The shocking adventures of Electroboy

The Guardian ^ | Sunday March 10, 2002 | A manic memoir by Andy Behrman

[vannrox]

The shocking adventures of Electroboy

Drugs, felony charges, even jail couldn't stop him... Electroconvulsive therapy did. A manic memoir by Andy Behrman

Andy Behrman

Sunday March 10, 2002

The Observer

Andy Behrman is a manic-depressive. For most of his adult life, he had periods of tremendous highs and terrible lows. He enjoyed drug binges and cross-continental shopping trips and sex with strangers. Then, in what would become a notorious art scandal in the 90s, Behrman masterminded a scheme to defraud his employer and friend, the artist Mark Kostabi. Behrman was convicted of fraud and sentenced to five months jail and five months house arrest. Seven psychotherapists misdiagnosed Behrman before his life ground to a halt. ECT was the last resort. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, Electroboy, Behrman provides an electrifying look inside the mind of a manic-depressive.

In Manhattan, even at 5am, it's easy to find someone to talk to if you can't sleep. There's an entire network of actors, writers, bartenders, prostitutes and drug dealers hanging out in after-hours bars and clubs across the city, waiting for the transition from vodka and cocaine to orange juice, pancakes and eggs. Somewhere in East Village, guys with names like Edgardo and Leon sell coke to kids who snort it in unisex bathrooms. In a theatre in Times Square, hustlers called Cody and Shane rush into cabs and limos and back to bedrooms and hotel rooms for $150 private shows. At a bar on the Upper East Side, two women laugh loudly - or is the one adjusting her skirt a man?

I happen to be an art dealer, which someone once told me at a Soho opening was a notch above drug dealer on the career ladder. But tonight I might as well be a prostitute. After quite a few lines of cocaine and more than 10 shots of vodka, I find myself trying to sell a Mark Kostabi painting for $3,000 to a minor-league porn star. The more coke we do, the closer he seems to meeting my asking price. He's in New York hustling for the month and wiring money back to his wife and two kids in Las Vegas. I'm telling him that he can flip the painting for $5,000 in a day because I'm giving him a price that's even lower than wholesale, or he can wait to take it to Christie's and maybe get even more money at auction. He actually seems interested and takes my card.

I stash my to-do list (bleach bathtub, toilet and sink; make Holocaust documentary; start tofu/tuna diet; work out five days/week; open Munich bank account; bring $2,700 to Dr Kleinman; pick up lithium and Prozac; tanning salon; visit Auschwitz; book trip with Dad to Galapagos; write novel and screenplay; read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People ; buy a dog_) in my pocket and buy a Kamikaze for each of us and a round of drinks for a group of faceless people across the bar, speaking what sounds like a Slavic language.

Time is kind of frozen, and I feel like I'm going to live forever. I fear I'm going to be awake all night and can't imagine my head resting on my pillow. Will I ever sleep again? I don't sleep much - maybe two or three hours a night, sometimes not at all for a day or two at a time - so I end up killing a fair amount of time hanging out downtown, drinking and doing drugs with my insomniac friends. I like the night. I'm scared that it's going to get light out soon, so I leave these people and journey back to the Upper West Wide. In the cab, I throw my head back. I'm going to force myself to get some sleep and hide from the impending brightness - it's only minutes away.

6.35am. I'm lying between my chocolate-brown, maroon, and green paisley Ralph Lauren sheets wearing Calvin Klein briefs and feeling very un-Lauren and frantic and guilty for wearing Calvin Klein briefs. At last I decide that it's perfectly OK to mix and match. The elastic is irritating me, so I push the briefs down and they get lost in the sheets for a few days. Now I'm totally naked and relieved. Is it OK to sleep alone naked? I won't tell anyone. These sheets are supposed to be comfortable. That's what the saleswoman told me - something about the high thread count. Six hundred. She should recommend sleeping naked to her customers. But the dramatic swirling pattern agitates me. I'm in the mood for French toast. I can't get comfortable, so I get up and put on Abba's 'Waterloo', turn on the lights and start counting $100 bills from a shoe box I keep underneath my bed. Fifteen minutes later, I've got $85,000. I double-check it. This time it comes to $83,000. Shit. I'm not going to count it again. I put three three-inch-thick piles of cash back into the shoe box. There's also 25,000 Deutschmarks in the box - about $10,000. This is my German reserve, my strudel money. I put it back under the bed. I rubber-band $50,000, bring it into the kitchen and stack it neatly in the freezer next to some chicken breasts, an old pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunk Monkey, a frosty bottle of Absolut, some half-empty ice-cube trays and a bottle of amyl nitrate. It'll be safe here. I'll probably go through it quickly anyhow.

