I just read a very strange book — and I liked it. It took me about 20 minutes of reading The Patient Who Turned Into a Pig before my confusion gave way to a realization of the professional and personal frustrations that author Dr. Peter Zack, a professional psychiatrist, has to deal with in his practice.

The first story really threw me off. A man visits a psychiatrist, presumably Dr. Zack, complaining of no sexual desire because he saw his grandmother in a bra at the age of six months. I was floored, but I read on.

The other stories were similar. Dr. Zack, actually Dr. Zak in the stories (forgive my assumption that he refers to himself), has a system for dealing with his patients.

He listens to their stories as long as insurance will pay for it before cutting them short, diagnosing them with either depression or an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and then prescribes a frightening amount of medication designed to induce a zombie-like state. The stories are amusing and, well, psychotic, and just a little on the mark to what many of us probably feel in our lives.

Some of his patients have very real disorders, while others seem saner than the good doctor. Dr. Zak even finds himself joining a few of his patients on trips into their worlds.

You find yourself hoping Dr. Zak will see how lacking his pathetic life is, consisting solely of work and bills. But whenever he is in danger of enlightenment through one of his patients, he pops those pills he is so infamous for prescribing.

While blissfully reading along, there were a few stories that didn't harmonize with my impression of the book to that point, such as suicide.

One minute a guy is just as crazy and oblivious as the others you read about, and then he kills himself to save a little girl.

In case you have not already realized it, the book is not lightweight at all. It is written as a satire with a few exceptions.

People are lonely and confused with real problems. They go to a doctor asking for help. However Dr. Zak finds it almost impossible to work within the constraints of today's HMO's, so instead writes the highest paid diagnosis and a prescription.

In the last story, "Conversation," Dr. Zak decides that he and his patient should stop taking their medication. A promise that he quickly reneges when he realizes how dependent he himself is upon it — because life is scary.

Who can't relate to that?