The Saltbox

By
Riley Jones

I did not go into psychotherapy until I was in my mid thirties. I had made it through the
1970’s and 1980’s by the skin of my teeth. During this time, I did not receive the
medical care that I needed to battle my problems. In the 1990’s, new drugs came on
the market to treat Obsessive Compulsive disorder and Bipolar illness. In my youth, I
was written off as weak and neurotic, and psychiatry was something my family did not
believe in. I can recall a Primary Care Doctor in 1976 telling me that I just need to calm
down, relax, and not worry so much about the Cold War and the threat of nuclear
annihilation. It took another 30 years, a trio of psychiatrists, and a bushel full of
psychotropic drugs to find out what was wrong with me. This story is a confession, and
I hope that it is one that makes some people feel that they are not alone.

You were Always on my Mind…

The year was 1995 and I had just celebrated my 36th birthday. It was three o’clock in
the morning and I found myself hanging from the gutter of my girlfriend’s house after
climbing up the drain pipe with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream clenched between my
teeth. You see, she had just broken up with me earlier in the day and I wanted to pay
her a visit. I felt sad and rejected hours earlier when she sat me down to express her
feelings. I was confused. I mean she had just told me that she loved me the night
before when we were having sex; now where in the world did this dramatic change of
heart come from? She claimed it was the red wine talking. Anyway, as I was in the
middle of my first experience with a psychiatrist, I had taken my prescribed dose of
Prozac, Lithium, Depakote, Xanax, and Buspar spiked with 12 or so Heinekens. This
led me to believe that it would be all better if I just brought her a tub of her favorite ice
cream. I mean, she was obviously emotionally confused and just needed to see me
again. No one answered the door when I knocked, so I went around the side of the
house and threw some pebbles at her bedroom window. When I didn’t get her
attention, I decided to shimmy up the drain pipe and use the gutter to get to her window.

As I hung from the gutter, I noticed a police cruiser with its red flashing lights on parked
in front of the house. The police were pretty demanding in their attempts to get me off
her roof, so I chose to descend and was beaten like a raccoon trapped in a basement
with two very solid night sticks. “What are you out of your fucking mind?” one of the
officers screamed at me. “It’s only ice cream, I replied, “cookie dough.” But I was
whizzed into the back of the squad car, handcuffs and all. And man is it uncomfortable
lying on your side in the back of a squad car with your hands cuffed behind your back.

Back at the police station things didn’t get much better. I later learned that the arresting
officer played golf with my girlfriend’s father. He wanted to make a point. He bounced
me off just about every wall in the place, and I was forced to strip so that a full body
cavity search could be performed. As anesthetized as I was, that rubber glove going
into my rectum felt like I had been impaled on a tree limb. I was ordered to put my
clothes back on and tossed into a jail cell, where I immediately fell unconscious and
seemed to wake minutes later in a complete haze. Of course I had been out for some
time, and the cell bars reminded me of a very dumb thing I had done the night before. A
friendly officer drove me back to my Jeep Wrangler. We both sat quietly as we drove
through the suburban streets, the only noise being the ruffling of the citation on my lap.
“You know, you really should stay away from her,” the officer told me, “she’s pretty well
connected.”

This affair began at a late night party at a friend’s house. I noticed this wild blonde
dancing on a table with her stockings wrapped around her head. “She’s pretty fast,”
someone told me. I made my way toward her and caught her attention. We began to
check each other out. She blew a kiss at me, ran her hand up my thigh, and laughed
devilishly.

“You’re the best looking guy here,” she said.

“And you’re pretty fine, yourself,” I replied. “How does a man go about getting a date
with you?”

“Easy,” she said. “Meet me at Marge’s party tomorrow, we’ll talk.”

She kissed me and went back to table dancing. That was the point of no return. My
saltbox mind had taken over. You see, at age 10 I found an adult magazine under the
city steps, extremely explicit – women on their knees giving oral pleasure to men, men
having threesomes with women, lesbians and gay men having sex, and so vivid, so
wonderfully vivid. I hid the magazine in a saltbox that was put on the street for city
residents to keep their sidewalks free of snow and ice. I would go to the saltbox every
day and check out the pictures and then bury it back in the box. I loved that saltbox. I
eventually took the book home and hid it in the basement. My mother became
suspicious after watching me go down to that basement and spend most of my time
there. I must have gotten busted because one day the book was gone. But the
pictures, the wonderfully explicit sexual acts being performed, fed my obsessive mind
and put me on track for a lifetime filled with fantasies. It must have had an effect on me,
because all of my girlfriends, save one, were promiscuous. They stimulated a part of
my mind that was left in that saltbox in my childhood. And the more promiscuous the
women acted, the more I got excited, but the more jealousy was unleashed as well. I
suppose I was turned on by the thought of them performing sex acts with other men and
hated myself for feeling that way. I was insanely jealous. I would take temper tantrums
when I thought they were out cheating on me. My moods would flow from a torrent of
rage to a school girl giggle. Not all in the same moment but over a period of days.

But back to the little blonde dancing on the table. Now, I thought to myself, this seems
like my kind of woman. I asked her to have dinner with me and she agreed. I met her
at a house party the next night that she had invited me to and she seemed to be
vaguely familiar with who I was. She had been intoxicated to the point of
unconsciousness the night before and really had no idea who the hell I was.

“Were you invited here?” she asked.

“You told me to come, remember?” I replied

She had an odd look on her face, like she had just been caught lying under police
interrogation. But we hit it off after a lot of conversation and had dinner the following
weekend. I cooked for her. She seemed to be quite impressed with my culinary skills.

“That smells so good,” she said as she sat on the couch while I cooked in the kitchen.

“A special meal for a special woman,” I replied. I made Mandarin beef with rice pilaf.

When we sat down to eat, she told me that the food tasted like the kind you would be
served at a fine restaurant.

“I cook a lot,” I replied. “And I had to make something that would win you over.”
I did the dishes while she sat on the couch and read a glamour magazine. “Boy, you
really do it all,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want some help cleaning up?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m pampering you. All you have to do is enjoy the meal.”

After dinner, I joined her on the couch and we began kissing and petting. This led to us
having sex as she asked, “do you want to take this upstairs?” She undid my pants and
they fell to the floor. She gave me oral sex and was downright filthy about it. The more
she rubbed it on her face and talked dirty to me, the more my heart beat like a drum.
This person was unwittingly lighting a fuse in my head, a fuse that burned to the
obsessive bomb in my mind, but she was only having her kind of fun. She seemed to
be in another world as she practically worshiped it. Afterwards I could not stop thinking
about her. Every waking moment she was on my mind. I could not think of anything
else. I could hardly concentrate on what people were saying to me. I would talk on the
phone to customers and there she was talking dirty to me and performing oral sex. I
tried eating dinner but I could not get her out of my head. I took my bike out for a ride
around the parking lot but still could not get her out of my head. I sat by the phone and
waited for her to call. And when she did, I immediately masturbated after talking to her.
You see, I fantasized about her being entangled in kinky sex acts – threesomes,
gangbangs, giving oral pleasure to men, multiple men sometimes. This cycle repeated
itself every day. I slept very little. I could not wait to see her again to watch her go
down on me.

We talked a lot on the phone from our places of employment during the week about our
likes and dislikes, cracking corny jokes, flirting, and making plans for the weekend. She
was an attorney and I was a ranking government official. “I think I’ll call you Chef
Saucy,” she told me with a giggle. “Listen,” I replied. “I pay extra special attention to
the women I date.” Little did she know how much attention I had meant.
Our plans typically involved alcohol in some way. When you are in your thirties, you still
feel invincible and having that blast of juice to the head is a popular pastime, for some.
For many others, they grow out of the partying mindset in their teens and twenties. And
pouring alcohol on an obsessive mind is like strapping TNT to a gasoline tanker.
Anyway, we were together for a total of four weeks. Friday was supposed to be for the
friends and Saturday was for us, but that arrangement lasted only one week. The
following Friday night I told her I was going to meet the boys at the local bar but drove to
her house instead. She looked startled, and I believe she was beginning to see the
obsession twinkling in my eyes.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. I told her that I had changed my mind and
wanted to be with her instead. She explained that she had already made plans. I
thought it was a good idea for me to go along. She gave me a frustrated look and told
me to hop in the car.

When we arrived at the nightclub, I followed her around like a puppy and carefully
observed everyone she was talking to and took in all that was said. I wanted to know
what she was up to. It was a strange sight to see five girls on barstools laughing and
talking about their personal dealings with one odd man sitting at the end of the line with
his ear to the railroad tracks. It didn’t take long for her to call it a night and she drove
me back to my Jeep.

I began to call her three times a day at work. Each time, she seemed a little less
attentive. I knew that my motor was running in high gear but just couldn’t slow down.
It’s like being a heroin addict, chasing the high and hating yourself for it. I didn’t hear
from her for a couple of days and after leaving a few messages on her machine, I
decided to take a drive over to her house. We got drunk together and had sex and she
whispered that she loved me. The following day, she was very quiet and asked if I
could leave because she had laundry to do. I left but returned an hour later just to see if
anything was wrong.

