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The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia
A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia.
In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.
Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder’s dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.
In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.
Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder’s dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 2026
About the author
Justin Garson
8 books28 followersJustin Garson, Ph.D., is a philosopher and historian of science at the City University of New York. He’s written numerous scholarly books and articles on biology, mind, and madness, including Madness: A Philosophical Exploration and The Madness Pill. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
May 4, 2026
Solomon Snyder, or Sol, was on a quest to find a cure of schizophrenia. In order to do that he thought he needed a drug to mimic what the illness does. So he searched in psychedelics for a while, but it wasn't quite right. When speed came about and psychosis from too much speed, well, this drug was closer.
I liked the succinct way the history of psychiatry was explained. Basically two types of approach to mental health, the environmental factors which talk therapy helps; and the biological approach, which is solved with medication. The later helped move the field into a more acceptable scientific field. This book covers many of the medications that were developed.
The book was divided into the two parts: psychedelics then speed, providing a short history and some of the people that were involved in the development. The book did not solely focus on one doctor, Sol, as there was a cadre of people working in this field, but it did keep coming back to Sol’s work. The organizational method of the book made sense, but it also meant that the timeline wasn’t completely linear.
The tail end of the book became a whirlwind of different drugs all with similar sounding names. It was hard to keep that all straight, but otherwise this was a fascinating and informative book.
Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.
I liked the succinct way the history of psychiatry was explained. Basically two types of approach to mental health, the environmental factors which talk therapy helps; and the biological approach, which is solved with medication. The later helped move the field into a more acceptable scientific field. This book covers many of the medications that were developed.
The book was divided into the two parts: psychedelics then speed, providing a short history and some of the people that were involved in the development. The book did not solely focus on one doctor, Sol, as there was a cadre of people working in this field, but it did keep coming back to Sol’s work. The organizational method of the book made sense, but it also meant that the timeline wasn’t completely linear.
The tail end of the book became a whirlwind of different drugs all with similar sounding names. It was hard to keep that all straight, but otherwise this was a fascinating and informative book.
Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.
May 7, 2026
Early thoughts: This history should be widely known and I find it wild that after a lifetime of psychiatric treatment, I am just learning some of this material. It's difficult for me to learn this history; to see how many people like me were experimented on within the last century in the US is ...a bit unhinged.
Feeling: Brilliant; wildly uncanny.
I’m curious about: This author is managing to tell this story *without* stigmatizing mental illness. That's because he harbors no prejudice against mentally ill people, is my guess, but how right am I about that? We'll see how the rest of the book goes.
"By 1955, [...] psychiatry had split almost perfectly into two camps. In one camp there were the psychoanalysts who followed Freud and believed in the power of talk therapy. In the other were the asylum doctors who experimented on patients’ bodies in hopes of finding a cure." p24
Final thoughts: This book is cold as ice. The history is actually interesting, but I think this one delves too far into the chemistry at times. I was more interested in the history of psychiatry, and I did learn some things here. There are details included about the research process that, while relevant, create friction for the reader. To what extent depends on the reader. Please see trigger warnings. And just know that this author does not attempt to account for the myriad ethical issues involved in what is discussed here until the epilogue.
"Endorphins block physical pain. But from nature’s point of view, pain is a good thing. It’s how your body lets you know there’s something seriously wrong that needs to be fixed. [...] Yet if too little pain is bad [...] too much pain is literally debilitating. [...] That’s when the endorphins kick in. They temporarily dull the screaming rush of pain so you can continue to fight or flee." p133
What worked: 📚 good research
🥰 not grossly ableist
⚖️ Well argued, balanced
What didn’t:
🐀 so much animal suffering
Who this is for: Readers interested in popular science, medical history, and mental illness
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Content Warnings: abuse of vulnerable people, experimentation on patients without informed consent, addiction, drugs, animal experimentation, extreme animal cruelty, animal death, animal butchery.
Feeling: Brilliant; wildly uncanny.
I’m curious about: This author is managing to tell this story *without* stigmatizing mental illness. That's because he harbors no prejudice against mentally ill people, is my guess, but how right am I about that? We'll see how the rest of the book goes.
"By 1955, [...] psychiatry had split almost perfectly into two camps. In one camp there were the psychoanalysts who followed Freud and believed in the power of talk therapy. In the other were the asylum doctors who experimented on patients’ bodies in hopes of finding a cure." p24
Final thoughts: This book is cold as ice. The history is actually interesting, but I think this one delves too far into the chemistry at times. I was more interested in the history of psychiatry, and I did learn some things here. There are details included about the research process that, while relevant, create friction for the reader. To what extent depends on the reader. Please see trigger warnings. And just know that this author does not attempt to account for the myriad ethical issues involved in what is discussed here until the epilogue.
"Endorphins block physical pain. But from nature’s point of view, pain is a good thing. It’s how your body lets you know there’s something seriously wrong that needs to be fixed. [...] Yet if too little pain is bad [...] too much pain is literally debilitating. [...] That’s when the endorphins kick in. They temporarily dull the screaming rush of pain so you can continue to fight or flee." p133
What worked: 📚 good research
🥰 not grossly ableist
⚖️ Well argued, balanced
What didn’t:
🐀 so much animal suffering
Who this is for: Readers interested in popular science, medical history, and mental illness
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Content Warnings: abuse of vulnerable people, experimentation on patients without informed consent, addiction, drugs, animal experimentation, extreme animal cruelty, animal death, animal butchery.
October 31, 2025
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
The Madness Pill by Justin Garson is a part scientific history, part biography. Following the career path of Dr. Solomon Snyder, the book delves into some crucial discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and psychopharmacology that helped redefine the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses.
The thing that makes this one of the easier science histories to read due to its concise nature. The book is relatively short, and the scope of the book is relatively narrow. The author wastes very little time delving into tangential topics. The author also is very clear in his aims that despite the career biography, this isn’t a personal biography. While Dr. Snyder’s basic biography does get mentioned, very little time is spent on his personal life. This makes a very specific, very streamlined narrative. The author is able to focus very strongly on the 50 or so odd years of research and innovation without finding the story mired in extraneous details.
I thought that the writing and language used in the story were clear and straightforward. The explanations and descriptions were technical and presumed a level of familiarity but weren’t overly technical.
Something that did impact my final feeling on the book were the epilogue and forward. While the context was certainly interesting about the personal connection, I felt like beside mentioning the side effects, it didn’t factor much into the bulk in the narrative. It was the epilogue that was really what made me feel conflicted. The author spends 200 pages talking about all the successes and innovations of this field and then levels a somewhat heavy handed critique of everything in a single chapter. It sort of felt like the author wasn’t trying to present some more food for thought but rather like they were trying to derail their own story. Sure, it’s not unusual or even a bad idea to present the counter arguments for a book, but this felt somewhat out of place. I think that this book was just too brief to have a very steep criticism in less than a chapter tacked on to the end.
For me, I’d realistically give this a 3.5/5 but feel that in light of the actual chapters of the book merit closer to a 4/5. Fascinating information, concisely written.
The Madness Pill by Justin Garson is a part scientific history, part biography. Following the career path of Dr. Solomon Snyder, the book delves into some crucial discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and psychopharmacology that helped redefine the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses.
The thing that makes this one of the easier science histories to read due to its concise nature. The book is relatively short, and the scope of the book is relatively narrow. The author wastes very little time delving into tangential topics. The author also is very clear in his aims that despite the career biography, this isn’t a personal biography. While Dr. Snyder’s basic biography does get mentioned, very little time is spent on his personal life. This makes a very specific, very streamlined narrative. The author is able to focus very strongly on the 50 or so odd years of research and innovation without finding the story mired in extraneous details.
I thought that the writing and language used in the story were clear and straightforward. The explanations and descriptions were technical and presumed a level of familiarity but weren’t overly technical.
Something that did impact my final feeling on the book were the epilogue and forward. While the context was certainly interesting about the personal connection, I felt like beside mentioning the side effects, it didn’t factor much into the bulk in the narrative. It was the epilogue that was really what made me feel conflicted. The author spends 200 pages talking about all the successes and innovations of this field and then levels a somewhat heavy handed critique of everything in a single chapter. It sort of felt like the author wasn’t trying to present some more food for thought but rather like they were trying to derail their own story. Sure, it’s not unusual or even a bad idea to present the counter arguments for a book, but this felt somewhat out of place. I think that this book was just too brief to have a very steep criticism in less than a chapter tacked on to the end.
For me, I’d realistically give this a 3.5/5 but feel that in light of the actual chapters of the book merit closer to a 4/5. Fascinating information, concisely written.
December 3, 2025
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
A biography of the man who helped to create the pill used to cure schizophrenia. This caused the practice of psychiatry to turn away from talk and psychoanalysis towards drugs.
The sad part, is that as far as I can tell, niether the pills nor the talking actually work very well.
A biography of the man who helped to create the pill used to cure schizophrenia. This caused the practice of psychiatry to turn away from talk and psychoanalysis towards drugs.
The sad part, is that as far as I can tell, niether the pills nor the talking actually work very well.
May 4, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ALC.
Good things first: this author manages to be pretty normal about schizophrenic people. Probably because his dad was schizophrenic. And possibly because this book hardly deals with schizophrenia.
