Traci Foust, author of new memoir NOWHERE NEAR NORMAL on Burke Allen show

Growing up in the 1970s with an anxiety disorder that was only later diagnosed as obsessive compulsive lent a strange, disquieting edge to San Francisco author Traci Foust's childhood, as she re-creates it in her moving memoir NOWHERE NEAR NORMAL. As a child Foust could not master the intractability of numbers, but excelled in spelling and English; she lied frequently, insisted on systematic ways of organizing her things, and had morbid concerns about safety and hygiene. Inexplicable actions, such as locking her best friend in a hot car, then running away, prompted visits to psychologists, who first diagnosed Traci as schizophrenic; later in high school she found comfort in NyQuil and antihistamines, coming gradually to the realization that the compulsions waxed and waned depending on levels of stress. Burke Allen gets an intimate look at OCD from author Traci Foust; don't miss this show!