“That’s it,” she told me as she opened her front door. “We have to talk.”

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“You are moving too fast and I can’t breathe. You seem to want my undivided attention
twenty four hours a day,” she said in a frustrated tone.

“You told me you loved me,” I whined.

“I was drunk and we were having sex. It slipped out. We’ve only known each other for
a month,” she said with a bit of exasperation.

Now I had a problem on my hands. I could see that she had a “we’re finished” look on
her face, so I got up and left without saying anything. Later that night, at 3:00 in the
morning, I ended up hanging from the gutter of her house, with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s
ice cream clenched between my teeth. After the incident, I remember feeling extreme
sadness over my behavior and the fact that I chose to be involved with yet another
promiscuous woman. I sat on the balcony of my apartment and cried deeply. I looked
inward and I asked God to let me live the second half of my life better that the first.

Obsessions come and obsessions go. It is not a matter of learning life lessons. You
hold on for the ride. You want to scratch your brain to get the thoughts out of your head.
You want to stop the thoughts and replace them with calm and quiet, an uncluttered
mind. You want to focus on something, anything else: a pet, a vacation, a fond
memory, a loved one, a hobby, a sport, anything other than what you are obsessing
about, but your obsessive thoughts keep coming back at you, right back into your
disturbed mind. You know that you are sick but there is nothing to do but end up in one
place or another. And if you are lucky, no damage will be done.
 Counting Sheep

The date was January 15th, 1991. I was 31 years old. This was a time before
psychotherapy. I was on my own and the only sedative medication on hand was
alcohol. I would spin around like a dog chasing its tail Monday through Friday and then
get completely wasted on alcohol on Friday evenings. Sometimes Saturday would be a
second night of binge drinking, depending on my mood. Alcohol is deceptive. It entices
the brain and causes euphoria while being consumed, but it has a terrible unnerving
effect when it wears off. It’s known as the rebound effect. So, the panic, anxiety and
depression that is completely relieved while being drunk becomes intensified the
following day as the alcohol wears off. It is an ebb and flow, a changing of the tide, and
misery to the mind. And when you have a mood disorder, nothing in the world could be
more destructive.

Early in January of 1991, I met another wild woman. We had sex the first time we were
together and she was as loud as cannon, screaming out erotic things while we were
having sex. The obsessive lantern glowed in my mind, prepared for another trip to the
saltbox. I can still see her coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel as we were
about to lie down for the first time, not knowing whether this would be my first mature,
normal sexual experience or whether it would be another thrill ride in the saltbox.

Two weeks after being together and spending every night in bed had my mind in a
whirlwind. I was knee deep in the saltbox. I wasn’t so much engaged in the sex acts
as I was in watching the things she did to me and listening to her wildly erotic cries. I
don’t think I was ever as obsessed with a woman as I was with this one. And, she was
off center. Something didn’t seem right about her in the mind. Having problems myself,
I picked up on hers. This intrigued me even more. She was always enrolling in the next
semester at the local college but never began the courses. This occurred every
semester in the several years I had known her. When we were not having sex, she was
constantly talking about complex medical conditions. She was an intelligent woman and
stayed awake at night reading medical journals. She was convinced that she had
Epstein Barr Virus, Fibromyalgia, brain allergies, Grand Mal seizures, Lupus, and a host
of assorted physiological disorders. She suffered from overwhelming anxiety and
medical school student syndrome. Under stress, some medical school students
become convinced they are suffering from the diseases they are learning about.
My relationship with this new wild woman ended after just two weeks. She would not
return my phone calls. She seemed to have just vanished. At this point in time, my
obsessions were boiling over. I was a volcanic eruption waiting to blow the top off the
mountain. I felt frazzled every waking minute, weak kneed, I sweated profusely, and I
was stuck on images of her in my mind. This was a time in my life when I simply went
off the deep end, as they say. The deep end is a dark and lonely place where no one
can break through to enlighten your world. You are alone and you are scared and you
are very depressed, intensely depressed. Depression makes you feel alone and
forsaken, with no adrenaline and no hope or joy. You float aimlessly through the
blackness of space as the voices of those around you become more and more faint.
Tears become like old friends, almost comforting the mind.

On January 15th 1991, I went to bed at my usual time, midnight. As I lay down to relax
and close my eyes, I could not stop shivering. I was in a complete state of angst. I felt
restless, anxious, incredibly hot, preoccupied with obsessive thoughts of this woman,
depressed, and wide awake. I did not know on that night that I would remain awake for
the next four months.

The first night without sleep was difficult, because I was not accustomed to going to
work without sleeping the night before. Understanding that everyone has difficulty
sleeping from time to time, I figured I would calm down and go to sleep within a day or
so. The hard part of being an obsessive person is that there is never a break in the flow
of thoughts to the mind, never, until the obsession subsides. It is difficult to concentrate
on anything other than the obsession. And my mood changes escalated my anxiety to
a state of crisis. Obviously most people have felt anxious, but most people have not
experienced the type of anxiety that is created in a crippled mind. All of my fears and
phobias became intensified. I would walk up six flights of stairs at the office rather than
take the elevator. I drank only bottled water because I feared the tap water contained
deadly contaminates. I found it almost impossible to leave my house for work, and I
paced back and forth from one radiator to another for hours at a time when I was at
home. I ate very little because I was afraid the food was spoiled and rotten. At work, I
moved about the office like a zombie. My legs trembled with every step I took and I
found it hard to breathe properly. If you have ever had an emotional shock and felt that
shaky, traumatized feeling with each exhale, this is how I breathed around the clock.
My fellow coworkers knew that something wasn’t right after a while, because I would
practically jump out of my skin any time someone addressed me.

“Are you on drugs?” my boss asked. “You young people, you know, I mean are you
shooting up or something?”

“I just have some problems in my personal life,” I explained, “and I am not sleeping
well.”

One week with no sleep was a bit harrowing, but after one month with no sleep I went
into a stupor that had me traumatized. I never felt tired or groggy and I could not relax.
I would walk around the neighborhood, ride my bike, or call people on the phone and
talk them into a coma about my lost lover. I was looking for answers about a phantom
lover and could not find any. I tried calling friends of hers that I knew of, but they did not
want to get involved. I could not get the thoughts of this woman out of my mind, not for
a single moment. I tried homemade remedies to calm down and sleep. First, I tried
Benadryl, two to start, and four after a week or so. I then mixed the Benadryl with
whiskey. Neither produced a result and neither calmed my nerves and neither stopped
my obsessions.

Three months into my insomnia, and I began to believe that I was going insane and that
I would be committed to a mental institution. I talked to no one about my mental state. I
did ask for suggestions on overcoming insomnia. One woman told me that it helped her
sleep when she counted sheep in her mind. It was then I realized that I was on another
planet from everyone else. I was in a deep, dark void, trapped by my obsessions,
drifting further and further toward psychosis. I would have called on a psychiatrist, but I
was terribly afraid they would lock me up. I was afraid the diagnosis would be an
incurable sickness of the mind that could not be treated. I had no social hang ups about
seeing a psychiatrist; I just feared what they would do to me.

I spent many weekend nights alone in bars. I stopped going out with my friends
because I did not want them to see me this way. I would drink two or three six packs
and either walk around the neighborhood or drive for long distances. I felt like a night
stalker, and no matter how much I drank, I could not get any relief from the symptoms. I
would return from my nights out and call the woman who had caused the obsession and
then hang up when she answered. What is she doing? I thought to myself. Who is she
with? Why did she abandon me?

Finally, on May 21st 1991, I feel asleep for a couple of hours. I felt like I was winding
down. The next night I slept a little more and a little more each night after that until the
obsession was completely gone. I went on with my life, but every time someone
mentioned her name or talked about her, I would lose just a little sleep. This lasted for
several months. She came back into my life as a plutonic friend around a year later.
The phone rang one day in my office one day. I recognized her voice as soon as she
began to speak.

“I wanted to tell you just how sorry I am for the way I treated you,” she said. “I was
having a lot of problems and wasn’t ready for a relationship.”

“I see,” I said.

“Can we be friends?” she asked. “You were so kind to me, and I’d really like to be your
friend.”
I agreed to be her friend and an unhealthy relationship was born. I wanted sex and she
wanted a sounding board. I tried to avoid her, but she had a way of coaxing me back
into her life. And when she did, the obsession started all over again.

