Terrell Owens: Just Selfish, Or Bipolar? - Page 3

Owens’ history of bizarre, narcissistic, and disruptive behavior also includes throwing numerous tantrums on the sidelines during games, which in the pre-Owens NFL were grounds for permanent benching.

While psychiatry cannot credibly excuse Terrell Owens’ character defects, the reported suicide attempt throws his manic behavior in a new light. Thus, the possibility obtains that Owens’ doctors may suggest to him that he try out a regime of lithium, the standard treatment for leveling out bipolar disorder’s violent yins and yangs.

I have a talented but irresponsible cousin who I’ll call “Geoffrey,” who got committed to psycho wards for nervous breakdowns over forty times in about twenty years (between the time he was roughly 15 and 35). Then he was put on lithium, and managed to remain a free man for a few years. Since I haven’t heard from or about Geoffrey in twenty years, I don’t know if he continued taking his meds — or staying off the weed he so loved — or if they continued helping him, but he was reasonably sane for a while.

Then there was the time during the last summer I spent on Martha’s Vineyard, in 1986, that I saw Geoffrey sitting in an Edgartown saloon called “The Café” (pronounced "kayf") over a plate of nachos and melted cheese. I sat down at the table with him, and he looked up at me and asked, “Do I know you?”

This was just nine months after we had spent a day hanging out together in New York. I still don’t know if Geoffrey was spaced out on the lithium or the pot.

If I hear of Terrell Owens getting put on lithium, and then one day, in a state of honest bafflement, looking at his head coach and asking him, “Do I know you?,” I guess I’ll have my answer.

Article Author: Nicholas Stix

New York-based, dissident journalist Nicholas Stix, has the dubious distinction of being arguably America's most frequently censored writer, having at different times outraged black supremacists, socialists, feminists, white supremacists, paleocons, neocons and libertarians. …

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