The Drugs That Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater

Author:Lauren Slater [Slater, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

The Brain Bank

The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean in Massachusetts, known colloquially as the Brain Bank, collects people’s brains upon their death and studies them, searching for the flaw that is schizophrenia, for the telltale tangles of Alzheimer’s, for the beautiful, rich dendritic connections that mark a healthy cortex.

One day I found myself calling them, and when someone on the other end answered and said, ‘Brain Bank’, in a crisp voice, I was suddenly unsure of what to say. I stammered out a hello, followed by silence, and in the silence the static popping on the line was the only thing connecting us.

‘Brain Bank,’ the person said again, as though I had not heard.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’

‘Can I help you?’ the person said, and I realised I could not tell if the voice was male or female and suddenly I feared I was talking to a computer when what I needed was a human who could help me through whatever it was I had to say, to give.

‘I am calling because I’d like to . . . to . . . donate my brain,’ I said, the last three words spilling together in a rush.

The person on the other end did not respond and again I stood there listening to the crackle on the line, looking out my large window at the apple tree, where clusters of reddening fruit studded its beautiful branches.

‘Donate. My. Brain,’ I repeated, articulating each word, suddenly, strangely, emboldened.

‘Okay,’ the disembodied voice said. ‘You can make the donation online.’ And then the voice gave me the Web address and, poof, was gone.

I stood there stunned, holding the phone, which after some seconds started to beep frenetically. I hung up and went online and once at the site filled out the forms that will allow McLean, at the time of my death, to cut a wide hole in the top of my head and remove my brain, after which they will stuff my empty skull with cotton and sew up the incision so that no one at my open-casket funeral will know. Meanwhile, back at their laboratory, my brain will be halved, each hemisphere preserved in formaldehyde until a scientist is ready to cut the delicate slices of neural tissue that might give some clues as to what these drugs really do after decades of use. This is my contribution to the psychopharmacological snarl we are in, the only way I can think to really and truly help. In the meantime I will find some way to live with my rising sugar, my failing eyesight, my fading memory and the occasional motor tics that cause me to jerk in weird and unsettling ways.

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