My illness is one often characterized by dramatic overspending -

Host: The mall was closing. The fluorescent lights dimmed to a dull hum, the escalators stilled, and the faint echoes of music—once cheerful—faded into silence. Shop windows glimmered in the half-light: mannequins frozen mid-smile, sale signs like ghosts of desire. The smell of perfume, plastic, and regret still hung in the air.

Jack stood by a storefront window, his reflection fractured by the glass—half man, half merchandise. He watched the security gates lower, each one clanging shut like punctuation at the end of a confession.

Jeeny walked toward him, a paper shopping bag swinging from her hand. She looked tired, but not from walking. From feeling.

Jeeny: “Andy Behrman once said, ‘My illness is one often characterized by dramatic overspending—in my case through frenzied shopping sprees, credit card abuse, excessive hoarding of unnecessary material goods and bizarre generosity with family, friends and even strangers.’”

She set the bag down gently, the sound soft but final. “It’s strange how he called it illness—not indulgence.”

Jack: “That’s because for him, it wasn’t choice. It was compulsion dressed up as celebration.”

Host: The last of the lights flickered out, leaving only the glow of emergency signs and the soft pulse of neon from a nearby vending machine. The silence was thick, electric—the kind that follows after too much noise.

Jeeny: “You ever feel like that, Jack? That you’re trying to fill a hole that keeps getting deeper the more you feed it?”

Jack smirked, but his eyes were tired.
Jack: “Only every day. Some people chase peace. Others just chase distraction that looks like peace.”

Jeeny: “And money makes distraction beautiful.”

Jack: “Until the bill comes.”

Host: Jeeny sat on a nearby bench, her reflection rippling in the polished floor. Around her, the mannequins stood like witnesses to human want—silent, plastic gods of consumption.

Jeeny: “I don’t think people understand what Behrman meant. It wasn’t greed. It was mania. The high of control through chaos. Buying things not because you need them—but because for a second, they make you feel real.”

Jack: “Real. That’s a funny word. You think plastic and paper can do that?”

Jeeny: “Not for long. But sometimes, when you’re desperate, a second feels like salvation.”

Host: The sound of distant thunder rolled through the empty mall, faint but intimate. The air outside pressed against the glass like the weight of consequence.

Jack: “You think that’s what drives it? Desperation?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or emptiness. Or loneliness wrapped in bright colors. I think people like Behrman just wanted to feel alive. When the mind turns on itself, buying becomes breathing.”

Jack: “Until the breathing stops.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: Jack reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an old, folded receipt. The ink had faded, but the numbers were still visible—long, unforgiving.

Jack: “You know, I used to spend like that. Not in malls—on work. Gear, tech, upgrades. The next camera, the next lens, the next ‘thing’ that would make me better. I told myself it was for art. But really, I was just trying to buy worth.”

Jeeny looked at him, her gaze softening.
Jeeny: “That’s the modern sickness, Jack. We’ve replaced faith with transactions.”

Jack: “And guilt with debt.”

Jeeny: “Debt is guilt. Just with a number attached.”

Host: The wind outside began to pick up, brushing the glass doors with restless fingers. A flyer came loose from a bulletin board and drifted across the floor—a promotion for “LIMITLESS DEALS,” the irony almost poetic.

Jeeny: “You know what’s tragic? Behrman wasn’t confessing to spending. He was confessing to pain. To the way his brain hijacked joy.”

Jack: “That’s the thing about addiction—it always masquerades as celebration until you realize you’ve been mourning all along.”

Jeeny: “Do you think he ever stopped?”

Jack: “No one ever stops completely. You just trade one form of excess for another. Shopping, working, praying, loving—it’s all the same hunger dressed differently.”

Host: The vending machine blinked in the background, its fluorescent hum cutting through the stillness. Jeeny got up and pressed a button—out of habit more than hunger. The can dropped with a metallic clunk.

Jeeny: “Even generosity can become a symptom. He said ‘bizarre generosity’—as if kindness itself could be manic.”

Jack: “It can. When it’s not about the other person. When giving is just another way of shouting, ‘See me, forgive me, love me.’”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s all any of us are doing.”

Jack: “Trying to buy love with the only currency we have left—attention.”

Host: Jeeny opened the can. The hiss of carbonation broke the silence like a confession escaping. She took a sip, eyes distant.

Jeeny: “You ever think the line between generosity and guilt is razor thin?”

Jack: “Thin and invisible. And most people bleed crossing it.”

Host: The rain started outside, steady and heavy now, drumming against the glass doors. The mall’s empty corridors reflected its rhythm, like veins pulsing with remorse.

Jeeny: “You know what’s cruel about mental illness, Jack? It tricks you into thinking your worst impulses are love. That overspending is generosity. That excess is proof of meaning.”

Jack: “And the world claps for it. ‘Look how successful you are,’ they say. No one calls it illness until the credit runs out.”

Jeeny: “That’s the danger of a culture that worships more. You can drown and still be applauded for swimming.”

Jack: “And we call it ambition.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The vending machine went dark as the power timed out. Silence fell again—thick, absolute. Jack looked at Jeeny, then at the darkened storefronts—each a tomb for forgotten desires.

Jack: “You think there’s a cure?”

Jeeny: “For illness? Yes. For emptiness? Maybe not. But there’s understanding. And that’s something.”

Jack: “Understanding doesn’t fill the void.”

Jeeny: “No. But it stops you from feeding it junk.”

Host: Outside, lightning flashed—a brief, pure white that illuminated everything for a fraction of a second: the mannequins, the receipts, the two of them standing between consumption and clarity.

Jack: “Maybe that’s what Behrman was doing. Not confessing to guilt, but naming the ghost. Once you name it, it loses some of its power.”

Jeeny: “Yes. That’s the beginning of healing—naming the hunger that’s been controlling you.”

Host: Jeeny picked up the paper bag she’d set down earlier and opened it. Inside, a single item: a small, cheap notebook. She smiled softly, almost to herself.

Jeeny: “Sometimes the cure for excess is simplicity.”

Jack: “And sometimes simplicity is the hardest thing to buy.”

Host: The camera would slowly pull back now, rising through the atrium of the dark mall—past the escalators, the skylight streaked with rain, the hollow temples of desire standing silent under the storm.

Host: And as the shot faded into black, Andy Behrman’s confession would echo through the silence—not as shame, but as revelation:

That illness can wear the mask of desire,
that generosity can hide desperation,
and that beneath every frenzy of want,
there lives a soul trying to feel whole—
mistaking the weight of things
for the warmth of meaning.

And yet, even in that confession,
there is a kind of fragile grace—
the first step away from madness,
and toward understanding.