for a month” after he experienced flashbacks, nightmares, feelings of guilt and emotional numbness. In medicalese, if these symptoms continue for more than a month they then constitute post traumatic stress disorder.

Jagger released a statement in which he said he would “never forget her.” He added: ‘I am still struggling to understand how my lover and best friend could end her life in this tragic way.”

Now years later, Mick Jagger at 80 years old is still touring and wailing with the Rolling Stones. He may not have forgotten the trauma of losing his love. But, body and mind, he has moved on.


Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in 1986, Lady Gaga is a singer, songwriter and actress known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga has received Grammy, Golden Globe, and MTV Video Music Awards among others. Her philanthropy and activism focus on mental health awareness and LGBT rights.

Lady Gaga began performing as a teenager. She studied at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, before dropping out to pursue her unique career in music. Gaga made her breakthrough with her first studio album in 2008. Five succeeding studio albums all debuted atop the US Billboard 200. Then she ventured into acting, winning awards for leading roles. Most recently, Gaga collaborated with Tony Bennett on albums and stage performances.

But life has not all been roses for Lady Gaga as she developed post-traumatic stress disorder after being raped repeatedly when she was 19 years old. She believes that she developed PTSD because she didn't “process the trauma.”

“I all of a sudden became a star and was traveling the world going from hotel room to garage to limo to stage, and I never dealt with it, and then all of a sudden I started to experience this incredible intense pain throughout my entire body that mimicked the illness I felt after I was raped,” she said.
 
Gaga first revealed her rape in 2014, and two years later, in December 2016, she made her PTSD diagnosis public during an appearance on the Today show. She also posted a letter on the website of her foundation, Born This Way, sharing more about her experience with PTSD. “Traditionally, many associate PTSD as a condition faced by brave men and women that serve countries all over the world. While this is true, I seek to raise awareness that this mental illness affects all kinds of people, including our youth.”


The media – at this writing – have been full of the assault and defamation case brought against the former president by writer and columnist  E. Jean Carroll. The defense attorney had tried to drill holes in her story and testimony. But, Carroll stood her ground and deflected attacks while endeavoring to redeem herself.

Carroll was assaulted in the 90s in the Bergdorf-Goodman store in New York City. She kept largely silent for over twenty years until writing about the incident in her cathartic book called What Do We Need Men For? E. Jean apparently couldn’t keep the lid on the story of her rape forever. Then, Mr. Trump made defamatory remarks repeatedly about her claim. Two juries in civil trials accepted her claim to being sexually assaulted and defamed. Carroll was first awarded close to five million dollars in damages and over 80 milion dollars upon a second trial.

Like the defense attorney, some may wonder why it took Carroll so long to point the finger and why there were both inconsistencies and missing information in her story. But to the jurors, it must have been clear that such a sudden, violent intrusion into her body and being could not but result in shocking effects. Nothing stays hidden forever. Signs and symptoms can be recognized in those who have been traumatized and shocked, for those “with the eyes to see.”


Oprah Winfrey is a phenomenon. Her story is almost beyond belief. At a time when women in broadcasting were largely limited to reporting local news and weather, Oprah defied the odds to create a top-ranked talk show, launch her own production company and magazine, and distinguish herself as an actress in films like The Color Purple. Oprah long ago became the first Black American female billionaire.

She was born to young parents, raised for a time by her grandmother, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her childhood was full of traumatic experiences. Her family was poor and received welfare benefits. She endured years of neglect, as well as physical and sexual abuse from an early age – raped before she was 10, and pregnant by 14. Her baby died in the first week of life. “When that child died, my father said to me, ‘This is your second chance. This is your opportunity to seize this moment and make something of your life,’” Oprah recalled.

Out of her personal experiences, Oprah eventually joined Dr. Bruce Perry to release a book on Childhood Trauma: What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. The book is a broad discussion about childhood trauma and the long-term impact on physical, mental, social and behavioral health. It also focuses on how positive connections promote healing. Oprah stated that “I’m hoping people find themselves in every story: in the faces, in the feelings, in the vulnerability and the openness and the willingness to share and understand that we’re all on the spectrum of mental health.”

For Winfrey, it was a bond with special teachers in her life that inspired, encouraged and made her feel safe. “It’s my teachers that saved me. For so many years in my life that’s the only place I ever really felt loved.”


Psychosis is commonly equated with schizophrenia. The latter word literally means split mind. Dissociation or mind-splitting (not brain-splitting) inevitably creates havoc in the body and whole being. That occurs even to the point where the affected individual can become possessed by discarnate beings. Too often it seems, psychotics are treated with chemicals when their actual problems involve “becoming home for extra tenants.”

We must remark that psychosis is more complicated than the rest of our list of “altered states of consciousness.” Psychosis – schizophrenia – most often occurs during the early years of life. It often erupts powerfully and persists for long times while becoming more and more consuming. And, it is beyond successful treatment with typical medical means.


Vincent van Gogh, born in 1853, was a Dutch post-impressionist painter whose vital style and brilliant colors brought him worldwide fame after his death in 1890. He has often been considered a genius because of his expressive innovations and the emotional depth in his paintings. Like his art, van Gogh’s mental ills have long been subject of active interest – and still are despite attempts to come to a “diagnosis” more than a century after his death.

Van Gogh started adult life aiming to become a preacher, but failed to meet expectations of his mentors and superiors. He then turned to study art which he followed in his own unique way thanks the financial help from his brother Theo who recognized his genius.

After six years working at his art, Vincent joined his brother in Paris in 1886. There, he began to suffer spasms of terrors, abdominal pains, and lapses of consciousness – much like epileptic seizures. His use of absinthe, a highly alcoholic beverage, appears to have played a role in the precipitation of van Gogh’s illness. His brother, with whom he lived, remained sympathetic to him despite the increasing burden he became. Theo described Vincent in a letter: “It seems as if he were two persons: one, marvelously gifted, tender and refined, the other, egotistic and hard hearted. They present themselves in turns, so that one hears him talk first in one way, then in the other, and always with arguments on both sides. It is a pity that he is his own enemy, for he makes life hard not only for others but also for himself.”

Vincent persisted in perfecting his art, all the while his eccentricities led to mental instability, bouts of depression. “I am a man of passion, capable and prone to undertake more or less foolish things which I happen to repent more or less.”

In 1888, Vincent left and moved to southern France. He continued to paint – often to relieve his disturbing emotions. The French painter Paul Gauguin – on Theo’s urging – went to spend two months with van Gogh there, but the friendship fell into arguments as had been the case with Theo. As Gauguin was leaving on Christmas Eve 1888, van Gogh followed him with an open razor in hand. He was somehow repelled, then went home, and cut off part of his left ear, which he then presented to his favorite prostitute. The police found him unconscious and had him hospitalized. He continued in an acute psychotic state with agitation, hallucinations, and delusions that required 3 days of solitary confinement. But, he retained no memory of his attacks on Gauguin, the self-mutilation, or the early part of his stay at the hospital.

Van Gogh continued to work even in the midst of serious mental ills, producing hundreds of paintings in his last two years. He also suffered further psychotic episodes, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations. Van Gogh eventually killed himself at the age of 37.  Over the decades past his life and death, many dozens of physicians have ventured a variety of diagnoses of his illness. Theories have suggested that the artist suffered from bipolar disorder [manic-depression], temporal lobe epilepsy, syphilis and schizophrenia among others.


Zelda Sayre, born in 1900, was a writer and artist as well as a 1920s celebrity. She has been considered the muse as well as the “partial genius” behind her husband, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. While he overshadowed her, Zelda was known as a “wild, bewitching, mesmerizing, quintessential flapper.” She was extravagant and flamboyant, but also uncontrolled and considered by some to be “a beautiful fool.” Even more defining for Zelda was her recurrent mental illness which surfaced in her late 20s and was said to follow upon “nervous exhaustion.”  

Still when she was only aged 22, the writer John Dos Passos described Zelda in his journal as “strange, tending to speak in an eccentric, difficult-to-understand manner.”
Likewise before Zelda was considered to be mentally ill, her friends thought she was a unique thinker who seemed to flow from one idea to another. She spoke frequently in allegories and metaphors with a vocabulary referred to as “convoluted.” Zelda was described in so many ways by so many people. Even before she “broke down,” Zelda moved back and forth between hyperactivity to inertia. She was often noted seeking attention, acting wilfully and sometimes dangerously. On the other hand, Zelda could be elusive and vulnerable, inward and aloof.

Zelda Fitzgerald was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930 by no less an expert than Eugen Bleuler, the clinician who coined the term. Bleuler believed that she had then been ill for five years. She began with a 15-month stay at the Prangins Clinic in Switzerland. The Prangins treatment, known as the Swiss sleeping cure, included morphine and bromides administered rectally.  

After her release from Prangins, she had relapses and hospitalizations for years. Besides Prangins, Zelda spent long periods at upscale sanatoria of the day. Intermittently when finances were limited, she was housed in whatever hospitals were affordable. Various and sundry treatments were administered.

Scott Fitzgerald struggled for years to find the right approach to his wife's mental ills. He was deeply involved with attempts at diagnosis and treatment. Much concerned, he wrote that, “I would rather have Zelda a sane mystic than a mad realist.”

But, schizophrenia was commonly given as her diagnosis along with less imposing ones. All the while, Mr. Fitzgerald resisted that diagnosis and continued to seek a physical cause for her illness. That was the case even as Scott himself added to Zelda’s problems through his own deep insecurities and addiction to alcohol. The Fitzgeralds’ lives were deeply entangled at many levels which supported and magnified their creativity as well as their maladies – mental, emotional, and physical. Neither Scott nor Zelda appeared able to discipline themselves and control their energies.

