sound over of conversation lips smacking against cigarette filters giggles rustling of plastic bags full of pills childish needless flinty flicks of lighters all culminating in squeals of girls who saunter up to the bathroom with their lovers to dose to swallow the necessary amount of water in the cheap plastic cups and upon doing so collapse onto sofas together in a heap of hair and rumpled clothing 

then fade in on where I’m sitting alone 

she has witch…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Coming Clean



Those who have known me over the course of my life may be surprised at this account. To them, I may be nothing more than a severely shy, introverted young man who stood on the sidelines, rather than actively participate. Following high school, I was described by a former classmate as “the kid who no one really knew.” I was hellbent on getting…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Don’t Fade on Me

If someone goes two days without calling me, I’m convinced that I’ll never hear from them again. It wasn’t until I first got involved in therapy that I learned the proper label to describe my symptoms. These are fears of abandonment. Establishing an indisputable reason why was difficult at first, but  I held myself up to enough scrutiny…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

Am I under arrest? 

Yes, technically, said the officer.

His partner had forcefully placed me in the back of a squad car minutes prior. My destination was the psychiatric ward. Due to the effects of a new, very powerful antidepressant, I’d been accidentally thrown into a severe state of mania. Every patient's case is…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter



T.S. Eliot, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock





Religion has been helpful with my physical and psychiatric medical problems. But then again,…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Sexual Beauty

We’d exchanged daily phone calls ever since discharge. My release had proceeded without a hitch. Hers had hit a significant snag. She didn’t have insurance, but could hardly be blamed for wanting to receive what she assumed was the best care in the city. When her credit card balance began to reach the tens of thousands of dollars, then exceeded its…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Band Aids 

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Self-Sabotage



As I think back, I see the tell-tell signs of mania in places and times I never acknowledged then. Mania often brought out a side of me that some might consider sleazy. My on-again, off-again girlfriend had a similar predilection towards risk-seeking behavior, one likely encouraged by her best friend’s self-destructive lifestyle. An…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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A Cautionary Tale



How had this happened? I sat inside the wood paneled great room, too depressed and exhausted to leave my chair. My surroundings looked like the offices of a huge guest lodge for a ski resort, not an upscale psychiatric hospital. Fellow patients fought their own demons, seated on the chairs around me. One of them…

Another unedited excerpt from Wrecking Ball

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The Slow Parade of Fears

I get the internet relationships confused now. There were several, in an uninterrupted stream, one after another. For a while, I e-mailed regularly with a woman my age from New Zealand. She lived in an isolated part of the country, if not the world, a…

Me and Everybody’s on the Same Sad Team



When hypomanic (in the beginning) or manic (after I turned twenty), I often went on rescue missions. The intensity of mania increases gradually with time. Each episode ups the ante a little bit more. Behavior grows more and more outlandish. The illness overtook me, and I no longer had any control over my thoughts and how I must have come across to other people. After a time, I believed that others, those in whom I was interested,…

Another excerpt from Wrecking Ball.



The Internet revolutionized my life, as it did for millions of other Americans. In particular, it gave me access to other lonely kids looking for the same things I was. Live chats became phone calls, then became impossible, but potent crushes. I was usually too shy to reach out and flustered by girls who expressed their appreciation. It’s remarkably easy to develop feelings for someone whose face you may…

I'm writing my sections of this proposed novel non-linearly. That frees me up creatively in a way that a A-Z rendering of the facts would not.

The Nicer the Nice, The Higher the Price



It’s difficult to pinpoint my first manic episode. The most effective psychiatrist…

This is a passage from the novel-in-progress, Wrecking Ball. In it I am discussing my first psychiatric hospitalization at age 15, and also my first sexual experience. My mother and I are now writing a book jointly. The premise is that of a personal memoir of my life, especially focusing on how my illness affected my nuclear family. It includes my history of bipolar disorder along with her parallel recollections of everything that…

II.

Anatomy of an Evening

I.

For most of the evening, I’d been trying to put the moves on an older man with a bald head. He appreciated the attention but was far too preoccupied to be pulled away from the action. While I tried to play coquette, minus the fluttering eyelashes, his body language pulled his skinny form farther and farther downward to the floor. Not interested. Not interested.

He was there for the distraction only, a means to escape, mostly. An…

There have been times in my life where I have wondered if anyone fits the dictionary definition of stability. Admittedly, I have asked these questions when witnessing the self-destruction of yet another artist. When I've known them personally, the shock takes on even more sorrow and melancholy. Based on multiple conversations with others over the years, I know the stories I am about to share occur over and over again.

My own worst days are now gratefully beyond me. One of the more…