I ask myself: Would I have been any worse off if I had stayed home or lived on a farm instead of shock treatments and medication?

Tierney’s question is a retrospective reckoning with the costs of institutional psychiatry as it was often practiced in the mid-20th century—especially electroconvulsive therapy (“shock treatments”) and heavy medication. The contrast she draws between a quiet, ordinary life (“stayed home” or “lived on a farm”) and invasive medical intervention suggests regret and skepticism: she wonders whether the pursuit of a public, high-pressure life and the subsequent clinical response to her suffering actually improved her well-being. The quote also implies a critique of how distress can be medicalized and treated aggressively, raising the possibility that stability, privacy, and simplicity might have been less damaging than the treatments she endured.