Flying High : Part 3

Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania
by Andy Behrman

(Page 3 of 4)

Oz

Manic depression is about buying a dozen bottles of Heinz ketchup and all eight bottles of Windex in stock at the Food Emporium on Broadway at 4:00 a.m., 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 into 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 at Duane Reade 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, color, 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 often I confuse my manic episodes with dreams I've had. On a spree in San Francisco I shop for French contemporary paintings, which I absolutely love, and have to have on my walls. I spend the next two days in the gallery obsessing over the possible choices. I am a madman negotiating prices with the dealer. I'm in a state of euphoria and panicked about the prices, but I go ahead and buy them anyway, figuring I'll be able to afford them somehow. Two weeks later the paintings arrive, in huge crates, at my apartment in New York. I'm shocked. I really did buy them. I own them now. I could have sworn that weekend was a dream.

Mania is about desperately seeking to live life at a more passionate level, taking second and sometimes third helpings on 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. My manic mind teems with rapidly changing ideas and needs; my head is cluttered with vibrant colors, wild images, bizarre thoughts, sharp details, secret codes, symbols, and foreign languages. I want to devour everything-parties, people, magazines, books, music, art, movies, and television. In my most psychotic stages, I imagine myself chewing on sidewalks and buildings, swallowing sunlight and clouds. I want to go to Machu Picchu, Madagascar, Manitoba. Burundi, Berlin, and Boise (Berlin wins-I absolutely need to watch the Wall come down-CNN coverage isn't good enough for me).

When things quiet 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. Those are the nights I might end up hailing a cab to Kennedy Airport and boarding a random flight. Once I found myself in St. Louis, once in Vienna. (It's better to end up in Vienna.) I want to be a chef, a model, an architect, a surgeon, and an astronaut. My mind consumes information at an incredible rate, and I organize this overflow using an intricate system, printing images in my head as I take in the data, laying it out visually in my mind, and later transcribing the images to notes. For example, I can visualize an image of letters, memos, calendars-even portions of dialogue. It's like having a photographic memory, except I am consciously aware of processing the information.

Manic depression, or bipolar disorder, is a disease that crippled me and finally brought me to a halt, a relatively invisible disease that nobody even noticed. Its symptoms are so elusive and easy to misread that seven psychotherapists and psychiatrists misdiagnosed me. Often the manic phase is mild or pleasant and the doctor sees the patient during a down cycle, misdiagnosing the illness and prescribing the wrong medication. One doctor treated me for severe depression with antidepressant medication that drastically increased my mania, turning me into a high-speed action figure. Another believed that I was just under too much pressure and needed to find myself a less stressful work environment. Yet another suggested group therapy as a way to improve my interpersonal skills and to draw me out of my depression.

I was so entrenched in the manic-depressive behavior (or was it my personality?) that I was certainly in no place to make a judgment about my own condition. Today I can diagnose my moods and behavior, differentiating between extreme happiness, too much caffeine, and mania.

More than two million Americans suffer from manic depression, usually beginning in adolescence and early adulthood; millions more go undiagnosed. It runs in families and is inherited in many cases, although so far no specific genetic defect associated with the disease has been found. Manic depression is not simply flip-flopping between up and down moods. It's not a creative spirit, and it's certainly not joie de vivre. It's not about being wild and crazy. It's not an advantage. It's not schizophrenia. My euphoric highs were often as frightening as the crashes from them-out-of-control episodes that put my life in jeopardy. Contrary to what most psychiatrists believe, the depression in manic depression is not the same as what unipolar depressives report. My experience with manic depression allowed me very few moments of typical depression, the blues or melancholy. My depressions were tornadolike-fast-paced episodes that brought me into dark rages of terror.

Manic depression for me is like having the most perfect prescription eyeglasses with which to see the world.

Everything is precisely outlined. Colors are cartoonlike, and, for that matter, people are cartoon characters. Sounds are crystal clear, and life appears in front of you on an oversized movie screen. I suppose that would make me the director of my own insanity, but I can only wish for that kind of control. In truth, I am removed from reality and have no direct way to connect to it. My actions are random-based on delusional thinking, warped intuition, and animal instinct. When I'm manic, my senses are so heightened, I'm so awake and alert, that my eyelashes fluttering on the pillow sound like thunder.

About the Author

Andy Behrman is a manic depressive who has undergone nineteen electroshock treatments. He has worked as a PR agent and an art dealer. His writing has been featured most recently in The New York Times Magazine. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he knows most of the all-night diners and after-hours bars in the major cities across the country. He currently lives mania-free on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.