In retrospect, I wasn't even looking for the perfect doctor - just a smart one with a good bedside manner. I was only looking for a doctor who could correctly diagnose my psychiatric malady, which all too frequently reared its ugly head in the form of pure manic behaviour. This included erratic outbursts, drug and alcohol abuse, compulsive shopping, sex with strangers, non-stop intercontinental travelling and a deed that ultimately landed me in prison - counterfeiting art.
But finding the right doctor was asking too much in New York - a city with thousands of psychiatrists in the telephone book.
In fact, before I was diagnosed with manic depression in 1993, I had already seen eight different psychiatrists, but none of them could figure out what was going on inside my head. Some thought that I had a classic case of depression. Untrue: I felt fantastic. Some thought that I was a huge narcissist. Maybe. One thought I was schizophrenic. I never pressed him on this diagnosis, and it turned out to be inaccurate.
It just didn't add up. I couldn't get anybody to agree on anything. The only thing I knew was that my life was spinning dangerously out of control and I was going to be lying in the gutter if I didn't get help. Oh, and isn't that funny? That is where I ended up. Drunk one morning, literally in the gutter, in the middle of Times Square, with one of those big street cleaners coming towards me.
In all fairness, statistics do show that manic depression is the most misdiagnosed mental illness of all. But trust me, I also didn't have much luck when it came to choosing the right shrink. (Yet I once won six thousand dollars in a slot machine. Go figure.)
The first doctor I went to was a dead ringer for Sigmund Freud. I walked into his office and he was sitting behind his desk, looking at least eighty years old. Same accent as Dr. Freud, and he's even smoking a cigar. At 7.30 a.m. Who smokes so early in the morning? After bacon and eggs? I thought it was a disgusting combination, but I wasn't judgmental.
So I sat down and told him that I was quite disturbed over my recent break-up with my girlfriend, and that I was trying to erase the thoughts through incessant activity - working, socializing, drinking and doing drugs. I told him that I was hypersexual, and he said he wasn't surprised. We talked for 45 minutes and he confidently told me that I had depression. He prescribed a new drug on the market - Prozac. He thought it would clear things up right away. That night I took my first 20 milligram yellow and green Prozac. No change. I took an extra 20 milligram capsule before I went to work. About two weeks later, I was in the shower washing my hair and I realized that I was in a really good mood. The doctor put me on 60 milligrams of Prozac and I was moving faster than the speed of sound. In a month, I had gone insane. Prozac launched me further into my own natural mania, and I couldn't stop this "high." But it felt so good, there was no way I was going back to see him. Yet I needed help because I was addicted and I was getting myself into trouble. I was involved in a counterfeiting scandal, smuggling money into the United States from overseas and just wreaking havoc in general in New York City. So I turned to - let's call him - Dr. X, who immediately took me off Prozac and told me that "talk therapy" was the answer. Oh, OK. At this point I was so desperate to regain my sanity that if he had told me to increase the dosage of Prozac, I probably would have. Dr. X told me that he was opposed to treating his patients with medication, and I found this comforting. Honestly, I was sick of medication at this point. Dr. X, who had a trace of a British accent (which I later found out was entirely fake), told me that the "cold turkey" method would be fine for me and not to expect any real withdrawal.
Within a few days, I noticed that my thoughts had become increasingly unhinged. It was as if chunks of my brain had been scooped out, like the part that edits my thoughts before they become speech. I talked non-stop to friends and family about anything that came to mind. I shook. I couldn't eat. Two weeks later, I learned that Dr. X didn't even have a license to practice medicine. That's why he didn't believe in "drug therapy" - he couldn't write a prescription. It was time to move on.
