David's Inferno

Excerpts Published in The Commons

2011-11-27T13:55:00.000-05:00

The editors of our local, independent, alternative weekly recently asked if they could use excerpts from this blog for an article. I, of course, couldn't help myself and did a little editing, but they did a great job of extracting pieces that are particularly appropriate for this time of year. You can see it at http://www.commonsnews.org/site/site04/story.php?articleno=4371&page=1

Note: The typographic eccentricities in their online headlines are troublesome to their tech folk but wonderfully appropriate for my content…

www.davidblistein.com

2011-10-24T10:01:00.001-04:00

You can now follow up on the progress of David's Inferno and my other work by logging onto www.davidblistein.com. I still plan to turn this blog into a book. In fact, it's next in line. It's just that you never know who's going to cut in front next. Will update my progress on that book on this blog until I get everything combined on the new one. Thanks for reading! (P.S. The meds are still working…that's the most important thing, right?)

2011-01-04T08:34:00.000-05:00

Submissions Wanted.
One of my goals in writing this blog is to talk about how complementary medicine has played an important role in my continuum of care. Or, to put it in more human terms: how other stuff got me through it and continue to help me today.
      As I begin to write a book based, in part, on this blog, I would love to hear from acupuncturists, homeopaths, cranial sacral workers, massage therapists, nutritionists, herbalists, etc.—even astrologers and psychics—any practitioner willing to share their own perspectives on and approaches to treating depression.
   One of the premises of these disciplines is, of course, that it is important to treat the whole person, not just a symptom.
     Still, I think it would be helpful for people to have a general idea of how different "modalities" approach depression. I'm looking for brief essays (±250 words). Naturally, you'd have final approval of content and attribution, if I include your essay in the book.
     My address—for submissions and/or questions—is davidblistein@gmail.com.
     Please feel free to forward this to practitioners you think might be interested in contributing.

2010-12-16T08:39:00.004-05:00

"The Truth Wears Off.”
The New Yorker (December 10, 2010) addresses four questions that every self-respecting gobbler of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and anti-all-kinds-of-other things has wondered about:
     1) Why are clinical studies such unreliable predictors of which treatment(s) will help me?
     2) Why can a drug/remedy that was perfectly effective for many years suddenly stop working?
     3) Why can that same medication have an entirely different effect when I start taking it again after stopping for a while?
     4) Why should I worry about having an erection for four hours when I can barely get up in the morning? [sic]
     While the New Yorker headline is intriguing, the question it addresses in the subhead: “Is there something wrong with the scientific method?” isn’t all that provocative. Most people know that scientists occasionally fiddle with results based on who’s paying for the research, their own assumptions, and current conventional wisdom. In fact, the author (Jonah Lehrer) does a really good job of proving that very fact—albeit anecdotally—by telling stories about experiments that follow all the rules of scientific protocol, but yield significantly different results over time.
     But the article doesn’t really address the more practical question implied by the headline: “Why does the truth ‘wear off.’”
     A while ago, I wrote about “entertaining ideas that are intriguingly unconventional.” This article reminded me of two ideas that are extremely conventional, but often seem to be overlooked when we try to answer the questions above:
     1) Humans evolve. All the time.
     2) Each one of us evolves. All the time. In fact, we're a swirling mass of energies in constant flux.
     These facts might not provide much relief for people who are currently struggling to find a drug(s) or other therapy that works, but, I hope, they might inspire some confidence that there’s something out there…or in you…or in humanity at large…that will.

2010-10-19T17:52:00.003-04:00

Powerful Positive Thinkers Getting You Down?
It’s time for me to stop writing this blog. Indefinitely, if not longer. There are a few reasons:

My goal was to collect my thoughts about clinical depression so I could eventually write my poor-man’s version of William Styron’s Darkness Visible. Clearly, I have more than enough material to get started.
I also wanted to track my major depressive episode from a perspective four years later. Which means I’ve arrived at Fall/Winter ‘06/’07—the period when it got way darker before the dawn. I don’t particularly feel like looking at that material right now. And there’s no need to subject anyone else to it either. I’ll get to it eventually.
I’ve been focusing more on my other blog (www.davidblistein.tumbler.com), in which I write about all kinds of other, way-less-depressing topics.
I want to begin gathering information on how holistic/complementary/alternative practitioners view and treat depression.

But the other day I stumbled upon several web pages with quotes about happiness…and I kept stumbling…until I realized there was at least one more post I had to write:

* * * * * * * *

People have been writing about happiness for a long time:

When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse. - Sophocles

Some of the quotes are just good one-liners:

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. - Colette

Others have a kind of crazy contrarian wisdom…

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination. - Mark Twain

I found some elegant metaphors:

The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. - J.D. Salinger

Quite a few argue it is futile it is to look for happiness outside oneself…

A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

Many talk about how happiness can come from making other people happy:

Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Buddha

Others offer simple but profound truisms:

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. - Anne Frank

* * * * *

All these insights make sense to me; both the "me" who’s known manic depression and the one who’s known enthusiastic joy.
But I kept coming across other quotes—mostly from the literature of classic spirituality and/or modern self-help—that suggest our happiness depends only on our ability to manage our own hearts and minds.

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life. - Leo Buscaglia

Learn to be calm and you will always be happy. - Paramhansa Yogananda

The happiest and most vital people are those who have goals. - Dr. Joyce Brothers

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be. - Taisen Deshimaru

It's impossible to be unhappy and feel fully present in the moment. - Eckhart Tolle

If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy. - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

When every single thing you do aligns with your values, you will be among the happiest people on this earth. - Peter Thomas

I’ve spent a lot of time in spiritual and even New Age circles, and I have a lot of respect for these people and what they say. But, frankly, these claims simply were not true when I was clinically depressed.
     I understand that many, if not most, of these writers would add the caveat that they are not talking to or about people who are clinically depressed. But, caveat or no, they can make a depressive want to cover his/her head in shame. Because these quotes illustrate how, despite the ongoing efforts by professionals and just plain folk to explain why depression deserves the “status” of an illness, the seriously mentally ill are still often given the overt or subliminal message that they should be able to pull themselves up by their synaptic bootstraps.
    The fact is that the clinically depressed often do not even have the capacity to think positively or be calm or even choose life. As for the ability to feel fully in the moment, believe me, they've been there and it ain't a real happy place.
     The very best I could do during that time was to repeat positive affirmations as a kind of prayer. One that, you could say eventually came true, although certainly thanks to "treatments" besides prayer. But, at the time, they made me feel only the more helpless.
     So if you suggest a depressive think positively, please do it gently. Because, from my perspective, to say things like this to someone in real mental pain can feel more cruel than helpful.