By the sea, by the beautiful sea…

The defining moment of my life occurred in June of 1976. I was finally graduating from
high school after four long years in an all male, catholic high school, which is sort of like
a prison. I had worn braces throughout high school and was teased by just about
everyone. I had to endure the typical nicknames like brace-face, tinsel teeth, and
buckey. My braces were supposed to come off the September after graduation. Up to
this point, I was quite a normal and well adjusted kid. I was not into drugs and drank
alcohol in small quantities on occasion, and I made fairly good grades. And I did not
have any of the symptoms of the mental illnesses I was about to experience.
I fantasized about sailing along the east coast with my buddies, traveling around the
country, and becoming a rock star who would perform world tours. I had a certain
wonder lust in my blood. Four of us graduates decided to plan a trip to Ocean City,
New Jersey. I was a 17 year old brace-faced kid, weighing in at 145 pounds, and over
six foot tall. I was lanky, awkward and did not know anything about the real world. We
were all innocent kids on our first adult vacation away from our families. We were wildly
excited about the trip. My friends picked me up at midnight so that we could make the
eight hour trip to the beach and get there by morning. We planned to drink it up and
chase girls around the beach.

The drive to the beach was great. We laughed every mile of the way. A couple of my
friends were into marijuana and smoked it constantly. They would turn up the radio as
we sang along to the sounds of Peter Frampton. “I want you-u-u, show me the way.”
We stopped along the turnpike and grabbed a burger. Someone decided to open the
cooler and we cranked out a few beers for the ride. We were only a couple of hours
from the beach and felt like gigolos honing in on our female victims. Up to this point, I
was an outgoing person who had a joke for every occasion. I was known as the
comedian in the crowd; I’d always been well known for my sense of humor.

We found a reasonable oceanfront hotel and checked in. We all traveled very light, with
just a couple pair of pants, some shirts, and underwear, much of what you would expect
from a bunch of grungy teenagers. The alcohol consumption was well under way. It
was only 10:00 in the morning and we were already half in the bag. We went down to
the beach with our beach blankets, put on our lotion, and waited for the chicks to line
up. After four hours of baking in the sun and not a single girl pass by who even noticed
that we were alive, we decided to go back to the hotel room and finish drinking on the
balcony. Lunch and dinner had passed and we skipped them both. We were having
too much fun drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and marijuana. I did not like the
marijuana. It made me feel paranoid.
Early in the evening, I decided to take a dip in the ocean. Everyone tried to talk me out
of it but I was determined. I put on a pair of cut off jeans, took the elevator to the first
floor, and ran out onto the beach. I explained to my friends that my grandfather had
taught me how to dive in the ocean – you just rub a little ocean water on your chest and
dive right in. I watered myself up, ran toward the waves, and took an Olympic style dive
head first into the sea. What I didn’t know is that it was low tide and I had dived face
first into six inches of water. I think I almost knocked myself out. I was in a daze. I
walked out into the ocean and stood around for a couple of minutes but didn’t see any
women to talk to. I must have been a hell of a sight – a lanky, chalk white yahoo
bouncing off the coastline.

We continued the drinking routine day and night. We would go out to bars at night to
check out the live bands. No one remembered how we got home and no one was sure
exactly where we had been. On the fifth day, we woke with a feeling of total dread.
None of us felt like drinking. We decided to make it a sober day. We went down to the
beach and bought some hot dogs and ran into a girl we had met at one of the bars. She
was even lankier than I and she had bright red hair and millions of freckles – another
awkward teen on graduation vacation. I began to feel funny inside. I had a feeling like
there was a bottomless pit in my stomach. I told everyone I had to go back to the hotel
because I was feeling sick. The others followed me. They were concerned. I kept
thinking over and over again that I had alcohol poisoning. When we got into the hotel
room, I started to panic. I was convinced that I had to make myself throw up to get the
alcohol out of my system. I put my finger down my throat and made myself gag.
Nothing came out. I became extremely dizzy and my muscles began to shake. Soon
every muscle in my body was trembling. I had a sensation that something dreadful was
about to happen; nothing in particular, just an all consuming fear that something
dreadful was about to happen. I could not breathe and I was sweating profusely. My
friend asked if I wanted to take a walk outside and get some air. He took me downstairs
and we went for a ride in the car. The symptoms would not wear off. I tried eating
something but could not stop shaking. We went back to the hotel room. I curled up in a
ball and trembled for what seemed like hours. I finally fell asleep only to wake a couple
of hours later in a cold sweat.

The trip home could not have been worse. It seemed like it took days to drive eight
hours. I was in the back seat and had a terrible sense of claustrophobia. “My nerves
are shot,” I kept telling everyone. There was complete silence all the way home. When
they dropped me off at my house, my mother was sitting outside on the porch furniture.
I met her and began to cry. “Something happened to me,” I sobbed. “What is wrong?”
my mother asked. “I had some kind of fit and I am still feeling crazy.” I replied. My
mother had me lay down on the couch. She called the family doctor. When I went to
see him, he was the doctor who told me that I was young and just needed to relax, calm
down, and not worry so much about the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

All of my friends were deeply concerned about me. I had not been out to see anyone
for months. I stayed in my attic, learned how to play the guitar, and read through World
Almanac books to find out what was wrong with me. I was pretty much convinced that I
had every disease I read about. After four months, my friend showed up at my house
and insisted that I go out with him for a while. “I just want to talk,” he said. We got a
few blocks from the house and I started to cry. “Please take me home,” I begged him.
He drove me back to my house and said how sorry he was for what was happening to
me. I had become agoraphobic, a hypochondriac, and suffered from chronic anxiety. I
would later learn in therapy that I had my first panic attack in Ocean City, one that
ushered in bipolar illness that would last a lifetime. I would spend the next twenty years
abusing alcohol to calm my nerves and eventually going from one psychiatrist to
another.
 Doctor Premo Rosalia

In 1993 at age 34 I dated an all American, normal, well adjusted woman. She came
from a good family and was raised in a nice neighborhood, sort of like the All American
families of the 1970’s sitcoms. This was a first for me. She decided to stop seeing me,
though, after seven months, but broke up with me in a civil manner. She said in a
manner as pleasant and as reasonable as possible that she could not deal with my
neurotic ways anymore – afraid to travel, always feeling anxious, asking her time and
time again if everything was alright, having panic attacks in traffic, and the whole sex
thing. You see, this was the first woman who made love to me. As much as I enjoyed
making love, my mind wanted me back in the saltbox.

“I didn’t like that,” she said one night after she sat on my lap and we made love. I was
staring into a mirror the whole time so that I could watch.
“Why didn’t you like it?” I asked. “You came didn’t you?”

“That’s not the point,” she replied. “You made it feel dirty by not looking into my eyes or
kissing me. You just stared into that mirror and watched us.”

“It turns me on,” I said. “What can I say?”

“Well,” she replied, “I am not that kind of woman, and I am not going to be your sex toy.”

Anyway, we parted ways. I did not feel obsession over this particular woman. I felt like
she wasn’t my type. She didn’t have that slutty appeal. The fact that she had uncovered
most of my mental problems, and the fact that my mental problems were crystal clear to
me, encouraged me to make an appointment with a psychiatrist for the first time. I
contacted my primary care doctor and he gave me the telephone number of someone
who he said was very good.

As I sat in the waiting area for Doctor Premo Rosalia to open his door, I fiddled with my
top coat and wondered what he would do to me. How could I tell the entire story in an
hour? I thought to myself. How do you get started? Will he want me to take drugs?
Despite my affection for alcohol, I was always deathly afraid of prescription drugs.
Suddenly the door opened and out stepped this unassuming man wearing a plaid
blazer, dress slacks, and $200.00 shoes.

“Come in, please,” he said.

I tailed behind him and sat down on his couch. “Do you want me to lie down?” I asked.

“That won’t be necessary,” he replied with a slight smile, and then stared at me through
his thick black glasses with a blank and empty look on his face as if he were picking out
wall paper. He gave me the creeps. There were a few moments of uncomfortable
silence, which I broke my telling him he had a nice office.
“So,” he said, “what brings you here?”

“Uh,” I replied with a lump in my throat, “my primary care doctor referred me to you.”

“I see,” he said, and then just stared into my eyes. He raised his hands as if to say
what’s up?

“I, uh,” I don’t where to start,” I said, feeling like a child explaining a wrongdoing.

There was a moment of silence and then I said, “My girlfriend broke up with me
because I’m kind of messed up.” Again, more silence.

Dr. Rosalia shrugged. “So, you broke up with your girlfriend and you need a
psychiatrist?” He said almost mockingly.

It was then that I felt a terrible disconnect with Dr. Rosalia. I felt like a complete asshole
for being there.

“Maybe I should leave,” I said and grabbed my top coat to get up.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said with a bit of compassion. “Slow down and tell me a little bit
about yourself. What do you do for a living?”

“I work for the government,” I replied.

“You dress well, you have a nice appearance, you look like a nice person, so what is it
that is bothering you,” he said.

“I have a really hectic job and my problems get in the way,” I said. “They also affect my
relationships.”

“Problems?” he said. “Tell me more about these problems.”

