The Shocking Tale of Andy Behrman

Written by Sara Solovitch

From public relations to art counterfeiting, male hustling, and aimless travel, Andy Behrman's tale of living with bipolar disorder is also frank and honest.

Andy Behrman wrote Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania while convalescing from four months of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) that effectively ended 20 years of undiagnosed, out-of-control bipolar disorder. His book reads at times like a chronicle of loss for that old life of sleepless nights fueled by drugs, anonymous sex, aimless travel, and midnight pastrami binges followed by tofu and tuna diets and male hustling. And yes, he admits, one of the secrets of manic depression is the pleasure it brings. "It's an emotional state similar to Oz," he writes, "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."

But in 1992, his life fell completely apart. A successful public relations consultant in New York, Behrman had gotten drawn into an art counterfeiting scheme ("the most exciting proposition I'd heard in years"), was tried, found guilty and sentenced to five months in federal prison. It was around that time that he was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder— after seeing eight different psychiatrists over a 12-year period.

His 2002 memoir has been optioned as a movie and is currently in pre-production— with Tobey ("Spider-Man") Maguire set to play Behrman on the big screen. The book, while raunchy and likely to be distasteful to some readers, is often funny and always honest. At his most psychotic, Behrman imagines himself chewing on sidewalks and swallowing sunlight. He squirrels away his nest egg— a tidy sum of $85,000, earned in the counterfeiting scheme— in a shoe box, and his "strudel money"— some 25,000 German deutsche marks (about $10,000)— in the freezer, neatly stacked between a bag of chicken breasts and a pint of ice cream.

In the book, Behrman describes his New Jersey childhood as happy, yet he was never comfortable in his own skin. A precocious boy, he always felt "different"; he had a compulsive need to wash his hands a dozen times a day and lay awake nights counting cars go by. Yet his family never guessed that anything was the matter. In fact, it was he— at the age of 18, right before heading off to college— who asked to see the first of what would grow into a parade of therapists.

Today, 37 different medications and 19 electroconvulsive therapies later, the 43-year-old Behrman is stable, married, and living in a Los Angeles suburb, where he and his wife just had their first child. He is a strong advocate for medication, and no longer considers it a challenge staying on his. He regularly addresses patient support groups, doctors, and mental health conferences, and is a featured speaker at the three upcoming conferences of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA).

Here, in an interview with bp Magazine, Behrman insists on dispelling the perceived glamour of mental illness. If he still feels any ambivalence, he doesn't let on in our conversation.

Why did you write Electroboy?

Behrman: I had read a few books about bipolar disorder but I never identified with any of them, because my story didn't sound like their story. I thought maybe my case is some kind of special case. I even thought for a while that maybe my diagnosis was wrong. And it was only after Electroboy came out that I heard from other people who said their story was just like mine. They, too, thought their stories were too graphic, too dramatic, too something to fit into the category of the illness. Their responses made me feel like my brand of bipolar disorder was more the norm than anyone else had ever represented, because there is a lot of high drama, a lot of craziness, a lot of risktaking, and a lot of destructive behavior.

How did your parents react?

Behrman: I gave them an advanced copy of the book and I don't think they knew how to react. I think they were just shocked. Pun intended. They were flabbergasted that I had led this life that they knew nothing about. They stopped talking to me for a while.

Then they wanted to sit down with a therapist. The general concern was that I was completely exposing myself, that it was a confessional. I think they were also concerned for themselves. We talked at length about bipolar, really for the first time. Before, I had just been seeing psychiatrists on my own and reporting back to my parents.

And they came to the realization that this was something they had ignored. I think they felt guilty that they had been oblivious to it, as well as guilty that they had passed it on to me.

Is there a family history of bipolar disorder?

Behrman: Yes. Probably my paternal grandfather. Nobody talks about him very much, but he was an attorney who kept very odd hours. We know he had mood swings, but he wasn't diagnosed with anything. My father is somewhat obsessive-compulsive and my mother is very driven, as is my sister. We're all related and similar in personalities, though I'm the only one diagnosed.

When did you realize that things had gotten out of hand?

Behrman: Probably when I became involved with the art-counterfeiting scandal. I was aware of the danger, but I thought I was being rational. I was aware of the dangers, but not frightened by them. It became a crisis only when everything broke down and my plan was discovered and there was this fear of what was going to happen to me. That's when I really sought help.

I can imagine the prosecution sighing, and saying, yeah, right, the bipolar defense: "My mania made me do it."

Behrman: The issue of my bipolar disorder never came up at my trial, which was in 1993. The issue only came up at my sentencing. That was 11 years ago and I had never heard of bipolar disorder. I had never heard of the term manic-depressive, which [is how] it was referred to back then. I didn't know anyone with bipolar and I was pretty aware.