Rating: 
Summary: IF YOU DONT HAVE IT, YOU DONT GET IT
Review: ok, first let me admit that i did not read the book yet. but i have read the reviews and those alone are making me crazy. someone wrote that you either love it or hate it. well, it seems the people that hate it just dont get it. i have suffered from manic depression for over 10 years now. the jumping around and not making sense is part of the illness. DC Smith said "After finishing this book, I still have absolutely no idea what it's like to be manic-depressive." you are lucky. its not easy. when you read the book and things dont make sense and there is no explination for why he does certain things, to you, that is part of the story. for the author, that is the way his mind works. people always acuse manic depressives of being self centered and wanting to get more attention. i cant even tell you how many times i was told to go volunteer for truly unfortunate people. mental illness is hard to understand because it isnt like cancer. cancer we understand what happens from it. its a physical thing in your body. manic depression is an imbalence in your brain. people think you can just snap out of it. but you cant. ive been on meds for almost 2 years now. i have my good days and my bad days. i stopped my meds for a while becuase i thought i would be fine without them. well, i quickly went back to the old ways and once i cleared my head a bit, went back on them. if you want to know more about manic depression, read a book about it. if you want to know what it is like to live with it without the elemetary explination of the illness, read memoirs.
Rating: 
Summary: A manic memoir, but not "a memoir of mania"
Review: Ostensibly a book about one man's bout with manic depression, this memoir chronicles Behrman's dizzying journey from part-time male hustler / full-time white-collar professional to convicted felon for art forgery. This period of his life is filled with sexual confusion, financial worries, unrealizable ambitions, stunning successes, equally spectacular failures, compulsive shopping, substance abuse, frenzied traveling, selfish stunts, generous acts, and ridiculously long work hours.And that's the problem with this book. Although Behrman describes the events leading up to his conviction and therapy, you never get a sense of how his behavior or his actions stem from his illness. I do not mean do imply that the author is not manic-depressive; rather he fails to convey how his experience is any different from your average Wall Street broker, celebrity, advertising director, crystal meth addict, bartender, alcoholic, or Enron executive--or, for that matter, just about any young male living in New York City. After finishing this book, I still have absolutely no idea what it's like to be manic-depressive. Indeed, the book at time seems more an autobiography of addiction than "a memoir of mania." Although one psychologist suggests substance abuse is a common symptom of manic depression, it's a marvel that no psychologist or psychiatrist, at least according to the author, speculates at any time that addiction may be the root of Behrman's problems. By his own account, he is continuously and excessively drinking, snorting cocaine, freebasing, and abusing the many prescriptions his doctors supply to him. The author even compares the sensations caused by electroshock therapy to the enjoyment of "everything I liked to abuse--alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, sex," and his full recovery occurs only when he finally stops drinking and using drugs. Reading his confessions, any sensible reader is going to waver among the four reactions that appear in other reviews on this Web site and elsewhere: (1) Behrman may well be manic-depressive; (2) the diagnosis of manic depression could be as wrong as the previous diagnoses supplied to him by a number of respected psychologists and psychiatrists; (3) the author may have accepted this particular diagnosis because it provided him with an excuse for his irresponsible and embarrassing behavior; or (4) he misses the limelight so much that he has pulled off yet another stunt by publishing this book. Behrman's account doesn't really persuade the reader which of the possibilities should be believed. And then there's his writing style. The fragmented, journalistic staccato may have been meant to be "manic," but instead it's just tedious. While many of the situations Behrman gets himself into are actually quite funny or tense, the prose overall is astonishingly flat and without any sense of wit or suspense. The exception is the retelling of his first electroshock treatments, when the memoir becomes, at long last, surprisingly humorous and affecting. But, for the reader, it's an awfully long haul to the payoff of those few pages.