“I have this terrible anxiety all the time,” I said. I started to cry a bit. “I have a hard time
breathing sometimes and my knees get weak because I am anxious all the time. I am
afraid of everything. I tremble inside sometimes and I can’t stop thinking about the
women I get involved with. I go crazy thinking about them, over and over again.” I was
talking way too fast, almost tripping over my words.

“Too many cows in the pasture?” he asked me.

“I’m sorry,” I replied. “What do you mean?”

“Thoughts, man, thoughts, do you have too many thoughts in your head?” he replied,
pointing to his head, as if we were on to something.

Dr. Rosalia was a very Italian man and had a heavy Italian accent. I had to focus hard
on what he was saying. “Tell me,” he said. “Do you ever have thoughts of, say, driving
to the White House to give the President your opinions?” He made me laugh. “No,” I
replied. “I am not at that point yet.” He laughed as well.

We spent the rest of the hour going in different directions about my personal life and my
job. When my time was up, I didn’t feel like anything had been accomplished. He
shook my hand and asked me to be patient. I thanked him and left the room. Dr
Rosalia was one of those psychiatrists who spoke more in terms of analogies and
metaphors than in medical terms. This is to say that he never described my problems
as being anxiety or obsessive compulsive or bipolar. He avoided labels.

“What difference does it make?” he said one day when I asked what type of mental
conditions I had. “Think of it as a benign growth in your mind that has to be removed.”
That, he told me was his job.

He had me read books. Once he had me read ‘The Little Prince.’ I felt like a moron for
reading a child’s book but got the clear message that I had to weed out the bad
thoughts and work on cultivating the good thoughts. Now why didn’t I think of that, I
said to myself. How stupid of an exercise was this.

After a month, he told me that he wanted me to try some medication. “If you will be
patient and work with me, I think this will help you,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Medicine scares me.” I didn’t take any prescription medication
and was terribly afraid of it.

“No, no,” he said. “What I would like to start with is a completely natural drug. It’s on
the chart of elements. You’ve heard of Lithium?” he asked.

“Yes and there is no way I am taking it,” I replied. “Do you think I’m psychotic?” I asked
with a great deal of fear.

“Listen to me,” he said, in a calming voice, leaning close to my face and saying in a soft
reassuring manner, “You are not psychotic. Do you understand?”

“That’s a relief,” I said, “But isn’t Lithium some serious shit?”

“We have been using Lithium for decades,” he replied, “so we know more about it than
any of the other mood stabilizing drugs on the market. We will start with a small dose
and work our way up.” Mood stabilizer, I thought to myself. So I have a mood problem.
That’s interesting…obvious, but interesting.

I left his office with a prescription. He told me to drink a lot of water with it, because
Lithium is a salt and would make me thirsty. I stopped by the local convenience store
and bought two gallons of water and drank all of it that night and then bought two more
gallons each night before my next visit. When I returned to his office the following
week, he laughed out loud when I told him how much water I had drank.

“I meant a glass or two,” he said in a kind manner, laughing with me not at me, “not two
gallons a night for Christ’s sake.”
“Thank God,” I replied. “I woke up to piss every half hour. I thought this was going to be
a nightly event.”

“I want you to increase the dose to 1,200 milligrams,” he said and shrugged it off like it
was no big deal. I didn’t mind. The first 600 milligrams didn’t seem to give me any side
effects, so I went along with the program. After a couple more weeks, we went to 1,800
milligrams, 900 in the morning and 900 in the evening, which is where I stayed
throughout therapy.

“I also want you to try this and this,” he said, handing me a sample pack of Depakote
and a sample pack of Xanax. “The Xanax will help your weak knees as you describe it
and the Depakote will help the Lithium work more effectively.” What could I say, I was
in the middle of psychoanalysis, already on medication, and tired of feeling badly, so I
took the pills and got on a regular regiment with all three of them. I added a fourth by
taking the antidepressant Prozac and a fifth by taking a drug called Buspar, which was
supposed to increase the effect of all the other medications. Over the course of therapy,
we experimented with changing the anxiety medication and the mood medication, going
from Xanax to Ativan, to Klonopin, back to Xanax, from a half milligram a day to 1
milligram three times a day. The antidepressant changed from Prozac to Zoloft to Paxil,
eventually ending up on Luvox.

“So, how are you feeling this evening?” Dr. Rosalia asked me one night. I had to admit
that I was feeling a little more grounded than I had been when I first walked into his
office.

I explained to Dr. Rosalia on another occasion that I had had a concussion when I was
two years old and was unconscious for two days. “That’s something new,” I said. “Do
you think I scrambled my brains in that fall?” I asked. “Don’t know,” he said. He held a
piece of paper up to the overhead light and said, “No X-rays, man. That was over thirty
years ago”

And then his demeanor changed. “Do you realize,” he said with a stern expression, “it
is a jungle out there. There are wild animals waiting to pounce on you. You are
vulnerable. Do you understand that?” I was a bit surprised and having a hard time
understanding the wild animals in the jungle. I suppose it was meant to inform me that I
could be easily manipulated in my condition. Again, Dr. Rosalia spoke in metaphors
and analogies. I decided to change the subject.

“I have to ask you, though,” I said. “It’s been six months since I have gone out to
single’s clubs. Is there any problem with me having a beer or two on the weekends? I’m
getting kind of bored.”

“Sure,” he said, “as long as you are talking about one beer and not the entire case like
you were used to consuming.” And God only knows how I wished he had not said that.
I started to hang out with my drinking partners again. I tried one beer – no problem. I
moved to two beers – no problem. I then graduated to ten beers – big problem. I was
now in the middle of an alcoholic pitfall and psychotherapy at the same time and mixing
large quantities of psychotropic medications with alcohol. At first I lied about how much
I had been drinking, but later confessed to being a drunk. And at this point in time, I
was up to 1,800 milligram of Lithium, 250 milligrams of Luvox, 500 milligram of
Depakote, 3 milligram of Xanax, and 15 milligram of Buspar. Add to those 10 beers, a
few shots of whiskey, and some Long Island Iced Teas, and I was literally in another
dimension.
“Let’s see if I have this right,” Dr. Rosalia said one night. “You have a best friend who
beats you up when the two of you are drunk and then you make up the next day – much
like lovers do - you have no other friends but girls; you want to have sex with all of these
girls but they only want to be friends, you decided to befriend an ex lover who kept you
awake for four months because of your obsession with her, you have no other interests
except playing the guitar and masturbating, your family makes fun of your neuroticism,
and you are afraid of me. That’s pretty fucked up,” he said. “I believe you are an
alcoholic,” Dr. Rosalia said to me one night. “And I don’t think you understand what that
means in relationship to your problems.”

“How is that?” I asked.

“You have this growth in your mind that stays pretty much controlled with the
medication, but when you drink alcohol, you open the window for your problems to
escape. Do you remember the story you told me about the dinner theatre?”

I had told Dr. Rosalia during one session about a time before therapy when I invited a
woman on a date to a place called the Holiday House. It was a dinner theatre. We
went with three other couples. The place was pretty laid out, with fancy curtains and
carpets, tablecloths, fine dinner ware, and great food. They had a center stage for the
acts to perform. We went to see ‘The Letterman.’ They were well past their prime so it
was a bit of a nostalgic event. We all drank heavily before and during dinner. When the
show began, my date was very excited. She told me how handsome she thought they
were. After crooning through a few songs, they struck up their hit ‘Maria.’“Maria, Maria,
I just met a girl named Maria.” The lead singer swooned the audience. He stepped
down from the stage and walked through the audience, touching the guests and
softening their hearts with his gentle voice. He eventually made his way to our table.
Of course he had to pick my date to sing to and he took her hand and kissed it. When
the show was over, another band took the stage, a Samba act. My date got out of her
seat and went backstage to meet the Lettermen. “Take it easy,” one of my friends said
to me. After grinding through some torrential thoughts in my head, I decided to stand up
on the tables and walk across them to get back stage. I was stepping on people’s
custard pudding deserts and trampling their dinner plates. When I got to the stage I
walked right in front of the female Samba singer who looked at me like she was eyeing
up a terrorist. I walked past her in mid song and walked to the backstage area. One of
the Lettermen was leaning against the wall talking to my date. “You’re walking home,
you fucking bitch!” I screamed at her. The Letterman ran back into his dressing room
and my date stood there with a completely shocked look on her face. I went straight to
the parking lot and drove home drunk and fuming mad. I left behind my date and
another couple who had gone with me. Since there was no room in the other car, they
had to take a cab home.

“Yes, I remember the dinner theatre,” I replied to my Psychiatrist. “Thanks for reminding
me.”

“Listen, man,” he said, “you have got to stop mixing alcohol with the medication. It will
result in something very bad happening to you.”

