Quite often, we read about the highs and lows of celebrities.

Jennifer Lopez is getting divorced. Julia Roberts might star in a new film. Colin Farrell seems to be holding it together pretty well since he started rehab. He even acted as a games spokesperson for the Special Olympics a few years ago, right?

Some writer who caught a break (or made the right connections at Harvard, or, I don’t know, had some talent) caught up with these famous names, spent a few hours with them, and wrote a piece that gives us a glimpse into their lives.

That’s the best-case scenario. Worst case, some writer caught up with a publicist or representative or “insider close to the star” and got a few statements before churning out another blurb or fluff piece to fill the space between two advertisements.

When it came to profiling the famous, Vanity Fair contributing editor Ned Zeman was never a worst-case scenario.

Yet, when it came to treating his depression, anxiety, and what eventually turned into bipolar disorder, he was worst-case all the way.

At some point during his moves back and forth between Los Angeles and New York (hey – the writers life), Ned Zeman developed depression and anxiety. For years, no medicine or therapist or hospital helped (and he tried – even to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars spent at the famed McLean Hospital, known for its past troubled souls like Sylvia Path, Ray Charles, and James Taylor), so he decided to try electroconvulsive therapy (ECT.)

I mean, hey: What’s good for Carrie Fisher and Ernest Hemmingway and Lou Reed and Kitty Dukakis and Tammy Wynette (Tammy Wynette?) is good for Ned Zeman.

A common side effect of ECT is memory loss. Almost always the kind that leaves you wondering someone’s name for a day or two, but rarely the kind that steals long periods of your life. That’s worst-case scenario stuff.

Naturally, ECT wiped clean two years of Zeman’s memory.

Once he eventually received a bipolar disorder diagnosis – thanks to the less-than-ideal relationship he, his antidepressants, and his ECT formed, and being the journalist he is (or, was?) – Zeman started piecing together those lost years. He sifted through piles of printed e-mails, turned pictures and mementos from relationships past around in his hands, and relied on an extremely resilient support system of family and friends to be honest with him.

He stared at a little frog and struggles to remember the child who once owned it.

Zeman described it best when he says that after 20 years as a profiler, he learned what it meant to be the profilee.

But really, that’s the short of it. That’s the “Hey, you should check this book out – here’s what it’s about” of it.

The long of it is, if you do check it out, you’ve signed on for a ride that will take you not only from L.A. to New York and back again, but to Russia on a once-snubbed mission to learn everything you can about Bruno “Penguin” Zehnder; to L.A., to find out how Jay Maloney could allow his booming Creative Artists Agent career (and lifestyle) to spiral out of control, leaving behind only a noose, a thick white cloud of cocaine, and a memorial filled with asinine stories about all the money he spent; up to Alaska, where Grizzly Man Tim Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were mailed to death by the bears they loved so much.

You’ll find a frozen ladies sock, on that trip. A fingernail.

You’ll nurse Ativan and Adderall and tell your doctors you’re fine. You can’t write anymore and went off your Wellbutrin and you can’t even look in a mirror, but you’re fine.

You’ll be charged with finding out what happened to George W. S. Trow, that famous New Yorker essayist, that brilliant mind who ended up in McLean after his friends found him living in Alaska and subsisting on sardines and Scotch…

McLean.

Trow wanted out.

You need to get in.

You need to get through this tunnel.

~*~

The Rules of the Tunnel: My Brief Period of Madness hit shelves this month. I highly, highly recommend picking up a copy. Before you do, though, stay tuned here at Celebrity Psychings for a free giveaway opportunity later today!

Image via Penguin

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    Last reviewed: 19 Aug 2011