Comedian and actor Byron Bowers’ wild, funny, and fearless memoir proves that healing can be a psychedelic experience—and that sometimes the only way to tell the truth is to laugh about it.

Byron Bowers is a comic’s comic—the guy other comedians watch from the back of the room wondering how he just pulled that off. His sets dive into spirituality, race, the dollar, and manhood—and sometimes he wings half of it on the spot. Most comics turn pain into jokes. Byron turns it into something stranger and deeper. And it all started with his father, a paranoid-schizophrenic visionary who accidentally taught him how to break reality open.

Part confession, part stand-up set, The Hardest Part of Schizophrenia is Spelling Schizophrenia takes readers from a childhood shadowed by loss in Georgia to the surreal absurdities of Hollywood. Each stop along the way is shaped by survival: hoop dreams and a basketball scholarship, hustling crack on a Christian campus, getting shot at, and standing on the edge of both suicide and homicide.

Determined not to let his past define him, Byron made it his mission to turn pain into purpose. He started grinding in Atlanta’s comedy clubs, earning his stripes one late-night set at a time, before heading west where he became a regular at the legendary Comedy Store and began landing breakout film and television roles.

Byron dismisses the idea that reality’s rules can’t be rewritten. His story educates, enlightens, and ultimately inspires anyone who refuses to let adversity stand between them and the peace found in the journey itself.