Zelda’s letters to Scott revealed many layers and chapters in her 20-year-long illness. At one time she admitted, “feeling from the flights of the human soul divorced from the person.” On another, she was “ill and harassed by evil spirits from the spirit world.”Zelda’s symptoms were marked by recurrent unrealistic beliefs, auditory hallucinations and occasional acts of unprovoked violence, usually directed at herself. At times, she was tormented by terrifying voices and her dreams were peopled with phantoms of “indescribable horror.” In later years, Zelda reported religious delusions. She told of being in communication with Jesus Christ, Apollo, and William the Conqueror among others. From the physical angle, Zelda developed an obsession with bathing several times a day and with practicing ballet non-stop. On occasions, her weight dropped below 90 pounds. Even in the throes of her symptoms, Zelda often displayed a high level of productivity throughout much of her life. She was able to publish a novel and magazine articles. Zelda’s pencil drawings and water colors were also exhibited.

Zelda’s travails have been described by several biographers, often drawing on her voluminous correspondence with Scott. But seventy years after her passing, a physical element to her illness has still not been identified. Today, medics variously describe her ills as having components of schizophrenia as well as bipolar disorder – manic-depression. Zelda’s own musings may yet have much upon which for us to ponder. A most telling notation she made to her husband in one of her letters was that, “The slave has lost its master…. It’s ghastly losing your mind and not being able to see clearly, literally or figuratively – and knowing that you can’t think and that nothing is right, not even your comprehension of concrete things like how old you are or what you look like.”

Zelda was hospitalized numerous times, several of them at Highland Hospital in North Carolina. But, she was eventually able to live at her mother’s home in Alabama while Fitzgerald was writing movie scripts in Hollywood. Scott suddenly died there in 1940. Then, Zelda fended for herself, more or less, until she was returned to Highland Hospital for the last time in 1947. There she intermittently received insulin shock treatments as well as electro-convulsive therapy until a fire broke out in March 1948 killing Zelda and eight other patients.


Howard Hughes, Jr. (1901-1976), was known as a business tycoon, manufacturer, aviator, and motion picture producer. A fascinating character, he became known as a very rich man as well as an eccentric reclusive genius. His father invented a rotary bit for oil well drilling that made the family extremely wealthy. The younger Hughes inherited that wealth and the Hughes Tool Company, in Houston, TX, upon the death of both parents when he was in his early 20s.

In 1926 Hughes moved to Hollywood, where he began producing and even directing films. While making films, Hughes became involved in aviation. In 1932 he founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in California. He set speed records crossing the country and the world in the 30s. Hughes continued in a similar vein to buy a share of Trans World Airlines and eventually gained controlling interest in TWA. He also bought the Desert Inn, a resort casino in Las Vegas and proceeded to play an influential role in Las Vegas’s development, changing the city’s image — which was then linked to the Mafia — and attracting more corporate investment.

During the Second World War, Mr. Hughes and his aircraft company took on the task of building military aircraft as well as testing them. The testing became a personal challenge for Hughes, but also a recurring danger to life and limbs. It seems that, like Ernest Hemingway who was involved in all sorts of land vehicle accidents, Howard Hughes drew airplanes to damage his body and disturb his mind.  His first mishap was in 1927 while piloting a Thomas Morse scout plane in California. The plane went into a spin and crashed to the earth. Howard was pulled from the plane unconscious with a crushed cheekbone. There followed days in the hospital and facial surgery which left his face markedly changed.

In 1936 while flying off Long Island, NY, Hughes was caught by a tail wind and crashed. He appeared uninjured even though that was by then his third plane accident. In 1943, Hughes was conducting a test flight of an experimental seaplane called the Sikorsky S-43 amphibian aircraft over Lake Mead, when it suddenly nosedived and crashed. Two died – one man’s body was never recovered from the lake – while Hughes “barely survived” with what were considered “minor injuries.”

Then, there was the Hughes XF-11 which almost killed Howard Hughes after he tried to make an emergency landing on the 9th hole of the Wilshire Country Club in Beverly Hills, California. Intended to be a fast, long-range, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft for the United States Air Force, Hughes Aircraft was awarded a contract for one hundred XF-11s. Production delays hampered the plane and the war ended before planes came off the assembly line. Then, the Air Force contract was whittled down to just three planes.

Hughes decided he would be the first to fly the aircraft and took off on its maiden flight from the Hughes Aircraft factory airfield at Culver City on July 1946. The airplane suddenly lost power and Hughes decided to land the aircraft on a golf course. Three hundred meters short of the course, the aircraft wheels clipped a couple of houses, slicing through the last one with its wing, igniting a fire. The crash caused Hughes burns, a crushed left collarbone, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung.

There was yet another maiden flight for Hughes with his H-4 Hercules which was designed to carry more than 700 troops. In 1947 in Long Beach harbor, it rose up 70 feet into the air for about a mile. There was no crash. Hughes said it needed more development. But, the Spruce Goose flew only once. It was never flown again, and sits now in an aviation museum in Oregon.
 
Much of Hughes’s story, even after deep investigations and several biographies, may still be unknown to the public. Howard Jr. started as a mere “jumble of possibilities,” growing up obsessed about his health, becoming a pill-taker, absorbing his mother’s phobias, and developing a number of superstitions.

Howard Hughes was merely unusual but not insane until his 40s. The turning point seems to have come as Hughes suffered numerous injuries in his aircraft accidents. In 1944, a downward spiral took over in the midst of overwork and anxieties. “Signs pointing to a mental breakdown were unmistakable” and Howard collapsed. Suspicious and secretive by nature, his foibles became exaggerated and his idiosyncrasies were expanded and magnified. Hughes became more and more obsessive-compulsive.

He then often drove to meet people and confer in automobiles in remote places. When it was necessary to speak inside buildings, meetings were commonly held in bathrooms or in auditoria which allowed large spaces around the speakers. Basically, any place which prevented intrusion by any kind of eavesdroppers suited Howard.

Mr. Hughes demanded exact timings for phone calls to key employees – many of whom he never met face-to-face – and outsiders alike. At the same time, delay and procrastination seemed to be hallmarks of his method. For years, Hughes worrried about being declared mentally incompetent even while he “made his own rules.” The obsessive, fearful, deranged man was very rich and thus was able to “control his own asylum.” He employed doctors but gave them little power over his life, body or mind. Hughes medicated himself using doctors to write prescriptions which were also multiplied by similar ones written in the names of his employees. Doctors and other workers played Hughes’s game for years.

While Hughes’s interests and activities covered much of the USA and beyond, his fears grew and grew. He took incredible precautions against germs and contamination while living in a self-restricted environment. Windows were taped shut, visitors and helpers kept at distances, rooms fumigated, darkness pervaded them, he rarely went outside. At the same time, Howard’s addictions to “prescribed” drugs became consuming  just like his watching TV and movies. All the while, his body and personal space were generally ill kept.

Much like a recent highly public American figure, Howard Hughes followed in the shadow of his father, living off his name, while producing a string of business failures over fifty years. Nonetheless, his wealth increased apace. He also kept a small army of lawyers busy with dozens of lawsuits. “I did nothing wrong…”

Hughes managed to maintain “special relationships” with the federal government; most especially the Internal Revenue Service and the Civil Aeronautics Board. He somehow was able to keep government agencies at bay. They seemed to ignore fraudulent, even forged documents which Hughes presented to them.  

For much of his “public life,” Howard Hughes imagined all manner of conspiracies by competitors and Communist sympathizers. Until the end, he had trouble making decisions while negotiations usually at long distance gave him thrills. Incredibly, Hughes was ranked for a time with J. Paul Getty as the country’s richest man.

Most amazingly, Howard Hughes kept hundreds to thousands of Americans employed with his businesses and project. Yet, he never appeared to relate to his fellows. Mechanical objects and technical matters were his forte. “Hughes Legends,” were spread with help by the media, and abound in regard to his fortunes, his mystique, and his non-existent or fraudulent philanthropies.

In his final years Hughes moved his residence repeatedly from Las Vegas to Nicaragua, Canada to Mexico, and the Bahamas to England. He took elaborate precautions to ensure absolute privacy in luxury hotels and was rarely seen by anyone except a few aides. Often working for days without sleep in a black-curtained room, he became emaciated and deranged while medicating himself to excess. In 1976, he died on a flight en route from Mexico to Houston to seek medical treatment.


John F. Nash Jr., was a mathematical genius and a Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences. He was also a man plagued by mental illness from which he eventually was resurrected. Nash was the subject of a book and a popular film in 2001, both titled A Beautiful Mind.  

John Forbes Nash (1928-2015) born in Bluefield, West Virginia, was a prodigy but not a sterling student in high school until he stumbled across E. T. Bell’s book Men of Mathematics. He soon demonstrated his own mathematical skill by independently proving a classic Fermat theorem. At Princeton in 1948, Nash’s doctoral thesis written when he was 21 predicted the possible outcome of a game with multiple players. It paved the way for economic theory to be applied to many situations including the marketplace.

But early in 1959 with his wife pregnant with their son, Dr. Nash began to unravel.  He suffered his first bout of full-blown schizophrenia and for the next three decades, Nash was plagued by paranoia, auditory hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and a decreasing ability to connect with others. His brilliance seemed to have a malignant side, leading him to paranoia and delusion, and he was hospitalized numerous times. Nash was subjected to repeated insulin shock among other treatments. He eventually fled for a while to Europe and vanished from the professional world.

Nash began a slow recovery in the 1980s. “He hadn’t published a scientific paper since 1958. Many people had heard, incorrectly, that he had had a lobotomy. Others, mainly those outside of Princeton, simply assumed that he was dead.” But by the early 90s one colleague, who had watched his earlier ghost-like ramblings around Princeton University, declared the man “a walking miracle.”
 
Nash believed that he rationally willed his own recovery over the course of a quarter-century. During that time, he was often cared for by his wife, mother and sister, and a supportive mathematics community. It may be wondered whether this larger, caring community kept Nash alive, physically as well as socially, until a recovery slowly became possible.
 