I get back into bed. I'd love a bagel. The trucks outside sound like rockets being launched. They carry milk, soda, fruit and beer. All of this will end up in supermarkets today. I walk back into the kitchen, take an Amstel Light beer from the refrigerator and swallow three yellow Klonopin and two plain white Ambien to try to knock myself out. I look in the mirror. Five more pounds to go. Legs look good. Big deal. That's a genetic thing.

From my balcony, I see a man walking his cocker spaniel. I open the sliding glass door and drop the beer bottle four floors down on to the street. Just see him as a moving target and feel the urge. It doesn't hit him, or his dog, but he looks up and curses. Asshole. I give him a slight nod. Go through the mail. Pay some bills.

After 20 minutes, I realise the pills aren't working. I can't get myself to fall asleep. This stuff is crap. Thank God the fucking insurance company foots the bill for this shit and not me. I get into bed and try jerking off to a video, but that doesn't work either. Probably because I'm so fucked up and exhausted. I'm not in the mood for phone sex either. I throw on a pair of jeans (no briefs) and a black cashmere turtleneck sweater. I've got to get out of my apartment and go somewhere. A diner, another after-hours bar, or for a walk up Madison Avenue. Early-morning window shopping. Fuck it. I pack my passport and prescriptions, a suit and a dozen rolled-up canvases, then reach into my freezer and grab the rubber-banded wad of money. I feel like I should wear a matching black cashmere mask over my face. I'm stealing from my own freezer. An inside job. I've got an appointment with my psychiatrist Dr Kleinman at 8.30am. Fuck him. He'll get his cash either way. Press for the elevator. Beer in hand. I'm not worried what the doorman thinks. I hail a taxi. Where to? Kennedy Airport, I guess. I open the window and let the breeze blow on my face as we cross the park. We're picking up speed. Thank God.

9.30am. There's a flight to Tokyo stopping in Los Angeles, so I buy a ticket with cash: $8,600. Grab a hot dog with ketchup and onions: $3. The plane smells like Dove soap. Everyone in first class was probably shower ing at the same time this morning. It's a nice smell. Still, something tells me this is going to be a painfully long flight. Usually it's 14 hours. I already feel restless and we haven't been in the air for more than two hours. That must be Ohio down below. The plane is filled with Japanese tourists. On my way to the bathroom, I notice a few Madonna look-alikes with bleached blonde hair sitting in economy. I hate this flight. I really prefer to keep moving, and the stopover makes me anxious. I stay on the plane. It's like coming down from a good cocaine high and waiting for the next 'crew' to arrive with a supply of new 'provisions'. But it was the first available flight and I'm in a rush. Got to get to Tokyo to see art and make some deals. I've done it tens of times before, but this time I feel strange. Too energetic. I haven't slept in two nights. And none of the medications are calming me down. We're flying near clouds that seem like they're in arm's reach. If I could just stick my tongue out the window and suck one of those amorphous numbus or cumulus or whatever-Mrs-Robinson-called-them-in-fourth-grade clouds deeply into my lungs, maybe I could get rid of this feeling. I ask the stewardess for a vodka to wash down the Klonopin. There's turbulence. I could do a much better job flying this jet plane than our pilot. I should walk into the cockpit and demand to take control.

We're flying at 35,000ft and the sun beats down on me through the window. I've slipped into the Land of Stiff Neck and Drool, a warm and sunny place. I'm just about to start kissing my ex-girlfriend's breasts when the stewardess bumps into my left shoulder and I abruptly straighten up in my seat. Dream ruined. Is it a dream? Is it day or night? My contact lenses are dry and I'm thirsty. I take two Prozac, two more Klonopin, one lithium and one Anafranil. I flip through my magazine 11 times. I do not care for Demi Moore. I sample all the scent tabs. Descent. I walk off the plane with my carry-on bag and canvases and wait for my luggage at the baggage claim. Then I make my way through customs and I take a cab to the Akasaka Prince Hotel. I don't know if I'm exhausted or wide awake or hungry or horny. I phone the concierge for extra towels and I take a half-hour shower. I check out the view from the 38th floor on to Akasaka - tons of bright neon. For a minute I think I can see H&H Bagels in the distance. That must mean I need to get something in my stomach. The last thing I really ate was a hot dog at the airport. God, Manhattan is 14 hours away. By plane.