Great, I thought to myself. He’s the one who got me into this mess with all of this
psychotropic medication and know he’s lecturing me. Dr. Rosalia and I never quite
connected during the three years I had been with him. Everyone around me had
noticed a severe change in my personality. I went from a mild mannered, neurotic office
worker to a camouflaged lunatic without fear. The fear was completely gone. It was
replaced with an utter sense of exuberance. I had traded in my Toyota Corolla for a
Jeep Wrangler and acted like I was on top of the world and in total control. I had pale
white skin and decided to go to the tanning salon and became brown as a chocolate
chip cookie. I colored my hair and wore dark sunglasses and battle fatigues. My
personality had changed from weak and timid to powerful and fearless, and everyone
around me took the time to talk to me about this dramatic change in my personality.
One night after being completely wasted, I decided to steal a ham from a local
supermarket even though I was dressed in a $500.00 suit and had $100.00 in my wallet.
As I walked along the aisles with a small ham stuffed down my pants, the police rushed
into the store. An employee must have called them because it was overwhelmingly
obvious that I had something stuffed in my pants as I moseyed through the store. I
resisted arrest just a little bit and was beaten with night sticks, handcuffed, and taken to
jail, where I slept it off and received a citation. After this incident, I was known by my
friends as the tan ham man. I was evolving into something but I was not quite sure
what that was.

Anytime I was at a bar or nightclub I drank heavily and got to the point where I rolled
down steps, fell backwards on my ass, or got into fistfights with me best friend. I
remember one night driving fairly fast on an icy road with a friend sitting next to me.
The Jeep spun out of control and began to spin around in circles. As this was
happening, I pushed in my cigarette lighter and calmly lit up a smoke. When the Jeep
came to a screeching halt, my friend was terrified. “What the hell is your problem,
asshole!” he hollered. “Do you have some kind of death wish?” “No,” I replied,” It’s just
not that big a deal. We’re alive, aren’t we?”
 The King of Swing…

My saltbox mind had gotten me into a lot of trouble in my life. There were always so
many sexual fantasies swirling in my head. When I was a teenager, I slept in the attic,
which had been turned into a bedroom. I would drop my pants and tap on the window
when a girl would walk by and show her my erection. I didn’t know what the hell I would
have done if they saw it and took me up on the offer. Later in my teens, I followed a
woman down a side street and decided that I was going to molest her. I grabbed the
woman and she let out a horrible scream. I took off running like a gazelle. All I could
hear was wild screaming until I realized a few blocks later that it was me. I had been
drunk and alone and on the prowl. I have no rapist in me, nor have I ever expressed
violence toward women, and have no idea why I grabbed this woman other than I was
at the peak of bipolar illness, drunk, with saltbox fantasies trapped in my mind.

As I grew older, I went through various phases. I masturbated three to five times a day,
which Dr. Rosalia thought was a wonderful thing – go figure. I bought a lot of
pornographic magazines and then came upon books where swingers advertise for
sexual partners. Usually when I responded to an ad and showed my nude pictures, I
would get a response from middle aged couples looking for a young stud. I talked with
many people on the phone but when it came to plan a meeting, I chickened out. I had
such a hard time fusing fantasy with reality.
It was inevitable that I would meet one of these couples, and so I did. I have to admit
that despite being a sexually obsessed young man with an extremely high libido, I was
more nervous than I had ever been in my life. The woman was extremely sexy and she
was very refined and easy to talk to. She was in her early forties. Her husband liked to
watch her have sex with young men. After chatting and drinking cocktails for an hour or
so, we decided to go back to their place. We continued chatting and she went upstairs
to use the bathroom. Suddenly, she called my name and asked if I wanted to come
upstairs. I made my way to the bedroom and there she was, completely naked sitting
on the bed putting up her hair. We stood kissing while she undressed me. My heart
was pounding like a drum and although I was nervous, I had an incredibly hard erection.
The sex was fantastic; that is, until the orgasm. If you have ever watched a skier take a
catastrophic fall down a cliff head over heels for a half mile, that is how my mind
plummeted after cumming. Man did I feel disgusting. Her husband had left the room
and the two of us lay there very quite. I never felt so empty in my life, and confused.
This was the first time I combined fantasy with real sex and the experience made me
feel repulsed. After a few more cocktails, we agreed to take our time and have sex
together without the husband being present. It was then I realized that I wanted only
one woman to have sex with and to be with and to talk to. Strange as it may sound,
without the saltbox sex and just plain foreplay and intercourse, I felt warmth and passion
in this odd situation. We stayed up all night having sex and I left without sleeping. After
sleeping for many hours, I woke with a feeling of guilt and swore never to do anything
like that again. But as the saltbox controlled my sexual fantasies, I ended up pursuing
similar friendships in the world of swinging. I made a lot of contacts but followed
through with just two other couples. I just couldn’t meet that one woman who would
make things right for me, much as I tried. But I cannot say for certain that meeting that
one special woman would have made any difference.

In between swinging adventures, I spent big money on phone sex. I would see a
picture of a woman in a pornography magazine who advertised that she loved to talk
dirty on the phone and that I should call her at the 1-800 number. The person on the
other end of the phone sex line was no doubt a 365 pound woman in a wheel chair with
no teeth but I played into the fantasy. I would talk for hours at one dollar per minute.
My phone bills were dragging down my budget to the point where I could hardly pay my
bills. Once, when I was living with a friend, he opened the phone bill and saw that it
was $800.00. He could not believe his eyes and asked me what the hell I was doing on
the phone. “Do you have a long distance lover?” he asked. I had to be honest and told
him that I had called the phone sex lines. “One night,” I said to him, “I came home
completely fucked up, called the line, and fell asleep. I was out the entire night and
woke up early in the morning, naked, with the phone clutched to my chest.
 Let me call you Sweetheart…

As fate would have it, I eventually learned about escort services through reading
pornography magazines. I came home drunk one night and found an ad in a magazine
for escorts. I wondered what they actually did. I called the number and was told that
the fee was $500.00. Shit, I had credit cards with thousand dollar limits. I could handle
this, I thought. An hour later, there was a knock on my door. I had my usual concoction
of drugs and alcohol in me as I opened the door and let in this very attractive woman.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Velvet.”

“Velvet,” it is an honor to meet you.” We both laughed.

We talked for about an hour. She asked me exactly what I was looking for since I had
not made a move on sex. I told her that I found her to be an interesting lady and asked
if she would have dinner with me. She looked kind of dumbfounded. “Are you for real?”
she asked. “You do know what type of service this is? And I never get involved with
clients.” I thanked her for her pleasant company and told her that she could leave if she
wanted. Out the door she went and I was out $500.00. When I woke with a hangover, I
wondered just what I was trying to accomplish. Over the next few months, every
Saturday night I would call the service. Eventually, I got one of the girls to have dinner
with me and it was a disaster. She was rough, sloppy, had no femininity or passion
about her and enjoyed being an escort because it was an easy way to make money. I
on the other hand had just about nothing to say about myself. I just couldn’t find words
that could compete with her horror stories of some of the bad Johns she had been with
over the years. I was baffled on the ride home. I was not quite sure why I actually went
through with the date. I guess I didn’t realize just how much of a distance there is
between fantasy and reality. Dr. Rosalia was right, when I became intoxicated my
problems escaped from the window in my mind and there was no way to control it. And
in my daytime life, as I dressed in battle fatigues, drove around town like an urban
cowboy in my Jeep, wore dark sunglasses with a red bandana wrapped around my
head, spent thousands of dollars on escorts, and believed myself to be the king of
swing, I had no idea what was happening to me. I was playing a role of some sort.
The reality of life is often computable, sometimes calculated, and for a stable person an
exact experience with a little uncertainty blended in. I realized just how bad my
problems had become but somehow couldn’t catch myself.
 The Meltdown

I stopped seeing Dr. Rosalia. At our last session I joked that I was cured. He agreed
that I no longer needed him and that I should stay on the medicine routine and call on
him if things acted up. I was in the middle of a sexual harassment lawsuit at my place
of employment that had me under pressure for two years. The complaint was partially
true but mostly exaggerated. It was true that I had made passes at her and flirted a lot,
but it was completely untrue that I asked her for sexual favors in exchange for a
promotion and political favors. Imagine that, for once in my life I did not engage in
saltbox sex and I was being sued for the thought of it. I guess I deserved it. Anyway,
with my new fearless personality I led myself to believe that it would be best for me to
resign my position with the government. I was going to blaze my own trail, be my own
man, be a pioneer, and I was determined to retreat to the nearby mountains, where a
man can be a man.

