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Andy Behrman's Electroboy is a brave, riveting and unforgettable memoir by an exciting new consumer author. The forty-year-old Behrman, who resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was raised in suburban New Jersey and moved to New York City as soon as he graduated from Wesleyan College in Connecticut. He craved the big city excitement and wanted to be famous.

Electroboy reminded me of my own obsessions, manias and anxieties, and anyone with manic depression (bipolar disorder) will be able to see part of themselves in the book. Family members could also benefit from reading it. I could identify with his inability to fit into suburban life and enjoying the anonymity and comfort of Manhattan life, which has a place for everyone.

Behrman's descriptions of his manic highs and angry depressions made me revisit my past experiences with bipolar disorder over the last 25 years. And since we are both roughly the same age (I am 42), and became sick at a similar age, the timeline of events and treatment options mirrored my own. But where I was correctly diagnosed and became stabilized quickly, Behrman suffered tremendously for 15 more years before he found a treatment plan that relieved his symptoms. How did all those expensive psychiatrists he saw miss his mania?

This is the real tragedy of Electroboy, the years lost to an illness that is not properly treated, or treated at all. Only about a quarter of those with depression and manic depression are ever diagnosed, and of those left untreated about a fifth eventually commit suicide. Another subject brought out in the open by Electroboy is dual-diagnosis, which describes those with both mental illness and drug addictions. Over half of the newly diagnosed cases of depression and manic depression are dually diagnosed as substance abusers due to self-medication.

It is remarkable that Behrman survived the mania, depression, and anxiety for so long. I cannot imagine how he used so many illicit drugs with his illness and still functioned on any level. His strong will and survival skills are evident throughout the book as well as his likeable personality-he has lots of friends who stuck by him through his worst times. His experiences are on such a grand scale they are seemingly impossible to live through. And that is the triumph of Electroboy-that he was able to come so far in his recovery and write such an inspirational book, one that earns its place among the best first person accounts of manic depression. It is sort of a New York City yuppie male counterpart to Kay Redfield Jamieson's "An Unquiet Mind."

Electroboy is at its best when recounting Behrman's various drug-crazed promiscuous sexual experiences, and later the heartfelt story of his recovery and rehabilitation. His mania led him into some extremely wild situations and caused severe money problems. He always spent money faster than he could get his hands on it, routinely overspending on apartments, furniture, food, travel, and clothes. He wouldn't think twice before jumping on a plane to Tokyo, or to see the Berlin Wall come down. The book ends four years ago with Behrman well on the road to recovery and drug free and his symptoms under control.

He had previously worked as a filmmaker, public relations specialist, and finally in the murky art dealer world, where he used his manic charm and sales skills to sell Mark Kostabi's paintings all over the world. Kostabi, in the Andy Warhol tradition, had a factory called Kostabi's World where he turned out large numbers of canvasses, many of which he never painted, but signed after they were finished. Ultimately this led to Behrman's downfall, when he got involved in an art forgery scheme that led to his imprisonment and subsequent house arrest at the age of 32.

Behrman was not diagnosed as a manic-depressive until he was 30 (around the time he was indicted for art fraud) and first began taking mood stabilizers for his mania. But his excessive drug use and his treatment-resistant illness made it impossible to control his symptoms. After nothing else worked, he turned to electroshock therapy (ECT) as a last resort and it helped him tremendously. His description of how he felt after his first treatment sticks in the mind like a haunting movie image:

"I feel incredibly different than I did pre-ECT which was just an hour ago. Like the hard concrete that filled my brain has been liquefied and drained from my skull." Electroboy grabs hold of the reader and almost never lets you go. Reading it was a thought-provoking, memory-jarring, rewarding experience. It should create discussion among consumers, family members and other people and hopefully ease the stigma associated with mental illness.