Manic depression is about buying a dozen bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup and all eight bottles of Windex in stock at the Food Emporium at Broadway at 4am, flying from Zurich to the Bahamas and back to Zurich in three days to balance the hot and cold weather (my 'sweet and sour' theory of bipolar disorder), carrying $20,000 in $100 bills in your shoes in the country on your way back from Tokyo, and picking out the person sitting six seats away at the bar to have sex with only because he or she happens to be sitting there. It's about blips and burps of madness, moments of absolute delusion, bliss and irrational and dangerous choices made in order to heighten pleasure and excitement and to ensure a sense of control. The symptoms of manic depression come in different strengths and sizes. Most days, I need to be as manic as possible to come as close as I can to destruction, to get a real good high - a $25,000 shopping spree, a four-day drug binge, or a trip around the world. Other days, a simple high from a shoplifting excursion for a toothbrush or a bottle of Tylenol is enough.

I'll admit it: there's a great deal of pleasure to mental illness, especially to the mania associated with manic depression. It's an emotional state similar to Oz, full of excitement, colour, noise and speed - an overload of sensory stimulation - whereas the sane state of Kansas is plain and simple, black and white, boring and flat. Mania has such a dreamlike quality that I often confuse manic episodes with dreams I've had. Mania is about desperately seeking to live life at a more passionate level, taking second and sometimes third helpings of food, alcohol, drugs, sex and money, trying to live a whole life in one day. Pure mania is as close to death as I think I have ever come. The euphoria is both pleasurable and frightening. When things quieten down in the slightest, it's hard to lie in bed knowing that someone is drinking a margarita poolside at a hotel in Miami, driving 100 miles per hour down the Pacific Coast Highway, or fucking at the Royalton Hotel. I have to get out and consume.

I am obsessed with working ridiculously long hours, earning plenty of money and spending it as quickly as I make it. When I go to the bank, I withdraw $5,000 from my account in $20 and $50 bills; the look and feel of so much money gives me such a jolt and a great sense of security. Losing control during a shopping spree is probably the ultimate high for me now; it causes a strange sense of panic, a near blackout state. My heart races - I'm nervous, I'm frightened, I'm pressured, I'm stressed. My body becomes numb and tingly and everything around me is spinning and I feel like I'm going to pass out, but there's a force inside driving me forward.

One Saturday, I feel like spending money at Barneys. I find a good-looking and slightly hip young salesman, who looks like he probably came to New York from Indiana to model after college, to show me some casual jackets. We pick out six or seven, and I'm trying on one after another, looking in the mirror, asking him for his opinion. 'It's a great-looking jacket,' he says. 'And I've got the perfect turtleneck for it,' he adds. I make a mental note: turtleneck with black-and-white checked jacket. I switch to the next one, a simple navy- blue blazer. 'Oh, this is a good one,' I say. 'I've got to have this one.' The next one, grey, looks fantastic, too. He smiles at me and laughs. 'Should we keep going?' he asks. I try on others, and now I'm totally confused and tell him that I have to think about it for a while. I go look at shoes and find a pair of black boots that is exactly what I've been meaning to buy. The salesman tells me that he has another pair with a slightly different heel, and he brings both out. I tell him I'll take both. $650. Simple. My mind is focused on the jacket dilemma. I go back and I don't see Indiana man. I need to find him. Finally, he appears from behind one of those mystery curtains that leads to nowhere, recognises me and smiles. 'You're back, have you made up your mind?' he asks. 'Yes, I'm going to take the black-and-white checked one, the navy blue one, the grey one and the black one.' He looks surprised. I feel like I've redeemed myself. 'Do you want to look at some pants and shirts?' he asks. 'Sure,' I tell him. 'And the turtleneck for the black-and-white checked jacket you mentioned.' I go into the dressing room to try everything on. I'm sweating and my head starts pounding. The tailor comes and hems the pants and fixes the sleeves and it's a done deal. $6,200. Indiana guy shakes my hand and tells me that the clothes will be delivered by the end of the week.