He did fail to address the misogyny present in "wandering wombs", though. I mean, if you have reading comprehension skills and basic feminist awareness, you're going to know how "wandering wombs" is misogynist as hell, but I do feel like it would have been important for the author to explicitly mention the weaponisation of madness in patriarchy.. Even if it's just a side note. Any mention please.
What I personally didn't like was that this book is more of a book on drugs, while I expected a lot more schizophrenia in this book. It was very chemistry-focused, lots of talk about different hormones and enzymes and whatever, which I simply don't know anything about. I mean, I guess it makes sense as Sol was dealing with drug development, but considering how obsessed he seems to have been with "the mystery of schizophrenia", I really would have wanted more schizophrenia here. Might be personal bias, as a schizophrenic myself, but I found that this book doesn't really address the illness itself, and just talks about like 5 different drugs and drug trials and how they work and don't work. I knew there would be discussion of Sol's work, but I still didn't expect it to be quite so... chemical. So, sadly, I was not the target audience, but my biochemistry friend might find this book really cool. I should hit her up with this rec.
Good things first: this author manages to be pretty normal about schizophrenic people. Probably because his dad was schizophrenic. And possibly because this book hardly deals with schizophrenia.
He did fail to address the misogyny present in "wandering wombs", though. I mean, if you have reading comprehension skills and basic feminist awareness, you're going to know how "wandering wombs" is misogynist as hell, but I do feel like it would have been important for the author to explicitly mention the weaponisation of madness in patriarchy.. Even if it's just a side note. Any mention please.
What I personally didn't like was that this book is more of a book on drugs, while I expected a lot more schizophrenia in this book. It was very chemistry-focused, lots of talk about different hormones and enzymes and whatever, which I simply don't know anything about. I mean, I guess it makes sense as Sol was dealing with drug development, but considering how obsessed he seems to have been with "the mystery of schizophrenia", I really would have wanted more schizophrenia here. Might be personal bias, as a schizophrenic myself, but I found that this book doesn't really address the illness itself, and just talks about like 5 different drugs and drug trials and how they work and don't work. I knew there would be discussion of Sol's work, but I still didn't expect it to be quite so... chemical. So, sadly, I was not the target audience, but my biochemistry friend might find this book really cool. I should hit her up with this rec.
March 23, 2026
Justin Garson has a personal connection to his book The Madness Pill. He is driven to learn more about the mental health condition schizophrenia, one that his father struggled with through much of his life. Garson tracks the history of our understanding of schizophrenia primarily through the life of Solomon Snyder, a visionary who had his hands in many discoveries but kept coming back to the question on what was the biological basis for schizophrenia? The book also is a nice snapshot of the history of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology for mental health conditions. We learn about how low serotonin was discovered as a contributor to depression, which led to the development of SSRIs like prozac. We go on a journey of psychedelics and their history of how they work on the brain, which is a timeline detour considering the increased interest in psychedelic assisted therapy for conditions like PTSD and treatment resistant depression. But "Sol" keeps returning to his dopamine hypothesis for schizophrenia. The experiments he works on to prove it are fascinating. If you are interested in mental health and/or scientific discovery, you will enjoy this one.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.
April 25, 2026
I debated if I should give this a full 5-stars, or a 4.5-stars rating. Ultimately, I felt that Justin Garson's The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia deserves all 5 stars. It was obvious that the subject matter is close to Garson's heart and was passionately written.
His interest in the subject matter comes from his personal, first-hand connection and experiences with a father who struggled with schizophrenia most of his life. Garson's research, in my opinion, was topnotch and included interviews. Garson's narrative skillfully included scientific history--specifically into the evolution of 20th century psychiatry along with the evolving science of neuroscience and mental health--and how one doctor, Dr. Solomon (Sol) Snyder (plus various peers/colleagues) quested to discover the cause for schizophrenia and sought to find its cure.
Before I go further, I would like to thank St. Martin's Press, NetGalley, and the author, Justin Garson, for providing this advance review copy (ARC) for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The Madness Pill mostly is a biography Sol, who looked at mental illness as a deficiency in the way the brain functioned rather than responding to trauma. He started his research into the subject using psychotropic drugs that included how LSD effected the brain/mind; even taking a carefully mediated "journey," to better understand LSD. Sol studied the way LSD and speed could induce psychosis, which, ironically, provided a way to understand mental illness better. Garson even teased a bit at how Richard Nixon played a bit of a role in Sol's quest--I won't spoil it, but to say, some of the historical events of the time were quite interesting to me.
Overall, I enjoyed learning more about the timeline involved with mental health and research and how this field went from psychoanalysis and progressed toward an approach that was more science based. One area that was discussed included the use of dopamine. Additionally, Garson provided a bit of history behind discovering SSRIs and SNRIs.
Garson wanted to make sure that anyone could read and understand this book, so even complex topics were understandable and engaging. Thus I highly recommend The Madness Pill to anyone with an interest in overall psychology, mental health, and, of course, schizophrenia.
His interest in the subject matter comes from his personal, first-hand connection and experiences with a father who struggled with schizophrenia most of his life. Garson's research, in my opinion, was topnotch and included interviews. Garson's narrative skillfully included scientific history--specifically into the evolution of 20th century psychiatry along with the evolving science of neuroscience and mental health--and how one doctor, Dr. Solomon (Sol) Snyder (plus various peers/colleagues) quested to discover the cause for schizophrenia and sought to find its cure.
Before I go further, I would like to thank St. Martin's Press, NetGalley, and the author, Justin Garson, for providing this advance review copy (ARC) for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The Madness Pill mostly is a biography Sol, who looked at mental illness as a deficiency in the way the brain functioned rather than responding to trauma. He started his research into the subject using psychotropic drugs that included how LSD effected the brain/mind; even taking a carefully mediated "journey," to better understand LSD. Sol studied the way LSD and speed could induce psychosis, which, ironically, provided a way to understand mental illness better. Garson even teased a bit at how Richard Nixon played a bit of a role in Sol's quest--I won't spoil it, but to say, some of the historical events of the time were quite interesting to me.
Overall, I enjoyed learning more about the timeline involved with mental health and research and how this field went from psychoanalysis and progressed toward an approach that was more science based. One area that was discussed included the use of dopamine. Additionally, Garson provided a bit of history behind discovering SSRIs and SNRIs.
Garson wanted to make sure that anyone could read and understand this book, so even complex topics were understandable and engaging. Thus I highly recommend The Madness Pill to anyone with an interest in overall psychology, mental health, and, of course, schizophrenia.
May 24, 2026
The Madness Pill is a very shocking, educational, and insightful read. It goes into detail about the life and work of Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind altering drugs revolutionized the way we identify causes and treatments for schizophrenia. His work helped turn psychiatry into a more well respected science by transforming the way we view and treat mental illness. The author, Justin Gaston, reveals at the beginning that this subject is close to his heart as his father was diagnosed with schizophrenia, back when the treatments were not the best. It is evident that he feels passionately about the topic and performed thorough firsthand interviews to adequately research the material.
The information is presented in a way that is fascinating and scientifically detailed, but also easy to understand. It is interesting to learn about the dark, ignorant history behind the initial treatment techniques for schizophrenia and then discovering the evolution of research and treatment in this field. As a healthcare worker in a hospital, I often treat many patients with psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia while not having a ton of schooling in this area. I truly learned a lot and feel this will help me in better understanding and interacting with these patients. There were a couple of sections that were a little slow that I had to push through but overall it was a compelling read that I would definitely recommend to others!
Thank you to Justin Garson, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for the gifted copy! This is a voluntary and honest review.
The information is presented in a way that is fascinating and scientifically detailed, but also easy to understand. It is interesting to learn about the dark, ignorant history behind the initial treatment techniques for schizophrenia and then discovering the evolution of research and treatment in this field. As a healthcare worker in a hospital, I often treat many patients with psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia while not having a ton of schooling in this area. I truly learned a lot and feel this will help me in better understanding and interacting with these patients. There were a couple of sections that were a little slow that I had to push through but overall it was a compelling read that I would definitely recommend to others!
Thank you to Justin Garson, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for the gifted copy! This is a voluntary and honest review.
April 27, 2026
Thank you, NetGalley, for granting me a free digital copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Schizophrenia is one of, if not the worst psychiatric disorders out there, plaguing its patients with hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and, in some extreme cases, even rendering them catatonic. It's also one of the most "cinematic" disorders: hearing voices is a telltale sign of madness in storytelling (oftentimes intertwined with tortured genius), and has long captured audience's imaginations. All this perfectly explains both why scientists would be driven to study schizophrenia, and why the morbidly curious would be drawn to a book like The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia. The catch is that we really don't understand schizophrenia very well, even today, which presents an issue not only for real-life patients, but also for the resolution of this book.
Very little time is allocated to the people struggling with schizophrenia in The Madness Pill. Even the symptoms of the condition are treated more like background information than as a focal point of the research. Instead, the first half of the book focuses primarily on the LSD experiments Dr. Sol Snyder and his associates ran on themselves and others, believing that the psychedelic simulated similar effects to schizophrenia, and therefore held the key to understanding (and hopefully treating and curing) it. The ethics of these experiments are a bit foggy--the students who participated in them would have been volunteers, but given what we know now about the effect psychedelics can have on some people, this comes across as reckless at best. Garson appears to find no issue with it, and even casts the growing public disapproval for LSD in the late-1960s as akin to a moral panic.
