He lost his mind

Salon has an article about memory and ECT in today's issue. You'll need to watch an ad if you want to read the piece.
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... This winning streak came to an end in 1998, when Cott's mother died. Her death set off a bout of depression from which Cott was unable to recover. "I had been truly seriously depressed a number of times in my life, but never to the extent of being 'clinically' depressed," Cott says. "I just didn't care anymore."

That's when the electroconvulsive therapy began. Cott was given 36 treatments over the course of the next two years. When he emerged from them, he could remember nothing from the years 1985 to 2000. Fifteen years of his life -- friends he had known, places he had lived, books he had written -- had been completely wiped out.
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In your book you quote Steven Rose describing ECT as "analogous to trying to mend a faulty radio by kicking it.

Yes, and I was the radio.

How exactly does ECT work?

They send an electrical current of about 200 volts for a fraction of a second through the frontal lobes of the brain, by means of electrodes connected to a machine that resembles a stereo receiver. But I don't remember that. I only remember receiving the anesthesia. I remember the feeling of falling off into unconsciousness, which was a beautiful feeling. But that's all.

You must have agreed to go along with it at some point.

Well, I was in a pretty distraught state, emotionally, and I think I had been talked into it by the doctors. They said I was in a really bad state and that I really needed to do this, and that there would be no serious side effects. I'd lose some memory but the memory would come back. This is what they tell patients. And when you're in a really disruptive state, like I was, it's very hard to be objective. I certainly hadn't thought about ECT treatments before. I didn't know they still gave them.

The last of the treatments happened seven years ago. Have you forgiven the doctors and moved on, or do you still feel angry?

I was angry, to begin with, that the doctors didn't really tell the truth about the possible damage that can occur, both cognitively and in memory loss. And I still feel angry about that. I believe that ECT does damage the brain. There's dispute about this, but there's increasing evidence to show that this is certainly a possibility. And there are many other people, not just myself, who suffer this kind of damage. I'm not prone to anger, but I do feel angry for the sake of other people. I really feel that ECT shouldn't be used at all except as a last resort, in the very final moments of emotional desperation, or mania, or catatonia.
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