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 enlarge | Author: Sally Brampton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Category: Book
List Price: £15.99
Buy Used: £7.75
You Save: £8.24 (52%)
New (22) Used (5) from £7.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 3120
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0747572410
EAN: 9780747572411
ASIN: 0747572410
Publication Date: January 21, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: immediate delivery. Efficient service .hardly used condition,From UK.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A must if you or someone close to you suffers with depression July 6, 2008
If you suffer with depression or know someone who does, I highly recommend this book.
It says everything that you can only try to explain to someone when you suffer with depression. Its so hard to really get a glimps into the mind of someone who suffers from this illness and it will explain so much if you are trying to help someone through a difficult time or you suffer yourself and desperately want those close to you to understand.
Well worth a read, excellently written.
Reactive not clinical June 15, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sally B starts by listing all the good things in her life: married to a man she's in love with, has a daughter and a successful career as a writer. If she had then claimed to be depressed I would have agreed with her diagnosis of clinical depression - if you're clinically depressed, everything is ok but you're still miserable. We then discover that at the time of writing she has recovered.
I would argue that her depression was reactive and won't return unless the relationship with Tom breaks down again. Prior to this, she wasn't a depressive but a functioning alcoholic, doing a job she was patently no longer cut out for (editing Red after many years of working as a free-lance writer from home). She admits to hating public speaking, so it's not wonder she loathed the pressures related to being an editor.
When she gets sacked from Red and her marriage breaks up, but Tom won't commit, Sally starts combining vast quantities of Xanax, Valium, sleeping-pills, alcohol and SSRI anti-depressants. This toxic tonic has accidentally killed other people, including most recently Heath Ledger. All the symptoms she then describes are, arguably, not those of clinical depression but the side effects of this potentially lethal combination - shaking hands, colours looking brighter, getting freaked in supermarkets, feeling as if you can't breathe and someone is choking you. The symptoms of all the drugs & drink combined actually create their own disease.
Sally also claims she can't 'read or write.' Nor could most people, living in what she admits is a condition of 'permanent drunkedness.' She doesn't have to work, so just gets worse and worse, her Fort Knox of a liver even shaking off suicide attempts (significantly, these occur after Tom has left her).
I really felt for Sally, but Elle magazine, which she used to edit, was in the forefront of research on addiction to various pharmaceuticals and I was surprised at her ignorance - not knowing that various anti-depressants were addictive, for instance, or understanding the effects of combining anti-anxiety meds with drink and sleeping pills.
I believe Sally will be fine as long as Tom stays with her and she stays off the drink, so she doesn't need to worry about the black dog returning of its own accord, as it would with a clinical depressive, regardless of circumstances.
I did enjoy the book, but the whole time I was reading it I kept thinking - how could she be so well-read, so well-informed, and NOT KNOW about the effects of combining drink, anti-anxiety meds and sleeping pills with SSRI depressants? Why didn't any of the doctors tell her? And, my God, is she lucky with that liver, though I hope she's got it checked out for damage.
 Very informative on a nuts & bolts level June 5, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
On a nuts & bolts level, Shoot The Damn Dog is very informative. It would be a great read for those who have loved ones suffering with severe depression, or just for people who are genuinely curious about what goes through the minds of the afflicted. However, on a personal level I didn't ever feel like I'd connected with the author, making it tough at points to stick with the book.
Highly Recommend May 28, 2008
I would highly recommend that anyone suffering from depression or wishing to understand depression reads this book. I found it incredibly helpful and informing. I admire Sally for her honesty.
THE users guide to depression April 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Most sufferers of depression, including me, have read the numerous self-help guides and the "What is.." textbooks for laypeople in attempts to treat themselves, thoroughly inform themselves or to just try to make sense of the world they find themselves in. Although the former two groups get some of their mental fodder from "Shoot the damn dog", I reckon it mostly helps those of us who want to share with someone who's been there. I didn't find this book harrowing or difficult.
Okay, Sally Brompton doesnt represent - and doesnt claim to be - the typical depressive; partly because there is no such person. Each brings their unique past, present and future (hopes) into the illness and needs to deal with that. Sally recognises this but finds some solace in others who have "been there": the black hole, the black dog, the emptiness within or whatever you call depression.
This is a sensible and balanced book. Sally walks a middle path between the "biological" and the "psychoanalytical" camps that set themselves up in the enormous and amorphous field of psychiatry, rarely crossing their carefully drawn boundaries to share knowledge or, god forbid, work together. Sally meets some who have, but I suspect she may be an exception (and exceptional). She advises those who cant get on with a therapist to find another. While acknowledging this can be difficult for a withdrawn depressive, a number of NHS users may not have access to alternative treatments, particularly of the psychological kind, let alone be able to change therapists .
With that caveat, I found this a great book. Its not just a "me too" book, joining the other people who found the courage to "come out". She deals with shame, suicidality, support, friends, family and even fun and laughter. This book should be in every psychiatric ward and, even more than that, it should be on every psychiatrist or psychotherapist's shelf.
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