By the early 1990s, he simply decided that he was going to return to rationality. In 1996, Nash said, “I emerged from irrational thinking, ultimately, without medicine other than the natural hormonal changes of aging.”

Brian Wilson is famed as a founder of the Beach Boys and one of the greatest musicians of all time: “A living musical genius,” according to George Martin. But, his personal life has been marked by tragedies. Born in 1942, Wilson experienced paternal abuse, familial loss, battles with addiction and a lifelong struggle with “schizoaffective disorder” – which is a combination of schizophrenic symptoms as well as mood disturbances.

Wilson was at the height of his career and international success when he suffered his first nervous breakdown in 1964. The increasing pressures of fame and constant demands of a successful career took a toll on his mind. Drugs became an aid as well as release for Wilson; but also apparently an opening to “voices in my head.” Brian has admitted that drugs helped him write his extraordinary music, while “shattering my mind.”

“I have heard those voices for a long time, maybe fifty years now. They first came to me when I was twenty-two, after I took LSD. People told me it made your mind larger, and that sounded interesting to me. I was interested in exploring ways of getting expanded.”

Eventually, the singer-composer distanced himself from The Beach Boys. Using marijuana, hashish, and psychedelics with his newfound social circle in Hollywood absorbed much of his time and interest. Following his growing drug usage, the pop star started having auditory hallucinations in his early 20s. Admitted to a psychiatric ward in 1968 and treated for severe anxiety disorder, he was then diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and mild manic depression. Eventually, he was given the label of paranoid schizophrenia.

In common words, Brian Wilson faced challenges in the likes of overweight – up to 300 pounds; fear, depression and insomnia; darkness and hypersensitivity to the world in and around him; hyperactivity then exhaustion. Then, he was overwhelmed with “ideas coming at me all the time.” Then periods of emptiness – hours spent in bed and times when he didn’t remember to clean himself.

“It got darker and darker, with more voices, more drinking, and more drugs…. The drugs weren’t something that I liked for themselves. They were ways of dealing with the fact that my head wasn’t right. But they didn’t solve a thing. With the drugs, in fact, came every other kind of problem.”

In 2006, he said, “Well, for the past 40 years I’ve had auditory hallucinations in my head, all day every day, and I can’t get them out. Every few minutes the voices say something derogatory to me, which discourages me a little bit, but I have to be strong enough to say to them, ‘Hey, would you quit stalking me? Don’t talk to me — leave me alone!’”

The voices included those of musicians as well as of his father. Some gave him music while others intended to do him harm. For much of Wilson’s life, dealing with The Voices was an every day struggle. So, the voices brought him music as well as conflict. Thus, his music was the problem which ultimately became the solution, “When I Grow Up to be a Man.”


Wilson “always listened to sounds in the studio, sounds in the world, to the voices in my mind and the voices in my head.” At times, Brian experienced hearing a whole song from start to finish “between his ears.”

Although Wilson’s mental health improved with treatment, the auditory hallucinations stayed with him and made it difficult for him to perform onstage. Brian Wilson made a comeback as recently as 2019 at age 77 while continuing to fight with the “voices in his head” and learning to combat his demons.  

In the winter of 2024, Brian’s wife Melinda died. She had been the pillar of his life for three decades and in recent years had provided Brian with his “daily living needs.” Soon thereafter, Brian’s family filed to place him under a conservatorship after Wilson was diagnosed with dementia. The family asked the court to authorize “placement or treatment for a major neurocognitive disorder (such as dementia).”

According to a doctor's declaration submitted to the court, “Wilson is unable to self-administer his own medication or adhere to his medication scheduling. He also struggles with his ability to control his mood or emotions.”

Brian Wilson continued on until June 11, 2025. His final days were spent under full-time care, with his bandmates and family visiting him to sing for him weekly. He passed away surrounded by family.



Parkinsonism appears as an off-and-on, stop-and-start, ragged, generally momentary change or shift of behavior. Most people with Parkinsonism are quite functional despite their illness. But, their symptoms can be ever so challenging and frustrating.

Then, it is common for Parkinsonian patients to follow patterns in which their manageable symptoms lead slowly to harsher ones. They often lead progressively to more serious and global problems – like dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.


Muhammad Ali was a modern hero, extraordinary athlete and humanitarian. He became something of a magical figure in America, given all sorts of titles and awards including “Athlete of the Century.” Ali brought speed and grace as well as charm and wit to the sport of boxing. He was World Champion several times over, living up to his claim to be “The Greatest.” Ali went on to “champion” many causes beyond the boxing ring including Islam, black pride, and third-world countries.

As he developed early onset, tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease, he then became an advocate for others so affected. Muhammad Ali passed through over thirty years of progressive, resting tremor dying in 2016 at age 74. “Ali manifested a classic Parkinson's disease left-arm rest tremor, which was suppressed as he raised his left hand to steady his right arm in order to light the torch.”

His symptoms included fatigue, weakened voice, slowing of motions, and a masked face as well as other visible motor effects. In his latter years, “Ali's face became gradually more masked, his speech more hypophonic, and he experienced stooped posture, shuffling steps, postural instability, and falling.”

Questions long swirled about the extent to which Parkinson’s disease versus repeated hits to the head contributed to Muhammad Ali’s progressive tremor and cognitive impairment. Debate still continues whether Ali’s diagnosis should have been young-onset Parkinson’s disease rather than a form of dementia from repetitive head trauma.


Bobby McFerrin is a vocal magician and 10-time Grammy winner. Since his first album in 1982, McFerrin produced a wide array of projects from conducting the world’s great orchestras as well as collaborations with artists from many disciplines to solo performances transforming audiences into impromptu choirs. Yet even at 73 he has been thinking about what comes next as his body has been slowed by Parkinson’s.

Sara, McFerrin’s mother, was also a singer, and she helped instill his abiding love of church music and his sustaining faith. “When I was 10 or 11, I remember that if I wasn’t feeling good, she’d bring me aspirin and a record to listen to. She taught me medicine and music took the pain away.” Sound and healing have run through McFerrin’s life, and have been bound to his work of improvisation.

He has struggled with depression because of voice changes related to his Parkinson’s symptoms. “I couldn’t get any sound. I had no control over it. It took me about a year and a half to get through, until his manager said, ‘You still have your creativity. You still have your chops.’”

So, McFerrin then started the Monday afternoon sessions called “Motion” in Berkeley as a rediscovery of his mother’s wisdom about music as medicine for the body and soul. His new a cappella quintet does “circle songs,” which combine deep listening with acute improvisational skills. McFerrin and his crew of vocal explorers — David Worm, Bryan Dyer, Tammi Brown and Destani Wolf — create spontaneous musical forms.  

Joining others to sing again, he was reminded that “the voice doesn’t lead,” McFerrin said. “The spirit leads. I just open up my mouth and go. I never know what’s going to come out. I really enjoy the surprise that improvisation brings.”


The Rev. Jesse Jackson announced in 2017 that he has Parkinson's disease, saying that he first noticed symptoms around three years past. Jackson, age 76, released the news in what he called an update “on my health and the future.”

The longtime political and social activist, who was part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s inner circle in the 1960s and who later founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said that after noticing signs of the disorder, he attempted to work through it. “But as my daily physical struggles intensified, I could no longer ignore the symptoms, so I acquiesced.”

“After a battery of tests, my physicians identified the issue as Parkinson's disease, a disease that bested my father. For me, a Parkinson's diagnosis is not a stop sign.” He added that he will do what he can to slow the disease, through physical therapy and changes to his lifestyle.  

By late 2022, Jackson’s disorder had progressed over time with decline of mobility and speech. He then spent several weeks at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab where he underwent physical, occupational and speech therapy to treat his symptoms: “I came in here in a wheelchair and I'm leaving here walking on my own power.” With some help to maintain balance, Rev. Jackson said he was determined to get back to work.  

“Fighting Parkinson's is about working and being active,” Jackson said. “You can't sleep your way through Parkinson’s.”

But by 2025, Jackson’s diagnosis had changed to progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) which is said to be a life-threatening, progressive neuro-degenerative disease. Then, Reverend Jackson passed away on February 17, 2026, at age 84, surrounded by family, who reported his final days were filled with prayers and hymns.


In recent years, actor Michael J. Fox has become something of a cheerleader and poster boy for Parkinson’s Disease. Fox was a big Hollywood star via leading roles in Family Ties and Back to the Future when his world changed dramatically at the age of 29 in 1991 with the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. His illness – young onset, progressive, degenerative, incurable, very rare – added to his singularity as well as his challenges.

After seven years of “hiding,” he decided to reveal his condition to the public. Two years later, he left Spin City to launch the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Along the path of becoming a PD activist, Fox opened up about his alcoholism as well as the equally challenging process of getting sober. Fox, now 61, has said that he’s been able to remain optimistic because of his love for his family and the fulfillment he finds in helping others who are struggling.

There occurred a “prequel” to Fox’s Parkinsonian symptoms on the set of Back to the Future: Part III [released May 1990]. “I had actually hanged myself during a botched film stunt. Marty McFly, stranded in 1885, finds himself at the mercy of a lynch mob. At the last moment before they string him up, he manages to insert his left hand between the rope and his neck. This shot was not designed to include my whole body, so for the rest of the couple of takes, I stood on a small wooden box. While this was technically, a stunt, it was also my close-up, so Charlie [stunt man] was on the sidelines. No matter how I shifted my weight, the swinging effect was not realistic, so I offered to try it without the support of the box. This worked well for the next couple of takes, but on the third I miscalculated the positioning of my hand. Noose around my neck, dangling from the gallows pole, my carotid artery was blocked, causing me briefly to pass out. I swung, unconscious, at the end of the rope for several seconds before Bob Zemeckis [writer-director], fan of mine though he was, realized even I wasn’t that good an actor.”

