The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD from Sunday Times Bestselling Author and BBC Correspondent Fergal Keane

Product Information

What does recovery look like for him? “It’s a matter of figuring out those boundaries and working on them. You should never not have an emotional reaction to something that is moving but you can’t let it take you over. And that’s what I’m working on. You can empathise but there’s a limit to what you can do and it doesn’t belong to you ... I think the basics would be to keep my promise: no war zones ... And it means loving life, spending time with friends, playing music.” He seems most upset when trying to explain his symptoms and what triggers them. “You know what? I think at some level I feel ashamed of it,” he says. “I’m still dealing with that. It’s so weird to lose control emotionally. It feels shameful. I can’t give you a rational explanation for it.”

The Madness by Fergal Keane and Breaking: Trauma in the The Madness by Fergal Keane and Breaking: Trauma in the

I think about all of that in the context of the conflict in the North and, then, on its roads to an imperfect peace.When Fergal returned home from Rwanda, he started having nightmares– upsetting and frightening dreams. It was obvious he was traumatised from the violence he had seen, but still Fergal didn’t go to a psychiatrist – a medical doctor who specialises in treating mental illness. As migration, integration and assimilation dominate public debate in Britain, Fergal examines the impact of the longest and biggest immigrant story in the history of the United Kingdom. Ask Leona O’Neill to put peace into words after seeing what she saw on the cold ground of Creggan in Derry in April 2019. Keane has not just the courage to risk death so that the most important stories can be told, as well as the eye to tell them with vivid subtlety, but also the humility to reveal the havoc that this task visits on the beholder” - Spectator

BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Addicted to war BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Addicted to war

I got very close to being diabetic and was told I had to lose weight. I went at it and got one of those calorie-counting apps, and I think it got slightly obsessive. I lost a lot of weight, but I now feeling guilty if eat French fries. He knows his initial impulse to be a reporter was a good one. He felt strongly about “people with power beating up people without power. Do you know The Grapes of Wrath, where Tom Joad is saying goodbye to his mother? She says: ‘Where will I find you?’ I’ll get emotional saying this, but he says, ‘You’ll see me everywhere, wherever there’s a people fighting for their rights, wherever there’s a cop beating up on a guy.’ I read that when I was in my teens, and it just really hit home.” Not devastation in a foreign field but on our own doorstep, with people dying and suffering all around us.”Belfast, and Northern Ireland in its wider frame, has not stopped — that imperfect peace I described still makes too many headlines; the stories we read in the book Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom, edited by journalists Leona O’Neill and Chris Lindsay. Fergal Keane opens doors into closed places. He lets us look inside those complex compartments where fear, anxiety, anger and panic lurk, and he tells a story of being afraid all of his life... beautifully written... This is an important book' Irish Times Things have changed. Media organisations are much more conscious of the mental health of their journalists now. Recently, he says, “the old addict in me was saying, ‘Maybe I could get the train across to Kyiv’”. A colleague said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?” He laughs. “It was calm, deliberate. He was right ... Now you’re offered assessment the minute you’re out of a conflict zone. You’re also encouraged to take time off to just decompress.”

The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD

Instead, Fergal turned to booze– an informal name for alcohol. Fergal had been addicted to alcohol before he arrived in Rwanda, but now he had another addiction to cope with – the need to keep returning to war. Fergal knew it wasn’t healthy, but he couldn’t stop. He dreads writing about Rwanda. Of course, he does. What happened there. What it did to him. What it does to him. Remembering the fear and the anxiety of being there. In the end though The Madness isn’t about self-discovery, but about rediscovering the world beyond the prison of addiction. Beauty, where it’s found, is fleeting; flowers on the frontlines, friendship among the mass graves and Keane makes a promise to the reader: he’s going to hold on to those moments. He’s going to keep hold of what is good.The Madness is engaging without resorting to sensation. Fluent prose follows the decline of the political situation - and of Keane's own mental health - in chilling, compelling detail' Observer

BBC Sounds - The Madness by Fergal Keane - Available Episodes BBC Sounds - The Madness by Fergal Keane - Available Episodes

Keane drank intermittently as a teenager, but when he was 21, a girlfriend, concerned about his heavy drinking and the sadness that seemed to be fuelling it, referred him to a physician in Cork. The doctor told Keane he could never drink again or it would eventually kill him. Keane was prescribed antidepressants, took them, and abstained from alcohol for several years, but he returned to drinking with a glass of champagne in celebration of a new job. His subsequent career path did him no favours. War correspondents are generally a hard-drinking lot. Self-medication and temporary emotional-anesthetization with alcohol are common.The Madness, an informative and often wrenching memoir, confirms Hedges’ remarks and then some. Keane opens up about his experiences in many conflict zones, including South Africa, Rwanda, Kosovo, the DRC, Sudan, and Ukraine. Some of these stories concern the tragic loss of colleagues. His main focus in the book, however, is his own mental health: his alcoholism, breakdowns, and diagnosis of PTSD. There is still no agreement on a legacy process to answer the questions of Northern Ireland’s past. But, eventually, when some story-telling archive is established, these contributions will add to understanding. That is the worth of this book. Its value. Why it is important. Keane is interested in the question of intergenerational trauma, an emerging scientific field based in epigenetics—the study of the ways in which environmental factors, including traumatic experiences, can turn genes on and off. There is some evidence that genes altered by trauma can be passed on to offspring. Keane was advised by an expert that given the newness of this field, it might be more fruitful for him to focus instead on cultural factors that can create greater vulnerability to psychological trauma. Hence, the early chapters of his book explore some of the turbulent history of Ireland, particularly of County Kerry where his people are from. He speculates that the Famine of the 1800s (which his grandmother’s elders survived and talked about), the Easter Rising, Civil War, and the protracted sectarian violence of the twentieth century have all contributed to the shaping of his character. Born in 1961, Keane grew up with “a consuming curiosity about the world,” a love of history, an “instinctive loathing of bullies,” and “an irresistible compulsion to be where the night was darkest.” It’s clear he was an emotionally wounded person with a compensatory need to demonstrate bravery and fearlessness. Given all these factors, his career choice—reporting from dangerous conflict zones—should perhaps not surprise. I read an awful lot of poetry – Sharon Olds, Anna Akhmatova, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon. Raymond Carver has written some moving poetry, and he’s got this line that really speaks to me: “All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others”. That’s it. In this programme, we’ll be hearing about the extraordinary life of BBC war correspondent, Fergal Keane. His reporting helped his television audiences make sense of the horrors of war, but underneath there were more personal reasons attracting him to the frontline. Was he 'addicted' to war? Listen to his story and learn new vocabulary along the way. This week's question