BIOGRAPHY OF ANDY BEHRMAN

Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania is Andy Behrman's chronicle of his battle with manic depression or bipolar disorder - - the euphoric highs and desperate lows.

For years Andy hid his raging mania under a larger-than-life personality. He sought a high wherever he could find one, and changed jobs as some people change outfits - - filmmaker, art dealer, hustler; whatever made him feel like a cartoon character, invincible and bright. Electroboy is about living life at breakneck speed. Andy hopped on flights from New York to Tokyo and Paris at a moment's notice, spent $25,000 without a bit of thought on a huge shopping spree and stayed awake nights exploring the underworld of nightlife in Manhattan or whatever city he happened to be visiting, in search of the perfect high. But when Andy turned to art forgery, he found himself the subject of a scandal lapped up by the New York media, then in jail, then under house arrest. And for once he didn't have a ready escape hatch from his unraveling life.

Andy was misdiagnosed by more than eight doctors and even when he was finally diagnosed with this chronic illness, he was treated unsuccessfully with any regimen of medication. Ingesting handfuls of antidepressants and tranquilizers, he felt his mind lose traction. With no hope of his condition stabilizing, he turned to the last resort: electroshock therapy also known as electroconvulsive therapy (or ECT). Andy underwent nineteen electroshock treatments over the course of about a year and a half.

Now Andy is a mental health writer and speaker who has traveled to more than fifty cities across the United States and Canada, speaking to more than two hundred mental health organizations and support groups, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, college audiences, and book clubs. Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania has been translated into six foreign languages and is distributed worldwide in places as far away as Australia and New Zealand, Hong Kong, and South Africa. His articles have been featured in The New York Times Magazine, on the BBC, and in various mental health publications and websites.

A graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, he currently lives mania-free in Los Angeles with his wife and baby. Electroboy is currently being made into a major motion picture. Not only is Andy working on the sequel to Electroboy, but he’s also writing a self-help book for sufferers of bipolar disorder, depression, and other mood disorders.