Susan Murphy-Milano...

LAPD Detective Chris Biller spent his days as a cop's cop, tracking down bad guys and risking his life to bring them to justice.

He worked long hours and moved up in the ranks.

But in his off-hours, he drank hard, struggling with despair and thoughts of suicide.

As he raised his family, his life was in shambles.

A panic attack in 1978 sent him to the hospital and triggered a 20-year battle with depression.

"It would get so bad, I would put a loaded .45 ... on the bedstand, with the barrel facing my face. I would stare down the barrel until I could visualize the bullet leaving the barrel and entering my head.

"The thought would scare me so much, I would snap my thoughts back to reality."

After years of therapy with department psychologists, Biller retired in 1991 with a better understanding of the factors that had fueled his emotional hell.

"Your brain is like a sponge. It takes stress, you wring it out; it fills up with stress, you wring it out. What happens to a sponge after so many wring-outs is it can't absorb water anymore. So what happens? All this stress goes into your system."

But at the time, his problems went largely undetected by supervisors and colleagues who said they admired him as a high-strung but tough and dedicated cop.

A brutal childhood growing up in downtown hotels, foster homes and with relatives overseas had convinced Biller that he wanted to stand on the right side of the law.

"Going to movies in downtown Los Angeles, that's where I learned my morals - the good guys and the bad guys. I made up my mind I didn't want to be a bad guy in life. I didn't want to be like my father."

Dyslexic and largely self-taught, Biller was accepted into the Police Academy after he was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1960.

"At the time, the Police Department wanted guys who were streetwise. Because of my aggressiveness and ability to control my temper, they liked me."

Increasingly unhappy in his marriage, he found salvation in the demands of being an officer.

"I was driving up Mulholland Drive and looking down at my uniform and badge, and I said to myself, `You made it. Your dream came true. You always wanted to be a policeman.' I thought I'd died and gone to heaven."

But during the 1965 Watts riots, Biller broke down in tears as a crowd of protesters threw bottles and rocks at his patrol car.

"That was the first time I broke. ... It was anger. It was an accumulation thing. They were trying to kill us and harm us when we were down there trying to protect their property.

"From that day on, it left a bad taste in my mouth."

By age 29, Biller was an angry cop - a mix of rage and risk-taking that made for aggressive policing. He violated Los Angeles Police Department policy that prohibits officers from shooting at unarmed fleeing felons and was suspended without pay.

"I was classified as an animal by my deputy chief. ... I had personnel complaints. I started having pains in my chest, but they couldn't find anything wrong. They were just anxiety pangs, but I didn't know what it was at the time."

A year later, he caught the eye of a lieutenant who asked him to join a busy station.

"They taught me to drink. I was drunk by 1 p.m. It caused a lot of emotional problems. But it was the culture."

Biller said he stopped drinking abruptly when he began to have suicidal thoughts amid domestic turmoil and while he was investigating the shooting of an elderly man.

"That's about the time `M*A*S*H' came out, and I was afraid to go see it. I was afraid I was going to kill myself. I knew I needed some psychiatric help because I knew this wasn't me."

Biller got help from a police psychologist, who taught him how to get through the emotional crises: "Thoughts are just thoughts. You can think about things, but the important thing is don't act on them. These are self-punishing thoughts. What do you have to punish yourself for?"

Going through a divorce and working nearly round the clock, Biller said suicidal thoughts abated but other warning signs remained.

"I was working two jobs and I'd get off morning watch to go home. I would stop at a liquor store and buy a pint of vodka and pour it into orange juice and drink it and put myself to sleep."

He went back to a department psychologist who said his continuing panic attacks stemmed from obsessive thoughts - like a phonograph needle stuck in a scratched album track.

In the fall of 1986, during a Saturday shopping trip with his wife, he found himself crying for no apparent reason.

With the support of his wife and more therapy, he got his life back on track, and finally retired on a Monday in 1991. Biller said he kept going into work until the following Friday, when a supervisor reminded him he was supposed to be at home.

Biller said he hopes his story encourages young officers to seek help if they need it.

"You know what painful is? Waking up and looking up at God and saying, `When is it going to end?' This is why I told you, `Policemen kill themselves. They don't kill other people ... they kill themselves."' Los Angeles, CA