As it turns out, LSD didn't truly replicate the effects of schizophrenia after all. Speed (amphetamines) was a better substitute, albeit even more dangerous, and Snyder and co. were able to gleam much information from studying it without ever reaching a firm explanation for schizophrenia's origins. The science can be difficult to follow, and after arguing in favor of a biological explanation for schizophrenia for the entire book, Garson abruptly switches lanes in the last chapter and suggests that it might be sociological instead. There's no mention of schizophrenia's inheritability, or if certain demographics are more susceptible to developing it. Given the heavy focus on drug experiments, the complete absence of marijuana--which studies have increasingly shown has a direct link to schizophrenia, at least among men--is also a noticeable blind spot. Dr. Snyder's work surely helped many people, but The Madness Pill feels incomplete, both because of how far there still is to go in treating this horrifying illness, and because of all the crucial information that was left on the cutting room floor.
Schizophrenia is one of, if not the worst psychiatric disorders out there, plaguing its patients with hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and, in some extreme cases, even rendering them catatonic. It's also one of the most "cinematic" disorders: hearing voices is a telltale sign of madness in storytelling (oftentimes intertwined with tortured genius), and has long captured audience's imaginations. All this perfectly explains both why scientists would be driven to study schizophrenia, and why the morbidly curious would be drawn to a book like The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia. The catch is that we really don't understand schizophrenia very well, even today, which presents an issue not only for real-life patients, but also for the resolution of this book.
Very little time is allocated to the people struggling with schizophrenia in The Madness Pill. Even the symptoms of the condition are treated more like background information than as a focal point of the research. Instead, the first half of the book focuses primarily on the LSD experiments Dr. Sol Snyder and his associates ran on themselves and others, believing that the psychedelic simulated similar effects to schizophrenia, and therefore held the key to understanding (and hopefully treating and curing) it. The ethics of these experiments are a bit foggy--the students who participated in them would have been volunteers, but given what we know now about the effect psychedelics can have on some people, this comes across as reckless at best. Garson appears to find no issue with it, and even casts the growing public disapproval for LSD in the late-1960s as akin to a moral panic.
As it turns out, LSD didn't truly replicate the effects of schizophrenia after all. Speed (amphetamines) was a better substitute, albeit even more dangerous, and Snyder and co. were able to gleam much information from studying it without ever reaching a firm explanation for schizophrenia's origins. The science can be difficult to follow, and after arguing in favor of a biological explanation for schizophrenia for the entire book, Garson abruptly switches lanes in the last chapter and suggests that it might be sociological instead. There's no mention of schizophrenia's inheritability, or if certain demographics are more susceptible to developing it. Given the heavy focus on drug experiments, the complete absence of marijuana--which studies have increasingly shown has a direct link to schizophrenia, at least among men--is also a noticeable blind spot. Dr. Snyder's work surely helped many people, but The Madness Pill feels incomplete, both because of how far there still is to go in treating this horrifying illness, and because of all the crucial information that was left on the cutting room floor.
May 8, 2026
I would’ve gave it 5 stars, but he didn’t actually cure schizophrenia by doing LSD and Speed.
November 2, 2025
4.5 ⭐️
Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Publishers, and Justin Garson for providing me with an advanced digital copy of The Madness Pill. This is my honest review.
The Madness Pill is a fascinating blend of biography, science, and history. Quite literally, this book is a true labor of love written by a son whose father lived with schizophrenia. Drawing from both personal experience and deep research, Garson crafts a compelling narrative centered on psychiatrist Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped transform modern mental health treatment.
Born in the 1930s, Snyder began his career at just nineteen with a single goal: to uncover the cause and find a treatment of schizophrenia. His lifelong dedication to this mission is both inspiring and deeply human.
As someone who regularly works with individuals affected by schizophrenia, I found this book to be empathetic and respectful toward people living with mental illness. Garson manages to balance scientific information with compassion, making complex concepts accessible and easy to digest.
I highly recommend The Madness Pill to readers interested in the history of mental health, neuroscience, or psychology. This book is for anyone looking for an approachable yet thought-provoking work of nonfiction.
Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Publishers, and Justin Garson for providing me with an advanced digital copy of The Madness Pill. This is my honest review.
The Madness Pill is a fascinating blend of biography, science, and history. Quite literally, this book is a true labor of love written by a son whose father lived with schizophrenia. Drawing from both personal experience and deep research, Garson crafts a compelling narrative centered on psychiatrist Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped transform modern mental health treatment.
Born in the 1930s, Snyder began his career at just nineteen with a single goal: to uncover the cause and find a treatment of schizophrenia. His lifelong dedication to this mission is both inspiring and deeply human.
As someone who regularly works with individuals affected by schizophrenia, I found this book to be empathetic and respectful toward people living with mental illness. Garson manages to balance scientific information with compassion, making complex concepts accessible and easy to digest.
I highly recommend The Madness Pill to readers interested in the history of mental health, neuroscience, or psychology. This book is for anyone looking for an approachable yet thought-provoking work of nonfiction.
October 31, 2025
What The Madness Pill by Justin Garson offers the reader is a sympathetic and approachable look into the work of psychiatrist Dr. Solomon Snyder, who spent his career attempting to understand the cause of and a cure for schizophrenia. While I think some scientific understanding is perhaps beneficial, as a layperson to the sciences, I still took a lot away from this book and was engaged throughout.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an eArc in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an eArc in exchange for an honest review.
January 4, 2026
a super interesting read for anyone interested in schizophrenia, neuroscience, or the history of modern psychiatry. great explanation of the biological and historical mechanisms behind schizophrenia while tracing how psychiatric treatment and the pharmaceutical industry have evolved over time through the work of Dr. Sol Snyder.
December 29, 2025
Amazing! Best non-fiction I have read this year.
Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. #giveaway
Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. #giveaway
April 29, 2026
Thank you to the publisher for a gifted copy; all thoughts are my own.
📖 Book Review 📖 For those of you new to my page, you might not know that my husband and I met on a psychiatric ward. He was a first year intern and I was the social work intern so our early days together were treating patients, many with schizophrenia. It’s an illness that has made a lasting impact on our relationship and I think it’s probably the hardest disease to understand. Justin Garson writes a fascinating look at the history of psychiatry, focusing on the work of Solomon Snyder and his pivotal advancement in the movement to treat mental illness.
The Madness Pill is indeed a biography but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and this one is captivating. Garson is a gifted writer, weaving in all of his research with an engaging narrative. We still have a long way to go in our understanding of the brain and how to help people diagnosed with schizophrenia but this book shines light on how far we’ve come and the need for continued advocacy and scientific developments.
📖 Book Review 📖 For those of you new to my page, you might not know that my husband and I met on a psychiatric ward. He was a first year intern and I was the social work intern so our early days together were treating patients, many with schizophrenia. It’s an illness that has made a lasting impact on our relationship and I think it’s probably the hardest disease to understand. Justin Garson writes a fascinating look at the history of psychiatry, focusing on the work of Solomon Snyder and his pivotal advancement in the movement to treat mental illness.
The Madness Pill is indeed a biography but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and this one is captivating. Garson is a gifted writer, weaving in all of his research with an engaging narrative. We still have a long way to go in our understanding of the brain and how to help people diagnosed with schizophrenia but this book shines light on how far we’ve come and the need for continued advocacy and scientific developments.
May 8, 2026
I learned a lot from The Madness Pill by Justin Garson. The name of the book is what initially drew me in and I also have personal and professional experience with mental health disorders.
I found the scientific information very easy to understand and follow and I gained great insight into the mechanism of psychiatric drugs.
The story of Sol Snyder was interesting and entertaining; he’s such a significant figure in our time, yet I’d never heard of him before.
I recommend this book to readers with any sort of interest in the mental health field, medicine, science in general, and to readers who just want to learn something new in an easy to understand way.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press & NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I found the scientific information very easy to understand and follow and I gained great insight into the mechanism of psychiatric drugs.
The story of Sol Snyder was interesting and entertaining; he’s such a significant figure in our time, yet I’d never heard of him before.
I recommend this book to readers with any sort of interest in the mental health field, medicine, science in general, and to readers who just want to learn something new in an easy to understand way.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press & NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.
May 9, 2026
Garson manages to take a very scientific topic and make it personal and deeply enjoyable. This book is clearly heavily researched and I commend his ability to create such an engaging story, which was easy to follow and built suspense. A must read for those interested in the psychology and mental health world!
May 12, 2026
A fascinating history of the study into schizophrenia. I listened to the audio book. Unfortunately, a couple spots entire paragraphs were read twice, back to back. But otherwise, it was a great listen.
May 6, 2026
Provides a good background on antipsychotic medications and the work that went into developing them.
May 3, 2026
Interesting yet somehow feels incomplete.
