People accuse me of glamorizing mental illness. Looking back sometimes, that's true. But I don't feel guilty.

Andy Behrman

Categorized in : Me Looking People Looking Back

The guilt I felt for having a mental illness was horrible. I prayed for a broken bone that would heal in six weeks. But that never happened. I was cursed with an illness that nobody could see and nobody knew much about.

six guilt broken

Weekly $25,000 shopping binges at Barney's and "high end" boutiques for clothes I barely wore were the norm. So were lavish meals with friends where I picked up $1000 tabs. These high-priced activities were within my limits because I was extremely successful financially, a testament to my manic behavior, not to mention my involvement in illegal activities.

illegal-activities shopping successful

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.

agony pain unique

When I'm manic, I'm so awake and alert, that my eyelashes fluttering on the pillow sound like thunder.

thunder eyelashes sound

As no one knew much about my mental illness, a lot of people had the attitude that I had the capability to 'kick it' and get better instantly. This was the most frustrating attitude for me.

get-better attitude people

I am a rapid-cycling manic-depressive, bi-polar one disorder, which means I can have thirty or forty episodes a year, and I used to have thirty to forty episodes a year.

cycling mean years

My manic depression was ravaging my life, but because nobody could see it, many people thought it was a figment of my imagination.

figments imagination people

Most nights, I'm good for only four or five hours of sleep. That leaves the other 20. I have to fill them some way.

four sleep night

The little depression I experienced during my manic-depression was not like depression as anyone else had ever described it. It was very violent and angry, and I was full of rage. I wasnt lying in bed.

bed littles lying

I couldn't sleep for nights on end, as my brain felt like there were thoughts colliding within it; I obsessed over small details, from saving pennies and polishing each one of them to washing my clothing over and over in the washing machine.

thoughts end brain sleep

My eating habits are the only behaviour of mine that are still manic. I can't walk by a restaurant, a bakery, an ice-cream store or a candy store without making a purchase; the amount of calories I take in today are at least five times as many as I took before starting on all of this medication.

restaurant walk eating today

My illness is one often characterized by dramatic overspending - in my case through frenzied shopping sprees, credit card abuse, excessive hoarding of unnecessary material goods and bizarre generosity with family, friends and even strangers.

strangers friends shopping family

I think, when it comes to psychiatry, that a lot of people are overmedicated. I think when it comes to ECT a lot of people go through too much. I think there's a lot of guesswork in psychiatry.

go think too-much people

Manic depression is a type of depression, technically, and it's the opposite of uni-polar. Manic depression is also called bi-polar disorder. Some people don't like to call it that because they think it makes it sound too nice, when the reality is if you have manic-depression you have manic-depression.

you depression reality people

There are lots of people with mental health disabilities, and that's just the way their life is; it's not like you see it in the movies.

you health life people

I think almost all manic depressives exhibit some kind of criminal behaviour, even if it's something as minimal as shoplifting, but then they often go on to bigger and better things - in my case, it was fraud.

better things think fraud

Like most manic depressives, some of my symptoms included racing thoughts that I simply had to act upon - flying from New York to Paris and taking the train to Berlin; flying to Argentina in the middle of the night; spending tens of thousands of dollars on unnecessary garments, dinners and gifts.

thoughts new racing night

I counterfeited Mark Kostabi's artworks. During the eighties, Mark didn't paint his own paintings. Instead, he had other artists painting them, and he just added his signature. So what I did was to use some of the same painters, and signed his name myself.

name own myself painting

I felt like I was the only person on the planet with this 'thing called depression', and I remember being frightened. I was knocked out and dopey, and I cried all of the time.

person depression time remember

After graduation in June of 1984, I moved to Manhattan. My first stop was a psychiatrist, who in less than our first fifty-minute session again diagnosed me with depression.

stop me depression graduation