If You Could Read My Mind: A PTSD Memoir

I am a survivor of gay conversion therapy.

In 1964, when I was 8 years old, my parents had me committed to the psych ward at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. I was subjected to electroshock therapy and put on medications like Thorazine. My doctor, Dr. Herbert J. Levowitz, wore a yarmulke at all times and quoted the Torah to me, in Hebrew no less, during our sessions. According to his 2006 obituary, Dr. Levowitz was “a devoted and innovative child psychiatrist.”

I often wonder how many other kids were harmed by his backwards and barbaric techniques.

If I ever acted “out of line” at Mt. Sinai (in other words: behaved like a normal 8 year old), I was wrestled to the ground and shot up with a variety of powerful anti-anxiety meds. I don’t even know what I was given during those incidents.

When I went into the hospital, I was a happy and imaginative 8 year old. When I was released three months later, I was a nervous wreck. I remained a nervous wreck for decades.

Years later, I asked my mother why they put me in that hospital. “We were advised to do so by the Rabbi,” was the reply. In Orthodox Judaism, the Rabbi’s word was law. I have often wondered what might have happened if the Rabbi had told them to walk down the street naked with carrots sticking out of their asses. Hey, if the Rabbi tells you to do it …

For years after that nightmarish hospitalization, I was forced against my will to take powerful medications which were causing the mental-health issues I was told I suffered from. Today, it’s illegal to give many of those drugs to children, yet throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, my system was bombarded with them. I remember having an allergic reaction to those drugs and temporarily losing part of my eyesight. My full sight returned after I was taken off of that drug, but it was still a terrifying and traumatic experience to my 12-year-old self.

Then there were the lectures. I endured endless speeches about how sick I was, how offended God was, and how I was ruining everyone’s lives. These tirades could go on for up to an hour and happened almost daily for years on end. I would often beg in tears for my parents to stop — they would respond by hovering over me, raising their voices, and upping the rhetoric. There were periods when I endured several of these each and every day — I can recall times when it began as early as 7am and continued well into the night. Leaving the house and taking long walks by myself was the only peace I ever enjoyed. Long, solitary walks have remained my solace to this very day.

This was my childhood. By the time I was 20 years old, I was barely functional. For many years, I couldn’t make friends, couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t really think clearly.

And yet I was still gay.

When I came out in 1976, there weren’t TV shows like Glee or politicians who supported LGBT equality. Same-sex couples couldn’t hold hands on the street. There were no equality laws of any kind. People were free to discriminate against us as they saw fit. I came out into a world surrounded by gay men and lesbians who had come from similar backgrounds of intolerance and hate. In about five years, the AIDS epidemic would begin, and people around the world would tell us that AIDS was our punishment from God for being who we are.

The gay community that I knew from 1976 onward was a sad collection of lost souls who took their hate for themselves out on each other — people from that generation live that way even today. In a sense, all of us from that time have PTSD. Symptoms include reliving the trauma repeatedly, which can lead to severe depression, psychotic breakdowns, and suicide.

After 40 years of living with, fighting against, and largely overcoming PTSD, I still have my moments. The symptoms are, for the most part, behind me. If I continue writing for OUT FRONT, I hope to offer my thoughts and observations about an entire generation of LGBT people who were as traumatized as I was, what it did to them, and what we did to each other as a result. I will also offer commentary on how the world views and judges us. I am not a mental health care provider; I’m just me.