May 21, 2026
THE MADNESS PILL
BY: JUSTIN GARSON
This has a huge amount of research that the Author has used to write this book about a trail blazing effort to take Psychiatry to be treating Schizophrenia the most severe form of Mental Illness from treating it with Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy into the discovery of a biochemistry that located it was Amphetamines which I already know that they can cause psychotic breaks from too much Dopamine. The book is very easy to understand for me since I studied Biochemistry as an undergraduate and was going to be a Psychiatrist and excelled in Psychology which I have a background in since even though I changed my major because I didn't have the stomach for dissecting but have to graduate degrees where I took as many Psychology classes and still keep up to date reading research so this was not anything new to me and even though psychoanalysis is considered ineffective for Schizophrenia in the 1950's I happen to think it fascinating even though not many people with depression or anxiety who see a therapist are going to devote five sessions per week but it has it's effectiveness and I know psychotherapy is still offered by a friend of mine who is a Psychiatrist who prescribes medication but that psychotherapy is usually done by a psychologist and if deemed necessary the way it usually works is the Psychiatrist prescribes SSRI's for depression which since Peter Kramer discovered Prozac it changed antidepressants in 1985 from Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors since before Prozac the medications prescribed had more side effects and not as safe as what psychopharmacology exploded after Prozac for depression and anxiety to what are SSRI'S by now it is standard. A patient might be diagnosed by the psychologist and depending on the diagnosis only meet with the Psychiatrist who can also prescribe the SSRI for depression or anti-anxiety medication or anti=psychotics for Schizophrenia which as established is the most severe Mental illness since the Psychiatrist is trained in Psychopharmacology, and that has always been the case but as far as Dopamine which can cause psychosis if too high a dose of Amphetamines which that was the point of Solomon Snyder's discovery of the neuron that he isolated by which back in the 1950's Asylums were full of people with which Schizophrenia weren't given anti-psychotic medication and even today Schizophrenia is still challenging because the medication has many side affects so the person with that diagnosis either isn't given the correct dose or they decide not to take their medication because it makes them tired or they don't respond to the anti-psychotic prescribed making it still a hard mental illness to manage. I know they can be plagued with auditory or see things that are part of hallucinations that makes this so difficult for both the afflicted who have it and for treatment to be a challenging part of the Psychiatrist to manage to prescribe even though they are trained in Psychopharmacology the patient with Schizophrenia can be the most challenging to manage. The book is by the Author who had been born in the early 1970's and his father suffered from psychosis which he describes how his father had episodes of psychosis in great detail. It is why he is so compassionate since I felt empathetic and why he goes through his father breaks with reality which I know how it presents so I felt bad for him and it's very hard to imagine how he felt as he gives detailed examples about his father's psychosis which I understand must be why he put so much history and describes Solomon Snyder's accomplishments with first discovering how dopamine was used as a biological chemical in Amphetamines which as I said too much even in ADHD medicine can cause psychosis and how Psychiatry has risen from being not as progressive as a field of medicine how it wasn't the field that recognizes that biological and biochemistry is the neurotransmitters and even my own interest in how far biochemistry is researching the brain that is well known how Neuroplasticity is the brains life long ability for which at the cellular level neurons are able to form ne new connections by rewiring itself, adapt and form new neural pathways in response to experiences and learning which isn't new. Basically Psychiatry was not advancing in the 1950's in how during that time medicine developed a cure for Polio and antibiotics, and even cancer were being advanced compared to Psychiatry and this author gives historical and philosophy how Solomon Snyder worked to change through discovering how Dopamine which I sound repetitive given through Amphetamines while Asylums were full since Psychiatry today has in his passion for Solomon Snyder who was a Neuroscientist who has made wide ranging contributions to Neuropharmacology and Neurochemistry. He studied at Georgetown University and has conducted the majority of his research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Many advances in Molecular Neuroscience Neurotransmitters and drugs, and elucidations of the actions of Psychotropic agents. He received an award in 1978 for his research on the Opioid receptor. He is one of the highest cited Researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences. His laboratory is noted for the use of receptor binding studies to characterize the use of neurotransmitters and psychoactive drugs. He is also known for his work with identifying receptors for the major neurotransmitters in the brain and in the process explaining the actions of psychoactive drugs such as the blockade of dopamine receptors by antipsychotic drugs. That the Schizophrenia treatment in a nutshell is how Psychiatry has different antipsychotic medication to be used to control auditory hallucinations and also seeing things that aren't there. I actually think that he gives much more about psychoactive drugs that he talks about and the Psychiatrist Solomon Snyder who he gives such a much more comprehensive narrative than I can include in this review. I don't think many health insurance covers psychoanalysis even though I have studied and like I said that my good friend is a Psychiatrist who also has psychotherapy which as an older reader and I have seen how SSRI'S are what is prescribed now and how that's not how it always was but I can also see why this author did a fantastic job making his quest for understanding something that just is still a challenge to treat. This an excellent thorough achievement for this Author's in depth research is staggering and impressive and I can see how heartbreaking from how he saw his father suffer as the book gave many examples that my background from biochemistry courses and I have read a lot of books that I think that he talks a lot more about the history of both Solomon Snyder's life which was interspersed in an accessible engrossing and fascinating history of also much of what surprised me about the vastly historic back ground regarding medical knowledge of medications and also an extensive outstanding history of Psychiatry with the masterful immersive exquisite writing style that is informative but always interesting. I knew this makes this engrossing which I did love this and I was surprised by the factual execution to which how much I learned while how much this author went above and beyond making this a resourceful n with this being a top favorite of non fiction since it captivated me to how there was some of what I already was familiar with but also professionally this far exceeded my expectations and anyone interested in how Neuroscience has helped bring Psychiatry to have evolved from it being traced back to its origins up to offering many more intriguing current countless side effects like his sprinkled up to date knowledge of prescription drugs that make his own tragic history with a father who was Harvard trained brilliance struggle with the medication as he felt drugged with how his heartbreaking side effects that affected him from the medications that prevented the psychosis. He wrote about Solomon Snyder's life before he decided to choose Psychiatry that offers so much impact that shows the humanity of Solomon Snyder's early life that I appreciated. Also that such a major contributor didn't like science before he decided to pursue Psychiatry is just one example of how this author's cited footnotes make this a wide ranging fantastic reading experience that I highly recommend.
Publication Date: April 28, 2026
A huge thank you to Net Galley, Justin Garson, and St. Martin's Press for generously providing me with my Spectacular ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own, as always.
#TheMadnessPill #JustinGarson #StMartinsPress #NetGalley
BY: JUSTIN GARSON
This has a huge amount of research that the Author has used to write this book about a trail blazing effort to take Psychiatry to be treating Schizophrenia the most severe form of Mental Illness from treating it with Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy into the discovery of a biochemistry that located it was Amphetamines which I already know that they can cause psychotic breaks from too much Dopamine. The book is very easy to understand for me since I studied Biochemistry as an undergraduate and was going to be a Psychiatrist and excelled in Psychology which I have a background in since even though I changed my major because I didn't have the stomach for dissecting but have to graduate degrees where I took as many Psychology classes and still keep up to date reading research so this was not anything new to me and even though psychoanalysis is considered ineffective for Schizophrenia in the 1950's I happen to think it fascinating even though not many people with depression or anxiety who see a therapist are going to devote five sessions per week but it has it's effectiveness and I know psychotherapy is still offered by a friend of mine who is a Psychiatrist who prescribes medication but that psychotherapy is usually done by a psychologist and if deemed necessary the way it usually works is the Psychiatrist prescribes SSRI's for depression which since Peter Kramer discovered Prozac it changed antidepressants in 1985 from Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors since before Prozac the medications prescribed had more side effects and not as safe as what psychopharmacology exploded after Prozac for depression and anxiety to what are SSRI'S by now it is standard. A patient might be diagnosed by the psychologist and depending on the diagnosis only meet with the Psychiatrist who can also prescribe the SSRI for depression or anti-anxiety medication or anti=psychotics for Schizophrenia which as established is the most severe Mental illness since the Psychiatrist is trained in Psychopharmacology, and that has always been the case but as far as Dopamine which can cause psychosis if too high a dose of Amphetamines which that was the point of Solomon Snyder's discovery of the neuron that he isolated by which back in the 1950's Asylums were full of people with which Schizophrenia weren't given anti-psychotic medication and even today Schizophrenia is still challenging because the medication has many side affects so the person with that diagnosis either isn't given the correct dose or they decide not to take their medication because it makes them tired or they don't respond to the anti-psychotic prescribed making it still a hard mental illness to manage. I know they can be plagued with auditory or see things that are part of hallucinations that makes this so difficult for both the afflicted who have it and for treatment to be a challenging part of the Psychiatrist to manage to prescribe even though they are trained in Psychopharmacology the patient with Schizophrenia can be the most challenging to manage. The book is by the Author who had been born in the early 1970's and his father suffered from psychosis which he describes how his father had episodes of psychosis in great detail. It is why he is so compassionate since I felt empathetic and why he goes through his father breaks with reality which I know how it presents so I felt bad for him and it's very hard to imagine how he felt as he gives detailed examples about his father's psychosis which I understand must be why he put so