Part II: Excerpt: 'A Fractured Mind' by Robert B. Oxnam
Oct. 13 — -- This excerpt is continued from the first part of chapter one of "A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder," by Robert B. Oxnam. To read the first part of the excerpt, click here.
Inevitably, the cluster of bizarre behaviors started to affect my work. By the late 1980s, I was calling in sick when I felt compelled to stay at the yacht yard. And in the winter months, I started figure skating for exercise and it quickly became a new obsession. One day, I apparently fainted in the men's room and hit my head. At the hospital, I was immediately assigned to intensive care and began a series of tests for three days (including an MRI and a spinal tap). My hospitalization coincided with the famous stock market crash of 1987 and, perhaps not coincidentally, with an Asia Society board meeting.
When they released me from the hospital, the doctor remarked: "We can't find anything wrong with you, nothing at all. It's not blood, not heart. You passed the stress test with flying colors. I think you had best see a psychiatrist." She must have seen the shock in my eyes. Luckily, she knew how to use humor to ease the tension. "Heard the one about the stock market crash? Who's better off — a yuppie or a pigeon? Answer: a pigeon — because a pigeon can still drop a deposit on a BMW."
Good joke, but the situation wasn't funny at all. Clearly, my skating episode was not just a fainting spell, but another of those strange blank spots. What the hell had really happened? Life was spinning totally out of control. I hated myself. I hated what I was doing. I hated life itself. Twice I tried to commit suicide; on both occasions, I was prevented by family or friends. Once I was stopped after I was overheard slamming the action shut on a Luger I had inherited from my father. Another time I was pulled from a car after I had returned, depressed and drunk, and left the engine running in a closed garage. To those who saved me, and who have suffered from witnessing almost-suicides, I owe not only my life, but also lifelong apologies.
In late 1989, a family member, shocked and hurt by my out-of-control behaviors, finally summoned the strength to confront me and perform an "intervention." "I've talked to a doctor. He says it sounds like serious alcoholism. He says you must see a Dr. Jeffery Smith. And he says that your life depends on it. No questions. You've just got to do it."
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Dr. Smith, a balding fortyish fellow in a casual sport jacket, offered comforting, professional warmth behind his unruly desk. Initially, his soft voice relaxed me, but soon I was squirming before Dr. Smith's demanding litany of questions and his unblinking better-tell-the-truth look.
"I only drink at night. Well, just a few drinks, mainly to sleep. How much exactly? I suppose I go through a bottle in about a week. Well, more like three days. I drink until I crash. I drink coffee all day long to keep me sharp. I'm real careful with the alcohol — never at the office, not even social events. I can quit the alcohol — I've done it for several periods before, once for over six months.
"Inside I feel terrible. I feel like I'm a bad person. That's what I find myself muttering a lot—'I'm bad.' Then there are the weird times when I can't remember what happened for several hours in a day. Total blank spots. Or when I'm on the boat and someone asks about China and I can't think of anything about China, nothing at all.
"Oh yes, there are the angry explosions. Someone or something sets me off, always someone very close to me, and I just fly off. I often break things—it's usually a watch or a clock or my glasses. I don't hit people, but I scream and yell. It scares the hell out of everybody. Then I feel awful and try to apologize."
Dr. Smith never gave much of a reaction, neither a smile nor a frown, just his undivided attention, eyes occasionally tightening. When he was done with his questions, he took a long moment to scan the form on his clipboard and looked sharply at me. "I can't believe you're not in therapy. First off, you don't have a drinking problem. It's much worse: you're a class-A alcoholic. You've got every symptom of a really serious drinker—uncontrolled emotions, frequent blackouts, drinking only to get drunk, periods of proud abstinence before another fall."
I was dumbfounded. I tried to keep the inner trembling from showing. "It's really that serious?"
"So serious that I'm going to tell you what you have to do. You need to go to a rehabilitation center. I mean right now. You must stay there for a month, not just to dry out and begin to get healthy, but also to get a grip on your life. And then you are going to have to join an AA program to stay straight."
I rubbed my forehead in disbelief. "But I'm running a major institution. I've got a board meeting in two weeks. We're barely balancing the budget. Then I've got to go to Hong Kong, where we're opening a new center that I've been working on for years. I can't just take off for a month. What could I possibly say to the trustees?"
Smith stood up and looked down with a gentle firmness that tended to close options. "You can pretend it's just a little problem and continue for a while. But what you have is deadly. It will surely kill you, probably sooner than you think. It's also devastating to others—maybe you'll avoid killing someone with an automobile, but you're doing terrible psychological damage to those around you. You're not alone, you know. There are lots of so-called successful people who are classic alcoholics and no one really knows. Most of them don't have the guts to deal with their disease."
After Dr. Smith waited for it to settle in, he made it concrete. "I can make a call right now to a good friend, former alcoholic himself, now runs the famous Edgehill Center in Newport, Rhode Island. Maybe he can make room for you. What do you say?"I closed my eyes, trembling inside as I pondered the consequences, then looked back at Dr. Smith, who hadn't moved an inch. "Okay"—I sighed—"make the call." Twenty minutes later, he called me back into the office. "It's all arranged. You are to arrive tonight before midnight."
I nodded with resignation. "One more thing," Dr. Smith added. "I want to see you when you get back. Not just for the alcoholism. You're a rather rare bird psychologically, you know. You're a male hysteric. You need treatment."
My mind was spinning as I drove back home. Had I done the right thing? Can I get out of it? No, I'd made the decision, now let's be organized. Got to call my office and my board chairman. No alternative but to be honest. What the hell is a male hysteric anyway? Oh damn, why me, why am I so bad?
Twelve hours later, I arrived at the rehabilitation clinic, totally drunk after consuming a third of a bottle of bourbon while putting away my sailboat for the winter. Edgehill Center was a complex of new brick buildings on a lovely estate overlooking dramatic Newport Harbor, which I knew so well from years of sailing into it. It never occurred to me that I'd see it this way: dressed in a hospital gown, stripped of all clothing, my belongings searched for alcohol, drugs, and weapons. I acknowledged what I had drunk that evening to the admitting nurse; she just nodded and muttered "typical." I walked out into the starry night, looked down at the twinkling lights of Newport, and began to cry until there were no more tears, just aching gasps.
I was assigned to a floor housing some twenty alcohol addicts, and the rugged process of rehabilitation began. Two professional therapists were attached to each unit, supplemented by other trained personnel who watched over us all at night. The group consisted of a crosscut of society: a teacher, a dentist, an investment banker, a few older students, a housewife, a retired man, a construction worker, an environmental code specialist, a carpenter. At age forty-seven, I was in the middle of the group ranging from late teens to late sixties.
