On Britney Spears And My Friend

The blog Dooce--a very popular parenting/mom blog--had some intelligent things to say about the whole Britney Spears spectacle and something revealing to say about herself involving Risperdal. Why am I bringing this up here? Several people have written to me to suggest that Britney is on a ton of psych meds and that they are the source of her erratic behavior. I don't know, but it sure is possible. Then again, maybe not. Like Dooce, I find this media absorption with her slow-running meltdown--she shaved her head recently, very badly, and pictures have shown up--to be disgusting. Whatever you feel about Spears, she deserves a little more respect, and as la Dooce points out, so do her children:

"I am surprised that no one has brought this up yet, that no one in the media who is hounding her has taken a step back to consider that she might be on the brink of something disastrous, tragic for both her and her children. I can honestly say that if I had filed for divorce from my husband within the first year of Leta’s life that there is no way I would be alive today. If cameras had been following me around during those awful months you would have seen me throwing full gallon milk jugs at Jon’s head. You would have watched as I slammed the front door so hard that it fell off of its hinges, or the countless number of times I called Jon at the office just so that I could hang up on him. Maybe you would have seen me through the window as I stood in front of the medicine cabinet in the kitchen trying to figure out whether or not I had the nerve to take an entire bottle of Risperdal."

Wow. I cannot imagine downing a bottle of Risperdal. And I am glad the author didn't go there, as she's a pretty good writer and such. Likely a good mom as well.

As does she, I think Spears is going through some very weird postpartum psychological reaction. I watched something vaguely similar play out with a former housemate of mine a few years ago, minus the photogs and the shaved head. My friend, who'd always been a bit squirrely, came unglued about three months after her daughter was born. After a year of increasingly erratic behavior, including kicking her partner out of the house, while taking anti-depressants (of course, it was Paxil she took), her family tried to get her to check herself into a psych unit one weekend. She wouldn't budge. So I got the call.

I am no fan of psych units and have never been in one as a patient, but have visited them as a reporter many times, so it took a lot for me even to walk over to her apartment. It was apparent to me that she was pretty wound up and manic-y. Worse than I'd ever seen her. I suggested that the assembled family members go get coffee for an hour because they were saying all the usual well-meaning "we love you, we'll do anything to help you" stuff that is just damn oppressive to someone in my friend's shape. They left. It was a weekend and she needed an evaluation right away, I determined. Within 15 minutes, I had convinced her to go to a nearby ER.

"So what's your diagnosis, smart ass?" she asked me.

"I'm putting my money on bipolar. You're pretty erratic but not psychotic."

So she went to the hospital, spent 10 days there and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I disagreed with the dx, but kept my trap shut. My friend began taking Risperdal, returned to work, and was fired within two weeks. She went off Risperdal and continued to fall apart over the following year. She went back on Paxil briefly--why I will never figure out--and lost another job. She split with her partner for good, which was likely the worst thing she could've done. The guy had been a rock and had taken over all the parenting chores. He took the baby with him. When she called me one night to complain about this, I told her that if she fought him on the custody, then I would testify against her in court.

"Go to hell, you fat fucking faggot!" she yelled at me. I am neither fat nor gay, but she'd become mean to all her friends that way. Like the others, I've drifted away from her. She won't do anything about her condition--we've talked about the whole "why don't you take Lithium or something for a year and let's see where you are at" thing--and it's just way too tough and way too sad to be around. She's a smart 30-something with two masters degrees, but when she gets going it's like being around an abusive drunk.

She stopped by my apartment with her daughter and her ex-partner a few weeks ago. Within minutes, it was clear to me that things have gotten worse. She has some money from her first marriage and had been spending it wildly--$17,000 in one month on furnishings for her new apartment in a very schmancy building and clothes. She insisted to me that strange men were following her around the building. And so on.

She is one of the few cases I have ever been around that I have completely given up on. What hope I have is reserved for her daughter. My friend is lost and no one really knows why. There isn't shit anyone can do about it either. But something sure as hell happened after she gave birth, just like something happened to Britney.