Looks like a pretty classic case of narcissism to me to the point where he was delusional about his chances of getting caught, thinking he was above all rules etc. The only tweak that made me wonder if he was on a benzo, sleeping pill or antidepressant was signing in to the Mayflower as his friend and donor and putting his home address. That does sound like someone under the influence of something I have to admit. But these guys tend to be very controlling and wary of mind altering meds so it would have had to be one that he would have thought was benign. Very bizarre. Still I respected some of the things ES did like chase GSK on Paxil even if the fine they got was laughable. In other countries (France?!) would govs be busted for this stuff -- I don't know. But it's pretty sleazy I have to admit.

I think it's the old "power corrupts" straight and simple and yeah megalomania.

As far as drugs making him irrational---I'm sorry but I've been on a shit load of drugs and I have never acted out of character in terms of my values and I've not made stupid ass poor judgment calls of the nature he made either. That's gotta be in your character to begin with most of the time. I'll grant you that extreme agitation can lead to uncharacteristic violence or suicide, but this kind of poor judgment? I don't think so. Maybe he was drunk---that's a more likely cause of that kind of poor judgment. Thinking you're above the law, though, in my opinion is the most likely culprit.

oh hell they do it because they can.

Of course, not everyone who takes psychiatric medications, especially antidepressants, is going to have a bizarre reaction to them. If this were true, the drugs would have been pulled from the market along time ago.

However, drugs like the antidepressants, especially the SSRI antidepressants, have listed in the Physicians Desk Reference such adverse reactions as Abnormal Thinking, Confusion, Mania & Hypomania [often leading to sexual preoccupations], paranoia, etc. These are not listed as rare adverse reactions, either. They are listed as either frequent or infrequent.

So, now, every time a person acts "out of character", we have to suspect the antidepressants. The big question then with the Governor of NY is: was this "out of character". We will probably never know but I think it is a bit presumptious to think that all people in "power" are megalomaniacs. Some are not and history books show this. Is it not possible to have a person in power who wants to clean up Wall Street when Wall Stree is doing after hours trading with preferred customers dealing in Mutual Funds? I was thrilled when Spitzer put a stop to that!

I say, "Let's wait and see" in regard to this case.

oh please.the guy had big bucks, could use it, did use it, and chose his actions.

his regret will be the same as Clinton's, Falwell and Bakker: he got busted. this is not a voluntary moment of cleansing of the soul in public for forgiveness. i'm sick of these freaks taking the pulpit in the media afterward and wanting forgiveness, what the hell---from who?
start with the wife standing next to him in the photo. she's standing there to save his political ass. both are idiots,and that is my personal opinion.

If he jumps on the "anti-depressants made me do it" train-I will scream!!!

To me the story is about hypocracy.

If Spitzer came out and acknowledged his hypocracy and called for the release from prison of every person in jail for prostitution because of his actions as a prosecutor and then became spokesperson and legal counsel for COYOTE, I'd be cool with him.

It's evil to put people in prison for prostitution while paying a prostitute yourself. If he shows up on Oprah with Patrick Kennedy claiming to be bipolar and then writes a book imagine how much money he'll make. Philip, you hit the nail on the head when you wrote:

"I think Spitzer is one of those classic Elmer Gantry or Jim Bakker types--moral and mighty in public, sleazy and law-breaking in private. Megalomaniacs, in other words."

This sardonic letter was published in today's FT (London) newspaper..

March 12 2008

From Mr Clark McGinn.

Sir, Poor Eliot Spitzer. From attorney-general to a common solicitor.

Clark McGinn,
Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middx HA1 3AJ

For those who don't get it, it's because it's an English joke.

The term "solicitor" has two meanings in the Queen's English: one who solicits goods or services, but also, a member of the legal profession who represents clients in the lowest courts of law.

Someone said, "If Spitzer jumps on the 'antidepressants made me do it' I will scream."

Why this person would scream, instead of taking a good look at antidepressants, is beyond me. If the people in the U.S. had screamed during the Wesbecker civil trial [Prozac} that we needed to have a re-evaluation of antidepressants, then maybe we wouldn't have had all of these school shootings and this tremendous increase in murder-suicides.

For example, today in the Dallas newspaper, there was a 'consenual murder-suicide" between a married & very prominent political Afro-American couple. Even the shrink from Southerwestern Medical Center said a consenual murder-suicide was extremely rare.

Then, a woman threw her two children from an overpass unto a freeway late last night and then jumped. I have been reading the newspaper in Dallas for 38 years and I have never seen so many woman killing their children as they have been doing since the introduction of Prozac.

There is a young boy in prison out east. He tried to kill himself at the age of 15 while on Zoloft. He was taken to an exclusive psychiatric hospital and there he turned 16. His antidepressant was changed from Zoloft to Prozac. He told his counselors that he felt violent and this worried him. His counselors told him he was being manipulative. This was ALL writtten in his HOSPITAL RECORD. He also asked the counselors to protect the other patients from him but this was not written in the hospital record.

