I Was Addicted to Hair Transplant Consultations

I would never have confessed to another man what I was going through. But by sheer virtue of being in the same room together, we’d disclosed something to each other; silent brothers in the same lonely war. Among them, I felt normal and lucid. It was the closest thing I had to a support group. Sitting on a heinous mustard-yellow sofa beneath a framed Lichtenstein knockoff, tapping my foot in time with the middle-aged man with a horseshoe hairline reading a magazine, I felt held.

The staff at hair transplant clinics is usually great too. Though almost always helmed by a man, these offices often employ beautiful women as receptionists and assistants. My first consultation in Dallas introduced me to a Russian woman in a white lab coat who sat me down in a chair, grabbed a fat marker, and drew a line that cleaved my forehead roughly in half. Such hairlines do naturally occur, though most typically in chimpanzees. She held up a mirror. “Is this what you want?” she asked.

“No?” I guessed.

“Yet you ask it!”

I was dismissed. How marvelous, to be dismissed, to be deemed totally insane by a severe Russian woman in a lab coat! I was hooked. I set up my next free hair transplant consultation in Oklahoma City, where, again, I was told that I was fine, and also too young to be operated on, but that, if I really wanted to do something, I should get saw palmetto pills and a laser comb. I promptly used my scholarship money to do just that. The consultations might be free, but that’s only because it’s assumed that the balding individual, already racked by anxiety, will be making some big purchases.

When I got older, and started making some money, I was at last accepted for a small transplant. The doctor, who looked like a doctor in a soap opera, told me I was making a smart investment. “A little one right now, and you get to enjoy your hair for decades,” he told me. Enjoyment was not, however, what awaited me. It seemed that “hair” wasn’t the end goal of my obsession. It was the feeling of being proactive about a problem that I was after. To put the fire out would be to lose the job of managing it. Managing it kept oblivion at bay.

This went on until last summer, when my friend, Rachel, shared a screenshot of an email she’d received from a public relations firm representing EsteNove, a Turkish hair transplant clinic that had recently garnered attention for handing out procedures to American influencers like they were skin care kits. Rachel, like me, works in media and, like all my friends, was totally oblivious to my deranged history with the hair loss prevention industry. I asked her to please forward me the email.

Within the span of a couple weeks, I was working out the particulars of my trip to Istanbul in September, which included a comped flight, a stay in a nice hotel, and, of course, a small hair transplant from my donor area to the crown of my head. There was only one thing required of me in return. It was the one thing I thought I’d never do. But it was also the thing that, if I were to summon the courage to do it, would finally set me free: I had to write about it. In other words, I had to tell absolutely everyone that I was getting a hair transplant.