Riveting New Memoir "Ticket to Madland" Offers Harrowing Take on Mental Illness

TICKET TO MADLAND by Jocelyn Davis

SANTA FE, NM, UNITED STATES, November 19, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A top-grade student with two master’s degrees. A successful business executive turned book author. A reliable woman with a loving family, kind friends, and ample resources, overall in great shape, her act solidly together.

“Then, at age 57 and with barely a warning, I found myself on a steam train to hell.”

After decades of smooth sailing in her professional and personal life, business author Jocelyn Davis found herself caught in a storm of bizarre medical symptoms: patches of itchy pain, spinning vertigo, surging anxiety and, worst of all, a never-ending sensation of being on a boat in rough seas.

She sought help, but the experts had no answers. Teetering on the verge of insanity, weighing methods of suicide, she had to rely on herself—her sane self, that is—to marshal resources, unravel the puzzle, and find a way out of the nightmare before it consumed her.

And now this riveting experience is captured in Davis’ just-released memoir, TICKET TO MADLAND.

Her voyage culminated with two weeks in a locked psychiatric ward. She emerged with a transformed view of mental illness: “another country,” as she calls it, with “monsters just like us.”

TICKET TO MADLAND is a vividly candid, darkly comic account of a high achiever’s self-guided trek through excruciating mind-body disease, the characters she meets along the way, and her courageous struggle to lead herself back to health.

Davis says she wrote the book to “demystify, destigmatize, and defang” the experience of mental illness, creating a “small, clear window” in the wall surrounding Madland.

Her book sheds light on three widespread, urgent health issues:

• Mental illness and suicidality: It can happen to anyone—including the most sane, competent people—and it's nothing like what you see in the movies. Fortunately, it's rarely the end of the journey. We need to demystify and destigmatize the experience of mental illness.

• Women's undertreated chronic illnesses: Chronic fatigue, persistent vertigo, gut disorders, unexplained pain ... Such conditions are too often misdiagnosed, downplayed, or dismissed as "all in your head." The brain-body connection is the key to understanding them.

• Perimenopause: For some women, it's no big deal. For others, it's a decades-long ordeal with bafflingly diverse, horribly severe symptoms that doctors don't understand. We need to talk about it.

The book has been receiving high critical acclaim.

“Ticket to Madland reads like a medical thriller. Jocelyn Davis perfectly captures what happens when the most ancient part of your brain, sensing physical weakness, suddenly rears up to pull you through the looking glass into a distorted, nightmarish, funhouse world. It’s a page-turning, wryly observed, beautifully written chronicle of how the most put-together of us is vulnerable to being tipped over when there’s a perfect storm, and what we learn on the way back.” —Deborah Grace Winer, theater artist; author of The Night and the Music and On the Sunny Side of the Street

“You’ll be informed, entertained, and inspired by this true story of a mental healing journey.” —Tal Leead, PsyD, psychologist; author of Happier Being: Your Path to Optimizing Habits, Health & Happiness

“Ticket to Madland is a powerful memoir that blends vivid storytelling with refreshing humor. As a mental health expert with a background in neuroscience, I highly recommend this book for its authentic and touching portrayal of mental health struggles. Davis’s compassionate and insightful perspective offers a deeper understanding of psychiatric illness and the resilience it takes to find hope amid chaos.” —Srini Pillay, MD, psychiatrist and CEO, NeuroBusiness Group; author of Tinker Dabble Doodle Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind

TICKET TO MADLAND is available on Amazon and from all retail outlets where books are sold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jocelyn Davis is an internationally known author and speaker and the former head of R&D for a global leadership development consultancy. Her previous business books include Insubordinate, Strategic Speed, The Greats on Leadership, and The Art of Quiet Influence. Her historical novel, The Age of Kali, has been called “brilliant,” “heretical,” and “deeply moving.” Jocelyn holds master’s degrees in philosophy and Eastern classics; she loves bringing ancient stories and wisdom from many cultures to bear on modern, practical issues. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jocelyn is available for speaking engagements, interviews, and workshops. Visit www.jocelynrdavis.com.

Jocelyn Davis
Jocelyn Davis, Author
jocelynrdavis@gmail.com
Visit us on social media:
X
LinkedIn