Author: artsmuklermd

Art Smukler, MD was born and raised in Philadelphia, went to college and medical school in Pennsylvania, and completed his psychiatric training at UCLA. He is a board-certified psychiatrist, specializing in the treatment of adults with a subspecialty in adolescents. As a member of the UCLA faculty, he ran an award-winning psychotherapy conference for psychiatric residents and received the coveted “Golden Ear” award. He has published in psychiatric journals, and won the award for excellence in creative writing at The Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Now a full-time author, he applies his deep understanding of the human psyche to the motivations of his fictional characters.

TRAVEL WITH ME TO JULY 1, 1969, by Art Smukler, MD, author & psychiatrist

I sat in the Airstream, sipped my morning coffee, and savored a fresh blueberry muffin. Are wormholes real? Can we actually slip through one and go back in time? What if we could? Would I really want to go back to the moment when my psychiatric career began? That first day of my first year of residency at PGH (Philadelphia General Hospital)?

In that ancient, medical fortress, thousands of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, suicide attempts etc. got the help they needed. Now, places like PGH no longer exist. Severely ill patients wander the streets, every day another challenge to find food and a place to sleep.

Would I go back?

Yes!

Don’t close the hospitals! I’d scream. Don’t believe the politicians who promise to treat patients in a community-based mental health system! It’s a lie. All they want to do is save money! I’d scream and yell and spend a lot more time being an activist.

Also…it would really be cool to be young again. All those new adventures. Watching my children grow up. Having a chance to fix the mistakes that, in retrospect, I know I made.

Plus, I’d buy Apple, Tesla, Netflix, Google and on and on before they were really discovered.

Show me the wormhole!

On the other hand, would I be able to come back to 2022? Would I leave everyone behind?

Hmm. Maybe I need to rethink my wormhole fantasy. The whole grass-is-greener scenario could be a nightmare. While I’m screaming to not close PGH, how would I explain to myself that the place is a nightmare – dark, damp, smelly, scary? Having to be there every day, even as a doctor, wasn’t easy. It gave me the creeps.

Life can be complicated.

Maybe, I’ll just enjoy my morning coffee?

Then again, what about…

Check out THE REAL STORY, a mystery. A fun adventure with an amateur sleuth, who needs to go back into his own unconscious.

A FAVORITE EXCERPT, Art Smukler, MD, author & psychiatrist

The REAL STORY is a mystery.
Lara, my lab partner, who’s into all this Freudian hocus pocus, thinks the answer is locked up somewhere deep in my unconscious. If our lives depend on me spelunking into my unconscious, we’re in deep shit. 
How can I get into a place that, by definition, is unavailable to the conscious mind? And by the way, wasn’t Freud the guy who got himself and a bunch of his patients addicted to cocaine before he discovered it was dangerous?
The more practical answer is to get a gun, learn how to shoot the freakin’ thing, and get the hell out of the City of Brotherly Love… But then what?

If you read THE REAL STORY, a mystery, and liked it, please go to Amazon and tell your tale. Thanks! Art