Fox’s outward ordeal began November 13, 1990, with just one of his fingers. But, “it wasn’t mine, it was somebody else’s. My pinkie was possessed…. Fifteen minutes into that first morning of the custody battle for my pinkie, the tiny tremor simply would not stop. Maybe if I ignored it for a while … I went into the bathroom, pulled open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet, found a bottle of Tylenol, and dry-swallowed two. Standing in front of the larger vanity mirror, I held up my left hand, as if by studying its reflection I might gain a little objectivity. No such luck. Now there were two twitching pinkies.”

Eventually without medication, forces beyond his control produced tics and tremors which gained “complete authority over my physical being. I’m utterly in its possession” except during hours of sleep. After brain surgery, there occurred “rapid escalation of the new tremor on my right side – worsening at a rate I could track almost on a daily basis. I wonder if the disappearance of the furious flapping in my left arm had also served to throw the other symptoms (rigidity, hypomimia [reduced facial expression], and the rest) into sharper relief.”  

Fox was recently the subject of a documentary called Still. Trying to put his life in perspective, he was asked about life before Parkinson’s. “What would it mean to be still?” Fox answered, “I wouldn’t know.”

As of  2026, Michael J. Fox, 64, continues to live with advanced Parkinson’s disease dealing with significant physical challenges and increased frailty. He maintains an optimistic outlook and is active through his foundation.


Neil Diamond, famed singer-songwriter, is the subject of a new Broadway show called A Beautiful Noise. Neil Diamond, who attended the opening with his wife Katie at his side, said that it was “kind of like a dream come true. It was absolutely wonderful.” The 82-year-old Diamond rarely performs since being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. But, he did lead the crowd in a chorus of “Sweet Caroline,” one of the many hits of the “Jewish Elvis.”

The show revolves in part around his “Olympian ambition” which undid two marriages. Diamond remarked that, “This show was part of my psychotherapy. And it hurt. I didn't like looking at myself in many of the scenes.”

In 2018, Diamond revealed he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease which abruptly ended his touring career. “Oh, I still haven't given it up, yet. It's very hard. In a sense, I was in denial for the first year or two. When the doctor told me what it was, I was just not ready to accept it.”

That acceptance is a work in progress. “Okay, so this is the hand that God's given me, and I have to make the best of it, and so I am…. But somehow a calm has moved [into] the hurricane of my life, and things have gotten very quiet, as quiet as this recording studio. And I like it. I find that I like myself better. I'm easier on people, I'm easier on myself. And the beat goes on, and it will go on long after I'm gone.”

“I still can sing,” he said. “I feel good. It's like, all the systems in my mind and my body are working as one when I'm singing. And it's a great feeling.”

As of March 2026, Mr. Diamond is living with Parkinson’s disease. Despite his condition, Neil has made surprise, emotional appearances to sing, stating that he “feels good” and continues to write and record music from home.



Linda Ronstadt, now 76, is a National Medal of Arts recipient, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 11-time Grammy Award-winner. In August 2013, Ronstadt announced in an interview that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and “couldn’t sing a note” anymore. This was after years of having trouble with her voice. “In fact, I couldn’t sing for the last five or six years I appeared onstage, but I kept trying.”

Linda told that, “I had a shoulder operation, so I thought that must be why my hands were shaking.” Then, her diagnosis took her by surprise. But, Linda has admitted in the past that she used to snort cocaine on a regular basis. Medical experts say that using cocaine can “produce short and long-term effects in the brain.” They also suggest that cocaine abuse is implicated in that fact that younger people are developing  Parkinson’s disease and Parkinson’s-like symptoms.” In the years since, Ronstadt has kept a low profile and only appeared in the public eye on her own terms. But, she did release a memoir and has done sporadic “A Conversation With Linda” events involving a multimedia presentation covering her storied career.

Regardless, her singing career came to an abrupt end and her life was profoundly changed. Previously simple tasks, such as eating or brushing her teeth, are now challenges that require considerable concentration for this vocal legend. Walking is difficult and she uses hearing aids, although she attributes the latter to growing old. “I can always harmonize in my head, even without music playing,” Ronstadt said, “That’s all I can do. I can’t sing.”

Linda said she needed a lot of help with her latest book, Feels Like Home. “I have a lot of involuntary moments. It wasn’t this bad when I was writing (her 2013 memoir) Simple Dreams, because my condition wasn’t as advanced as it is now.”

Linda Ronstadt was re-diagnosed as having progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) in 2019.



John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne is an English musician and media personality. He became prominent during the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. During that period, he adopted the nickname “Prince of Darkness.”

On a 2024 podcast, Osbourne aged 75, opened up about his health since his last spinal surgery and taking on sobriety after a decades-long struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had his fourth spinal surgery in September 2023. Since his recovery, his health focus has been on Parkinson’s disease, with which he was diagnosed in 2003.

“I’m not seeing so many doctors anymore. I’m just seeing the Parkinson’s doctor but I’m not having surgery or anything. I had seven surgeries in five years,” he explained. Ahead of his spinal surgery last year, the “Crazy Train” singer said he would no longer go under the knife. Those operations followed on structural damage he sustained from a 2019 fall.

Osbourne took time to get candid about his Parkinson’s disease which he first revealed publicly in 2020. He told about his physical symptoms like walking issues, and mental symptoms including depression. “My feet feel like I've got bricks tied to them when I'm walking…. Then I was thinking, maybe I just need to get up off my ass and walk around the block a few times.”

Ozzy Osbourne had faced a number of health challenges over the years. The “Patient Number 9” singer contracted COVID-19 and underwent numerous surgeries all the while dealing with symptoms related to his Parkinson’s disease. Side effects from surgery only added to the difficulties Ozzy already faced with Parkinson’s. Depression brought Osbourne to a point where “nothing really felt great,” which prompted him to begin taking antidepressants. “You learn to live in the moment. You don’t know when you’re gonna wake up and you ain’t gonna be able to get out of bed.”

Osbourne is thankful for his wife Sharon who has been a wonderful support system throughout his health battles. “Without my Sharon, I’d be f…ing gone,” Ozzy said.  
 
The “living legend” still said, “You have not seen the end of Ozzy Osbourne, I promise you… I’m far from being on my last leg.”

Ozzy Osbourne passed away on July 22, 2025, death attributed to a heart attack. While he struggled in his final years with mobility issues, a 2019 neck injury, and general physical decline, Osbourne continued to perform up until his final show on July 5, 2025.



Sleeping Sickness, in its various forms over the ages, fits quite clearly into the spectrum of ills involving Loss of Consciousness even as it seems to be a bridge on the spectrum between Parkinsonism and Dementia. History records numerous instances of Long Sleepers going back to Epimenides known among the Greeks in the fifth century BC. While tending his father's sheep, Epimenides is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretan cave sacred to Zeus. On waking, he was reported to have received the gift of prophecy.


In relatively recent times, Rip Van Winkle became well known for sleeping a “mere” twenty years. At the same time, Rip was only a figment of an American writer’s imagination. Van Winkle was brought to life, so to speak, by Washington Irving in 1819. Rip was a Dutch-American villager in colonial America – something of a “ne’er do well.” One day, he went off squirrel hunting with his dog in the Catskill Mountains to escape his wife's nagging. After night had fallen, Rip heard a voice calling his name and found a Dutchman lugging a keg. Rip helped his newfound friend carry the keg until they eventually encountered ornately-dressed and bearded men playing nine-pins. Rip then happily joined the group in drinking flagons of alcohol from the keg. He soon became so intoxicated that he fell asleep.

Rip awoke on a sunny morning, at the spot where he first saw the man carrying the keg. He found that many changes had occurred; his beard was then a foot long and had turned gray, his musket was badly deteriorated, and his dog was nowhere to be found. When he returned to his village, it was much larger than he remembered. And, Rip recognized none of the villagers.

Furthermore, he was told that the American Revolution had taken place in his absence. Many of his old friends were either killed in the war or had left the village, and his wife had been dead for years. Before long, Rip came upon a young woman who told that her father was Rip Van Winkle, missing for 20 years. Eventually, he also met his son and grandson, both named after him.

In the case of Rip Van Winkle, his “ill” seems to have passed through harmlessly as he resumed his general manner of life little changed from a score of years lost. Thus, Van Winkle’s Loss of Consciousness appeared to have had no effect beyond making for a good story.


But decades later, there appeared a number of fasting girls. Among them was an even more extraordinary Sleeper. The fasting girls were generally Victorian pre-adolescents who lived for indefinitely long periods of time without consuming any food or other nourishment. Beyond refusing food, the fasting girls appeared to have special religious or magical powers. Those young women lived lives somewhat like Christian saints who thrived in states of purity and abstinence while shaking and breaking the bonds between body and soul. Rev. Hugh Carpenter noted in a speech in that era that, “the mystery of the connection between mind and matter has not yet been fathomed.” That has changed little a century later.


Surely the most prominent and unusual fasting girl was Mollie Fancher. Mollie was widely known as “The Fasting Girl” and “The Brooklyn Enigma.” Mollie not only fasted but also lived and slept in an astonishing way. At one point, Miss Mollie Fancher, lived without any food for over 14 years. She never slept in the usual sense of the word. But, she did spend much time in frequent trances.

Mollie lived a relatively unexplainable (then and now) life from her teens until death in 1916 at age 68. At age 16 after two accidents, she became famous for her ability to go without food. After the second accident falling from and being dragged behind a horse trolley, Mollie was knocked unconscious and suffered broken ribs. Thereafter, she gradually lost her sight and other senses, and her body became twisted, legs and feet crossed. She developed epileptic-like spasms of her whole body lasting up to three hours at a time. And, Mollie proceeded into trance states lasting five to 14 hours.