Asking a depressive to look on the bright side is like asking someone who’s color blind to see red. - Me

The quotes above came from various websites:
http://www.about-personal-growth.com/quotes-on-happiness.html
http://www.quotegarden.com/happiness.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotations/happiness/
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/topics/happiness/
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4493.Eckhart_Tolle
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/about.html

2010-09-23T19:22:00.001-04:00

Seasonal Affective Disorder.
No self-respecting book about depression would be complete without a discussion of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
     Like all things diagnostic in the world of mental illness, the phrase is a vague stab in the dark at a disorder that manifests in all kinds of ways, and for which there are many not-too-reliable treatments.
     If you suspect you have this disorder, you definitely shouldn't start taking 20 mg of Celexa and call your psychiatrist next spring—although that might help. Nor can you simply start working under bright full-spectrum lights—although that does seem to help a lot of people, if Nor can you simply spend all winter in Costa Rica…although, that does sound like kind of a good idea.
     While the disorder can kind of sneak up on you, I had one specific experience each year (long before I was taking meds) that assured me it was going to be a long sad winter. I'd be on my daily commute—a beautiful 20-mile ride. One October morning, I’d round the corner at the top of the highest hill and be overwhelmed by the sight of breathtaking fall foliage, a crystal-clear view of Mount Monadnock, and a sinking feeling in my stomach.
     While I’ve always believed that my major agitated depressive episode in October 2006 was a non-accident just waiting to happen, the change of seasons probably helped get it off to a flying start.
* * * * * * * *
The fact that Seasonal Affective Disorder has come out of the closet illness-wise is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, more people feel comfortable asking for help, instead of listening to people who say they'll “just snap out of it.” (Although, they may.) On the other hand, a few down days might cause someone with a mild case to become anxious…which can be depressing…which can cause anxiety…
     With the notable exception of a friend who keeps telling me how much he loves November, a lot of people seem less perky during the winter. Some acknowledge it. Some suffer quietly. For some, it is a pattern that they have learned to recognize and deal with by getting outside more, working out more, taking more vitamins, and/or intentionally thinking positive thoughts. For others, it’s something new; maybe based on changing hormones or life circumstances. In which case it can be kind of scary.
     For those of us who are already medicating, the first line of defense may be simply upping the dose. I did that a year ago with one of my meds, on the recommendation of my doctor, figuring I’d be able to go back down in the spring. Around May, I stared slowly trying to do just that. But at the first shadow, I quickly scurried back to my full dose. It just wasn't worth the risk.
     Don't take my advice—seriously—but I'd try a lot of other things before medications if I "just" had seasonal depression. I know that some people are able to take antidepressants for short periods to get through a difficult time and then go off. But from my perspective, once you start, you have to be at least prepared for a possibly long ride. For the simple reason that going on and off is so dicey.
* * * * * * * *
While I subscribe, at least in part, to the chemical theory of depression, I like the idea that our real seasonal disorder is the fact that we try trying to be as productive through the winter months as we are during the spring and summer. Bears are smarter than the average human. As are Eskimos who definitely scale back their fishing and hunting in winter. To my eye, they do look kind of grumpy, but I’m pretty sure that’s just racial prejudice and projection.

NOTES:
1. I don’t like the acronym SAD because if you got it, you feel a whole lot worse than sad.
2. There are also people who get depressed in Spring, although their symptoms tend more towards the manic. (BTW: Others have already made the March Madness jokes.)
3. For more about Inuit and Pskov peasant winter habits, check out my favorite citation of all time… http://chestofbooks.com/health/natural-cure/The-Hygienic-System-Fasting-and-Sun-Bathing/Hibernation-In-Man.html.
4. Speaking of which, I know Inuit is a more appropriate term, but are also Yupik peoples in various far northern regions who sleep a lot in winter and don’t like being called Inuits. Because they’re not.

2010-09-16T17:56:00.003-04:00

Oy vey...The Hangman. My therapeutic calendar for May-Sept 2006 demonstrates an unwavering commitment to restoring my mental health and/or indiscriminate flailing. I’ve interspersed notes from the time—primarily from e-mails. It's not exactly pleasant reading but, in retrospect, the swings between despair and hopefulness is kind of poignant. I always felt that real relief was just around the corner.

Summer 2006

May 3: Cranial Sacral; Homeopath

May 4: Horrible early morning. Surprisingly hopeful mid-morning. The rain, which has been going on for two weeks continues. After a while, you develop a great facility to function in the world while in the throes of a depressive episode. But it’s a strain.

May 6th: We've had a wonderful spring and I'm coming around.

May 11: Acupuncturist

May 19: We're coming to the end of 2 weeks of rain here…not the best kind of weather for a guy who needs bright sunlight…but just took a new homeopathic constitutional and have seen some positive signs (in between the "wailing moaning and gnashing of teeth")

May 31: I'm a few more homeopathic remedies from throwing myself back at the mercy of western meds!

June 1: Whenever I emerge…and I write this having just returned from a walk during which I caught a few brief glimpses of my full self, engaged, and enthusiastic again…the first thing I want to do is reach out…call people…interact.

June 2: Massage (Rolfing)

June 2: A couple of days ago I took a bunch of magnesium and it really calmed the flutter in my throat chakra, and for the next 24 hours I thought the homeopathic remedy was really coming up and working. I had my energy and enthusiasm back for all kinds of different projects and ideas. But the next day and now…after 2 days of rain here, my head/heart balance is all jumbled again.

June 7: Homeopath

June 9: I sort of think I bottomed out a couple of days ago. It's not so much that I really felt any different, it's just that I realized in my bones I was going to be start moving in the right direction. Maybe slowly. But the right direction.

June 10: Energy Treatment (Scoff if you will, it made me feel better…)

June 15: Cranial Sacral (I also did a therapeutic 55-mile bike ride to celebrate my 54th birthday.)

June 20th: Totally crashed the day after the cranial sacral treatment but have been improving slowly—two steps forward, and only 1 back ever since.

June 22: Cranial Sacral

July 6: Channeler

July 10: Some agitation is still there particularly in the morning, but my spirits are definitely lifted…general direction is positive.

July 14: Cranial Sacral

July 19: Homeopath

July 23: Astrologer

July 24th: Had a fabulous deep restful sleep the afternoon I took the homeopathic remedy. The next morning, however, things were the same and I moved back into the "have to exercise right away w/ drive heaves at the end" phase.

July 28: Cranial Sacral

July 31: Cranial Sacral (at 5 a.m.—we were trying to catch the demons in the act!)

August 3: Psychiatrist

August 4: Homeopath

August 5th: My stability, or lack thereof, has continued to be…uh…challenging. Both my psychiatrist and homeopath have said that this doesn’t fit the standard “pictures.” Still, I have Valium for when things get really bad.

August 18th: Well it’s been a bit of a wild ride but things have settled down. Bottom line I’m starting to have some good periods…measured sometimes in hours; once a whole day. And the bad periods seem not quite so bad.

August 27: Chaneller

September 1: Massage

September 1: I still spend most days just trying to keep on keeping one…I was thinking the other day that I’ll refer to this as my “Lost Year” and then I decided I should be positive and think of it as my “Found Year.” Or maybe just my “Lost & Found Year.”

September 6: Homeopath; Psychiatrist

September 7: I don’t want to jinx anything but today wasn’t a bad day. And that’s GOOD.

September 11: Shiatsu-Energy-Worker-Kabbalah-influenced Tarot Reader. (Really.)

September 19: [Same]

September 20: As of today, I seem to be fracturing again and will probably try to lie still and lay low (instead of doing a workshop I'd signed up for].)

September 25: This time the Shiatsu Energy Worker did a Tarot Reading which began:

"The first position is your connection to the Divine; manifestation of the Crown Chakra area. The head centers. Pituitary, pineal glands. And it’ll give us a picture of what that looks like at the moment…Oh boy…the Hangman."

September 30: Channeler

September 30: For the last 3-4 days, I've caused quite a ruckus, fortunately, for the most part, in the privacy of my own cabin. Finally, well, who knows what triggers what, but Sunday afternoon, Wendy came upon me in total extremis and took me outside, put me in my sleeping bag on the ground, and just watched over me for a couple of hours. I've been slowly, very slowly, walking back to balance ever since.

2010-08-26T11:08:00.001-04:00

"Stop Making Sense.” (Homeopathy Part I.)
In the midst of all my personal chazerai, a homeopath was trying to determine the right “constitutional” for me: a kind of magic bullet that I hoped would heal all my ills.
     Homeopathic constitutionals are not the same as the symptom-specific remedies in little bottles and tubes that we buy to deal with aching muscles, insect bites, and this year’s version of the plague, a.k.a. flu.
     The right constitutional gets so deep into the fundamental energetic causes of what ails you, that it can bring about a pretty radical transformation in your physical, mental, and/or emotional well-being.
     This isn’t as strange as it seems. In spite of all the relatively modern focus on observable and/or measurable phenomena—such as germs, cellular aberrations, heredity, and environmental factors—there’s a certain undefinable something that seems to determine how, why, and when each of us gets sick in our own individual way. An undefinable something that underlies not only those germs, etc., but even our positive or negative thoughts, our ability to love and be loved, or what we eat.