So, in 1995 I resigned my position with the government. In reality, my job was not in
jeopardy over the sexual harassment suit, I had burned through my pension money on
bad investments, and I ended up filing chapter seven bankruptcy within six months of
leaving. I discharged a total of $75,000 in unsecured debt. Before I resigned, I bought
a house in the Laurel Mountains, two hours from the city, and bought three Golden
Retriever puppies. Everyone in my life was astonished at the decision I had made since
I had been with the government for 16 years and knew nothing else in order to make a
living. I was flying higher than the space shuttle and no one could stop me. It was
assumed that I had a nervous breakdown but that was not the case. You see, a person
who suffers from bipolar illness goes through many different mood changes, not just up
or down. Most people believe they are bipolar because they hate Mondays and love
Fridays. Mood disorders involve many mood changes, depression or mania, anxiety or
panic, violence or rage, a sense of sexual prowess, fears and phobias, moods that
change the shape of the landscape constantly, moods that come from nowhere for no
reason. I was in the middle of a bipolar high and had crashed and burned. The cure
that Dr. Rosalia provided was actually a misdiagnosis of the problem. He had been
treating me for alcoholism and a benign growth in my mind, as he put it. I would later
learn the benign growth was bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. But
he did not pay attention to the obvious changes in my personality. As far as he was
concerned, I had reacted positively to the medication and the cognitive therapy and no
longer needed care. I would later learn in therapy that he and I had created a maniac
through the combination of psychotropic drugs and alcohol, a maniac whose bipolar
illness had brought him down and made him lose everything that he had once
cherished.

I was still consuming alcohol and taking the medication in the first year of my life in the
mountains. I decided that the place needed to be remodeled. I had never picked up a
hammer in my life but that didn’t stop me from ripping out all of the paneling, tearing out
all of the ceiling tile, stripping out all of the carpeting, and taking down all of the doors,
all of which I burned outside in my bomb shelter of a fire pit. The flames glowed for
days on end. I would throw spray paint cans in the fire to watch them take off like a
missile and I walked around with a blow torch to light my cigarettes. I used credit cards
to rack up $10,000.00 in debt to replace everything I had demolished. It was a sad sight
to see the new paneling and molding cut uneven with huge gaps between the paneling
sheets, doors that would not swing closed and would not latch, hardwood floors that
were only half finished, and ceiling tile that looked like a child had stapled gunned it in
place.

In year two of the mountains, I made a conscious choice to stop the medication and the
drinking. I was not much for 12 step programs. Instead, I had created a sanctuary by
secluding myself in the Laurel Mountains of Pennsylvania. It was a beautiful place with
rushing mountain streams and dense forest. My Golden Retrievers became swimmers
at three months of age and they were my constant companions on and off the trail. I am
not one to convert the non believers, but I had a very clear feeling that someone was
watching over me and guiding me as I healed by hiking through the woods and wading
in the streams with my dogs. I had asked God if he would let me live the second half of
my life better than the first, and that wish was granted. I became more and more
grounded with each passing day and the further away I stayed from alcohol, the less
insane I behaved. This is not to say that my psychological problems went away. They
were always a big part of my life and always will be. The mentally ill are never cured;
they are controlled with proper therapy and their symptoms may go into remission, but
they are never actually cured.

I left the mountains after four peaceful years and emerged a new man; one who was
thoughtful, sensitive, caring, and at peace - comfortable in my own shoes as they say. I
still had nagging problems with anxiety and depression and my obsessions would come
and go on a regular basis. I moved back to the city and took a job with a high
technology company as their facility manager. A facility manager basically makes sure
that all of the employees have what they need and that all mechanical systems are
running properly. It was an unchallenging position but one that suited me perfectly for
the time.
 Dr. Wilhelm Mussel

After I returned to the city, the company I worked for eventually wanted me to fly to the
corporate office in California. I had never been on an airplane and the thought of it
made me tremble inside. This triggered a severe bout of anxiety. I found Dr. Wilhelm
Mussel in the physician directory of our health care package and since his office was
close to where I lived, I decided to give it a chance. When I entered Dr. Mussel’s office
he asked me to sit and then stared at me through his wire rimmed glasses with a blank
expression, just as Dr. Rosalia had done. It was then I realized that psychiatrists are
trained professionals who must control the dialogue. Therefore, they want you to speak
first so that they can maintain control. One should never feel uncomfortable at their first
visit with a psychiatrist. They are there to observe everything about you, from your
appearance to your mood to your body language. I decided not to say anything and
after a few minutes we were like two dogs in a stare down contest. Finally, I gave in
and broke the silence. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a psychiatrist,” I said timidly.

“Is that right,” he responded. “What brings you back?”

“I had a really bad experience with a doctor several years ago and I got really fucked
up,” I responded with a gasp. I tried to continue but suddenly burst into tears. I don’t
think I’ve cried that deeply in my life.

“It’s alright,” he said. “We can talk about something else.”

“No, no,” I sobbed. “You need to know the story. I had been seeing a shrink for years
and he really fucked me up with medication. I didn’t help much because I was a total
drunk during the whole time and I lost everything.”

“Okay,” he said. “Slow down and take your time. It’s alright.”
It took several minutes for me to cry the pain out of me and to stop trembling. I went
over the entire experience I had with Dr. Rosalia from beginning to end. There was not
much time left in the session, so Dr. Mussel asked me to take a little Xanax until we met
the following week. He gave me samples of .25 milligram Xanax, which is not anywhere
near what I had been used to taking. In fact, I didn’t even take it because I knew it
would not have any real affect on me, and I wasn’t prepared to get back into a medicine
routine. I thanked Dr. Mussel and left his office drying the tears from my eyes. Good
lord, I thought to myself, I had been keeping that anger in me for years and never
realized how much the booze and drugs messed up my life until I sat in front of another
Doctor in a sober and stable environment.

Dr. Mussel turned out to be a nice guy but he was completely expressionless. I hardly
ever saw him smile. He only nodded in agreement. He had that look on his face like he
was a researcher staring at a test tube. And Dr. Mussel explained to me that he
prescribed medicine in a very narrow manner. He was not one to prescribe tranquilizers
and his main drug of choice was lithium. In fact, he co-authored a book on bipolar
illness and promoted the use of lithium heavily throughout it. He told me I should read
his book. “I am the book,” I told him. And that was one of the few times he laughed.

I was on a regiment of lithium, 1800 milligram in the morning and Trazadone, 200
milligram at night, since the Trazadone had such a sedative effect. He wanted me to
take the Lithium all at one time, which made me vomit constantly. The only bad thing
about Lithium is that there is a fine line between the therapeutic dose of Lithium and
Lithium overdose. Not only do you throw up but you get the dry heaves as well. Dr.
Mussel finally had the kindness to allow me to break up the dosage to 900 milligram
twice a day and my sickness went away completely. As Dr. Rosalia explained, lithium
has been prescribed for decades, so doctors know more about it than almost any other
mood stabilizer on the market. The strange thing I found about lithium is that it is really
no big deal to take. It has a bad reputation for some reason, but there really are no side
effects, if you break the dosage into smaller doses to avoid the upset stomach and
vomiting, and you really don’t even notice that you are taking a drug. Its purpose is to
stabilize moods, moods that bleed out from bipolar illness. There is no euphoric feeling
when it is taken; there is no unstable or drugged feeling. It is actually quite a benign
medicine to take.

Dr. Mussel paid little attention to my obsessions. He prescribed Prozac after a while.
Prozac is an effective medication. It must be because it seems like half the population
takes it. There are even yuppies that otherwise feel fine but take Prozac in order to
achieve a greater sense of well being. It makes them feel like they can produce more at
work and become more sociable. In my case, I had no need to take Prozac other than
to shut off some of the symptoms I was experiencing, and I had absolutely no desire to
become sociable. Since Dr. Mussel was fixated on bipolar illness, he diagnosed me as
being bipolar one. You see, there is bipolar one and bipolar two. Bipolar one is
basically the same as bipolar two except the symptoms are much more pronounced.
Bipolar illness is characterized by mood swings, from depression to mania, feelings of
grandeur, feelings of sexual prowess, anxiety, and panic. One day Dr. Mussel assured
me that I was bipolar one. “You know,” he said, “considering the fact that you were
jailed a couple of times due to this illness and that you were hanging from someone’s
gutter, I think it is safe to put you in the one category.”

During one of our sessions, Dr. Mussel informed me that he was going to be relocating
to Maine and that he would continue to see me until I found a new psychiatrist. I had
only been seeing him for a year and didn’t notice any real improvement in my mental
problems, so I was looking forward to finding someone new. It is extremely important
for patients to connect with their psychiatrist. Even though the medication turns off or
controls the symptoms of mental illness, a strong and trusting bond has to be
established in order to form a bond between the doctor and patient and to have an
effective experience. This I finally found in Dr. Ceteri.
 Dr. Colleen Ceteri

I worked through the leads that Dr. Mussel had given to me to find a new psychiatrist,
but did not feel a connection with any of them on the phone. I decided to look into my
health benefits at the physician directory and browsed through the psychiatrists. I came
upon a name where it was indicated that the Psychiatrist treated adults as well as
children and provided spiritual healing. I was so tired of the clinical atmosphere of the
last two doctors, so I thought I would give this one a try. Her name was Dr. Colleen
Ceteri. I called her and left a message on her voicemail and she called me back. “Mr.
Riley,” she said. “This is Dr. Ceteri returning your call.” There was something special in
her voice, a nurturing and kind feeling. I told her that I suffered from bipolar disorder
and obsessions. She told me that she had experience with the disorders and we set up
an appointment to meet.

