With these words, Brian Frazer strikes the keynote for his quixotic quest for total wellness -- a seemingly paradoxical goal for a young man who doesn't smoke, rarely drinks and never misses an opportunity to floss.

Chronicling his relentless search for inner peace, Frazer takes readers on a hilarious guided tour of his dysfunctional childhood, marked by an extraordinary ability to contract a new disease almost every month, a disturbing obsession with bodybuilding and a veritable sampler platter of disorders of every imaginable type. Snake oils, old wives' tales and oddball remedies dispensed by charlatans quickly become mother's milk to him. While other children are playing Little League, Brian visits his first hypnotist.

As an adult, Frazer proves even more high maintenance. His forays into analysis, Kabbalah, yoga, anger management, psycho-pharmacology and puppy rearing are all attempts to achieve some sort of lasting happiness and inner peace. He discovers that almost everything works. For about five minutes.

Achingly funny, uncomfortably true and always entertaining, Hyper-chondriac abounds with an antic energy one would not expect from so sick an individual.