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann
Founder of Homeopathy

     Homeopaths look for that certain something.
     A lot of people walk into their offices saying that have a chronic headache, back problem, a cough that won’t stop, or manic-depression so bad they don’t know if they’re coming, going, or both. But from the homeopath’s perspective, each of these symptoms is just one of a myriad of ways that you are “presenting” what really ails you.
     He wants to know what time you wake up in the morning; if you have a history of knee problems; where you itch; if, how, and when your private parts have been working lately; and way more than you’d like to tell anybody about your sweat, snot, and bathroom habits. In fact, during the first appointment—which can last a couple of hours—you may wonder whether the guy is more psychopath than physician.
     Again, however, this isn’t as strange as it sounds. After all, a psychiatrist evaluates each individual’s symptoms to try to intuit which anti-depressive, psychotic, or anxiety medication will work. Often it takes several tries. A homeopath is, essentially, trying to do the same thing. It’s just that he's looking at a way wider set of conditions, and trying to intuit a remedy whose effect, if any, is more all-pervasive and can’t be explained by any current scientific model.
     In any event, based on one or more of these in-depth examinations, a homeopath gives you a few tiny sugar-based pills that contain an essence of some animal, vegetable, or mineral substance that’s been diluted so much that scientists often can’t find a single trace of it left in the remedy.
     And that’s when the fun begins. Or not.

2010-08-20T15:06:00.003-04:00

“I want a new drug, one that won't make me sick...one that won't make me nervous, wondering what to do."

Buspirone

I had mixed feelings about the trade name BuSpar when my psychiatrist prescribed it on August 3, 2006.
     Drug companies put a lot of effort into coming up with names. They need something with an obtuseness only a doctor could love (and prescribe). At they same time they want to give patients at least a subliminal message of encouragement.
     In retrospect, neither the name Valium nor Prozac seems to fit that bill. But they have become so much a part of the lexicon that we don’t question them anymore. The names Zoloft and Paxil are a little more calming and uplifting. Wellbutrin suggests it may actually tame the beast. And, for some reason, Cymbalta has a relaxing ring, even though the image of crashing cymbals isn’t exactly soothing.
     The name BuSpar sounded unpleasantly Germanic to me, but did imply it’d put up a good fight in what was increasingly appearing to be a losing battle.

Benzodiazepam

     Its generic name is Buspirone Hydrocholoride. It’s really an anti-anxiety drug as opposed to an antidepressant, and distinguishes itself by being an Azapirone instead of a Benzodiazepines like Valium or Lorazepam. The advantages, they say, is that Azapirones have fewer side effects, aren’t addictive, and don’t cause cognitive/memory impairment. Which is obvious from looking at the chemical drawings. Just kidding.
     From what I read, Azapirones are most effective when used in conjunction with an SSRI. In some studies, thy seemed no more effective than placebos. But I think that happens a lot with antidepressants—unless the side effects are really outrageous, the hope that “this is it,” often helps even a placebo to raise your spirits for a while.
    The half-life of Buspirone is pretty short, so I ended up taking 3x5mg/day and then 3x10mg, with brief contrarian and nerve-wracking trial of 3x15mg. I suspect my psychiatrist was trying to find a less addictive way of dealing with my anxiety than the Valium I was continuing to gobble. But by November we were slowly weaning me off it so we could try a new drug.
     I always considered myself to be a well-informed patient but, reading the literature now, I’m amazed at how little research I did back then. Although, in the midst of this kind of experience, it’s hard to know whether a little knowledge is a good or dangerous thing.

2010-08-04T08:20:00.007-04:00

August 4, 2006…four years ago today.
From an e-mail to a friend...

A Homeopathic

"My stability, or lack thereof, continues to be…uh…challenging. But I actually feel like all the pieces are coming together. In one way or another, my psychiatrist, astrologer, psychic, homeopath, and inner self are all now saying the same thing.
"Both the psychiatrist and homeopath have admitted that this doesn't fit the 'standard pictures,'—which, although that clearly complicates the cure, gives me a perverse pleasure. In any event, I have a homeopathic remedy that seems to work, although it doesn't 'hold' very long; Valium for early in the morning and other times things get really bad; and a prescription for a new anti-anxiety/anti-depressant to take if the days start getting shorter before I start getting better. *

Buspirone 5mg

"All the non-physical types say it's coming to an end. Not too much longer…a few more months of ups and downs to go. From the astrologer's point of view, December is the end of a ±two-year Pluto opposition over my Venus then Rising then Sun. (You know me, I'll believe anything, as long as it makes for a good story.)
"So I write a little, bike a lot, work in the woods, and start other little projects. Rest when I can. I think of it as being on 'sabbatical' or 'temporary disability.' Too bad I'm not working, they'd probably pay me big bucks to be this screwed up. But just learning how to try not to accomplish something every minute is a lesson, no? As a friend said, 'When this is over, you'll probably say you hope you never have to go through that again, but if that's what it took to get you where you are now, you'll think it was all worth it.'" **

Valium 5 mg

* I had finally gone back to the psychiatrist the day before, and he gave me a prescription for a drug called Buspirone and (90 more Valium (Diazepam)—a treasure drove of soporific bliss. I have his notes, but am still working on my doctor-scrawl translation. But the days must have gotten shorter real fast that year because I started the Buspirone right away.
** Remarkably, he was right.

2010-07-31T11:29:00.029-04:00

http://news.health.com/2010/04/13/

If antidepressants cause suicide does that mean chemotherapy causes cancer deaths?
Extensive studies have been done on whether antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. And the subsequent headlines, like those based on many such studies, have generated a whole lot more fear than hope.
      The fact is that, just as chemotherapy can make some patients feel worse and, ultimately, even shorten their lives, so antidepressants can make some patients feel worse and, sadly, trigger suicidal thoughts.
      These are strong drugs. But the underlying diseases are pretty virulent to begin with—which makes the attempt to draw direct causes-and-effects seem a bit simplistic. Still, the same people who see trying chemotherapy as brave (which it is!), even while accepting that it may 'hasten' death, may consider taking antidepressants indulgent or foolhardy because it can "cause" death.
      Suicide is such a taboo topic, I always hesitate to bring it up. Which is probably the reason this post took me much longer to write than any to date.
      I accept that psychiatric medications are over-prescribed in the sense that less aggressive treatments might help many patients, especially children and adolescents, feel and function better. I also accept that it’s important for patients to understand statistical risks.
     Still, while the link between taking antidepressants and suicidal thoughts is somewhat tenuous, the link between hopelessness and suicide isn’t.
     So to imply that medications “cause” suicide or simply do not work, seems like a disservice to all of those who are or might be helped by them. And even a disservice to the unique individuality of those who, having tried everything, ultimately feel there’s simply no more hope.