On our first visit Dr. Ceteri asked if I felt comfortable talking to a female doctor. I
responded that I was actually looking for a female doctor.

“Why is that?” she asked me.

“I just feel more comfortable talking to a woman. They are more sensitive and
pragmatic,” I said.

“And if we talk about sex, is there an issue?” she asked. I told her that I had no problem
discussing sexual matters and that it was probably going to be a big part of our
conversations.
“The main thing,” Doctor,” I said to her, “is that I am now in my late forties, been beaten
up by psychotherapy, I haven’t had a drink or a friend in ten years, and I am genuinely
looking for someone to help me without hurting me.”

Since I had not had a drink in ten years I was probably more prepared for therapy than
at any other time in my life, besides Dr. Mussel, but he seemed to be out of focus on my
problems. Dr. Ceteri made it a point to remind me that she had an advantage over Dr.
Rosalia, because he had been dealing with me while I was on the booze. “Still,” she
said. “I would never prescribe medication for you if I thought you were drinking at all.”
That was her way of condemning Dr. Rosalia’s performance as a professional and as a
psychiatrist. Many people would have sued Dr. Rosalia for malpractice, but I was not
that type of person. I made the conscious decision to drink on top of the medication. It
is the biggest regret of my life. I just wish that he had seen what was happening to me
and had taken me off the medicine.

“Your obsession with alcohol has clearly had a negative impact on your life, clearly,” she
explained to me. “We both know that. And your former doctor who told you that the
alcohol opens a window for your problems to escape is referring to your bipolar mania.
You’ve experienced mania in many different forms, excessive spending and unusual
sexual acts, for instance. The alcohol takes the obsession to a whole new level, an
explosive level. No doubt you feel invincible when you drink.”

Two months into the therapy with Dr. Ceteri and I was beginning to feel like a different
person. She recognized right away that I was a person with a tremendous amount of
anxiety and obsessions. She talked in specific terms. She didn’t talk conceptually as in
I had a growth that had to be removed from my mind. She told me that I was bipolar
and that I had obsessive compulsive disorder. She described each medicine that she
prescribed and made me aware of potential side effects and when to tell her if the drugs
were too little or too much. And we quickly established trust and bonding, which made
me, feel like I had finally found someone to help me. She took little notes and had a
concerned look on her face, agreeing with me when I said something that made sense
and disagreeing with me when I said something that stemmed from my disorders. She
used the words disorder, mental illness, phobias and fears, and other medical terms.
She treated me like an intelligent adult and knew exactly which medications would work
for each of the symptoms I had experienced. “You were dealt a bad hand,” she told me
one day. “You happen to have two mental disorders, bipolar disorder and obsessive
compulsive disorder. The two work together and one affects the other. This is why you
are having such intense feelings of obsession, panic, anxiety, and fear.”

She eventually put me on a regiment of Lamitical instead of Lithium, Geodon instead of

Trazadone, and she kept me on Xanax and Luvox, but in doses that were precisely
correct for each of the symptoms. She listened to my life story and became very
interested in the Saltbox.

“The magazine you found in that saltbox had explicit pictures and you were very young,”
she said. “This can have an effect on anyone’s mind let alone a person with obsessive
compulsive disorder.” She explained that the obsessions were not just about sex. I
obsessed over many different things, typically anything that caught my attention
became an obsession, whether it was a woman, booze, playing guitar, my Golden
Retrievers, and any other person, place, thing, or fad that I found interesting. My
compulsions were a nagging problem, also. I would check the iron many times to make
sure it was unplugged, or I would make a list of things to do to get ready for work in the
morning and go over each time after time, or I would wash my hands so many times
that my hands were flaking from dry skin. I was concerned that the germs on my hands
would make me sick. She was the first doctor to explain that obsessions can
sometimes be good, such as being obsessed over your job, your school work, and
playing guitar or caring for animals. It was the bad obsessions we had to tackle. “The
fact that you were exposed to pornography at such a young age and that you have
obsessed fanatically over it to this day, has not allowed you to grow up sexually. You
are still the boy hiding in the basement viewing those erotic pictures,” she explained.

“So, my fascination with wild sex is because I have not grown sexually?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “You have selected party girls for girlfriends because you are
looking for what you found in that magazine as a child. Of course it’s not quite that
simple, but exposure to pornography at such a young age can have a long lasting
impact on the mind.”

These kinds of back and forth made me feel like I was coming home. I finally had
someone who understood me and my problems. And I could joke with her, too. She
appreciated my dry sense of humor and would genuinely smile at the times I blended
serious talk with humor. Sometimes, there is no way but to laugh at yourself when you
are talking about the insane behavior brought on by mental illness. It helps the doctor
get through to the patient and it helps the patient tell the true story.

Dr. Ceteri helped me through my episodes with anxiety. She would increase the
dosage of Xanax according to the level of anxiety, from 1 milligram up to 3 milligram. It
usually takes four months for me to work through an episode with anxiety. The anxiety
episodes stem from the bipolar illness. I have a never ending sensation that something
terrible is about to happen and I can’t calm down. When she told me that this was
called anticipatory anxiety and that the sensation was known as impending doom, I was
floored. That was the feeling I had in Ocean City in my teens when I had my first panic
attack. When I heard those two words together in a sentence, it all began to make
sense to me. She explained that the panic attack in Ocean City was the onset of bipolar
illness and that the agoraphobia, the anxiety disorder, the hypochondria, and the fears
and phobias were all part of bipolar illness. The obsessive compulsive disorder
interacted with the Bipolar illness. This is why I felt so frazzled when I did not sleep for
four months. I was obsessing over a woman, and my bipolar disorder kept me in a
frazzled state.

I explained my spiritual experience in the mountains to Dr. Ceteri and she understood it.
“If you had gone on with the drugs and alcohol, you would have died or become a
vegetable, even worse,” she said. “That inner voice that told you to leave your job may
have come from bipolar mania but it was the thing that saved your life,” she went on.
“You asked God to let you live your second part of your life better than the first half and
he did so. So you do not have the high position or the money you once had, but you
are a better person, more caring and sensitive, more mature and rational, and sober.
The guiding hand you felt was probably the hand of the Supreme Being, in my opinion.
I’m not preaching to you,” she said, “and I don’t expect you to become a Reborn
Christian, because only know how you felt and only you know what was guiding you…
yes?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I am not a religious person but I can tell you without doubt that
something very definite was watching over me in those mountains.”

Over the years, we talked about every part of my life, from my Ocean City panic attack
to the present state of my emotional being. She understood the bipolar mania and
obsessions that had changed my life, and she tried repeatedly to help me move past the
past and into the now.

“Your social life has been nothing but a drinking binge, she told me one day. “It is the
only way you know how to socialize.”

“I realize that,” I replied. “But at this point in time alcohol is the furthest thing from my
mind, and I have no desire to be in bars.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she replied. “You have to learn a new way of socializing. Do
something different - join a group, volunteer, take your dogs to the dog park, be around
other sober people.”

I understood exactly what Dr. Ceteri meant, but somehow I could not get myself to go
online looking for a social group to join. I felt awkward about it. So, I decided to join an
online dating service. Now there is a real disaster. I joined for three months. I
exchanged emails with lots of women but met only a few.

“What if I become obsessed with all the women I meet online?” I asked one day.

“You have to trust me,” she replied. “I won’t let that happen.”

So, I continued to search for a normal woman online to share sober times and
companionship. The saltbox was still in my mind but only in fantasy. I was genuinely
looking for a non promiscuous woman, intelligent and sincere. But what a train wreck
online dating is. You go back and forth with emails about your likes and dislikes, your
hobbies, and your taste in things. Mostly, you look at each other’s pictures to see if
there is any physical attraction. When you meet, it is the biggest letdown. No one looks
like their pictures and no one has the personality they claim to have. I remember one
woman talking about nothing but politics over lunch. I kept trying to change the subject
but she continuously went back to politics. I mostly listened. Afterwards, she sent me
an email saying that she did not think we had anything in common. No shit, I thought to
myself. It was like going on a date with a cable news commentator. Another woman I
met told me right up front as we sat down for dinner that she was looking for someone
who had the financial means to allow her to stop working. She was 55 and tired of
going to work every day. She did most of the talking as I sat and ate my dinner, ravioli.
She went on and on about how she needed to know someone for a long time before
she would goes out on a date with them. “This,” she pointed to me and then to her, “is a
first, and probably not a good idea, but I do make exceptions when there is a possibility
of meeting the right kind of man.” I listened to her go on and on about how she had to
trust someone and really know them before eventually going out on a date. Finally, I
said to her, “Do you mind if I give you some personal advice?” “No,” she replied. “Just
do it!” I said in a pathetic tone. “Just get up one morning, take a shower, put on your
make up, thrown on a dress, and jump right into the front seat of a man’s car and go out
somewhere, anywhere. Just go for it!” I said harshly. She got up from the table and
left. I finished my ravioli, had some dessert and went home. Wow, I thought to myself,
online dating is a rough business. I concluded that I would simply enjoy the progress I
was making in therapy and make it the center of my life until I was ready to go out in the
world and meet some new people.