Despite her loss of senses, Mollie could describe distant friends and perfectly discriminate colors. Even though her right hand was drawn into a permanent paralysis, she was able “to make embroidery upon canvas, and produce in wax, without having taken a lesson in the art, and with neither a knowledge of botany nor even models to copy, flowers of a most marvelously natural appearance.”

Mollie just as amazingly
• was oblivious to pain inflicted by experimenters.
• predicted future events and gathered information at a distance.
• read books and wrote thousands of letters and without use of her eyes.  
• related through five different personalities.
• stayed in bed for over 50 years.

While Mollie’s extraordinary abilities were challenged by some medical authorities of the day, those who dared to sit and spend time in her presence became convinced of the authenticity of the phenomena which passed through her. Reverend Joseph Duryea observed that, “The child cannot deceive. She does not practice imposition. But her physical changes have in some manner released her mind from the imprisonment of the body, and she does with it what other mortals cannot do with theirs…. Her experience was living proof of the separation of the spirit and the flesh, and the superior power of the former over the latter.”

Mollie told her original biographer, Abram Dailey, a number of important things which may give some clues to the eerie phenomena she demonstrated:

• “[I] received nourishment from a source of which they [physicians and attendants] were ignorant.”
• “My spasms and trances were essential to my living; but this my physicians did not know.”
• “I don’t know what they can base my complaint upon. I have broken the backbone of science and all the ‘ologies!”

“In Miss Fancher the immortal is really held to the mortal part by most fragile threads.”


Sleeping sickness in the modern era appears to have been a variation and exacerbation of Parkinsonism in a collective population. Encephalitis lethargica came in recent times to public attention most particularly through the study and writing of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Many sleepers, who became entranced and spent decades of torpor following on the great pandemic of 1918, became his patients and friends during the 1960s.

The Great Flu Epidemic affected hundreds of millions, much like the Covid pandemic of recent times. Vast numbers were made sick while the Spanish Influenza sent more than fifty million to the grave. In our day, we hear of cases of long Covid. A century ago, there developed after the Spanish flu the Sleeping Sickness which caused thousands of New Yorkers to be “frozen in time and space.”

Numbers of those so affected were housed at the Beth Abraham Hospital in Bronx, New York, where Oliver Sacks encountered them. Those Sleepers then became subjects of his intense interest, the eventual book Awakenings, and an award-winning film of the same name.

Sacks told in intimate detail the histories of several Sleepers under his care. He gave especial attention to the changes in their lives occurring once they were given the drug L-DOPA. On first meeting them, they appeared “insubstantial as ghosts, and as passive as zombies.” They seemed to be cocooned, hidden away from the world until treated with the drug. Then, he discovered that the “higher faculties” – intelligence, imagination, judgement, and humor of ninety percent of them had been “spared amid the ravages of this otherwise engulfing disease.”


Sacks’s patient-friends were young and precocious when their Sleeping Sickness began. Decades later, most appeared only half their chronological age. One was described as a “Sleeping Beauty” who could not bear being awakened. Another was said to be absorbed in “thinking about nothing [which] is easy, once you know how” for many long years.

Brief biographical sketches of two of Dr. Sacks’s Long Sleepers follow:


Miss A. (born in 1908) must have been on top of the world when she graduated high school at age 15. But before long, she experienced the major shock of her father’s death and proceeded to sleep for 10 weeks. She then was thought to have Parkinsonism with psychosis.

When Dr. Sacks met Margaret she appeared much younger than her sixty-one years. When she was placed on L-DOPA, Margaret began to speak in a whisper and share the feeling that there was “‘some force, some sort of obstruction’ which stopped her speaking loudly, although she was able to whisper to us without impediment.”

Three years later, “The original Miss A. – so engaging and bright – has been dispossessed by a host of crude, degenerate sub-selves – a ‘schizophrenic’ fission of her once-unified self…. there are still a few things which bring her together, or which recall her former un-broken self. Music calms her, relieves her distraction, and gives her – if briefly – its coherence and concord; and so too does Nature, when she sits in the garden. But, above all, she is recalled by a single relation, the only one which still preserves for her undivided meaning and feeling. She has a favourite younger sister who lives out-of-state, but who comes to New York once a month to visit her. This sister always takes Miss A. out for the day – to an opera, or a play, or a good meal in the city. Miss A. is radiant when she returns from these excursions, and describes them in detail, with feeling and wit; at such times there is nothing ‘schizophrenic’ in her thought or her manner, but a return of wholeness and the sense of the world. ‘She goes mad in your madhouse because she is shut off from life.’”


Leonard L. was Sacks’s favored patient, maybe because he had the “profoundest disease with the acutest investigative intelligence.” At age 46, he had the unlined face of a man twenty years younger. Leonard sensed within himself “an awful presence.” “The presence is a mixture of nagging and pushing and pressure, with being held back and constrained and stopped – I often called it ‘the goad and the halter.’”

Leonard was precocious and withdrawn in his youth, had graduated from Harvard, and had nearly completed a PhD. He only wanted to bury himself among books because he could not trust human beings at all. Becoming disabled at age 30 when admitted to the hospital long years past, he was given charge of the hospital library. Thus he became buried in books and achieved his childhood wish.

Leonard and his doctor recognized that there was intense violence locked up inside him. When he took L-DOPA, Leonard experienced an abundance of health and energy – which turned out to be too abundant. Leonard was one of the patients who experienced “all-or-none reactions” to the drug. He told Sacks: “If only I could find the eye of my hurricane!”
 
Key facets of Oliver Sacks’s work of Awakenings were shown in his repeated comments on the importance of the physician recognizing the personas – the whole beings of patients, of going beyond their illnesses, and – as opposed to much of modern medical practice – to move with his patients, treat them as equals and become a fellow traveller, a fellow explorer with them.

This writer has found many observations made by Dr. Sacks and his patients to be telling, if not diagnostic. Some patients like Hester Y., who had been motionless for years “jumped up and walked in the twinkling of an eye.” She sensed no lapse in time from her separated period of being conscious.

Mr. O. suddenly became quite lucid in his speech and thought the week before he died. Like Leonard L., Mr. O. was convinced at times “that ‘influences’ of various sorts were ‘fiddling’ with his thoughts.” Frances D. encountered “monstrous creatures from her unconscious.”

A wonderful conversation about forgotten things which occurred between Leonard and his doctor in the movie Awakenings included this back-and-forth:

“Leonard L.: People have forgotten what life is all about. They've forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded. They need to be reminded of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!

“Doctor S.: … the human spirit is more powerful than any drug – and THAT is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. THESE are the things that matter. This is what we'd forgotten – the simplest things.”


The neurologist Oliver Sacks was convinced that rather than a “brain problem” alone, the whole persona  – total organism – was involved in the sleeping sickness. Like Leonard L., patients felt themselves caught in a whirlpool, “a swirling violence, a sort of deadly attraction, as these patients are sucked into the depths.”

His Parkinsonian patients were lost in space and time. “Expressed in their sickness, their health, their reactions, is the living imagination of Nature itself, the imagination we must match in our picturing of Nature. They show us that Nature is everywhere real and alive and that our thinking about Nature must be real and alive. They remind us that we are over-developed in mechanical competence, but lacking in biological intelligence, intuition, awareness; and that it is this, above all, that we need to regain, not only in medicine, but in all science.”


Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks’s work, researchers working in the same state’s mental health-care system have identified about 200 patients with “autoimmune diseases,” some institutionalized for years, who they believe may be helped by their discovery. Their premise is that underlying autoimmune and inflammatory processes may be more common in patients with a variety of psychiatric syndromes than previously believed.

April Burrell had been an outgoing, straight-A student majoring in accounting at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. But after a traumatic event experienced at age 21, April suddenly developed psychosis and became lost in a constant state of hallucinations. She could no longer communicate, bathe or take care of herself. The young woman was catatonic — unmoving, unblinking and unknowing of where or who she was.

April was a friendly, outgoing high achiever until she received a nightmarish phone call from one of her professors in 1995. April became incoherent and was then hospitalized after that unrevealed traumatic experience. She spent months at a short-term psychiatric hospital and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 2000, she went into a long-term care center after the family could not meet her needs. April was unable to recognize, let alone engage with, her family. She did not want to be touched, hugged or kissed. She was lost to her family and to nursing attendants.

Twenty years later, Dr. Sander Markx who had encountered her early in his medical career, remarked that, “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.” Little had changed for the patient he had encountered nearly two decades earlier. In the years since they had first met, April had undergone many courses of treatment — antipsychotics, mood stabilizers and electroconvulsive therapy — all to no avail.

Eventually, it was decided that lupus, an underlying autoimmune condition, was attacking her brain. Markx convened a multidisciplinary team of more than 70 experts from Columbia University and around the world. The team concluded that though April had all the clinical signs of schizophrenia, lupus appeared to only be affecting her brain.

The medical team set to work with an intensive immunotherapy treatment for her problem then diagnosed as “neuropsychiatric lupus.” April was given monthly “pulses” of intravenous steroids for five days, plus a single dose of cyclophosphamide, a heavy-duty cancer drug, as well as rituximab, a drug initially developed for lymphoma.

Some improvements were made after two series of treatment; still her psychosis remained. But on a most noteworthy day when Markx was scheduled to depart on a trip to Europe, he stopped at the hospital to check on his patient. April was then most often found sitting in the dining room in a catatonic state. But when Marks found her that day, April didn’t seem to be “at home.” Instead, he saw another woman sitting in the room. It was as if April had awakened after more than 20 years; a miracle to some.

Markx has since begun care and treatment for 40 similar patients. Discussions are also underway to look for people like April among the 20,000 outpatients in the Ne York state system as well.  


