Whether shopping with military precision or hanging the tea towels just so, compulsion is something most of us have witnessed in daily life. But compulsions exist along a broad continuum, and at the opposite end of these mild forms exist life altering disorders.
Sharon Begley’s Can't Just Stop: An Investigation of Compulsions is the first book of its kind to examine all of these behaviors—mild and extreme (OCD, hoarding, acquiring, exercise, even compulsions to do good)—together, as they should be, because while forms of compulsion may look incredibly different, these are actually all coping responses to varying degrees of anxiety.
Sharon Begley is the senior science writer at STAT, the life sciences publication of the Boston Globe. Previously she was the senior health & science correspondent at Reuters (2012-2015), the science editor and the science columnist at Newsweek (2007 to 2011), and a contributing writer at the magazine and its website, The Daily Beast (2011). From 2002 to 2007, she was the science columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and previous to that the science editor at Newsweek.