2010-07-24T04:34:00.004-04:00

Pluto oppositions. 
By July 23, 2006, “How long is this going to last, oh Lord?” had tied, “What’s should I try next, oh Lord?” and was threatening to overtake, “If you got something to say, why don’t you say it, oh Lord?" in my list of top 10 existential questions. Which, from a theological point of view, represented at least some kind of progress for a lapsed Jew. So, when someone suggested I visit her favorite astrologer, I was more than happy to do so.
     I like serious astrologers. As much for their descriptive as predictive powers—both of which have little relation to the mass-produced newspaper, magazine, and short-form web variety.
     In other words, I’m not talking about the, “your partner has different ideas how to spend money,” kind of description. (Even I know that.) I’m talking: “Pluto coming opposite your ascendant moving into your descendant…it’s kind of like a death and rebirth. And all you can do is surrender and align with the meaning.”
    In terms of therapeutic rephrasing, I’ll take that kind of talk any day over: “What I hear you saying…” I know what you heard me saying. I just heard me saying it. But I never heard me saying that my problems were caused by Pluto. I thought the fault, dear Brutus, probably lay in myself, not the stars.
     Besides, it did feel like a death and rebirth. And, since I was constantly wavering between surrendering to the thing and all-out warfare, her perspective was valuable. She then explained that the purposes of this time in my life wouldn't, "always be clear at the moment. So," she continued ominously, "all your knowing is not useful here.”
     That’s tough love for someone who prides himself on being able to scale tall conundrums in a single leap of logic. Still, in some small way, it put my mind at ease. At least it wasn't going to have to take all the heat for this thing.
     But, at the time, what mattered most to me was [in short form]:

“So the thing you’re absolutely experiencing now is this Pluto transit. There it is, opposing your Venus back in September ‘05, then your rising sign and sun between October and December. It’s influencing them all last fall…this is long…and going all through December of this year. Looks like it’s moving off there…even when it comes back, it doesn’t come all the way back. So, as of the end of December, it’s moving away. Through this year, it’s going to be at its most intense. Meanwhile, Saturn is coming up to conjunct this natal Pluto from the end of August through early October, and it’s going to come back in March '07 through June '07. Then it’s gone."

While I was pretty devastated that I didn’t feel it “moving away” in December '06, by March '07 I had found the right meds. And, by June '07, it was, indeed, virtually gone.

2010-07-18T09:20:00.002-04:00

Valium.
Among my more vivid memories is the look on my (new) psychiatrist's face when I told him I was taking 30mg of Valium on my worst mornings—i.e., between ±4 a.m. and 8 a.m.—as I desperately tried to avoid facing the day.
     He managed to retain his calm, clinical tone as explained that he didn’t mind prescribing that much for someone who arrived at the hospital just one un-restrainable thrash short of a straitjacket. In that case, they usually gave an injection. Fortunately, the idea of self-injection never appealed to me, or else he would have been giving the wrong person the wrong idea at the wrong time.
    I mean it’s not like I was overdosing per se: 30mg - 40mg is, as far as I can tell, the maximum daily prescribed dose. It was probably the 4-hour dosage period of time that troubled him. And the fact that I wasn’t eating much. The Jameson or two the evening before may have also helped visions of rehab dance in his head.
      It wasn’t even like I was doing the max every night, I reassured him. Often it was as little as 5mg - 10mg. (Isn’t it interesting how we closely we read the look on our doctors’ faces when we’re trying to convince them to give us more or less of the drug he/she wants to prescribe and we do or don't want to take?)*
    But I’m getting ahead of myself—about nine months ahead of myself. Because, while reviewing my records (as doctors like to say), I see that on this very day in history, four years ago, I was prescribed 30 (5mg) Valium.
     I had somehow managed to live, if you can call it that, the previous three months on a grand total of just 40 (5mg); and the previous seven months on the same amount. Over the next four months, however, I would be prescribed 30, 90, 90, and finally 120, as if my poor psychiatrist was just throwing the stuff at me in a wild attempt to stop the madness.
    Over the same period, as I, in turn, began to throw myself back on the mercy of western medicine, I was prescribed 5mg and then 10mg of an anti-anxiety drug called Buspirone (BuSpar) and 30 of the sleeping pill Lunesta for good measure. Clearly, I was determined to lick this thing once and for all...

--------------------------
NOTES: All the italics are mine:

1. From Crazy Meds: “Unlike most anticonvulsants, benzodiazepines are mostly useless as mood stabilizers. Their addictive nature, potential for abuse just don't make their case for them. Especially when the bipolar often have an attitude of too much is not enough. That, and long-term use aggravates depression."

2. I can decipher some of the prescription but translations are welcome: "Phone _____ for renewal of diazepam [C3??] 5mg —rarely needs it but wishes to have it available. He _____ has used it sparingly. [emphasis mine]...diazepam 5mg PRNBID[???] #30 ORF [?] [??]"

3. In the interests of fairness, although I did end up eventually switching to a doctor with equally bad handwriting, the one who wrote the script above had been able to help me for years prior to this episode.

2010-07-14T20:13:00.000-04:00

FYI: I'm experimenting with a different kind of blogging on Tumblr. It's neither manic nor depressive; but, I hope, still interesting.

2010-07-12T15:18:00.023-04:00

Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Ochs, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Sid Vicious, Rory Storm, Del Shannon, Richard Farina, Keith Moon, Richard Manuel, Kurt Cobain...
I had a really good time at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when I visited there with my brother and nephew on July 7th, 2006—even though it was a rather odd choice of venues for a mentally-tentative relative...

Tentative though I may have been when I walked in the door, I was soon overwhelmed by the shameless outpouring of creativity that drew me into each acoustically-shielded exhibit. I walked out after about an hour, still gasping at the synesthetic connections that had taken me back 35 years, faster than a speeding bullet (poor choice of metaphor there.)
A childhood drawing of a flock of sheep by Jimi Hendrix—with one black lamb off to the side; a letter home to mom from Joan Baez about this guy named Bobby; Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout shirt; John Lennon’s Sgt. Pepper jacket; Grace Slick’s vest from Woodstock (be still my heart…); Neil Young’s fringe jacket (be still my brain…).
I have surprisingly few regrets from the 1960s. But, if instead of being mildly manic on that day several decades later, I’d been pleasantly stoned, any one of those holographic images would have taken me on a long, pleasant journey into some of the most intense years of my life—a time when depression was, even at its worst, a rather attractive pose…and, for a price, there was always temporary relief close at hand.

There's more to the picture

Than meets the eye.

Hey hey, my my.

Pretty good 17th b-day Jonathan, wasn't it?

2010-07-06T20:54:00.003-04:00

Post #100.
This blog was inspired by William Styron's Darkness Visible. I read that book just as I was emerging from my ±2 year period of dysphoric mania in 2007.
     One night back then, Wendy asked why I was reading that, of all books. I said: "Because I feel like I'm listening to a kindred spirit."
   It was such a relief to read someone who took a clear-eyed, literary, and—of all things—sane look at the experience. Styron captured the desperation without sounding desperate. He captured the anxiety without sounding manic. While he may have occasionally lost his sense of humor, he didn't lose his sense of irony. Bottom line: he got right inside the disease and ripped it open, so the allegedly sane could see the guts of the thing.
Even in the midst of my experience, I wanted to write about it; I wanted to understand it; I wanted it to have meaning. Because, as bad as I got, I knew that I was still a writer (husband, father, son, brother, friend) first and a depressive a distant second.
    This blog is not a cry for help. Nor is it a daily chronicle of wild emotional swings—although I do include writings from back when I had them. Nor is it an attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the disease, although I do occasionally indulge in some plain-English versions of medical jargon. It's my attempt to, like Styron, help the allegedly sane see the guts of the thing—and the clinically ill to know there is intelligent life on the other side.
   As I've said before, I'm a successfully treated depressive. Every day, I take 200 mg of a mood stabilizer called Lamotrigene and 60 mg of a basic anti-depressant called Cymbalta. Occasionally I nibble on a benzodiazepine called Klonipin (think "Valium Light"). Not only am I not currently depressed, I'm probably happier than most people reading this. If I missed a dose, it'd be OK. If I missed a couple, things would get dicey. If I went cold-turkey, I would probably break into cold sweats and my emotions would go haywire.
     Someday this will be a book, or the basis for a novel, or some kind of wild interactive web thing that hasn't been invented yet. For now, it doesn't matter. For now, I just have to write it.

2010-06-30T13:25:00.007-04:00

A footbridge. A stone walkway. A multiflora rose. A septic tank.
A labyrinth. #5 in a series of projects from 2006.