much history and describes Solomon Snyder's accomplishments with first discovering how dopamine was used as a biological chemical in Amphetamines which as I said too much even in ADHD medicine can cause psychosis and how Psychiatry has risen from being not as progressive as a field of medicine how it wasn't the field that recognizes that biological and biochemistry is the neurotransmitters and even my own interest in how far biochemistry is researching the brain that is well known how Neuroplasticity is the brains life long ability for which at the cellular level neurons are able to form ne new connections by rewiring itself, adapt and form new neural pathways in response to experiences and learning which isn't new. Basically Psychiatry was not advancing in the 1950's in how during that time medicine developed a cure for Polio and antibiotics, and even cancer were being advanced compared to Psychiatry and this author gives historical and philosophy how Solomon Snyder worked to change through discovering how Dopamine which I sound repetitive given through Amphetamines while Asylums were full since Psychiatry today has in his passion for Solomon Snyder who was a Neuroscientist who has made wide ranging contributions to Neuropharmacology and Neurochemistry. He studied at Georgetown University and has conducted the majority of his research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Many advances in Molecular Neuroscience Neurotransmitters and drugs, and elucidations of the actions of Psychotropic agents. He received an award in 1978 for his research on the Opioid receptor. He is one of the highest cited Researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences. His laboratory is noted for the use of receptor binding studies to characterize the use of neurotransmitters and psychoactive drugs. He is also known for his work with identifying receptors for the major neurotransmitters in the brain and in the process explaining the actions of psychoactive drugs such as the blockade of dopamine receptors by antipsychotic drugs. That the Schizophrenia treatment in a nutshell is how Psychiatry has different antipsychotic medication to be used to control auditory hallucinations and also seeing things that aren't there. I actually think that he gives much more about psychoactive drugs that he talks about and the Psychiatrist Solomon Snyder who he gives such a much more comprehensive narrative than I can include in this review. I don't think many health insurance covers psychoanalysis even though I have studied and like I said that my good friend is a Psychiatrist who also has psychotherapy which as an older reader and I have seen how SSRI'S are what is prescribed now and how that's not how it always was but I can also see why this author did a fantastic job making his quest for understanding something that just is still a challenge to treat. This an excellent thorough achievement for this Author's in depth research is staggering and impressive and I can see how heartbreaking from how he saw his father suffer as the book gave many examples that my background from biochemistry courses and I have read a lot of books that I think that he talks a lot more about the history of both Solomon Snyder's life which was interspersed in an accessible engrossing and fascinating history of also much of what surprised me about the vastly historic back ground regarding medical knowledge of medications and also an extensive outstanding history of Psychiatry with the masterful immersive exquisite writing style that is informative but always interesting. I knew this makes this engrossing which I did love this and I was surprised by the factual execution to which how much I learned while how much this author went above and beyond making this a resourceful n with this being a top favorite of non fiction since it captivated me to how there was some of what I already was familiar with but also professionally this far exceeded my expectations and anyone interested in how Neuroscience has helped bring Psychiatry to have evolved from it being traced back to its origins up to offering many more intriguing current countless side effects like his sprinkled up to date knowledge of prescription drugs that make his own tragic history with a father who was Harvard trained brilliance struggle with the medication as he felt drugged with how his heartbreaking side effects that affected him from the medications that prevented the psychosis. He wrote about Solomon Snyder's life before he decided to choose Psychiatry that offers so much impact that shows the humanity of Solomon Snyder's early life that I appreciated. Also that such a major contributor didn't like science before he decided to pursue Psychiatry is just one example of how this author's cited footnotes make this a wide ranging fantastic reading experience that I highly recommend.
Publication Date: April 28, 2026
A huge thank you to Net Galley, Justin Garson, and St. Martin's Press for generously providing me with my Spectacular ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own, as always.
#TheMadnessPill #JustinGarson #StMartinsPress #NetGalley
May 21, 2026
Real Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia.
In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.
Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder’s dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I did not think I'd review this book all that politely. The publicists who wrote the synopsis above used two words in particular that felt...off, odd, even a smidge dishonest, in my mental ear: "rollicking" and "raucous." A scientist's life's work decribed in storytelling superlatives, not scientific ones like "groundbreaking" or "paradigm-shifting"? ::side-eye::
One victory for y'all, publicists. This story as told by Author Garson does indeed rollick raucously through Solomon Snyder's life's work in neurochemistry. I'm a big proponent of talk therapy for those able to benefit from it. Those who can benefit include me (happily) when, after a major crisis that was stabilized by antidepressants, aka neurochemicals, I entered another phase of talk therapy that has presented me with ongoing benefits that I remain deeply grateful for.
Schizoaffective disorder and the multitude of brain-chemistry malfunctions related to it is not adequately addressed by talk therapy. Until Solomon Snyder got to pokin' around because there was zero progress towards curing this life-ruining disorder, there was no good outcome for its sufferers on offer anywhere. It's still a horrendously difficult condition to manage even with neurochemical models explaining some root causes of its symptoms, and chemical therapies helping manage some of devastatingly painful results of its symptoms.
Author Garson is chatty in his presentation of the facts uncovered by Sol, as Dr. Snyder seems to be universally referred to after a time, and his collaborators and even enemies. (No one who changes paradigms is going to be without enemies, detractors, and ill-wishers.) The chattiness and the organizing principle of Sol's personality and perspicacity leads to the strange sense that we're getting to know *about* Sol, getting to know how he affected people and worked with them...or didn't...but not to *know* him. The research, the systems of conducting it, aren't glossed over or lingered on. It's very uncomfortable stuff to our twenty-first century eyes. Sol was in the thick of it. He did wonders for people who previously had little to hope for; getting there, he caused harm and suffering. Those who suffer with experimental animals are strongly cautioned not to read this story; those who feel raw about issues of consent are not going to find this subject matter at all easy to contend with.
There truly is no light without shadow.
Light there is, all in despite of the dark tunnel traversed to get to it. I have known eople suffering with schizophrenia who, when medicated, felt worlds better than without these hard-won treatments. Some have not felt the positive effects outweigh the frustrations of the side-effects that come from altering one's brain chemistry long term. My sample size might not be huge but is exactly in line with the results reported, and analyzed, in Author Garson's story. The names of the chemicals, the names of the drugs, the explication of the functions of them...all of that's a lot, and be ready to use Google often. But the reason to keep your attention on the page is that this detailed information is the foundation of the genuine miracle that is the help offered to previously unhelpable sufferers.
I was so buoyed up by this end result that I was able to consider the abusive and unethical (by today's standards) actions committed and/or not opposed at any point in the process as distasteful, but not disqualifying of the results as very much positive. I do not feel that way about, say, watching a Weinstein-produced film now that I know the crimes he committed, or the awfulness of that transphobic conversion-therapy supporter whose wizard books I once enjoyed.
I offer my ethical calibration for your reference only. Your decision about learning the good with the unpleasant in search of help for the mentally ill is not for me to do more than inform. I felt all the way through the read that I'd've been even happier had Author Garson discussed ethics in specific and open terms as we went along but the way he chose to address the issues passed my muster. Barely...more would've been better.
Again I strongly caution those sensitive to animal suffering to avoid this entire topic. It will not reward you commensurate with your own distress.
The Publisher Says: A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia.
In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.
Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder’s dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I did not think I'd review this book all that politely. The publicists who wrote the synopsis above used two words in particular that felt...off, odd, even a smidge dishonest, in my mental ear: "rollicking" and "raucous." A scientist's life's work decribed in storytelling superlatives, not scientific ones like "groundbreaking" or "paradigm-shifting"? ::side-eye::
One victory for y'all, publicists. This story as told by Author Garson does indeed rollick raucously through Solomon Snyder's life's work in neurochemistry. I'm a big proponent of talk therapy for those able to benefit from it. Those who can benefit include me (happily) when, after a major crisis that was stabilized by antidepressants, aka neurochemicals, I entered another phase of talk therapy that has presented me with ongoing benefits that I remain deeply grateful for.
Schizoaffective disorder and the multitude of brain-chemistry malfunctions related to it is not adequately addressed by talk therapy. Until Solomon Snyder got to pokin' around because there was zero progress towards curing this life-ruining disorder, there was no good outcome for its sufferers on offer anywhere. It's still a horrendously difficult condition to manage even with neurochemical models explaining some root causes of its symptoms, and chemical therapies helping manage some of devastatingly painful results of its symptoms.
Author Garson is chatty in his presentation of the facts uncovered by Sol, as Dr. Snyder seems to be universally referred to after a time, and his collaborators and even enemies. (No one who changes paradigms is going to be without enemies, detractors, and ill-wishers.) The chattiness and the organizing principle of Sol's personality and perspicacity leads to the strange sense that we're getting to know *about* Sol, getting to know how he affected people and worked with them...or didn't...but not to *know* him. The research, the systems of conducting it, aren't glossed over or lingered on. It's very uncomfortable stuff to our twenty-first century eyes. Sol was in the thick of it. He did wonders for people who previously had little to hope for; getting there, he caused harm and suffering. Those who suffer with experimental animals are strongly cautioned not to read this story; those who feel raw about issues of consent are not going to find this subject matter at all easy to contend with.
There truly is no light without shadow.
