29 Quotes by Andy Behrman

In total, I was diagnosed with depression by eight psychotherapists and psychiatrists over a period of thirteen years. Diagnosed wrong. Absolutely wrong. My accurate diagnosis was manic depression, or what we call bipolar disorder today.

Friends and family were convinced I was functioning just fine because I was efficient, productive and successful - who wouldn't be working twenty hour days? I had everybody fooled with my illness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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