Amnesia appears to be another selective Loss of Consciousness in which memory is the main or only focus of mental disturbance. The mind is not lost in toto, but rather one of its major functions is displaced, blocked or obstructed. Amnesia appearing without other ills is quite unusual. Fortunately in most cases, amnesia passes relatively quickly as time separates the affected individual from the causative shock.


Writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976) filled novels with detectives hunting for clues to solve mind-stretching mysteries. But Christie became the subject of her own real-life mystery in 1926, when she disappeared for 11 days and then was discovered 200 miles from where her abandoned car had been found. Christie had no recollection of where she had been or what had happened during that period.

After Christie was located and identified by her then-husband Archibald, he said in a newspaper interview, “She has suffered from the most complete loss of memory, and I do not think she knows who she is. She does not know me, and she does not know where she is. I am hoping that rest and quiet will restore her.”

In December 1926, Agatha Christie’s husband, Archie, announced he wanted a divorce. Not only that, he planned to marry his mistress, a secretary ten years younger than his thirty-six-year-old wife. Late that night, the author’s Morris was found abandoned, her suitcase and fur coat still in the backseat. Over the next eleven days, a nationwide manhunt ensued. Christie’s disappearance remains one of her most enduring mysteries – one never solved.

It is not known how she got from that abandoned car to her destination, or why she stayed hidden. According to Jared Cade’s book Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Christie checked into the Harrogate Hotel on December 4th and stayed there for ten days. She registered at the hotel under the last name of her husband’s mistress, Nancy Neele, who would go on to become the second Mrs. Christie.

In her autobiography, Christie wrote about the end of her marriage: “The next year of my life is one I hate recalling.” She said she couldn’t recall the lost 10 days and wrote not one word about the disappearance. Archie Christie backed her up, telling newspapers she hadn’t recognized him, and didn’t know her own identity, or where she’d been.  

Interestingly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) enlisted the help of a medium to locate her. Horace Leaf, a world-famous spiritualist declared that Agatha was still living, and he was only off by one day on when she would reappear.

Once her wits and memory were recovered, Christie traveled to the Middle East on her own aboard the Orient Express. She met her second husband, the much younger Max Mallowan. She went on to write plays, stories, and novels that made her a household name decades after her death. 


When Sirhan Sirhan was captured, seconds after the shooting of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968, he behaved quite oddly. He was tackled by a group of men who held him down and tried to wrest the gun out of his hands. But “in the middle of a hurricane of sound and feeling,” wrote author George Plimpton, Sirhan “seemed peaceful.” A Los Angeles police officer who rushed in recalled, “He had a blank, glassed-over look on his face — like he wasn’t in complete control of his mind.”

All the same, the short, slim Sirhan — 5 feet 5 inches, about 120 pounds — exerted superhuman strength to resist efforts to slam his wrist to a steam table in the Ambassador Hotel pantry. He was still able to fire five or six more shots even as he was held down. The .22-caliber pistol was finally wrenched from Sirhan’s grip.

Thereafter, Sirhan remembered everything about June 5, 1968, except the moment of the shooting. That fact led some people to suspect that Sirhan was under hypnosis when he fired at Kennedy.  

Years later, Sirhan was examined for more than 60 hours by Harvard Medical School professor Daniel P. Brown who concluded that “Mr. Sirhan did not act under his own volition and knowledge at the time of the assassination and is not responsible for actions coerced and/or carried out by others.”  

Brown wrote, “Mr. Sirhan is one of the most hypnotizable individuals I have ever met, and the magnitude of his amnesia for actions under hypnosis is extreme.” Brown spent another 60 hours with Sirhan in the years since his original 2011 study to further confirm his conclusions.

Sirhan’s attorney William Pepper has been convinced that someone used “both drugs and hypnosis to make him a totally compliant distraction at the time Bobby Kennedy was within range of the second shooter, who was able to get behind him.” Kennedy’s fatal wound was fired at point-blank range from behind, while all the time Sirhan was in front of him.

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Sirhan told a psychiatrist in 1968. “If I had wanted to kill a man, why would I have shot him right there where they could have choked the … out of me.” He also noted that he was a Christian and that “my own conscience doesn’t agree with what I did. It’s against my upbringing. … ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Life is the thing, you know. Where would you be if you didn’t have life? And here I go and splatter this guy’s brains. It’s just not me.”

Sirhan admitted at trial in 1969 that he killed Kennedy, though he said then he didn’t remember it. His defense team didn’t learn until midway through the trial that Kennedy’s fatal shots had been from behind. He was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence. For years, Sirhan was skeptical of the hypnosis claim. In 1994, he told journalist Dan Moldea, “It’s probably too diabolical to suggest that I was controlled by someone else — but I don’t know. I only know that I don’t remember anything about the shooting.”  


Let us lighten our tune for a moment by considering the life of one self-described “amnesiac.” Oscar Levant confessed that until 1958, if a friend got sick, he would cut him off and not see him again. He somehow viewed it as a personal affront. When such a person would appear and ask, “Do you remember me?” Levant would respond giddily, “Fortunately I’m suffering from amnesia.”

Oscar Levant (1906-1972) was a pianist and composer, radio and television wit who was frequently seen on the Jack Paar Show. Levant published his Memoirs of an Amnesiac in 1990, a quarter-century after his first bestseller, A Smattering of Ignorance.

In his book, Levant interspersed his “memories” of Hollywood in its heyday with one-liners and his unique humor. His wit in the book was self-deprecating and often biting as it was in public and television appearances. His tales included ones about his good friend George Gershwin as well as other notables like Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, William Faulkner, Harpo Marx, Irving Berlin, and Joseph P. Kennedy.

Despite questionable memories, Levant took the opportunity to skewer fellow musicians, actors, conductors, politicians, and gangsters. Along the way, Oscar also took pains to retell stories of his neuroses and obsessions; of difficult times on psychiatric wards; of addiction to demerol and paraldehyde; of experiences with electroconvulsive therapy.

“Above all, I remembered the never-ending desire for those drugs which would give me instant oblivion, the wild and neurotic quest for unconsciousness.” Then too, he was not shy about recounting the useless psychiatrists, and unscrupulous quacks whose paths he crossed. Levant freely admitted that his wife June and his three daughters endured his numerous foibles, superstitions, and hangups.

When Jack Paar asked Levant what he did for exercise, Oscar responded, “I stumble and fall into a coma.”  


After an airplane crash in March 2015, actor Harrison Ford sustained serious injuries that hospitalized him for most of a month. Ford also suffered loss of memory that left him unable to recall details of the accident. Ford was flying solo when his small, vintage two-seater fighter plane malfunctioned, forcing him to crash land on golf course in Venice, CA. He lost further details of the emergency on waking in the hospital five days later.

Ford could only recall how the incident started. “I remember the engine stopping, I remember that part very well. I remember telling the tower what I was going to do and I remember their suggestion. Their suggestion was that I take the normal route to land and I knew that I wasn't going to do that. So I said ‘No.’”

“And that's the last thing I remember until five days afterwards. I’m told by the doctors that the amount of general anesthetic that I received … gave me retrograde amnesia.”

Ford, known for his memorable roles in movies, has been involved in several aviation accidents throughout his flying career. those incidents include a helicopter crash landing in 1999, a runway overshoot in 2000, a taxiway landing in 2017, and a runway crossing mistake in 2020 – as well as the golf course crash in 2015.
 
Of further interest, fourteen years before his bout of amnesia caused by an airplane mishap, Ford played a movie role in which amnesia is of key focus. It may have been a preview of things to come. Acting as an unscrupulous lawyer, Henry Turner will do whatever it takes to win a case. He also treats his family in a similar merciless manner. Henry inevitably gets caught in the middle of a robbery and is shot in the head. He wakes from a coma to find that he has amnesia and doesn’t know how to do the simplest tasks. As he recovers and relearns how to function, Henry reveals a much kinder and more thoughtful persona, much to the surprise of his family and friends.



We come to the end of our spectrum of demented states. From Amentia, a state of small or limited mind from birth, we have passed to Dementia, most commonly called Alzheimer’s, in the latter years of life.

Interestingly, it seems that states of outright Dementia are increasing in quantum leaps simultaneously with the expansion of human consciousness. Generally speaking, there are reasons besides longer lifetimes for the increased incidence of Alzheimer’s and similar forms of Dementia. Less physical activity and involvement with the natural world, reliance on machines and electronic devices, more fixation on being entertained than in entertaining and aiding others must contribute to the mix. The reader may be able to add to the list. While we dare not forget the vast array of drugs and intoxicants available and in constant use in the modern world.


Personal experience can make a huge difference in how we understand the world around us. So then, one of the writer’s best friends is now in her early 80s following a full life. After retiring from work most often as a cook for institutions with large populations, Angie has filled recent years with a fourth marriage to her childhood sweetheart and many travels across the USA. In the midst of those days, Angie has repeatedly doctored for this, that and all manner of ills. She went under the knife to have joint replacements, removal of gall bladder and uterus – and probably more – while taking a number of medications – maybe as many as a dozen – for various ailments.

Over time, Angie went through a variety of states of consciousness. For the first few years of our acquaintance, she was prone to “bitch and moan” at relatively minor things. Her husband managed those and more recent changes quite well. Then, more obvious symptoms appeared – most notable and obvious among them being major losses of recent memory. “I can’t remember shit!”

Angie’s consciousness is muddled – to be generous – most of the time. She forgets anything and everything which has passed in near time. On the other hand, she remembers details from her childhood days on the prairie. And, she tends to repeat those stories over and over and over again.

At the same time, Angie is now generally much mellower than in previous years and only rarely “cusses and damns.” She still functions, but has handed over most household chores including cooking to her husband. She probably would not do at all well in any care facility. Her case has not been “diagnosed” or given a label. Still, Angie’s state provides the writer every day in-your-face glimpses of “dementia.”