I haven't gone more than 100 yards when I see a black cashmere V-neck sweater that I love instantly. I can pay cash for it and not feel as guilty. A saleswoman approaches me. She shows me an entire counter filled with cashmere sweaters all in different styles. My mind is racing. I take off my coat and start trying on sweaters and looking in the mirror. I'm sweating like crazy. The black cashmere V-neck sweater in the case is $800. I touch it and it feels luxurious. I'll take it. I also buy a navy blue cashmere crewneck for $500. I'm getting the urge to buy another, but at this point I'm so hot I just want to get some air. 'How would you like to pay for this?' she asks. 'Cash,' I tell her. She seems surprised. I've spent more than $8,000 in three hours, and I'm only making $20,000 a month, so I'm feeling pretty guilty at the moment. I find my way out the front door and into a cab where I collapse. My three-hour high at Barneys is similar to what it feels like to prolong an orgasm for hours and hours. There's a brief moment of guilt overshadowed by euphoria, and part of me wants to return it all (and sometimes I do several days later), but usually I move on to the next store after a few deep breaths and do the same thing all over again. It's a kind of marathon masturbating.

My girlfriend Allison and I escape the city most weekends, flying to Martha's Vineyard and staying at bed and breakfasts. We spend our days at our favourite beach, a nude beach at Gay Head, and in the evenings we go out for dinner and a movie. It sounds relaxing, but I'm finding that I'm not that good at having fun on these trips. The peace irks me; I need more stimulation. Allison appears to be perfectly comfortable walking around naked, aware of both men and women looking at her as she walks on the beach or just lies in the sand. I'm totally aroused by the entire situation, but otherwise I can't understand why people flock to the beach to do absolutely nothing but look at the clouds and sky and the water and lie in the sun. I remind myself not to go to the beach ever again.

The grand opening of Kostabi World, an enormous three-storey warehouse facility on West 38th Street takes place in November 1988 with a huge press party for about 1,000 invited guests. I have orchestrated the entire event, from invitations to cocktail napkins, and the morning of the opening is a busy one for me - hanging paintings, setting up the physical space, dealing with the lighting and the music. I instruct the caterer to set up tables of live mermaids - scantily clad women decoratively surrounded by hors d'oeuvres. This makes a huge splash. It's mostly a trendy downtown crowd, models and artists mixed in with 'new' collectors - yuppies, stockbrokers, investment bankers and lawyers rushing to invest their recent bonus cheques in the most talked-about art.

At 2am, when the last guest leaves, we have offers on four of the paintings. Mark Kostabi tells me that he's never seen sales look so good. It never feels like a real business, it just feels as if we're playing around, almost as if the paintings aren't real either. It's as if we're printing our own money. And we're just making it all up as we go along. The energy is so powerful that I feel as if I could show up at a hospital operating room and perform arthroscopic surgery successfully and nobody would even notice that I had absolutely no training at all.

A few weeks after my 28th birthday, I realise that something is not functioning properly, and I'm convinced I should go for a CAT scan. I feel like I have an abscess swelling deep inside my head - I imagine that there's pus within the depths of my brain - just waiting to explode. I'm obsessed with buying large quantities of cleaning products. Everything I can get my hands on: paper towels, sponges, bleach, laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, scrubs, soaps, waxes, sprays and oils. I hoard them in my kitchen cupboards in case I get snowed in for the next six months. Then I get to work. I put on my rubber gloves and scrub the entire bathroom until it sparkles - this can take an hour or longer. I move on to the next room, vacuuming dust from crevices, waxing floors and polishing furniture. I set everything in its proper place. When it's all done, I'm exhausted. I'm also obsessed with counting the number of words on a written page, usually after I've read it, but sometimes I have to count first. Sometimes this gets in the way of getting work done. When I leave my apartment I check three or four times to be sure I've locked my door.

When I tell Dr Kleinman about my obsessional cleaning and counting, he prescribes Anafranil, which puts a sudden end to most of the behaviour within a matter of days. He still thinks Prozac is working well for me, although I tell him the combination of the two medications is making me feel as if I'm moving faster and faster. I assume that means it's working, because I'm not depressed. I'm invited to an art opening that's happening in Los Angeles that very evening and by 1pm I'm at the airport. I'm selling art faster than I ever have before, and I feel as if I have this magic power of attracting people to me.