Rating:
Summary: Virtual Reality Reading - Getting Inside the Manic Mind
Review: Reading "Electroboy" was definitely an experience. As I read this book, I felt as if I were in the mind of Mr. Behrman or at least following in his shadow through all his experiences. The emotional rollercoaster I experienced while reading this book made me question my own sanity at times. In many ways, I felt like this was my story and in others, I couldn't imagine being in the emotional predicaments that he was in. I felt the fast-paced world that he lived but what was quite impressive was how the thoughts in his mind raced like scenes from 10 different movies all playing in fast-forward all at once. The genius of mania manifested itself through the pages of this book. The book covers his years of emotional turmoil as he fights within himself to keep on top in a hyperspeed world. He tries to beat the system that we all fall victim to and succeeds...until he's caught, all the while trying to control his mental chaos with sex, drugs and alcohol. Live the vicarious life by reading this book! Get into the frantic psyche of the manic depressive. Spontaneously travel the world overnight on a whim. Experience the multitude of sexual encounters that lead from the darkest of areas to the highest of society. Get swept up in the deluge of cash flow and the inexplicable numbness when spending thousands of dollars on un-needed purchases. Feel the rush of beating the system and the sudden impact of being trapped with no where to go when discovered.
Rating: 
Summary: Brett Easton Ellis never promised you a Rose Garden
Review: Reading the first 75% of ELECTROBOY was similar to reading Less Than Zero or Rules of Attraction because you have all these excesses of yuppie angst without much emotional background. I was disappointed with the book becuase the author seemed to take pains to gloss over the human aspect of his story (while reveling in the wilder antics) and then chose to end the book in a more sensitive "my cross to bear" perspective. The book would have been better and more consistent if it had more input from the people who were being affected by his outlandish behavior. Outside of writing a stack of letters to a judge (in a twist so dubious I had to remind myself I was not reading a novel), they hardly register at all.
Rating:
Summary: Manic Explosion
Review: Sometimes, being a therapist, you forget what real true mania looks like because you don't get to see it too often. Granted, you see some hypomania, but you don't see the graphicness of true mania: $20,000 Barney's shopping sprees, prostitution, 3 a.m. random travel to wherever, or lying, cheating, and stealing without fear of getting caught. Reading this book was like watching a horrible TV special on fast-forward (horrible because it made you feel uncomfortable for Behrman and also for the people he knew, not because it was written poorly). I read paragraphs out loud to other therapists and they told me to stop because they couldn't follow what he was talking about. I sat and shook my head, thinking, "You did WHAT?" I definitely suggest this book to anyone who is interested in knowing what a full-blown manic episode looks like and all the possible ways that the psychiatric community can deal with it
Rating:
Summary: Kind of Dull
Review: Sort of a take off on 'Kitchen Confidential', i.e. "I'm a wild and crazy guy and look at all the stuff I've done and gee I let my parents down but they still love me and none of the doctors would help me until finally one does and I've really been through alot and now I'm recovering, etc. etc.". I'm sure Mr. Behrman did have some bizarre experiences and has been ill but you know it is just not all that interesting. I do wish him well though.
Rating: 
Summary: The life and times of an extremophile
Review: The kind of manic self-indulgence and self-escape that Andy Behrman indulges in on a daily basis is almost beyond description, but he's a pretty good writer and gives it a shot here in a memoir sure to offend the burghers and to titillate and impress the fast lane crowd. For the first half of the book he goes from ups to upper ups and never seems to come down; or at least when he does come down it is a short-lived, relatively unremarkable period that he skips over. Most of the time he is frantically busy buying and selling, hustling and chasing: dope, women, men, food, drink, clothes, airplanes, money, money and money. At one point he is making $20,000 a month doing PR for clients and hustling art work. He spends the money as fast as he makes it; actually sometimes he spends it faster than he makes it. His adventures include being a male escort, raising money for a film he never makes, stealing his sister's clients, developing his own publicity company, going from go-fer to international broker of fine art, multi-sexual sex gigs, cocaine, snorted and smoked, alcohol, marijuana, and pills, legal and illegal. If it's to be done, Andy-boy is the man to do it, and now. He can work sixteen-hour days weeks on end and still find time to roam the streets at three a.m. looking for excitement. He has so much frightful energy that he can do tasks in hours that would take most people days. On the other hand he can't sit still--literally. He says he has no choice, that before the day begins the decisions--to fly to Paris, to engage in marathon sex, to obsessively clean and scrub every square inch of his New York apartment, etc.