Alyce and Elmer Green were pioneers in the field of Biofeedback. Based at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, the Greens spent decades teaching and publicizing the practice of Voluntary Controls (Biofeedback) over internal physiology. Alyce, ten years older than Elmer, eventually entered into a state of Alzheimer’s Dementia. “Alyce's ordeal didn't really begin until about 12 years ago, and then she began to have trouble with rational processes, and was fortunately forced to expand internal awareness and also accept my help. Amazing, isn't it, how life arranges things so that information and lessons that are needed, are given a chance to appear.”

Elmer Green was trained in both physics and psychology and self-taught in areas of metaphysics. He described himself “as a scientist, a guided-missile engineer, a physiologist, a psycho-physiologic researcher, and as a knower, about these things.” So, in many ways he was prepared to take on the care of Alyce in her demented years as well as to intimately study her unusual life passage. Eventually, Alyce became absent-minded, forgetful to the extreme, and often beyond reach. At times, she would forget her husband, her children, and her own nature.

To Elmer, the key was not the brain but the psyche – soul-mind. He was perplexed that modern authors and authorities, continued to “maintain the fiction that the brain is the source of the mind, rather than the instrument of the mind…. The difference between her brain and her mind which is not in the brain any more than a TV program is in the receiver.”
 
Beyond reading spiritually focused texts to Alyce, Elmer drew upon music, nature, family care, and love to nurture Alyce into her next life. Alyce died at age 87 in 1994 following seven years of the Alzheimer’s journey while Elmer continued to 2017 dying at the age of 100. [Further details on the Greens’ journey will appear in a later chapter.]


Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) long held a large place in modern musical history. Sinatra’s talents and accomplishments need little note for any age group or generation. But, many readers may be unaware of how Old Blue Eyes spent his latter years. They did not appear kind to him even though The Chairman of the Board continued to perform intermittently. Eventually, Sinatra reached a point where many thought he was too old to make a final album. “He knew that those closest to him were concerned about his memory loss.”

Thanks to his wife Barbara, Frank summoned the courage to sing and create his last album. After the recording, he launched a tour and appeared on several television interviews to promote his songs. Eliot Weisman, Frank’s manager, wrote that the singer eventually “lost it” and started making bizarre remarks to his audience – asking if they loved him. Weisman quickly signaled television producers to go to commercial break.

“He was becoming increasingly sentimental. When Sinatra became sentimental you never knew what was coming next. He might start talking about Ava or Nancy. I didn't know what he would say, but I couldn't stand by and let him melt down on live television.”

By his last performances, Sinatra was reading the lyrics from a ring of cue screens placed among the footlights. The toupeed figure could not rely on the memory that had once held the entire library of Broadway theatre songs. His great voice had been steadily deteriorating, its range was contracted and its intonation unsteady. Still, there was enough left to evoke more than just the ghost of the finest male interpreter of musical masterpieces written by sophisticated composers and lyricists.

As Sinatra was caught forgetting lyrics, media speculated he had Alzheimer's. Weisman revealed a freakish incident with Sinatra. “We were in Atlantic City, and Vine, who was in charge of the venue Sinatra was performing, knocked on my door to say I needed to come across the hall. She had a look of disbelief on her face. ‘He's at the dressing table. Go over and take a look,’ she said.”

"I didn't know what to expect. I walked in the outer dressing area of the hotel bathroom and saw Sinatra standing there holding his toupee in his hand. He was trimming it with a small pair of cuticle scissors."

“‘You can't believe how fast it's growing,’ he said.”

Sinatra's state of health then was deteriorating even while medications were affecting his performance. Despite his sad decline, Frank Sinatra’s Duets albums sold millions. “Impressive numbers for an artist in the final years of a six-decade career.”

But by the time he finally ended a tour in Japan, Sinatra was at his worst. “By the night of the first performance, Sinatra seemed lost and discombobulated. He was spacey. I'm not entirely sure he knew we were in Japan,” Weisman recalled.

“The tele-prompters were operating but he still struggled with the lyrics. While he had forgotten lyrics in the past, usually a few words here and there, this night he forgot entire chunks.”

Following the end of his tour performing songs from his final album, Sinatra dedicated the last two years of his life to his family. But, Sinatra spent much of that time afflicted with heart problems, bladder cancer and dementia. He died on 14 May 1998, in a Los Angeles hospital, aged 82. But he had said his goodbyes every time he sang “Angel Eyes,” as he did to close thousands of concerts. Frank then acted as if draining the last drop of bourbon from its bottle, stubbing out his cigarette, pulling on his coat, adjusting his hat. Then heading through the saloon door into the lonely night, he made his bow saying: “’Scuse me while I disappear … ”


Robin Williams was a comic genius, a fantastic mimic, a wonder with accents and languages, and an award-winning actor. He took television and then films by storm. But, the Robin Rocket flared out seemingly before his time as he died by his own hands in 2014 at the age of sixty-three.

His passing was itself a shock to many of his closest friends. That was the case even though Robin appeared frail and gaunt and “not himself” in his last few years. Williams may have previewed his early death with his national tour called Weapons of Self Destruction in 2009. Synchronistically, he was sidelined with health issues which resulted in his “chest being cracked” early in the tour.

Besides being a kamikaze comic, Robin passed through several addictions, sobriety and then relapses which most certainly had to contribute to his eventual ill health. In his last years, Williams was thought to have Parkinson’s disease. His symptoms then included a slight, intermittent tremor as well as depression, yet he continued to “fill every block of time” with work. Until he eventually developed a more pronounced tremor, varying abdominal symptoms, and moments of almost “freezing in motion.” Williams’s posture became stooped and his body frail.

After he died, autopsy and brain studies suggested the diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. Susan, Robin’s wife, then believed the Lewy bodies to be the cause of “The Terrorist Inside My Husband’s Brain.”

Note: We believe Lewy bodies to be effects and not causes as “They have also been described in the brains of normal older individuals and referred to as incidental Lewy body disease….  It was not possible to distinguish a specific pattern in the cognitive or psychopathological symptoms of dementia that would differentiate LBD from Alzheimer's disease (AD).” (National Institutes of Health)


Kemal Amin Kasem died at the age of 82 in 2014. That would have been of little note except for two things. First, Casey Kasem dominated the radio world from 1970 until his retirement in 2009 as he created and hosted several radio countdown programs, most notably the American Top 40. Kasem also did voices for cartoon characters in the likes of  Shaggy Rogers in the Scooby-Doo franchise.

Secondly, Kasem’s name still dominated headlines at times for a different reason: a legal battle developed in his family over his end-of-life care. The struggle between his wife, Jean, and the children from his first marriage deepened as Kasem’s health deteriorated.

Kasem was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2007. But, that diagnosis was changed to the newly-named brain disorder called Lewy body dementia. The family battle over Kasem’s end-of-life care was magnified by the media. Still, his story surrounding families facing difficult decisions at the end of a loved one’s life is one that millions of Americans can understand. While Kasem was worth $80 million, his case was otherwise fairly typical.

“We’re in the midst of a longevity revolution,” said Ellen Goodman, co-founder and director of The Conversation Project. “We now live 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago. Sixty is not the new 50; 60 is the caregiver of the 85 year old.”

The Conversation Project seeks to eliminate the stigma surrounding conversations about death and encourage families to have early discussions about end-of-life decisions. A recent survey by The Conversation Project indicated that 90% of seniors thought it was important to plan their end-of-life decisions, but only 30% of those people actually had open discussions about facing death.

“Casey Kasem is a celebrity, but this is an everyday American story.”


Glen Campbell, the legendary singer and guitarist parted life after several years “battling” Alzheimer’s dementia dying at age 81 in 2017. “The Rhinestone Cowboy” was famous for songs like “Gentle on My Mind,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Southern Nights,”  and “Galveston.” But, Campbell left his most intimate song until his last years.

“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” was released in 2014. The lyrics which he co-wrote with Julian Raymond grappled with his mortality:


Throughout his life, Glen demonstrated how the power of love, laughter and music helped him overcome many obstacles. It seems that Glen Campbell’s outer image shrouded a tortured inner being for many of his long days. His fourth wife Kim retold in her book Gentle on My Mind how he was still struggling with cocaine addiction during the early years of their marriage in the 80s. Then, it was alcohol which assumed control of Glen as “virtually every night he drank himself unconscious.” Cocaine took his common sense away and one drink was enough to make him “snap.” Glen also lost memory of his debauches as “he never remembered what he put me through” the night before.

Campbell had a difficult upbringing in a family of twelve cotton pickers in Arkansas in the 40s. But, music came to the rescue as all family members were musically inclined and played instruments. Glen was proficient at guitar by age 5 and worked his way up the ladder to become an accomplished session musician, then one of The Beach Boys, and eventually a world class musician. Composer Jimmy Webb figured that Glen Campbell was “probably the best all-around guitarist on the planet.” All the while his virtuosity on the guitar guarded the secret that he could not read or write a note of music. All his music was performed by ear.

From early on, Kim Campbell got clues from fellow musicians and even her own father, who remarked, “It sounds like there’s two Glen Campbells. You met the good guy. But the bad guy is out there on the loose. And it sounds like the bad guy is really bad.”

For years “after every show, he hit the bottle and hit it hard. He went from sweet and humble Glen to belligerent and self-centered Glen.” At one point, Glen had a sit-down with Gene Autry who had had his own struggles with booze. Autry “frankly said that Glen’s out-of-control drinking would inevitably destroy his life.”

In the late 80s, Campbell came clean of cocaine and alcohol – although he did have brief relapses with alcohol. Years later, forgetfulness became the next great challenge of Glen and Kim Campbell’s lives. By age 70, Glen began to shed his usual alpha roles, and developed aversions to bathing and changing his clothes, while symptoms of dementia grew apace. Kim believed him to be “at war with an invisible and inaudible enemy.” For years, the Campbells experienced the “up-and-down, in-and-out random nature of early stage Alzheimer’s” until verbal communication between Kim and Glen became nearly impossible.