14 May 1991. My phone wakes me up at 5.20am; I figure someone is in trouble. It's Mark Kostabi, calling from Tokyo. 'Don't go into Kostabi World today,' he tells me. 'There's a problem with some paintings Heather and I have found at a small gallery in Tokyo.' I know right away I've been caught. I've been producing fake paintings and selling them abroad. My heart is racing. Shit.

February 1995. Worn out and tired from five months' imprisonment at Esmor community corrections centre, I'm pained to think my sentence is not yet over. I still have to serve a five-month term of house arrest. I'm restricted to my one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side for 20 hours a day, with a beeper-sized electronic monitor continuously strapped to my left ankle for 152 days. At first, the ankle bracelet is a novelty with which I entertain my friends. Then it feels like a growth. I am forever fiddling with it. Wanting it off. The device goes everywhere I do, like a sinus condition. I sleep in it, eat with it, have sex in it. But it is showering that underscores the humiliation of house arrest: even after the last article of clothing is off and I am standing under hot water, there is still a black metal contraption soldered to my body. Because I am confined to my apartment, my manic world comes inside. I am like a butterfly trapped beneath a glass dome.

20 March 1995. I mix alcohol and about 10 Ambien and Klonopin to relax - not the safest combination - fill the bathtub with hot water and fantasise about killing myself by floating beneath the surface - hoping that I'll be too drowsy to resist drowning. I spend hours in the tub. I can't give up this pleasure because it relieves so much of my pain. My thinking becomes psychotic.

9 April 1995. It's the middle of the day. Perfect weather. I'm walking up Madison Avenue. I'm in front of Barneys. My skin starts tingling and I feel as if my insides are spilling on to the sidewalk. Everything moves in slow motion. I can't hear. I rush home and curl up in my empty bathtub in my jeans and black turtleneck. I lie still for hours. I'm cold. Barefoot. None of the drugs seem to be working for me. I'm ashamed and frightened that the manic depression is growing wildly out of control. It feels as though someone is pouring cement into my skull. Nobody can help me. The next episode is going to kill me. I can't make it go away. The bathtub is too small and hard for me, but I feel safe here. I call psychiatrist Caroline Fried, and explain that I'm in serious trouble and need help. She tells me to be at her office at 5pm and to ask my parents to come.

Dr Fried brings us into her office and tells us we have tried every possible combination of medication available and my condition has still not been stabilised; I have reached a critical stage. So I ask the question about the last resort - electroconvulsive therapy, or electroshock therapy. Dr Fried has mentioned ECT before, but she has always been very much against treating me with it because of the side effects, particularly memory loss. There is an odd silence, and Dr Fried looks at my parents. But we've known all along it could come to this, and we all know that that's why we're here. Dr Fried explains that ECT is used to treat depression, manic depression, mania and schizophrenia and that it causes a seizure in the brain by passing a mild electric current through the head. She tells us one of the main criticisms is that there is no convincing scientific explanation of how it works, only a number of unsubstantiated theories. Brain damage scares the shit out of me. Am I going to become a permanent zombie, forced to return to the suburbs to live with my parents?

11 April 1995, 8am. The light is streaming in through the dirty windows on the terrace floor of Gracie Square Hospital on the Upper East Side. I'm waiting in a hallway outside the operating room with a group of other depressed souls. A woman in her late 60s tells me that this is her 15th electroshock treatment in four months. 'You have no reason to worry,' she assures me. 'You won't feel a thing.' 'Easier than a root canal?' I ask. 'No comparison.' She smiles.

My mouth is dry and I ask one of the nurses for something to drink, but she tells me that I can't drink until after the treatment. The doctors and nurses keep using the term 'treatment' as if we're at a health spa. It sounds so pleasant - could it be? That would be nice. Could it be as relaxing as a massage? As refreshing as a facial? What am I getting so worked up about? I'm not usually this scared going to the dentist. But I'm not getting my teeth cleaned. I'm in a hospital about to get electroshock.

I never imagined this illness would land me in a mental hospital. Am I going to be permanently damaged by ECT? Am I sure this is a wise choice? Dr Fried has referred me to a well-respected specialist, Dr Charles Wallenstein, who tells me there is no other choice. ECT is the last resort in my case. Michael, a guy about my age, leans toward us and says, 'Trust me, you won't feel a thing. It's actually kind of cool.' I thank him and try to imagine how fucking cool it's going to be.

