Agorafabulous! Dispatches from My Bedroom

She is "utterly hilarious" (NewYorkTimes.com) and "delightfully loopy" (ChicagoTribune.com). But comedian and radio host Sara Benincasa's life hasn't always been a funny joyride. Since childhood, she strugged with panic disorder, becoming by age twenty-one a "full-on obsessive, cowering, trembling agoraphobe." Terrified to leave her own apartment, she stacked empty cans and jars against the wall of her tiny studio apartment. Her fear eventually extended to everything but her bed. Afraid of even the sink, she began using cereal bowls as toilets. And always there was the siren song of the knives in the kitchen drawer, luring her to give herself over to emptiness.

As she neared the edge, friends and family, therapy and drugs intervened to help Sara build a new world from the ashes of her former life. Today, the acclaimed artist tours the world-a life inconceivable to the frightened, stick-thin young woman crouching in the dark whom she once was.