He then killed a nurse. He was found guilty and given life without the possibility of parole plus 50 years. The judge was being accused, at the time, of being too lenient so she gave him the works. Politicians!

The boy has been in prison for 12 years now. He is 28 and a painter. He was allowed to paint in prison and sell his paintings. He donated half of the money to victims of violent crime and kept half for himself for art supplies. There was an outcry from the victim's family and he was forced to stop painting.

Yes, I feel terrible about the nurse who was a victim. This is the only reason I spend hours at the computer - for the victims sake. But I still have to wonder why a person who was a patient in a mental hospital would receive such a harsh sentence. Doesn't the psychiatric facility have an obligation to know how to protect themselves from a violent patient?

As far as Spitzer goes, even if he was on antidepressants and even if it was revealed, nobody would understand it. I doubt that he was on antidepressants so I guess it doesn't make any difference but it is still sad to think that antidepressants are doing so much harm in our society and people just don't 'get it'.

you know rosie, people 'get it'; and they also 'get' free will, choice and basic lack of moral character. THAT's why even I will scream if he claims any illness or medication made him to anything; give me a break!

YAWN! There is fairly little outrage about illegal federal government monitoring of phone calls and emails and God knows what else, but everyone is up in arms because a politician had consensual sex with a prostitute. I'm not condoning Spitzer's actions by any means, but this is a distraction from more important issues. The vast majority of material on this blog, for example, is much more worthy of public discussion than some politician who likes pricey call girls. Gimme a break. Yes, Spitzer gets a gold medal in the hypocrisy department and he harmed his marriage and family. But there aren't exactly a lot of victims of his crime. Can we move on to more pressing issues already?

CP, you know this is human nature to love gossip, esp regarding sex and money, what else is there?

Like LILLY ON TRIAL. In my opinion, no one cares a rat's ass about any psych med, emails spied on, lies, or truth unless it involves them directly.

CL, I too have wondering what is really happening in the world while all of the media focuses on this story, still...

what's weird to me is the psychology of all of this, of Sptizer, an anti prostitution crusader compelled to break his own laws just to visit a prostitute. We all act baffled but it's basic human nature and we all know it. The root of the story is his profound humanness that can't be buried under mounds of modern nonsense.. Psychology doesn't seem to reflect this as we can see from the endless gazillions of dollars spent to determine why men cheat of their wives, why people are unhappy, why boys are restless, why old women get severely depressed, why veterans commit suicide.

The pressing issue in the Spitzer thing is that we have the wrong laws, laws that protect what we think humans should be instead of laws that protect the real humans. Why on earth should prostitution be illegal? Drugs? No good reason, and yet billions are spent in enforcing these unnecessary laws that the lawyers themselves routinely break.

The need to control people is the sickness and the more surveillance humans are put under the more we find out that we don't obey our own laws and we don't change our behavior because of surveillance. Don't you find something compelling in that?

there's an article out now interviewing a Uof Wa psychologist or someone about why his wife stood by his side and they say she is in shock, then basically doing what other political wives did. and how she will be worried about finances and taking care of her kids. what's new? she's in the public eye is the only difference. now she's one of us. welcome to the real world. in a way, CP is way off base, [respectfully speaking here CP], because we can harp about why men over 50 are killing themselves, and yet when a man hires a hooker about the same age bracket, why not talk about it? he left his family right? not suicide, but still something happened to him? or maybe it was just simple shitty behavior.

CL makes some good points on his blog, among them this (with my less than even handed hyperbole added in), there's virtually no media coverage of Eli Lilly's crimes, crimes with lots of victims, victims deceived, diseased and killed, while the media goes crazy over Spitzer's consensual sex and his wife's support of him. Spitzer's was an act of reprehensible hypocrisy but which is worse reprehensible hypocrisy or making billions selling poisons to children to treat made up conditions?

Meanwhile, though I'm not condoning Spitzer, he did some pretty great things in terms of busting corporate and insurance company criminals. So he seems to me now to be a sort of Nixon type, wrong in many ways, and yet someone who made some good contributions, a hero in the world of white collar crime.

And I have to confess, while I'd never accept a bipolar and/or booze made him do it excuse, a prozac made him do it seems plausible. I've seem people who, their sex drives reduced to virtually nil by ssri's, became more and more deviant as it took more and more to stimulate them. "Sexual deviance, online porn and ssri use in the 21st century," that's a study that would be fun and profitable for some psych grad students, but who would fund it?

I'm on another list serve where bets are being placed that in a few months we will be hearing reports that Eliot Spitzer is "bipolar". You can bet if he wasn't medicated before someone's going to be trying to medicate him now.

As for those heaping scorn on the "antidepressants made me do it" argument I still believe that unless we, as a society, start taking very seriously just how big a role these drugs can have in altering behavior in violent and bizarre ways the string of crimes and deaths associated with their use is only going to increase. Nothing less than a very radical reappraisal of how they are used will stop the mayhem.