Every year, I cut a cord or so of wood to heat my cabin. Although not much wood, it still leaves behind a lot of slash, which, like any self-respecting guy with a chainsaw, I throw into half-hearted piles, hoping they'll decompose before anyone notices.

In 2005, however, a weird thing started happening: The brush began intertwining itself into orderly circles around trees. Soon—as if the elves or aliens were getting increasingly bold—the branches started wending their way around several trees and even around curves in the paths.
Clearly, as quickly as I was creating chaos out of order, Wendy was doing the opposite. At the time, the game was tied…and I was definitely rooting for her.

The first labyrinth I ever saw is one of the most famous—at Chartres Cathedral. It was the summer of '76 and I was with a group of people who were searching for enlightenment or some reasonable facsimile. We were there on the summer solstice because that's one of the few days the labyrinth isn’t covered with chairs. It’s also the day that a fairly perfect circle of sunlight falls in a certain way on a certain flagstone that’s set somewhat askew on the floor in the transept.
The labyrinth didn’t make much of an impression on me. Neither did the circle of light which, as I remember, my friends were crowded around in the hopes of seeing the face of God. Thanks to too little sleep and too much cognac, I was in a fit of manic transcendence and saw God just about everywhere. In fact, I was beginning to wish he’d leave me alone, so I could find some inconspicuous corner and take a nap. But, I digress.
In subsequent years, Wendy and I walked our share of labyrinths. Although I respected the spiritual intentions of these labyrinths, and am always up for a radical transformation, I never really got what the big deal was. Walking them just seemed like going in circles, albeit meditatively. If the rhythmic clockwise and counter-clockwise turning was doing any inner re-balancing, it was way below my coarse conscious mind.

But even I could tell that Wendy was on to something with the intertwining-branches thing. I liked the challenge of using the same low-tech approach to building a labyrinth in our woods. And, I secretly thought it might buy me enough karmic credits to help me find a way out of my Dantéan dark wood.

NOTES:
1) As you may know, a maze is designed to get people lost. A labyrinth is designed to guide people in and then out...
2) I was hoping to pass along some of the fascinating facts I've learned about Chartres over the years but, unfortunately, while surfing around to refresh my memory, I ran across http://www.labyrinthos.net/chartresfaq.html which does a pretty believable job of debunking most of them. BTW: The picture above of Chartres also comes from that site.
 

2010-06-26T19:15:00.000-04:00

A footbridge. A stone walkway. A multiflora rose. A septic tank. A labyrinth. #4 in a series of projects from 2006.

Building a footbridge from house to cabin—connecting a narrow stream but wide psychological divide—gave me hope that one day I would get to the other side.
     Setting a series of heavy stones in place, to make a walkway that didn’t quite lead where I wanted it to go, gave me pause.
     Digging down deep to get out all the roots of an allegedly invasive and definitely thorny bush, reminded me it wasn’t easy to get free—but that it was possible.
     The symbolism of having our septic tank pumped, however, simply made me smile. Still makes me smile.
     Every old house has its rituals. You learn them one by one. When to get the chimney cleaned. How to install the idiosyncratic storm windows on the screened-in porch. Which pipes lead where and—most importantly—where the shutoff valves are.
     If you have a septic tank, where it is and how often to get it pumped out: typically every 2-3 years.
     I knew where our septic tank was—at least I had found a treasure-type map with obscure symbols and bad spelling. But, six years in, I still hadn’t had it pumped. And this was a good time. Because, since I wasn’t doing a helluva lot of productive things out in the world, I thought a few small victories at home might prove that there was a bright side to having a bipolar husband. Wash some windows. Clean up the basement. Match all the socks and throw the orphans away (what a nightmare…) Although I wasn’t sure that having the septic tank pumped would necessarily endear me to Wendy, I knew, by then, she appreciated any gesture at normalcy.
     This is how to get your septic pump dug: 1) Call septic tank guy. 2) Make appointment. 3) Find septic tank. 4) Dig gently until the top is exposed. Four steps that anyone old enough to pick up a phone and a shovel should be able to do easily.
     It wasn’t easy. Not for me. #1 & #2 were the hardest. Primarily, because I had to commit to being home and functional on a specific day, at a specific time, and ready to deal in a grownup way with a total stranger who was holding a rather large hose with a rather large diameter that was sucking up everything within reach.
     Having dodged the appointment bullets, I had to bite the next two: find it and dig. Frankly, I didn’t know what to expect. I went online (seriously!) I wanted to get an idea of how deep it might be…what diameter…how you actually got the top off…questions that, really, you don’t need to know to dig up a septic tank. In any event, imagine the euphoria when I finally hit pay dirt…actually pay cement. Imagine the the pride when the guy with the big hose came and I was able to show him the top, exposed for all to see. Imagine the relief when I confessed I couldn’t get the top off, and he said no problem—that was his job!—upon which he materialized a special long, hooked, iron rod that was designed specifically for this purpose. Imagine the thrill of standing there shooting the breeze, and then some, with this consummate professional; calmly asking obsessively detailed questions about sewage:
     So, how often…? What’s the deal…? What’s that for…? And, “What’s the worst…’ I’m going to spare you the answers…OK, fine, the answers are:
1) depends how many teenagers live in the house, 2) whether you’re grandfathered, 3) gray water, and 4) dental floss.
     Finally, imagine the charmingly twisted symbolic logic of watching his truck drive away, and being convinced that I was, in some way, cleansed; relieved of a huge burden.
     We look for hope wherever we can find it. And leave no stone unturned.

2010-06-24T08:59:00.003-04:00

A footbridge. A stone walkway. A multiflora rose. A septic tank. A labyrinth.
#3 in a series of projects from 2006. The symbolism borders on the banal, but reminds me, in an oddly fond way, what it was like. 

From my perspective, humans are the only truly invasive species. After all, an “invasive” is described as a "non-native species whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic harm, environmental harm, or harm to human health. These species grow and reproduce rapidly, causing major disturbance to the areas in which they are present." ‘Nuff said.
     One of the more common invasives around here is the Multiflora Rose—a beautiful, fragrant vine, full with tiny rose flowers. It can overwhelm just about any tree or bush it gets its prickery vines around. I didn’t really get what the big deal was about until one day I biked past a neglected orchard which had Multiflora growing in one mass all the way up its hillside. Still, it’s not quarantined in Vermont. Just on the watch list. Which I wasn't very surprised to learn since Dwight Miller, the late great patriarch of the orchards that surround us, used to watch it all the time. And, in his ADHD way, try to control it using a combination of his beloved “Brush Hog,” Yankee wit, and, if all else failed, benign neglect.
     We had one major Multiflora Rose on our property. It enveloped a tree that, at the time, I thought was a young multi-trunked black birch. I felt kinda guilty about letting the vine keep growing where it could provide berries for birds who were more than happy to plant the seeds in the neighboring orchard. In 2006, “kinda guilty” meant "kinda tragic obsession."
     After consulting with Dwight, I learned that the vine propogated through its roots as well as seeds. So I couldn’t just cut the thing down, I had to dig up the roots—which were busy underground doing the same thing as the vines were doing up above.
     I started by pulling away all the vines I could without ripping my arms to shreds. Then, I went at the thing with a shovel and pick axe, following the distinctive roots—inside they’re a bright mustardy color—until I was confident I had removed every single trace of this “unwanted” plant that had invaded our personal piece of paradise. I don’t remember how long it took. In my memory, it was days, weeks, months. So it must have at least been a few hours.
     Eventually, I was done. Having spent all that time sweating mentally and figuratively over a project that really could have been ignored—or taken care of with a chain saw (and a brief yearly follow-up) in less than a minute.
I’ve always been good—some might say too good—at identifying with plants, animals, and inanimate objects. In any event, looking at that multi-trunked tree, freed at last from its crown of thorns, gave me a feeling bordering on freedom…release. I hadn't felt that way in a long time.
     Turns out that the tree I liberated is a Japanese Bayberry, which is also considered an invasive. But, I don’t worry so much things like that anymore…even though it sure seems like there are a lot of berries on the thing. Every year, a few small seedlings appear in the middle of a cluster of ferns 100 yards away. I just dig them up before they get out of hand.

