I love Lou Reed’s music so much, but not a single writer I know who met him had a good word to say about the late rocker. “Asshole” was the most common descriptor. Not that he did anything awful; he was just a mean punk looking to put his unhappiness somewhere. 

The reason usually given for Reed’s aggressively surly demeanor was that he had been administered electroshock therapy as a teen. As Reed is set to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, his sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, explains in a Cuepoint piece the backstory of her family’s tortured decision to allow for the crude treatment. It was a very different time medically, with parents, especially mothers, often blamed and hectored for things not their fault, and traumatic “cures” conducted. An excerpt:

My parents were like lambs being led to the slaughter — confused, terrified, and conditioned to follow the advice of doctors. They never even got a second opinion. Told by doctors that they were to blame and that their son suffered from severe mental illness, they thought they had no choice.

I assume that Lou could not have been in any shape to really understand the treatment or the side effects. It may well be that he was fearful that he would be committed to a psychiatric hospital and not allowed to remain home if he did not agree to the treatment. Thus, informed consent from him would have been obtained in a rather questionable fashion.

Was he suicidal? Impaired by drugs? Schizophrenic? Or a victim of psychiatric incompetence and misdiagnosis? Certainly no one was talking about the impact of depression, anxiety, self-medication with illegal drugs, and what all that could do to a developing teenage brain. Nor was there any family therapy, involving us in understanding him and his needs.

My father was attempting to solve a situation that was beyond him, but it came from a deep love for Lou. My mother was terrified and certain of her own implicit guilt since they had told her this was due to her poor mothering. Each of us suffered the loss of our dear sweet Lou in our own private hell, unhelped and undercut by the medical profession. The advent of family therapy unfortunately was not yet available to us. We were captured in a moment in time.

It has been suggested by some authors that ECT was approved by my parents because Lou had confessed to homosexual urges. How simplistic. He was depressed, weird, anxious, and avoidant. My parents were many things, but homophobic they were not. In fact, they were blazing liberals. They were caught in a bewildering web of guilt, fear, and poor psychiatric care. Did they make a mistake in not challenging the doctor’s recommendation for ECT? Absolutely. I have no doubt they regretted it until the day they died. But the family secret continued. We absolutely never spoke about the treatments, then or ever.

Our family was torn apart the day they began those wretched treatments.•