“I just see that James Chasse came to a classic ending for a person who dealt with his mental illness by himself,” says Roy Silberstein, technical adviser for Alien Boy and founding president of the Mental Health Association of Portland. “And his disease, schizophrenia, is a lot more difficult to function with than bipolar disorder.”
Silberstein was raised in NYC, graduated from CCNY, and went off to graduate school in Madison Wisconsin at 20 in 1963.
Silberstein was diagnosed bipolar disorder in 1966 at the age of 24, and since then, it has robbed him of a great deal.
“At the age of 20, I didn’t believe that at 66 I’d be living hand to mouth, that’s for sure,” he says.
His first breakdown happened at the same moment a romance went bad, and Silberstein’s father, a CPA, paid for private psychotherapists out of a desire to see him finish his Masters. But when Silberstein’s ex-girlfriend moved in with her new boyfriend upstairs in the same apartment building, things fell apart. Silberstein started drinking heavily, then after a few years he had his first involuntary commitment that led to eight months of hospitalization.
Silberstein failed to complete the Masters and then worked a few part time jobs at the University for six years. He then moved to San Francisco in 1973 to marry another ex-girlfriend from Madison who spent the next seven years in and out of remission from breast cancer, ultimately dying in 1979.
Silberstein earned an MLS at Berkeley in 1978 and worked at a few short term librarian jobs in 1980 and 1981. His father died in 1981 and left Silberstein a trust fund which supported him until 1994. He moved from Berkeley to Portland in 1984.
During the ‘80s in Portland, Silberstein did stints of work for Bonneville Power Administration and Wacker Siltronics; also, volunteer work as a researcher for the Portland Alliance, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Advocacy Center, and NAMI.
Then, in 1994, he ran out of money, and because he had been “in denial” and failed to formulate a plan, he ended up homeless.
“I just lost everything,” he says. “A record collection of 5000 records, my father’s photography equipment, 10 or 15 cameras, musical instruments, some paintings of my wife. All the pictures and mementos from my father and her. You just lose everything.”
Silberstein lasted less than a week on the streets of Portland, before he was committed again. The police found him knocked unconscious in the street, after having been hit by a frustrated motorist in retaliation for screaming in the street and holding up traffic.
“I wasn’t sleeping, I was penniless, I wasn’t eating. I was just flopping on benches, or I’d go to the all night bowling alley,” he says. “I was in a demented state, just falling over myself for six days.”
He was committed to two months at the Dammasch state hospital, and then moved on for four more months to the Eastern Oregon Psychiatric Center in Pendleton, now known as the Blue Mountain Recovery Center.
“That was a nightmare,” he says. “Because all of my support systems were in Portland, but they can’t let you go unless you have somewhere to go. So I’d given up. I didn’t think I was ever going to get out.”
Fortunately, a social worker discovered Silberstein while on a visit to EOPC to see another patient.
“And she was so appalled by my situation that she decided to get me out,” he says. “And she did.”
Silberstein got into supported housing through a program called Banyan Tree, which also helped him to get SSI. Initially he worked two days a week, six hours a day, in a sheltered workshop, taking apart computers for Tektronix. After a short while, he moved into his own apartment and got a job in the Department of Assessment and Taxation at Washington County, where he worked for 11 and a half years between 1995 and 2007. In January, he started getting social security, and Silberstein now also works part time as a grant writer for a non-profit, Diversified Abilities.
After undergoing a kidney transplant in 2006 for chronic kidney disease caused by having been on lithium for 25 years, he had a steroid induced mania (a common adverse reaction to Prednisone, a necessary medication following his operation). As a result, he spent three weeks in a hospital psychiatric ward until the mania could be controlled. He does not seem bitter about the situation.
He now takes 11 pills at night and eight in the morning, both to treat his bipolar disorder, and for side effects of the kidney disease. There are pills for blood pressure, anti-cholesterol, psychotropic drugs, antacids, diuretics, and Silberstein has gained weight, as a result of the new medications.
“Although right now I don’t have the mental and emotional turmoil that I experienced for most of my life,” he says. “Bipolar meant I never had a career, I never finished my first MA, never had a career with the MLS , never had a professional life. I just had odd jobs, sometimes interesting ones, but not a career.”
Silberstein feels the worst part of his illness has been living a solitary life for the last thirty years since his wife died.
“Chasse, we know, had a family, a father, a mother and a brother,” he says. “But we don’t know what interaction he had with them. Which in many ways is one of the barriers we are facing in making this film. He coped. He got himself to 42, living that way for 20 years. I lived only 6 days like that and it drove me nuts. He coped in a way that I couldn’t. To survive the daily hardships for two decades required great self-discipline, nothing less than heroic.”
