I arrived into this world in Bakersfield, California in the late summer of 1938, kicking and screaming, into a very dysfunctional family. I was a very sick child medically, so I spent more time out of school than I did in it and I didn't get very good grades either. At subjects I liked I got good grades, the others, I didn't, so I was labeled by my parents and teachers as lazy and no-account. To this day, I still contend that I had a learning disability, but at the time no one would listen.
As a child growing up with my parents and one sister, I had a very hard life. I was subject to much verbal and physical abuse as well as sexual abuse from my father. To compound matters, when I turned sixteen I was gay and "came out of the closet" at that age, which only made matters worse. My parents sent me to a psychiatrist, but he couldn't help me because the die was cast at birth. I set the same psychiatrist on my dysfunctional parents to try and figure them out.
I served my time in the U.S. Navy when I enlisted in the summer of 1955 and received an honorable discharge upon completion of my time. As a man out of my teens, I lost more jobs than I could keep and I floated for many years, finally leaving California and my dysfunctional family behind. I had a few successful gay relationships in those early years in Washington D.C. I even worked as a Licensed Practical Nurse in Maryland and New York City. I "fell apart" in the late sixties and wound up on welfare and was transferred to SSI in 1968. I was sent to many psychiatrists and was labeled "Undifferentiated Schizophrenic," and therefore put on many medications. I was also in an 18 year relationship, which sent me into a psychiatric hospital.
While I was there, I was under the care of Dr. Alan Cott, who cured me of deep depression with massive doses of mega-vitamin therapy. The Fryer Research Center was helpful as well. From the hospital I was sent to an adult home, then to a supervised residence, then to an intensive supportive apartment program through a provider agency and finally through it all I earned my own permanent independent apartment funded by the New York State Office of Mental Health.
I have done many things these last few years in mental health. I am co-chair of a consumer advisory board. I have graduated from the Howie T. Harp Peer Specialist Training Program, and am now in the process of starting my own advocacy business. I am receiving a great deal of expert help from Mimi Kravitz and the staff of INCube. In addition, I am distribution manager of New York City Voices in Brooklyn and Queens.