Light there is, all in despite of the dark tunnel traversed to get to it. I have known eople suffering with schizophrenia who, when medicated, felt worlds better than without these hard-won treatments. Some have not felt the positive effects outweigh the frustrations of the side-effects that come from altering one's brain chemistry long term. My sample size might not be huge but is exactly in line with the results reported, and analyzed, in Author Garson's story. The names of the chemicals, the names of the drugs, the explication of the functions of them...all of that's a lot, and be ready to use Google often. But the reason to keep your attention on the page is that this detailed information is the foundation of the genuine miracle that is the help offered to previously unhelpable sufferers.
I was so buoyed up by this end result that I was able to consider the abusive and unethical (by today's standards) actions committed and/or not opposed at any point in the process as distasteful, but not disqualifying of the results as very much positive. I do not feel that way about, say, watching a Weinstein-produced film now that I know the crimes he committed, or the awfulness of that transphobic conversion-therapy supporter whose wizard books I once enjoyed.
I offer my ethical calibration for your reference only. Your decision about learning the good with the unpleasant in search of help for the mentally ill is not for me to do more than inform. I felt all the way through the read that I'd've been even happier had Author Garson discussed ethics in specific and open terms as we went along but the way he chose to address the issues passed my muster. Barely...more would've been better.
Again I strongly caution those sensitive to animal suffering to avoid this entire topic. It will not reward you commensurate with your own distress.
May 17, 2026
The Madness Pill
This book covers aspects of chemistry, medicine, psychiatry, and schizophrenia. My review only covers the numerous chemistry errors. I can’t comment on the information related to the coverage of medicine, psychiatry, and schizophrenia because I don’t have any credentials in these.
I am a retired PhD organic chemist with 40 years of industrial experience. I enjoy reading books on chemical topics written for the lay reader, but I always read with a critical eye towards any and all incorrect chemical information.
I gave this book only 3 stars because of all the chemical errors. Ignoring the errors I've listed below, the rest of the narrative was interesting.
Here are the errors I found:
Page 32: the author states that sodium citrate is a “close cousin” of vitamin C. (Not at all true, they’re two completely different molecules: the first is a tri-sodium salt of a tricarboxylic acid which contains NO chemical rings, while the second is a monocarboxylic acid, NOT a salt, and contains a chemical ring). They’re NOT related.
Page 66: the author states that LSD is a fluorescent drug, and that it gives off its own light, i.e., it glows. Sort of correct: It will glow (fluoresce) only DURING irradiation, and will stop glowing (fluorescing) as soon as the irradiation is shut off. A fluorescing substance will not glow by itself. The “glow-in-the-dark” phenomena is called “phosphorescence”, not “fluorescence”. Something that phosphoresces will continue to glow in the dark even after the source of irradiation is stopped.
Page 70: The chemical structure given for LSD is INCORRECT: the author gave it two methyl groups attached to the N (nitrogen), but those groups should both be ETHYL groups. The “D” in “LSD” stands for “diethyl”, meaning two ethyls, not two methyls. The structure in the book should have been labeled so I didn’t have to scan the preceding paragraph to learn what it was.
Page 84: the author mentions “Crick and Watson…in their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA”, but ignores Rosalind Franklin’s discovery until page 183 when Franklin’s name is mentioned as the discoverer, possibly because the author quoted someone else.
Page 92: The author stated that LSD had a “nitrate chain”. No, it does NOT have a nitrate anywhere in the molecule, period. LSD has a 2-carbon chain ending with a diethylamino group, not a nitrate.
Page 111: “…a mineral salt called lithium…” Lithium is NOT a salt; it’s an element. The author maybe was referring to the medicine, which is lithium carbonate, and which is a mineral salt.
Page 121-122: The author mentions the isomers “levo-amphetamine” and “dextroamphetamine”. He then gives two chemical structures, but doesn’t tell which isomer is which. (The dextro is on the left, while the levo is on the right.) Additionally, he could have mentioned that the levo isomer is named as such because it will rotate plane-polarized light to the left, and the dextro isomer is named as such because it will rotate plane-polarized light to the right.
Page 131: he refers to lithium as an “atom”. No, the medication provides it as an ion, and that’s how it is present in the body.
Page 140: he incorrectly refers to the scientific instrument that measures radiation as a “scintillator”. INCORRECT: the scientific instrument is a “scintillation counter” and it counts scintillations (radioactive emissions) emitted by a “scintillator”, the latter which is the substance that emits radiation. The author confused the instrument, a “scintillation counter”, with the substance, a “scintillator”.
With so many erroneous chemistry statements, I wonder how many errors there are in the other fields covered in this book, such as medicine, psychiatry, and schizophrenia. How many readers of this book will use the information for their own purposes, assuming that it is all correct?
The author could have easily avoided all these chemical errors by simply asking a chemistry professor at his school to review the chemistry content.
This book covers aspects of chemistry, medicine, psychiatry, and schizophrenia. My review only covers the numerous chemistry errors. I can’t comment on the information related to the coverage of medicine, psychiatry, and schizophrenia because I don’t have any credentials in these.
I am a retired PhD organic chemist with 40 years of industrial experience. I enjoy reading books on chemical topics written for the lay reader, but I always read with a critical eye towards any and all incorrect chemical information.
I gave this book only 3 stars because of all the chemical errors. Ignoring the errors I've listed below, the rest of the narrative was interesting.
Here are the errors I found:
Page 32: the author states that sodium citrate is a “close cousin” of vitamin C. (Not at all true, they’re two completely different molecules: the first is a tri-sodium salt of a tricarboxylic acid which contains NO chemical rings, while the second is a monocarboxylic acid, NOT a salt, and contains a chemical ring). They’re NOT related.
Page 66: the author states that LSD is a fluorescent drug, and that it gives off its own light, i.e., it glows. Sort of correct: It will glow (fluoresce) only DURING irradiation, and will stop glowing (fluorescing) as soon as the irradiation is shut off. A fluorescing substance will not glow by itself. The “glow-in-the-dark” phenomena is called “phosphorescence”, not “fluorescence”. Something that phosphoresces will continue to glow in the dark even after the source of irradiation is stopped.
Page 70: The chemical structure given for LSD is INCORRECT: the author gave it two methyl groups attached to the N (nitrogen), but those groups should both be ETHYL groups. The “D” in “LSD” stands for “diethyl”, meaning two ethyls, not two methyls. The structure in the book should have been labeled so I didn’t have to scan the preceding paragraph to learn what it was.
Page 84: the author mentions “Crick and Watson…in their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA”, but ignores Rosalind Franklin’s discovery until page 183 when Franklin’s name is mentioned as the discoverer, possibly because the author quoted someone else.
Page 92: The author stated that LSD had a “nitrate chain”. No, it does NOT have a nitrate anywhere in the molecule, period. LSD has a 2-carbon chain ending with a diethylamino group, not a nitrate.
Page 111: “…a mineral salt called lithium…” Lithium is NOT a salt; it’s an element. The author maybe was referring to the medicine, which is lithium carbonate, and which is a mineral salt.
Page 121-122: The author mentions the isomers “levo-amphetamine” and “dextroamphetamine”. He then gives two chemical structures, but doesn’t tell which isomer is which. (The dextro is on the left, while the levo is on the right.) Additionally, he could have mentioned that the levo isomer is named as such because it will rotate plane-polarized light to the left, and the dextro isomer is named as such because it will rotate plane-polarized light to the right.
Page 131: he refers to lithium as an “atom”. No, the medication provides it as an ion, and that’s how it is present in the body.
Page 140: he incorrectly refers to the scientific instrument that measures radiation as a “scintillator”. INCORRECT: the scientific instrument is a “scintillation counter” and it counts scintillations (radioactive emissions) emitted by a “scintillator”, the latter which is the substance that emits radiation. The author confused the instrument, a “scintillation counter”, with the substance, a “scintillator”.
With so many erroneous chemistry statements, I wonder how many errors there are in the other fields covered in this book, such as medicine, psychiatry, and schizophrenia. How many readers of this book will use the information for their own purposes, assuming that it is all correct?
The author could have easily avoided all these chemical errors by simply asking a chemistry professor at his school to review the chemistry content.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic copy of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: April 28, 2026
Justin Garson is a non-fiction author whose books focus on philosophy and science, in particular biology and neuroscience. His previous work, “Madness: A Philosophical Exploration”, introduced mental illness as a philosophical concept, whereas his new work, “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” is more of a scientific examination of the development of psychiatric meds and the neurological components of mental illness, especially schizophrenia.
Garson’s father suffered from schizophrenia, which influenced Garson’s focus in his newest novel. He began to look into the scientific discoveries of Solomon Snyder, who introduced mental illness as a deficiency in brain functioning and not as a response to trauma. “Pill” starts the conversation with a focus on “recreational” drug use, such as LSD and heroin, and how Snyder realized the comparisons between drug users and schizophrenics, and how this led to his profound research.
“Pill” is scientific and neuroscience based, with a focus on psychotropic meds and their development specifically. Obviously, this relates to psychiatry and mental illness directly, but the book focuses more on the makeup of the brain itself and how various drugs came into existence and less on the mental illness component. If you are interested in books on medical science, “Pill” would be right up your alley; however if you want more of the neuropsychology angle, “Pill” can be a bit dry.