2010-06-19T20:56:00.007-04:00

A footbridge. A stone walkway. A multiflora rose. A septic tank. A labyrinth.
The stepping stones from the house to my cabin don’t lead directly to the cabin. And they're more than a step across—unless you take giant steps.
     For many years, I didn’t understand why Wendy told me to put them like that. Particularly in the Spring when I often had to hop-step to avoid the saturated ground. Many muddy shoes and vaguely annoyed thoughts later, I finally saw what she saw: that while nature doesn’t really abhor a vacuum, it is slightly baffled by straight lines. And, although it's bemused by human dreams of creating order out of chaos, it can't help but follow its own mysterious, but decidedly non-linear, logic.
     The symbolism did not, and does not, escape me.
     The stones came from various places on our property. I even copped a few from a tumble-down stonewall out back. Which they're considering making a crime around here. But I figured a few from our own land would be forgiven by the Gods and, hopefully, the neighbor whose border we share.

     Unlike the borderline-boulder that became my front step, these stones were all in my weight class. As long as I kept my knees bent and back straight, I could lift them high enough to rest on my thighs and then leverage-pivot them onto the cart.
     Compared to most hole-digging, going down 6” to plant a paving stone is pretty easy:
     Put stone in place. Outline the ground with spade. Set aside rock. Remove sod. Dig/scrape soil until hole vaguely mirrors contour of the rock. Place rock in hole. Rotate back and forth a little. Try to convince yourself it’s perfect. Realize it’s a little high or low, here or there. Remove rock. Repeat. Repeat. After 15-30 minutes, surrender and move on.
     It sounds simple. And it was, physically. But to my mind it was high drama:
     Decide exactly where to put the stone. Eyeball the depth exactly on the first try. Debate with self whether it looks exactly right—i.e., like it had risen gently out of the ground after the last glacier and is getting ready to settle comfortably back in place until the next one. And, most importantly, worry about what Wendy, friends, neighbors, and casual walkers-by would think. Would I be exposed for the incompetent hole-digger and stone-paver that, clearly, I was? Would I spend the rest of my life in a Sisyphian struggle to get them just right?
     One of the (many) reasons I politely declined when my psychiatrist suggested I check myself into a hospital, is that I couldn’t imagine being confined to corridors. Since it's a very enlightened place, my therapeutic captors would undoubtedly have let me go for walks outside—maybe even do some cardio- or weight-work in a wing dedicated to a different kind of therapy. But I doubt they would have sent me out with a shovel to bake my psychosis in my own sweat.

2010-06-16T16:10:00.005-04:00

A footbridge. A stone walkway. A multiflora rose. A septic tank. A labyrinth.
What did I actually do all day during that time? Looking back, I wonder the same thing. Because, even when you feel almost human. you can’t walk away from a “major episode” of agitated depression. Wherever you go, there it is.
     Still, even though I lost 25 pounds, I did eat. Even though I feared waking up in the morning, I did sleep. Even though I lost most of my interest in sports, I did watch some. Even though I wasn't all that functional, I did work a couple of days a week. And, even though they were primarily monosyllabic, words did come out of my mouth.
     I even did some writing. Some of which wasn’t all that bad, although clearly lacking in life, like a plant that only thrives in full sun.
     I also started projects I was unable to finish: washing every window in sight; cleaning up the basement; going through boxes of memorabilia. All remained half done. (Most still are!)
     There were, however, a few projects that I did finish. Projects so rife with symbolism that it borders on the banal. But projects that remind me, in an oddly fond way, what it was like.

A footbridge. We have a seasonal stream—about 8’ across, that runs between the house and my cabin. Shortly after we moved in, I built a platform bridge to cross it—just 2 x 4's nailed onto 6 x 6’s. Sometimes, during the spring thaw, it rained so hard I’d have to clear the leaves and gravel that were damming the upstream side. The rest of the year, it did just fine on its own.
     One day in Spring 2006, however, the rains were so strong, the waters actually lifted up the bridge and deposited it 10’ away on the lawn. So I decided I needed to build a small arched bridge.
     I thought about this bridge a lot. Actually, I obsessed about this bridge. As I drove around or went on bike rides, I’d look at other small arched footbridges. I studied pictures in books. I measured the span several times a week, and kept forgetting the number and/or where I’d written it down. I settled on a width and then realized it wouldn’t be wide enough for my lawn tractor. I decided to put in railings and then realized that the lawn tractor cart might occasionally be loaded with sprawling saplings and brush, and the railing would get in the way.
     Occasionally, I’d try to reason with myself: “Dave, calm down, it’s just a little footbridge.” But the other voices in my head refused to listen. Eventually, through some extraordinary engineering insight (i.e., I found some graph paper), I realized that if I bought three rough-cut 2 x 12's that were 8’ long—no, better do 10’; no 8’ will be fine; 10’ to be safe—I could cut arcs in the tops and bottom, nail down some planking, and be done with it.
     But where should I get the 2 x 12's? And, if I went up to 10’ how would I transport them? Would I need to dunk them in a high-powered preservative? Was there something less toxic to use? What about the arc?—it looked good on graph paper, but what would it be like to walk across? Most, importantly, how the hell was I going to layout and then cut arcs in 2 x 12's?
     I could go on and on, of course. But I’ll put us both out of my misery. Eventually:
     1. A friend not only knew where to get the 2 x 12's, but convinced me my bridge would last a long time even if I didn’t use preservative. Of course, it took two weeks before we found a time that worked for both of us and the guy with the little sawmill. But, eventually I drove the boards to my house—sticking out of the passenger-side window with red flags on the ends, like hostages trying to get the attention of passing cars.
     2. I figured out how to mark the curve. I laid the 2 x 12's against one wall in the basement, put a nail in the floor on the opposite side, tied a long string to the nail, and attached a pencil at the other end. After fiddling with the length of the string a bit, I was able to draw roughly similar arcs on all three boards.
     3. I found someone who believed that someone as unstable as me could still be trusted with his Sawzall.
     4. I bought brand new ripping blades.
     5. I cut the arcs—which, while not easy, was enhanced by my demonic mood.
     6. I got the first friend over to help me prop up the three 2 x 12’s, as I laid a few 2 x 4's on top to hold them steady.
     7. Then I nailed the rest of the 2 x 4's down. And only bent a few nails in the process. Although, I did end up a couple of 2 x 4's short, of course…
     8. As you can almost tell by the picture, the new location meant I'd have to move the large stones I'd put in the ground leading up to and away from the bridge. But that's another story.

I walk across that bridge almost every day. From where I live to where I write. And back. Over the last few years, the water, as is its nature, has started eroding the banks below the ends of the bridge. So, a few weeks ago, I reinforced that area with heavy rocks. I still need to put some flat rocks under the ends of the bridge. Then, at last, it should be stable.

2010-06-12T06:10:00.007-04:00

Friends.
These excerpts are all from e-mails written in May, 2006:

From a friend who had driven by and seen me on a street corner:

So amazing…through the rain I see…that’s david....from the distance of the road you seemed somehow one step removed from this world…here yes…but…stay here, david...there are more adventures!!!!

From my idiosyncratically shamanistic friend in New Mexico.

No more "breakdowns".... for either of us—or energy that wraps around one's heart and fucks you up. I've died for the cause before and no more.... no need. I find a lot of it comes down to loving myself. Hope your wailing and moaning is swept away with the rain.

