I really enjoyed reading this book. It is a great story and incredibly inspiring. The journey for chris from feeling like a total let-down to being a source of strength for other people is just awesome. The way Chisto writes it is very good too. You really get inside chris's head and you know what he's feeling, so much that you can feel it too. I also liked how that the band Guster plays such a role in his struggle, because I've been there, when I just can't express something but somehow a band has managed to say exactly what I'm feeling in their lyrics. I've hit a few low points, never anything on the level of what chris felt, but I have felt pretty low, and the book taught me something about how to go on and how to face the problems that you can't fight with your fists.

This book is an excellent read. No pompous verbiage or excessive page fillers that you find in some first novels. He was concise but entertaining.I sat and read the entire book in 3 1/2 hours.(Not speedreading,just fast)I enjoyed the discriptive power of the author,(example:like a China doll facing a ten story fall) and the tension generated by the story made it hard to put down. The author shows real promise for the next book.I look forward to it. I hope he doesn't run out of experiences to write about?

I'm about half way through this book and my impression of this book is it really needed a 3rd party editor. The text is very rough and should probably be considdered a first draft. With that said everything in this book is true .
Chisto's text is obviously from the perspective of some one who's been through an "institution" .I know this becuase i worked in a Mental ward, and its much more sinister then he portrays. Indeed People are tricked into wards like this on a regular basis. Any perfectly sane person would protest such treatment, but a person in a mental ward protesting would be considdered having an "episode" of a mental problem later to be diagnosed, or in most cases made up and then drugged . If how ever you dont protest your considdered depressed or suicidal and again you'd be drugged. to make matters worse mild cases even by the wards standards are thrown together with actually mentaly diseased people.
Things again get worse then i've described. I was promoted and then had access to the money trail and inner workings of hospital policies. Hospitals May receive up to 200$ a day for each patient in their ward from the state. in many cases the success of a hospital is gauged by How meny people Are in their Psych Wards. and conscious efforts are made by upper management to do what ever it takes to fill beds to keep the money train moving. with so meny hospital jobs on the line People are put into the system and are kept there in most cases with out even seeing a doctor so incase the hospital is sued they can plead plausible deniability, in other word they'll claim they didn't realize you were sane. to further keep people in the system patients are traded like baseball cards with other facillities to extend their stay .
If a mental ward is your last or only resort please read this book and take this advice. Make sure some one visits you every day , and make sure that person asks allot of questions .Its the ones who don't get visitors and no one misses, they are the ones who will never be let out