Inside the operating room, Dr Wallenstein stands to my left. He's wearing a jacket and tie and those black sneaker-like shoes. He shakes my hand and introduces me to the anaesthesiologist, the nurse, an assistant and a group of residents. He seems too slick and charming to be doing what he does. He should be working at Goldman Sachs. Everyone is hovering over me. Standing room only. I'm making small talk to keep my mind off the fact that I'm about to have my brains jolted with 200 volts of electricity while 10 note- taking residents gawk. I'm thinking about the electric chair and being struck by lightning, and joking incessantly to fight off the terror. Is it too late for the call from the governor? No call. The show must go on. 'Got an Amstel Light?' I ask. No response. I give the thumbs-up. An IV of Brevital, an anaesthetic, is stuck into my arm, silencing me.

I feel as if I've just smoked cocaine and drifted high into the clouds, and I am struggling to stay awake. It's a losing battle; I eventually lose consciousness. But I've been told what will happen: an IV of succinylcholine chloride goes in next, relaxing my muscles to prevent broken bones and cracked vertebrae from the seizure that will occur. The nurse sticks a rubber block in my mouth so I don't bite off my tongue, a mask over my nose and mouth so my brain is not deprived of oxygen, and electrodes on my temples. All clear. Dr Wallenstein presses the button. Electric current shoots through my brain for an instant, causing a grand-mal seizure for 20 seconds. My toes curl. It's over. My brain has been reset like a wind-up toy.

I wake up 30 minutes later and think I'm in a hotel room in Acapulco. My jaw and limbs ache. But I am elated. 'Come, Electroboy,' says the nurse with a thick Jamaican accent. I take a sip of juice as she grabs my arm and escorts me to my room, where my parents and sister are waiting for me. They stare at me as if I've just returned from Jupiter. 'I feel great,' I announce with delight. My mother's eyes well up with tears. I give her a hug. My father gives me a gentle kiss on the forehead and holds back his tears. My sister kisses me and starts to cry. All I can do is smile and laugh. I feel so fucking good. Later, I'm stretched out in bed, and my parents and sister pull their chairs up alongside me. For a brief moment, I'm confused as to where I am. I feel as though these well-dressed people have walked into the middle of my dream. I hold my mother's hand. If I can just snap out of this fog I'm in, I'll be OK, I'm happy to be with my family. But most important, I'm glad that the pressure in my head has been relieved.

After my third treatment, I wonder what the inside of my head looks like, if the ECT has actually changed the shape of my brain - really shaken up the neurons the way the doctors have told me it does. I imagine the neurons bouncing around like in one of those big bingo tumblers. I'm looking forward to my fourth and final treatment. I'm hoping I can be put on a programme of medication that will stabilise the manic-depression.

18 April 1996. I call Dr Wallenstein a few days before my 20th ECT treatment is scheduled. 'I think I'm done with ECT for now,' I tell him. I believe I am balanced enough to work with a new psychiatrist, and quite honestly I know that I am addicted to ECT and the premedication.

July 1996. Dr Fried has found a cocktail that seems to work well for me for the time being. It consists of one and a half milligrams of Risperdal, an antipsychotic; 750mg of Depakote, a mood stabiliser; 1,200mg of Neurontin, an anti-convulsant; 300mg of Symmetrel, for Parkinsonian syndrome; 30mg of Propanolol, for tremors; 50mg of Benadryl, for muscle stiffness; 2mg of Klonopin, for anxiety; and 10mg of Ambien, a sleeping aid. That's little more than 22 pills a day. The cocktail needs to be tweaked every so often, and I spend a lot of time with Dr Fried on the phone adjusting dosages, but my moods are starting to stay pretty even.

Throughout this recovery period, I despise manic-depression, but pretend to be its friend, so as not to set it off. I work with it. I take all the pills at all the right times. I monitor my mood and behaviour. I go to sleep on time. I eat well. I avoid stress. I play the good patient. And I don't like any of it. I miss the planes, trips, money, dinners, alcohol, drugs, and sex. My recovery represents a real loss. What am I doing in Kansas?

· Electroboy: a Memoir of Mania, by Andy Behrman, is published by Viking on 28 March.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

[Servant of the Nine]

Sanity is Hell.

So9

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

An amazing look into the life of a bi-polar individual.......... I lost a friend to this disorder.......and I never had any idea of the pain......