--are made for him. He craves excitement and danger, and gets high by giving himself too much work to do, making him afraid he can't finish; and he gets high from shopping sprees where he spends more than he can afford. He's a madman of energy, an electrifying near genius who used to get off on tearing his hair out by the roots as a kid, who as an adult can't function without half a dozen different drugs pulsating through his veins and a dozen projects juggled between the hangover gloom and three a.m. He will try anything and anybody. His mind is superfast and his aggression is always threatening to spill over. In addition to stealing his sister's clients, he physically assaults her. When his girl friend of many years finally makes a permanent break from him he stalks her and her boyfriend. Left alone in someone's apartment for a minute he gets up and frantically goes through the drawers and cabinets. From my point of view the clinical malady that goes by the name of bipolar disorder is a kind of survival strategy: one runs around wildly in the spring and summer when there is something to gain, but when the long shadows of autumn arrive, depression takes over. One pulls the deer skin up over one's head and lays dormant burning body fat until the snows turn to tinkling streams, and then the mania returns. Such guys die young, but I am told. And they cannot help themselves. Andy in particular cannot help himself. His internal chemistry drives him to extremes. Sadly, manic depression, like schizophrenia and autism, are seldom if ever cured. The psychiatric profession prescribes pills, therapies, including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), counsels and applies various theories in an effort to treat these disorders. What it usually comes up with is more pain and suffering. Behrman's experience is no exception. His crash and burn experience begins when he is indicted for art forgery. Thus begins a downward spiral into increased depression, more violent mood swings, and an increasing inability to function economically amid thoughts of suicide. As the book ends he is taking a regimen of pills that would choke a horse; he has undergone 19 sessions of ECT; his weight at last report was 245 pounds (normal for him would be about 185, so he's sixty pounds overweight). Whereas once he was able to work sixteen hour days, now he has trouble leaving his apartment. Although there is an attempt at a rosy glow as the book ends, it is clear that Andy Behrman is only the shadow of the man he once was. I think all of us can identify to some extent with Behrman's state of mind. We are all driven at times to overindulgence, to manias of one sort or the other. We all fall into periods of self-doubt and depression. The difference really is one of degree. Yet, as they say in physics, more is different; and in Behrman's case it is dramatically and horribly different. When I feel depressed or anxious; when my brain chemistry points me toward some sort of undefined behavior to satisfy the gloom or restlessness, what I do is exercise. I have found that the troubles of the world and the wild cacophony running round my brain become muted and silenced by the sheer sense of physical exhaustion, a delicious state of mind that wants only water and rest, and then when there is physical rest perhaps something good to eat and then some work and then some sleep, and in this way the brain chemistry is reset. I don't say this will work for people like Behrman. Clearly it has not worked for many others. But I think it should have been (and should be!) tried. Notice that when he was manically working he was happy and healthy, at least for that period of time. Since everything about Behrman goes to extremes, perhaps only the most rigorous and extensive sort of physical exercise program will work.
Rating:
Summary: Electroboy
Review: The literary criticism of this book demonstrates an absence of empathy and understanding. Andy tells his story from his perspective, that of someone suffering from bipolar disorder. I found the story compelling. I cried, I laughed and, for the first time, felt like someone could describe the feelings, compulsions and the pain. Andy deserves respect for his willingness to share the realities of his disease, rather than criticism for trying to "sensationalize" his story. Andy's story is a must read for anyone who has a loved one with bipolar disorder.
Rating:
Summary: Electroboy
Review: The literary criticism of this book demonstrates an absence of empathy and understanding. Andy tells his story from his perspective, that of someone suffering from bipolar disorder. I found the story compelling. I cried, I laughed and, for the first time, felt like someone could describe the feelings, compulsions and the pain. Andy deserves respect for his willingness to share the realities of his disease, rather than criticism for trying to "sensationalize" his story. Andy's story is a must read for anyone who has a loved one with bipolar disorder.
Rating:
Summary: Coming to terms
Review: They say you shouldn't judge a book by its coverer, but I have to admit I've been guilty of this crime. I was originally drawn to Behrman's work by the bright yellow cover, but what I found inside was far better. The work provided an entertaining look at someone's life, from stories of travel around the world, to risky behavior revolving around sex and drugs, to life in New York City. This book did things for me other than entertainment as well. As someone that has been diagnosed with biopolar disorder it helped me realize things could be a lot worse. Despite my problems with illness the actions of Andy Behrman seem more extreme than I am capable, which gave me some peace.
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