From a friend living in Europe :

I have a favor to ask. I am in Sicily and don't plan to come back until August. I need a shrink in the States who will write me a prescription. The last doctor I had in NY was impossible.
Your psychiatrist was the first person to prescribe medication for me, but I don't know if he'll remember me—it was almost ten years ago. Do you think you might be able to call him to see if he is willing to talk to me? It is impossible to get anything for ADD in Italy because they don't believe in it…

From one of the funniest people on the planet whom my wife and I have known for a long time. Maybe too long:

And as for nervous breakdowns...dude, you’ve been living with her for umpteen years. There’s no mystery here. You’re in line for the frickin’ Distinguished Service Cross. If I was you I would have downed a quart of Liquid Plumber years ago and been done with it.

From my anything-but-depressed friend in California.

My daughter is bouncing back and forth with the same thing. She was doing well on her homeopathic supplements, but then went into the deep, dark, well that she sinks into now and then. She cries, she can't do anything, be anything, etc. She snaps out of it eventually, but it's hard to watch her be so despondent and lacking hope. And I'm sure it's hard for her to have Pollyanna for a mother, too.
I hope this doesn't sound cruel, but I often think she needs other people's energy to get by. Do you ever find that to be true? She won't do western meds AT ALL.

From me, responding to the above….

When you're deep into depression, the very idea of having to "socialize" can be excruciating…and yet, at times, it can be particularly soothing, particularly if it's with people who understand and are sympathetic to your condition. Otherwise, you spend the day maintaining two personas…an external one who relates more or less functionally with others. and an internal one who feels like it wants to scream, curl up in a ball, break down and cry, whatever.
I know that when I emerge…and I write this having just returned from a walk during which I caught a few brief glimpses of my full self, engaged and enthusiastic again…the first thing I want to do is reach out…call people…interact.
All of which is my way of saying that I feel deeply what your daughter is going through and can only wish her all the best.

2010-06-08T21:51:00.012-04:00

One morning, I realized I was running out of Lamotrigine...

I called for a refill, but, having no other excuse to go downtown, I decided to split my two doses that day (i.e., 50 mg morning and night instead of 100 mg).
The next morning, I took 100 mg because I was sure I'd get downtown. But I didn't. So, I took 50 mg that night and 50 mg the next morning. That day—I can't remember why I didn't go to the pharmacy—maybe it was snowing? In any event, I took my last 50 mg that night.

The writers of those tiny-type prescription inserts whip themselves into a frenzy about how you can break into weird rashes, send your blood pressure soaring, and/or die if you lose at medication roulette. But, at least with the antidepressants I’ve taken, they are rather la-di-da about missing one dose: don't double up, just take your next regular dose and get on with your life.
But they don’t tell you why. As I understand it, the why has a lot to do with the half-life of your medication—basically, how long it takes for half of it to leave your bloodstream.
Unlike the Strontium 90 they just found in the soil near my friendly neighborhood nuclear plant—which has a half-life of about 30 years—the half lives of most medications can be measured in minutes, hours, or days. Obviously, the longer the half life, the less problematic it is to miss one dose.

In other words, over three days, I had taken 350 of the prescribed 600 mg. If the half-life of Lamotrigine (a.k.a. Lamictal) was 30 years, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Unfortunately, it's more like a day.

While, in general, doctors encourage patients to be well-informed, I guess they think a little bit of half-life knowledge could be a dangerous thing—especially in the delusional, anxiety-ridden minds of the mentally ill. They may be right. After all, the half-life depends on a lot of factors, e.g., how much you weigh, other drugs you’re taking, and whether your kidneys and/or liver are operating at full power.

When I woke up the fourth morning, I was seriously agitated. But the pharmacy wouldn't open for a couple of hours. I took a Clonazepam, which calmed my mind a little but didn't do much for the shakes.

To my ever-curious, albeit chemically untrained mind, half-lives explain a lot. For example:

why you might be told to take one drug, say, 3x/day and another 1x/day;
why it takes a while to get up to a therapeutic dose…i.e., for all those overlapping half-lives to stabilize into a fairly steady amount in your bloodstream;
why they tell you not to double-up after missing a dose;
and why you should tell your psychiatrist everything you can about your health history and daily habits. Hey, he/she might not be pleased that you smoke, drink, and never exercise, but it's better to fess up, rather than be given the wrong amount of the wrong drug.

By the time I was in the car, my heart was racing, I was beginning to cold-sweat, and it took all my powers of persuasion to convince myself I wasn’t having a heart attack. At one point, I almost pulled over and called 911.
I got downtown and managed to feign some measure of calmness while picking up my prescription.
I started sucking on one before I was even out the door.

The half-life of Lamotrigine is particularly variable—although a day, actually ±25 hours, seems to be the accepted average for someone taking it on a regular basis. Ergo, on the day after a given dose, you have 50% of it left in your system; 25% the next; 12.5% the next, and so on. Which means that, by the time I drove to the pharmacy, I was at ___% of my regular sustained dose. (You do the math…I get really confused when I try). In any event, it wasn't a whole lot compared to what I'm used to.

I felt better almost immediately—maybe a placebo effect, although Lamotrigine is absorbed pretty quickly (reaching peak concentration in 1.4 - 4.8 hours). Most of my symptoms were gone within an hour, leaving me with that feeling of shaky relief you have after narrowly escaping a car crash.

Not only am I not a chemist or biologist or biochemist, I have never even taken a biology or chemistry class. Below you'll find some layperson’s explanations of facts I found by simply download the “Prescribing Information” on the Lamictal website. Similar information is undoubtedly available for your medication(s).
By the way, you also might want to check out the highly idiosyncratic and borderline x-rated, but very amusing, Crazy Meds. It's kind of like Hunter Thompson meets drug-blogging—which is essentially what the guy actually did in his own gonzo way. It does have a forum, and med-forums are always risky because you might hear stories about reactions, etc. related to a drug that you're using without any problem. Nevertheless, the site moderators work hard to collect a lot of good information about different meds, and put it out there in plain, irreverent English.
For more of my questionable (and irreverent) chemistry about Lamotrigine, click "Read More". It gives you an idea of what you can learn with a little research.

If, in consultation with your doctor, you decide to stop taking Lamotrigine, it's recommended that you step it down over at least two weeks. In clinical trials two people had seizures when they withdrew abruptly. People don't seem to realize how dangerous it is to stop taking an antidepressant as soon as you feel better. Not only can it send your emotions haywire but, for some reason, it can be hard to re-calibrate to the correct dosage. I.e., what worked before might not work again.
98% of the Lamotrigine is absorbed and, unlike many drugs, this is not affected by food. It also doesn't matter whether you take the chewable or swallow-able variety.
Lamotrigine is eliminated through urine. So, if you have kidney problems, the half-life could be longer.
If you’re taking valproate (Depakote), the half life of Lamotrigine is considerably longer; i.e., you need significantly less. I found this particularly interesting because, when I seguéd from Depakote to Lamotrigine, my psychiatrist gave me a special pack that dispensed exactly the correct amount to take of each over a four week period.

2010-06-04T09:52:00.002-04:00

“You have to navigate your own personal catastrophe.”*
One day, I decided to dig up a rock that had been harassing my lawn tractor for years. I approached this borderline-boulder with a long iron pry bar, pickaxe, two boards, two shovels, two hands, and equal parts determination and trepidation. Slowly, methodically, I began to work my way around it, stopping every few minutes to re-evaluate its emerging size, contour, and depth. Each time, it returned my gaze rather sheepishly. As if it would like to help but, having been stuck there for the last 10,000 years, didn’t have the slightest idea how to begin.

During May - June 2006: I saw a cranial-sacral therapist, acupuncturist, homeopath, rolfer, and one of my favorite psychics. (I also saw a dentist but he doesn’t count since, by then, my whole life was one long root canal.) This undoubtedly sounds like a study in hopeless flailing. But there was a method to this particular aspect of my madness.