Garson focuses on Snyder’s research and influence but he covers other scientists as well, at least those who played a significant role in mental illness as we see it today. There is a brief prologue where we are introduced to Garson’s father’s struggles and how it affected and influenced young Garson, but after that, the story switches focus to the medical sciences. Garson, again, returns in the epilogue to talk about his personal feelings on psychotropic medications and their impact on his father and others who suffer, which I found profoundly impactful and emotional, even though his personal opinions on medication seems to go against the very premise of this story.
“Pill” is a scientific non-fiction story on the progression of mental health treatments, attitudes and, specifically, medication, which have changed over time and how much progress we still need to make. If you have an interest in how medicines are discovered, approved and distributed to the public, then “Pill” will provide some interesting insight.
Expected publication date: April 28, 2026
Justin Garson is a non-fiction author whose books focus on philosophy and science, in particular biology and neuroscience. His previous work, “Madness: A Philosophical Exploration”, introduced mental illness as a philosophical concept, whereas his new work, “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” is more of a scientific examination of the development of psychiatric meds and the neurological components of mental illness, especially schizophrenia.
Garson’s father suffered from schizophrenia, which influenced Garson’s focus in his newest novel. He began to look into the scientific discoveries of Solomon Snyder, who introduced mental illness as a deficiency in brain functioning and not as a response to trauma. “Pill” starts the conversation with a focus on “recreational” drug use, such as LSD and heroin, and how Snyder realized the comparisons between drug users and schizophrenics, and how this led to his profound research.
“Pill” is scientific and neuroscience based, with a focus on psychotropic meds and their development specifically. Obviously, this relates to psychiatry and mental illness directly, but the book focuses more on the makeup of the brain itself and how various drugs came into existence and less on the mental illness component. If you are interested in books on medical science, “Pill” would be right up your alley; however if you want more of the neuropsychology angle, “Pill” can be a bit dry.
Garson focuses on Snyder’s research and influence but he covers other scientists as well, at least those who played a significant role in mental illness as we see it today. There is a brief prologue where we are introduced to Garson’s father’s struggles and how it affected and influenced young Garson, but after that, the story switches focus to the medical sciences. Garson, again, returns in the epilogue to talk about his personal feelings on psychotropic medications and their impact on his father and others who suffer, which I found profoundly impactful and emotional, even though his personal opinions on medication seems to go against the very premise of this story.
“Pill” is a scientific non-fiction story on the progression of mental health treatments, attitudes and, specifically, medication, which have changed over time and how much progress we still need to make. If you have an interest in how medicines are discovered, approved and distributed to the public, then “Pill” will provide some interesting insight.
May 5, 2026
Justin Garson’s father suffered from schizophrenia. He recounts his father’s madness, and his experience with psychiatry in the introduction to
The Madness Pill
. At first, in the 1970s his treatment was therapy sessions. But when his illness came back in the 1980s pills became his treatment regimen. In between his first bout with mental illness and his second, psychiatry had undergone a revolution. And one of the reasons why was the work of Dr. Solomon Snyder.
Garson’s new book centers itself on the long career of Dr. Snyder. Other scientists make their appearances as well, especially as the book enters the 1960s, but Snyder was the one whose discoveries around dopamine, dopamine receptors in the brain, and their link to schizophrenia, revolutionized psychiatry.
Born in 1938, Snyder graduated from medical school at Georgetown University in DC, specializing in psychiatry. From there he spent time at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco before landing a role as research assistant to Julius Axelrod at the National Institutes of Health. It was there where his love of laboratory science and scientific research took off. He spent decades searching for the biological roots of schizophrenia.
Garson’s book is part biography and part scientific history, and he has done an excellent job of blending the personal stories with the scientific work. Some of the experiments that Snyder and his peers conducted in the 1960s with psychedelic drugs, including LSD with themselves as the guinea pigs, shows both their dedication to the search for a solution to complex scientific problems, and the naiveite of the times.
This book has a lot in common with Off the Scales, Aimee Donnellan’s book about Ozempic and the discovery of GLP-1 drugs that I reviewed last November. Donnellan acknowledged in her book that obesity has both physical and psychological origins. Garson also acknowledges that the understanding of the chemical nature of mental illness, that Dr. Snyder played such a large role in uncovering, has led to the discovery of drugs much more capable of treating their effects. But there is a growing recognition that drugs cannot replace psychoanalysis but rather must supplement it.
This is an informative and interesting history of the late-twentieth century discoveries about the biology of schizophrenia. Read it for a window into the history of mental illness, psychiatry and our understanding of how the brain works.
Garson’s new book centers itself on the long career of Dr. Snyder. Other scientists make their appearances as well, especially as the book enters the 1960s, but Snyder was the one whose discoveries around dopamine, dopamine receptors in the brain, and their link to schizophrenia, revolutionized psychiatry.
Born in 1938, Snyder graduated from medical school at Georgetown University in DC, specializing in psychiatry. From there he spent time at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco before landing a role as research assistant to Julius Axelrod at the National Institutes of Health. It was there where his love of laboratory science and scientific research took off. He spent decades searching for the biological roots of schizophrenia.
Garson’s book is part biography and part scientific history, and he has done an excellent job of blending the personal stories with the scientific work. Some of the experiments that Snyder and his peers conducted in the 1960s with psychedelic drugs, including LSD with themselves as the guinea pigs, shows both their dedication to the search for a solution to complex scientific problems, and the naiveite of the times.
This book has a lot in common with Off the Scales, Aimee Donnellan’s book about Ozempic and the discovery of GLP-1 drugs that I reviewed last November. Donnellan acknowledged in her book that obesity has both physical and psychological origins. Garson also acknowledges that the understanding of the chemical nature of mental illness, that Dr. Snyder played such a large role in uncovering, has led to the discovery of drugs much more capable of treating their effects. But there is a growing recognition that drugs cannot replace psychoanalysis but rather must supplement it.
This is an informative and interesting history of the late-twentieth century discoveries about the biology of schizophrenia. Read it for a window into the history of mental illness, psychiatry and our understanding of how the brain works.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.5 out of 5 stars
Justin Garson provides an intriguing look into the study of schizophrenia in his book The Madness Pill. The quest to determine what caused schizophrenia led scientists and doctors to explore drugs and whether or not they could recreate the symptoms of schizophrenia. This book focuses on two drugs: LSD and Speed.
When covering scientific topics, it is easy to fall into heavy jargon use and dry explanations of all the gritty details. Garson avoids all of that with clear language and a closer look at the person doing the investigation, Solomon Snyder, rather than the investigation itself. That is not to say that the book does not cover the details of the drugs or the mental illness. Garson has a way with words that weaves the two together in fascinating narrative that keeps readers engaged. I never found myself getting bored while reading this book. Each chapter contained interesting details, and I was excited to keep going. Even for someone who has never been particularly interested in the topic, this book kept me engaged.
This book is very well written and well organized. It is split into two parts, each covering one of the ‘madness pills.’ Both sections are thoroughly researched and could easily stand alone as an examination into the particular drug and its potential connection to the symptoms of schizophrenia, but Garson effortlessly blends the two together to show a clear process of the study of the drugs. Garson also does a good job with his examination of Solomon Snyder and how he fit into the larger study of drugs and schizophrenia in the mid twentieth century.
If you are interested in the history of the study of schizophrenia and doctor’s determination to recreate the symptoms of the mental illness than this is the book for you. It is also a great book to pick up if you are itching to learn something new. It does not require any previous knowledge of the subject and the writing it inclusive enough that anyone can pick up the book and easily follow along.
Justin Garson provides an intriguing look into the study of schizophrenia in his book The Madness Pill. The quest to determine what caused schizophrenia led scientists and doctors to explore drugs and whether or not they could recreate the symptoms of schizophrenia. This book focuses on two drugs: LSD and Speed.
When covering scientific topics, it is easy to fall into heavy jargon use and dry explanations of all the gritty details. Garson avoids all of that with clear language and a closer look at the person doing the investigation, Solomon Snyder, rather than the investigation itself. That is not to say that the book does not cover the details of the drugs or the mental illness. Garson has a way with words that weaves the two together in fascinating narrative that keeps readers engaged. I never found myself getting bored while reading this book. Each chapter contained interesting details, and I was excited to keep going. Even for someone who has never been particularly interested in the topic, this book kept me engaged.
This book is very well written and well organized. It is split into two parts, each covering one of the ‘madness pills.’ Both sections are thoroughly researched and could easily stand alone as an examination into the particular drug and its potential connection to the symptoms of schizophrenia, but Garson effortlessly blends the two together to show a clear process of the study of the drugs. Garson also does a good job with his examination of Solomon Snyder and how he fit into the larger study of drugs and schizophrenia in the mid twentieth century.
If you are interested in the history of the study of schizophrenia and doctor’s determination to recreate the symptoms of the mental illness than this is the book for you. It is also a great book to pick up if you are itching to learn something new. It does not require any previous knowledge of the subject and the writing it inclusive enough that anyone can pick up the book and easily follow along.
May 18, 2026
In the 1950s, polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing. However psychology had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity--specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it. Is creating a madness pill possible in the 1950’s? Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. Snyder started medical school at 19, then he worked for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder's dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.