Dr. Ceteri helped me through the initial side effects of the Geodon. Geodon in known
as an atypical antipsychotic medicine, but is also prescribed for bipolar mania. Geodon
is a major tranquilizer, whereas drugs like Xanax, Klonopin, and Ativan are minor
tranquilizers. Geodon taken alone has the effect of putting you down to sleep around
two hours after taking it. There is no fooling around with this drug. It makes the lights
go out and it is like being hit in the back of the head with a 2 x 4. After taking it for a
short period of time, the sedative effect wears down a bit but the drug still gets you
through the night. Strange side effect occurred, though. I was having problems with
sleep walking and bedwetting. I would find myself in the basement swatting at flies or
laying in a pool of urine. When you mix major tranquilizers with minor tranquilizers, say
Geodon with Ativan, you had better not have plans for the next eight hours. A chemical
reaction occurs that is immobilizing. Occasionally, I would mix the two when I was
obsessing too much or my moods had me in a state of anxiety. In either case, Geodon
proved to be the most effective drug for my problems.
Dr. Ceteri told me that I had at least made an effort to meet new people but she wanted
me to continue looking for groups of people who shared the same interests. “You would
be surprised at some of the good friends you can make at sober events,” she told me.

I’ll see me in my dreams

I thought I had gone through as many bizarre events as possible by the time I hooked
up with Dr. Ceteri. I was now middle aged, sober, settled down, grown up and had a
positive outlook on life. I still had problems with anxiety, depression, and obsessions,
but they were manageable with the medication regiment and her counseling. Little did I
know that I was about to have the most bizarre occurrences of my life, occurrences that
would change me forever.

I decided to take a nap on a Saturday afternoon. I usually wake at 5:00 AM and my

morning medications make me drowsy by mid afternoon. I drifted off to sleep and as I
was dreaming, I suddenly became fully awake inside my dream. I felt a sense of
incredible alarm. I was sitting on a bed watching the dream through two bright lights
that were surrounded by a dark oval. It immediately occurred to me that this was my
conscious mind inside my dream. The dream setting was in the old house I had grown
up in. All of the rooms looked exactly as they did in reality. My late mother came out of
the bedroom and she looked young and beautiful as she did in life. I tried to
communicate with her to tell her that she was going to die of cancer one day but I could
not interact with her. There was a telephone on the mantelpiece. I reached out and
grabbed the phone and called the number of an old friend. The number I dialed was in
fact his actual telephone number. I began to talk to him but there was too much static
on the line and lots of other voices talking at the same time. I decided I did not want to
dream about this anymore. Suddenly my mind went completely white like a blank
motion picture screen. My entity was still very much conscious. In fact, the
consciousness was on a higher level than when I was awake. There was no sense of
right of wrong, or of good or evil, of religion, or of any of the baggage that we carry –
relationships, money, guilt, envy. There were no feelings except for that of the self,
what and who you truly are, what makes up you as a person. If this is what is called the
soul, I felt a great sense of confidence and no fear, except for the sense of alarm over
the fact that I was facing my consciousness and completely awake. I decided that I
wanted to dream about sex and right away a man making love to a woman played out in
my dreams. A voice said to me that I was not supposed to be there. I tried to wake up
and eventually did so. But then a fat man walked into my bedroom and I realized that I
was still dreaming. Another dozen times or so I fought to wake up, but in each case
something played out to let me know that I was still dreaming. When I finally believed
that I was actually awake, I ran downstairs and guzzled two cans of soda pop. I thought
that if I could feel the cold sensation, I was truly awake. I felt chilled to the bone, I was
sweating, and it was not long before I felt extreme anxiety and depression, which lasted
well into the evening.

When I reviewed this dream with Dr. Ceteri, she could not understand what I meant by
being awake in my sleep. “It’s as if you are describing a situation where you are
conscious in your unconscious mind,” she said. “Is it the medication?” I asked. “I do not
believe so,” she explained, “You have been on the same drugs for years. If these types
of dreams were to occur, they would have happened long ago.”

Later that evening, I went online and goggled the words, “awake while dreaming.” A
few sites popped up regarding lucid dreams. I did some homework and learned that my
experience was a phenomenon similar to that of the out of body experience and that
lucid dreams had a history going back thousands of years. Buddhist monks practice a
form of mental yoga to elicit lucid dreams. Dr. Ceteri was not at all familiar with lucid
dreams and referred me to a sleep specialist. The sleep specialist told me that he had
had patients in the past who described bits and pieces of what I was describing but
never a full blown lucid dream. He referred me to a dream expert who never returned
my calls.

Over a four month period, at least half of my dreams were lucid. They were not
pleasant at first only because of the sense of alarm that occurs with the knowledge that
you are awake inside your dream. The inability to fully wake from the dream is called a
false awakening. The dream makes you believe that you have come out of the dream
only to plunge you back into it. These dreams are almost spiritual in nature. There are
two separate entities in some of these dreams, the conscious mind, as conscious as the
waking mind, and the dreams that are played out like movies. It is possible to interact
with the dream. For instance, I once decided that I was going to reach into the dream I
was watching and kiss a beautiful woman, and I felt the real sensation of kissing; that is
to say that my conscious mind felt the sensation. In other lucid dream types, there is
only one entity. These are entirely different and they are the most joyful and wonderful
experiences a person could hope for. There is no sense of alarm and you are in total
control of the dream and you are the main character. I felt myself flying over mountains
and oceans, clear as they are in real life. I sailed along the beach and made love to
every woman that appealed to me. I felt the sensation of inserting my erection in her
and I felt myself humping and kissing her. I almost had an orgasm. There is no anxiety
or depression after this type of lucid dream. It is another dimension, another world,
without limitations. The lucid dream also helped me come to terms with my sexual
fantasies. My clear conscious mind sought to make love to one woman, albeit, there
were several encounters, but it made me realize that all of the fantasies I had about
kinky sex were not what I truly wanted and were just garbage fantasies that needed to
fade away. I wanted only one woman. There were no obsessions of oral sex or
threesomes or any unusual sex acts, there was just the tender joy of making love to a
woman.
Dr. Ceteri was not able to help me deal with the lucidity of my dreams; she wasn’t even
able to interpret them, even though she is an expert at interpreting dreams. She was
baffled by the notion of lucid dreams and explained that there really are no psychiatrists
who specialize in it because there is no way of capturing empirical data to conduct
studies. Psychiatrists are scientists and cannot look into the mind to determine what the
individual is dreaming about. She was concerned with the fact that I was having such
dreams and felt like she had let me down by not knowing anything about them.

The consciousness of these dreams can be rated on scale between one to ten, with ten
being full consciousness and one being a low level of consciousness, low level meaning
that a person is aware that they are dreaming and can have limited interaction with the
dream. I still have both types of dreams frequently to this day, at least twice a week. A
higher level dream where I am the person in the dream and I control what happens is
the most pleasant experience and I usually wake when I want to. Most times I fight
waking up because I want to remain in the dream and enjoy the pleasure. This is the
goal of people who do not have lucid dreams naturally. They want to have high level
lucid dreams so that they can control what they are dreaming about. There are mental
exercises that one performs throughout the day to achieve the lucid dream. The exact
nature of these exercises I will leave to the reader to learn about. Mine occurred
naturally, so I was a bit skeptical about the artificial means of producing lucid dreams.
After reading online discussion forums on lucid dreaming it appears that most people
achieve low level lucid dreams where they can interact with the dream by diving into a
body of water, for instance, or climbing a tree. They are entirely different from the high
level lucid dream where one encounters their own consciousness. To be your
conscious self and to control your dreams through the bright light in the darkness that
surrounds you is the most awe inspiring act I have ever experienced. It is as if I have
seen my own soul.
 Afterthought

Having been through a life filled with wild experiences and mental disorders, I have
finally come to a place where I am able to live mostly free of the torments of the mind. I
remain on a medicine regiment, I stay sober, and I look for the simple and the good
things in life. I spend a great deal of time alone. Mental illness can make a person feel
isolated. But that is of my own choosing and it is a mistake. One can have problems of
the mind and still be a social person, a person with strong friendships and love affairs.
These are the things I hope to achieve one day. What helps me most is the therapist to
patient relationship. When I am in between anxiety episodes and I am not obsessing, I
am able to work out a lot of things with my doctor. I am able to focus and follow her
direction. Psychotherapy can be hard work. She encourages me to be more involved
with people and to seek a mate. She will always be there for me during the rough
periods. I am no longer alone with my problems.