Finally after many moves and efforts at home care, Glen and his wife Kim had to move to Abe’s Garden – senior community in Nashville, TN – for safety’s sake. “Something about Abe’s Garden soothed Glen’s soul. Part of that was due to his fascinating neighbors. One woman who had been a concert pianist still played magnificently. Another fine musician had worked as a conductor and arranger for Disney. Because he had a hard time with language, he made the sounds and motions of playing a trombone, a trumpet, or a xylophone — all to tell you to have a nice day. Glen and I both enjoyed our new eclectic and eccentric group of friends.”

Abe’s Garden “was our community, too. We lived each day with families on the same journey. We laughed together, cried together, prayed together and supported each other. If this disease becomes too difficult to manage at home, being part of a quality memory care community should be your first choice, not your last resort.”  

Campbell continued to perform until a few years before his passing. In most cases, he was able to present himself on stage in the form of the superb entertainer, singer, and guitarist of years gone by. His wife remarked that for Glen music “was really stimulating and probably helped him plateau and not progress as quickly as he might have. I could tell from his spirits that it was good for him. It made him really happy. It was good for the whole family to continue touring and to just keep living our lives. And we hope it encourages other people to do the same.”


Tony Bennett (1926-2023) was said to “move the hearts and touch the souls of audiences.” And he continued to do so until his latter days despite dementia, still inspiring others and demonstrating the power of music. For many years, Bennett seemed ageless. Signs of memory loss were subtle and gradual at first and were brushed off as simple signs of aging: such as difficulties making decisions and taking his medicine as prescribed. His wife Susan generally covered for him.

Tony became an international celebrity in the 40s. In the 1950s and 1960s, he focused on jazz and standards, recording with the Count Basie Orchestra and releasing dozens of hits, including his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

His popularity waned in the 1970s and 1980s, but he was re-discovered in the 90s and in the mid-2000s, Bennett was still doing more than 100 shows a year. Tony sang in a wide range of genres and with almost everybody including the likes of Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Queen Latifah, and Lady Gaga.

But by 2015, he couldn't remember the names of the musicians with whom he was performing. That led to medical rounds and the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Tony didn’t want to share the news. So, his wife Susan ran interference for him and carried many conversations for Tony.

But as soon as he heard piano accompaniment and opened his mouth to sing, he became the Tony Bennett of years past. Then, the mask of dementia disappeared as the charming master entertainer showed up. Bennett was also an artist-painter for most of his life, but canvases didn’t hold his attention any longer. Music and performance were the only stimulants that brought him to present time. “It's the music that saves him.”

By late 2020 with the impending release of Love for Sale, Bennett's new album with Lady Gaga, it was time to make his diagnosis public. Susan said, “Tony would never want to tell people his problems, but we thought that maybe his story could be inspirational for others and we could do a little good here…. He has always been there for anybody in need, so hopefully he can continue to do that by showing people that the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease doesn't mean you go home, shut the door, and lose your entire life. You can still contribute. You can still connect. And you should keep doing whatever you're passionate about for as long as you can. That will help you.”



Bruce Willis (age 68) will long be known for playing detective John McClane in the Die Hard franchise. Those five movies made him a leading action hero. Also famous for playing opposite Cybill Shepherd in the 1980s television series Moonlighting, Willis has been busy, visible and well received …

Until 2022, when his family announced that he would be retiring from films because of aphasia (difficulty speaking or understanding others speaking). Apparently the actor had been exhibiting signs of decline in recent years and dozens of people expressed concern about Willis’s well-being.

Filmmakers described his loss of mental acuity and inability to remember his dialogue. Willis’s lines had to be fed the star through an earpiece. Many pages of his dialogue were compressed into a few. Most action scenes were filmed using a body double as a substitute for Willis. While continuing in many films, his shoots were limited to two days. The actor’s contracts stipulated that he was not to work more than eight hours a day, but he often stayed for only four. Amazingly, Willis was able to act in 22 films over four years in those circumstances until retiring in 2022.

Eventually, Willis appeared to be a hugely different person to many with whom he had worked. Filmmakers had the difficult task to produce movies and maintain the old Bruce Willis tough-guy facade. “How do we not make Bruce look bad? Someone would give him a line and he didn’t understand what it meant. He was just being puppeted.”

After a year, Bruce Willis’s condition had worsened and was given the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Medics claim that FTD is “a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain’s frontal or temporal lobes.” Willis’s family have shared little about the challenges facing Bruce and them; communication problems are the only ones which have been revealed so far to the press. Wills receives 24/7 care.



President Ronald Reagan announced his Alzheimer's Dementia to the nation in 1994 (at age 83) when he had been out of office for five years. But even before Reagan became the oldest elected president, his mental state had become a political issue. Adversaries noted  his habit of making contradictory statements, of forgetting names and his seeming absent-mindedness which together pointed to dementia. There were also subtle changes in Mr. Reagan’s speaking patterns which were apparent years before his diagnosis.  

It should not be forgotten that in March 1981, President Reagan left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., after speaking to members of the AFL-CIO. John Hinckley, Jr., fired his .22 caliber revolver with “devastator” bullets at the President and his security team. Reagan and three members of his entourage were wounded during the shooting.

Reagan was seriously injured by a bullet which struck him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious bleeding. He was said to be close to death – low blood pressure indicated he was in shock – upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital. The president lost over half of his blood volume in the emergency department and during surgery. After twelve days in the hospital, he was able to return to the White House.

In 1984, Mr. Reagan’s poor performance in his first presidential debate with Vice President Walter Mondale stirred questions about his mental capacity. A study published in 1988 suggested that Mr. Reagan had some cognitive impairment during his debates with Jimmy Carter as well as Mondale. Subtle mental decline commonly predates major changes that stimulate compensatory actions, like relying on well-worn phrases and simple words. Those efforts eventually fail and the affected individual can no longer hide his deficits.

First Lady Nancy Reagan, who was the president's chief defender and most ardent supporter, was almost always close at hand: “I protect Ronnie from himself. You know, he has a big Irish heart. He trusts everybody and he doesn’t see when he’s being blindsided, or when people are acting out of motives that are less than noble. And he never acts upon it once he does. I do.”

Oftentimes, Nancy Reagan had the greatest influence upon President Reagan politically as well as personally. George Shultz said, “If you have any intelligence, you don’t make an enemy of the First Lady, particularly Nancy Reagan, because she was so strong.”

Doctors didn’t take clear notice that the former president had begun to develop symptoms of dementia until 1989. According to his daughter Patti Davis, it “didn't feel real.” Reagan was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994. Thereafter, he wrote his letter to the nation announcing that he had the disease. In his letter announcing his diagnosis, Reagan looked ahead to the coming day when he would need support: “At the moment I feel just fine. … Unfortunately, as Alzheimer's Disease progresses, the family often bears a heavy burden.”

The former president, once a towering man in both stature and presence, grew smaller. Davis saw that he became “stripped away, to the essence of himself…. There’s always a different way to look at it.”

In 2004 — 10 years after announcing his diagnosis to the world — Ronald Reagan died at age 93 in Bel Air, California.  


Prior to her passing in 2023, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, a longtime advocate for mental health care, was diagnosed with dementia. “She continues to live happily at home with her husband,” her family said at the time.

The announcement came four months after former President Jimmy Carter himself entered hospice care at the couple's home in Plains, GA. At 99, he was the longest-living president. The Carters share the longest presidential marriage in U.S. history. They celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary on July 7, 2023. Together they had four children, 12 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
 
“First in the Georgia Governor's Mansion, then in the White House, and later at The Carter Center, Rosalynn urged improved access to care and decreased stigma about issues surrounding mental health.”

In her 1994 book Helping Yourself Help Others, she wrote about the loneliness and struggles that caregivers often endure. By providing tips on best practices amassed through several national surveys, she said, she hoped to also provide some relief.

“The purpose of this book is to encourage you, empathize with you and advocate for your special needs. ... Of course, I hope this book will help you provide better care, but not only that; I also hope it will help you have an easier and more enjoyable life.”


In the election year of 2024, the American media was often focused on apparent signs ranging from simple aging up to glaring dementia most notably among presidential candidates. Democrats hoped that President Joe Biden would put the peoples’ minds at ease over questions regarding his physical and mental capacity at the debate in late June. But from early on, the 81-year-old struggled to talk at times in a weak, raspy voice. For minutes, he tripped over his words, misspoke and lost his train of thought.  

Most notably, Biden ended a rambling, unfocused statement saying, “We finally beat Medicare,” before moderators cut him off. Biden eventually warmed up and collected himself. Still he often stared off into the distance, while Trump frequently steamrolled over him. At times Biden managed no response, though he eventually fired back with some one-liners.

The debate was a huge turning point in the election. It caused donors, pundits and media to push for him to drop out of the presidential race. At first, he vehemently stated that, “Only the Lord Almighty could convince me to quit.” But persistent and powerful forces eventually caused him to leave the race in order “to save democracy.”


Then there is former President Donald Trump, at 78 years old, who became the oldest president ever elected. During numerous appearances, it was noted that his remarks were rambling or incoherent. At one event, he swayed silently to music on stage for 40 minutes. Questions were repeatedly raised about possible cognitive decline.

Trump’s actions were often considered weird at best and insane at worst. His behavior and intentions had already been questioned by mental health professionals. See The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, 2019, and The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew, 2024.  

As of 2026, concerns regarding Donald Trump’s mental and physical health persist. Observers and political opponents highlight erratic, confusing, rambling behavior during his second term as president. Experts have pointed to signs of cognitive decline which have to be balanced against obvious continuing personality characteristics, such as impulsivity and a need for excessive admiration.