The book has compiled the history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated. It’s history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated. Psycho analysis was not the only treatment any more. I liked the way the history of psychiatry was explained. Basically two types of the approach to mental health, the environmental factors which talk therapy helps; and the biological approach, which is solved with medication. This book covers many of the medications that were developed due to Snyder’s discovery. I found the book while reading it to be fascinating.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author/publisher from Netgalley. I wasn’t obligated to write a favorable review. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.
The book has compiled the history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated. It’s history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated. Psycho analysis was not the only treatment any more. I liked the way the history of psychiatry was explained. Basically two types of the approach to mental health, the environmental factors which talk therapy helps; and the biological approach, which is solved with medication. This book covers many of the medications that were developed due to Snyder’s discovery. I found the book while reading it to be fascinating.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author/publisher from Netgalley. I wasn’t obligated to write a favorable review. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
It’s complicated: neuroscientists exploring the complex biological, chemical and functional mechanisms of the brain. Yet, it’s written in a simplified version to make it easier for the average person to understand.
Justin Garson started with his dad’s health predicament. He had a distinguished career as a lawyer in DC under President Nixon and then he was overpowered with symptoms that made it impossible to work. In 1973, his dad was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was prescribed with various pills at a psychiatric hospital in the DC area that made him appear somber.
Garson decided to take a deep dive into the progress made over the years. He revealed the result of conversations with neuroscientist Solomon Halbert Snyder who now lives in a nursing home after years of an outstanding career developing better ways of treating patients with schizophrenia. Synder gave him an outline of what led up to the “madness pill.”
The book provided a considerable amount of research. One part focused on the brain area with the use of LSD (how the brain sees images) and how it compared with schizophrenia (as one hears voices). One theory from a scientist was that the brain was flooded with too much dopamine. It outlined the difficult work of many scientists who were competing for funding and results.
Garson said now most mental disorders are treated with prescribed drugs. He mentioned the books that have been written over the years. I wish he took it one step further to explore the current AI-driven research. This book did a decent job describing the history and yet, there’s so much more to learn.
My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of April 28, 2026. The views I share are my own.
Justin Garson started with his dad’s health predicament. He had a distinguished career as a lawyer in DC under President Nixon and then he was overpowered with symptoms that made it impossible to work. In 1973, his dad was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was prescribed with various pills at a psychiatric hospital in the DC area that made him appear somber.
Garson decided to take a deep dive into the progress made over the years. He revealed the result of conversations with neuroscientist Solomon Halbert Snyder who now lives in a nursing home after years of an outstanding career developing better ways of treating patients with schizophrenia. Synder gave him an outline of what led up to the “madness pill.”
The book provided a considerable amount of research. One part focused on the brain area with the use of LSD (how the brain sees images) and how it compared with schizophrenia (as one hears voices). One theory from a scientist was that the brain was flooded with too much dopamine. It outlined the difficult work of many scientists who were competing for funding and results.
Garson said now most mental disorders are treated with prescribed drugs. He mentioned the books that have been written over the years. I wish he took it one step further to explore the current AI-driven research. This book did a decent job describing the history and yet, there’s so much more to learn.
My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of April 28, 2026. The views I share are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
In The Madness Pill, Justin Garson unfolds the life and achievement of Solomon Snyder, a psychiatrist whose mission to understand and treat schizophrenia resulted in leaps and bounds being made in the study of psycho-pharmaceuticals.
I always find non-fiction kind of hard to review, but this was very solid overall. Science history nonfiction is usually what I go for when I want to read nonfiction and I've read similar books so this is familiar territory for me. Ultimately, it was informative but not particularly exciting. It was similar to Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer, both because they had some overlap in content and also because I had similar issues with both books. They both discuss pretty exciting subjects—basically the discovery of medication based mental-health treat and the CIA's experimentation with LSD respectively—but the actually book ends up being kind of dull. It's a real skill to spin a non-fiction story into something that feels like a fictional narrative and is therefore engaging and emotional, but I don't think The Madness Pill quite manages it. The story departs from Snyder so much that it's difficult to get invested in him, and there isn't much enchantment around his discoveries. I think the book could have really benefitted from some personal contributions from the author, because the few moments where Garson opens up about his own experiences with mental illness in his family are some of the highlights of the book, but they are few and far between.
It does the job and Garson did a great job narrating, but I think a lot more could have been done with this story.
Thank you to Justin Garson and Macmillan Audio for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!
I always find non-fiction kind of hard to review, but this was very solid overall. Science history nonfiction is usually what I go for when I want to read nonfiction and I've read similar books so this is familiar territory for me. Ultimately, it was informative but not particularly exciting. It was similar to Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer, both because they had some overlap in content and also because I had similar issues with both books. They both discuss pretty exciting subjects—basically the discovery of medication based mental-health treat and the CIA's experimentation with LSD respectively—but the actually book ends up being kind of dull. It's a real skill to spin a non-fiction story into something that feels like a fictional narrative and is therefore engaging and emotional, but I don't think The Madness Pill quite manages it. The story departs from Snyder so much that it's difficult to get invested in him, and there isn't much enchantment around his discoveries. I think the book could have really benefitted from some personal contributions from the author, because the few moments where Garson opens up about his own experiences with mental illness in his family are some of the highlights of the book, but they are few and far between.
It does the job and Garson did a great job narrating, but I think a lot more could have been done with this story.
Thank you to Justin Garson and Macmillan Audio for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!
May 6, 2026
I find it interesting that the science-oriented books that I have read that are written by authors who have a personal stake in the subject matter end up being some of the best books on the subject. “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” by Justin Garson is one such book.
His father had suffered from schizophrenia, and as with many diseases, the affliction doesn’t just affect the sufferer but the family as well. Consequently, the author was interested in schizophrenia as a disease because, during the time of his father’s affliction, the treatment of schizophrenia went from talk therapy, which wasn’t all that effective, to medications that had a profound impact on the sufferer.
In fact, the field of psychiatry began to gain respect in the medical community because of the ability to “treat” schizophrenia and other conditions. This shift in the treatment could be traced back to a seminal paper on the discovery of the dopamine receptor and its effect on schizophrenia.
That paper was “The Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia” by Solomon H. Snyder and it started psychiatry’s biological revolution.
Author Justin Garson book “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” is a story about Dr. Solomon H. Snyder’s quest to find the biological cause of schizophrenia.
But first, a brief explanation of what “schizophrenia” is. From Wikipedia: “The word schizophrenia (“splitting of the mind”) is Modern Latin, derived from the Greek “schizein” (Ancient Greek: “to split”) and “phrēn” (Ancient Greek: “mind”). Its use was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and perception.”
When I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies, a common mistake was to use the definition of schizophrenia to refer to a person who had multiple personalities, popularized by the 1957 movie “The Three Faces of Eve.” Now schizophrenia is no longer identified as such and anyone with multiple personalities is now diagnosed as having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
I found “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” a compelling read and, in fact, many times I found myself reading past my designated stop time, it was that superbly written.
I especially like the way that the author was able to segue into diverse topics that were peripherally related to the topic, never losing the thread of the discussion or topic. I also like the way he wrote about the other scientists who worked with Dr. Snyder, giving just enough background to understand their place in the overall subject.
This book will be of interest to anyone interested in mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, as well as the “hippie” drug culture of the Sixties.
5/5
[Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the advanced ebook copy in exchange for my honest and objective opinion, which I have given here.]
His father had suffered from schizophrenia, and as with many diseases, the affliction doesn’t just affect the sufferer but the family as well. Consequently, the author was interested in schizophrenia as a disease because, during the time of his father’s affliction, the treatment of schizophrenia went from talk therapy, which wasn’t all that effective, to medications that had a profound impact on the sufferer.
In fact, the field of psychiatry began to gain respect in the medical community because of the ability to “treat” schizophrenia and other conditions. This shift in the treatment could be traced back to a seminal paper on the discovery of the dopamine receptor and its effect on schizophrenia.
That paper was “The Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia” by Solomon H. Snyder and it started psychiatry’s biological revolution.
Author Justin Garson book “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” is a story about Dr. Solomon H. Snyder’s quest to find the biological cause of schizophrenia.
But first, a brief explanation of what “schizophrenia” is. From Wikipedia: “The word schizophrenia (“splitting of the mind”) is Modern Latin, derived from the Greek “schizein” (Ancient Greek: “to split”) and “phrēn” (Ancient Greek: “mind”). Its use was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and perception.”
When I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies, a common mistake was to use the definition of schizophrenia to refer to a person who had multiple personalities, popularized by the 1957 movie “The Three Faces of Eve.” Now schizophrenia is no longer identified as such and anyone with multiple personalities is now diagnosed as having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
I found “The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia” a compelling read and, in fact, many times I found myself reading past my designated stop time, it was that superbly written.
I especially like the way that the author was able to segue into diverse topics that were peripherally related to the topic, never losing the thread of the discussion or topic. I also like the way he wrote about the other scientists who worked with Dr. Snyder, giving just enough background to understand their place in the overall subject.
This book will be of interest to anyone interested in mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, as well as the “hippie” drug culture of the Sixties.
5/5
[Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the advanced ebook copy in exchange for my honest and objective opinion, which I have given here.]
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