I was only able to write this book with the help and support of a large number of people. First and foremost, I want to thank the brilliant Sarah Punshon, who helped me with additional research and fact-checking, but much more than that—her insights and thoughts were central to the shaping of what you’ve just read. I am deeply in her debt.
I owe a huge amount to the social scientists and other experts who gave so much of their time to explain their research to me. The social sciences have been having a rough time lately, but they are an essential tool for how we understand the world, and I’m really grateful to them.
My totally brilliant editors, Kevin Doughten at Crown and Alexis Kirschbaum at Bloomsbury, both made this a much better book, as did my agents, Natasha Fairweather at Rogers, Coleridge & White (RCW) in London, and Richard Pine at Inkwell in New York. Lydia Morgan at Crown also made really helpful suggestions that reshaped the text. Thanks also to Tristan Kendrick, Matthew Marland, Sam Coates, Laurence Laluyaux, Stephen Edwards, and Katharina Volckmer at RCW.
Conversations with my friends Naomi Klein and V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, really transformed this book and I owe them a lot, for this, and for so much more. My friend Lizzie Davidson helped me to track down lots of the people I talked with, using her sinister NSA-like powers of detection.
In Provincetown, I am really grateful to Andrew Sullivan, James Barraford, Dave Grossman, Stefan Piscitelli, Denise Gaylord, Chris Bodenner, Doug Belford, Pat Schultz, Jeff Peters, and everyone at Café Heaven. If you want to learn yoga from Stefan, go to outermostyoga.com.
On my travels, I was helped by so many people—Jake Hess in Washington, D.C.; Anthony Bansie, Jeremy Heimans, Kasia Malinowska, and Sarah Evans in New York; Colleen Haikes and Christopher Rogers in San Francisco; Elizabeth Flood and Mario Burrell in L.A.; Stephen Hollis in Ohio; Jim Cates in Indiana; Sam Loetscher and John Holder in Miami; Hermione Davis (the queen of publicists) and Andy Leonard in Australia; Alex Romain, Ben Birks Ang, and everyone at the NZ Drug Foundation in New Zealand; Sarah Kay, Adam Biles, Katy Lee, and everyone at Shakespeare and Company in Paris; Rosanne Kropman in the Netherlands; Christian Lerch, Kate McNaughton, and Jacinda Nandi in Berlin; Halldor Arnason and everyone at Snarotin in Iceland; Sturla Haugsgyerd and Oda Bergli in Norway; Kim Norager in Denmark; Rebekah Lehrer, Ricardo Teperman, Julita Lemgruber, and Stefano Nunes in Brazil; Alnoor Lahda in Costa Rica; and Joe Daniels and Beatriz Vejarano in Colombia.
Thank you to James Brown for explaining magic to me. If you want to hire him in the U.K. go to www.powa.academy. Thank you to Ayesha Lyn-Birkets at YouGov, and to everyone at the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry, particularly Dr. James Davies. Thank you to Kate Quarry for her copyediting.
My transcriptions were all done by the team at CLK Transcription. Thank you to CarolLee Streeter Kidd and everyone there. If you need good transcripts, contact them at CLKtranscripts@gmail.com.
And thank you to the people who discussed this topic with me for years: Decca Aitkenhead, Stephen Grosz, Dorothy Byrne, Alex Higgins, Lucy Johnstone, Jess Luxembourg, Ronan McCrea, Patrick Strudwick, Jacquie Grice, Jay Johnson, Barbara Bateman, Jemima Khan, Tom Costello, Rob Blackhurst, Amy Pollard, Harry Woodlock, Andrew Gow, Josepha Jacobson, Natalie Carpenter, Deborah Friedell, Imtiaz Shams, Bruno Giussani, Felicity McMahon, Patricia Clark, Ammie al-Whatey, Jake and Joe Wilkinson, Max Jeffrey, Peter Marshall, Anna Powell-Smith, Ben Stewart, Joss Garman, Joe Ferris, Tim Dixon, Ben Ramm, Harry Quilter-Pinner, Jamie Janson, and Elisa Hari.
The reference to W. H. Auden at the end of this book is thanks to David Kinder, my brilliant former English teacher, who taught me to love his poetry. Thank you also to two other brilliant English teachers I had: Sue Roach and Sidney McMinn.
I am really grateful to all my Patreon supporters, particularly Pam Roy, Robert King, Martin Mander, Lewis Black, Lynn McFarland, Deandra Christianson, Fiona Houslip, Pam Roy, Roby Abeles, Rachel Bomgaar, Roger Cox, and Susie Robinson. To find out more about my Patreon—and get regular updates on what I’m working on next—go to patreon.com/johannhari.
Any errors in this book are entirely mine. If you spot anything that you think might be wrong, please do reach out to me so I can correct it on the website and in future editions of the book at chasingthescream@gmail.com. To see any corrections I’ve already issued, go to stolenfocusbook.com/corrections.