Naturally, the rock was bigger and heavier than I’d imagined. A lot bigger and a lot heavier. But I kept at it, slowly working the edges, finding a ray of hope every time I was able to release one of the many smaller rocks that were wedged up against it; rocks that I could then use as fulcrums to release others. Eventually, I began to get a little wiggle room. Something the rock seemed to kind of enjoy.

People like to say there are no “magic bullets.” But we depressives—like most people with chronic illnesses—always hold out hope that some singular therapy or medication will put us out of our misery.
By that point, I was more than happy with the minor victories that these appointments offered: the hopeful anticipation; the sense of release that came from lying on a table while one of my friends—as I considered all these practitioners—surrounded me with their own particular brand of kindness; the lightness I’d feel afterwards for a few minutes, maybe hours.

Once I got some serious purchase on that rock, I started sliding boards underneath. More purchase. More leverage. More boards. Slowly—to our mutual surprise—the rock began to rise from the earth. And kept rising. Except that, every once in a while, no matter how carefully I levered and pried, it would shift slightly off one of my precarious supports and fall back into place with, seemingly, more determination than before.

Each of my therapies was helpful. The question was always how long it would "hold." Frankly, if I'd had a cranial-sacral treatments several times a day, my depression could have probably been kept at bay indefinitely. Taking pills just turned out to be a little more convenient eventually. And I knew/know full well that even they can drop out from underneath you.

It took a while—and the help of a neighbor who saw me struggling with it—but that rock is now the front step of my cabin. It does shift a little…I’ve never been able to get it perfectly steady.

* One of the more interesting pieces of advice that the psychic gave me.

2010-06-02T11:48:00.002-04:00

Western = Eastern = Alternative = Traditional = Complementary = Conventional = Holistic = Integrative.
About twenty years ago, practitioners of “alternative” medicine started referring to their practices as “complementary” because, in many cases, they saw the benefit of offering their treatments as complements rather than alternatives to traditional western medicine. But the original name is still used frequently, which leads many patients to avoid "alternatives" or, perhaps, believe in them too blindly.
     More recently, the phrases “holistic” and “integrative” have become popular—honorable attempts to acknowledge that practitioners should do everything they can to learn all about their patients and find the best combination of all possible treatments. This concept, of course, is not new. Well before Dr. Andrew Weil (who, I must admit, never seems to age), it was recommended by healers from Hippocrates to Paracelsus. And, to their credit, they didn’t complicate things further by using fancy words like “modalities,” when something far less intimidating like “mode” or even “approach” would do just fine.
     There’s a certain conceit in the claim that any practitioner could treat the whole person. We’re talking 11 systems, 22 internal organs, 206 bones, 600 muscles, 60,000 miles of arteries/veins/capillaries, 100,000 hairs (on a good day), 100 trillion cells*; plus individual combinations of genetics, lifestyles, environment, and astrological influences; plus individual mental, emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual capacities and/or experiences. Even healers who say they can see auras or energetic bodies—which presumably present a bigger picture—have to deal with an organism that’s in constant flux (e.g., 1 billion of those 100 trillion cells are replaced every hour). As I’ve said before, under the circumstances, it’s amazing that individuals can ever be cured with similar medications or “modalities.”
     Interestingly, for many years, the so-called medical establishment treated proponents of complementary medicine as second-class citizens of the healing nation. Now, the tables are frequently turned.
     Fortunately, the medical/modality fiefdoms are crumbling. Still, the generally accepted wisdom is that western medicines focus primarily on symptoms while complementary medicines are more concerned with underlying causes.
     This, too, may be an artificial distinction. If there is a mind-body connection that goes both ways, wouldn’t the same be true for the cause-symptom connection? Isn’t it possible that a pharmaceutical can get to the causes of an illness while a complementary medicine could be masking it?
I’m not trying to disparage any form of healing. On the contrary, I'm trying to address the underlying assumptions that lead some people to have feelings of failures they have when they "resort" to western medicine; as well as the dismissiveness or even scorn other patients face when they try an "unproven" complementary treatment.
     Patients, especially depressives, find enough causes for concern without worrying about whether they're doing the right thing. Rest assured that, in some way—no matter how inscrutably personal or even karmic—we all are.

* There are various estimates of these things, but I always put the most trust in children's books and websites: in this case http://www.kidskonnect.com/subject-index/31-health/337-human-body.html

2010-05-31T08:49:00.007-04:00

Mental illness & medication as a spiritual path.
Six years under a fig (bodhi) tree…forty days and nights in a desert…seven-day sesshins at a Zen Center…three-day vision quests in the middle of nowhere…weekend retreats at a monastery. These are just some of the more popular, albeit not-guaranteed, ways to attain what’s considered the pinnacle of human consciousness—whether you call it enlightenment, religious ecstasy, cosmic consciousness, or some other word that “just can’t describe it.”
     In my experience, a major episode of manic dysphoria also works pretty well. As I emerged in mid-2007, I would sit on our porch staring out at the trees, overwhelmed by the delicious sensation of just sitting on our porch staring out at the trees.
     That’s why I suggest, only partly in jest, that some kind of emotional breakdown may be a more direct path to the experience of enlightenment than beating yourself up trying to intentionally put your attention on the NOW. De gustibus.
     Many, if not most, people experience at least one helluva long dark night of the soul (as St. John of the Cross put it in the 16th Century). Whether you awaken to greater wisdom, acceptance, and/or compassion—or just go back to your ordinary life with a big sigh of relief—you'll probably agree that you've been changed, often profoundly, by the experience.
     The potential of deep depression for spiritual/personal transformation has led many people to suggest that we shouldn’t medicate away the pain…that these dark nights are part of being human—in fact among the most meaningful parts of being human.
     Whenever I read words to this effect, I wonder if the writer knows (or remembers) what major depression really feels like. It hurts. OK? It hurts.
     Nobody suggests withholding medication from people with headaches, broken legs, heart disease, or cancer, arguing that if they’d just suck it up and endure the pain, they might reach some kind of transcendent omniscience. But, for some reason, we’re worried about over-medicating depression?*
    During my 20s and 30s I spent countless hours sitting with my legs crossed, watching my breath, and trying to still my mind. I can assure you that meditation also hurts. It hurts your knees. It hurts your back. It can make you kind of crazy. But I chose to do it. And I could stop anytime. If you want to lie on a bed of nails or do 10,000 prostrations, more power to you. But if you ask me to help you up, I’m happy to do so.
     I wouldn’t be where I am today—I wouldn’t even be able to sit still long enough to write these words—unless my depression had been treated. More importantly, I had transcendent moments and profound insights before, during, and after my episode—in good times and bad, even during long existential but-not-depressed dark nights.
     Psychosis isn’t a one-way ticket to transcendent truths. In fact, all too often, it’s a one-way ticket to something far different.
     For some of us, maybe medication is the only sane response to an insane (inner or outer) world.
* I’d like to give credit where credit is due, but I can’t remember where I first read this idea.

2010-05-29T21:09:00.005-04:00

“Mental Illness Is the Only Sane Response to an Insane World.”
The British Psychologist R.D. Laing popularized this theory back in the 1960s, a time when hallucinogens made the experience of mental illness available even to those who weren’t naturally inclined.
     Like many radical insights of that time, it was a gust of fresh air that blew away a lot of old, stale perspectives. Unfortunately, it dislodged an equal amount of common sense in the process. And, like many theories that glorify mental illness, there are so many exceptions they demolish the rule.
     “Only” Laing says? As far as I’m concerned, living happily and healthily in a small Vermont town is a reasonable response. "Crazy" as it might seem, other people are quite contented working for a high-pressure, high-paying, high-tech firm. And for many, including John Burdett’s character (quoted in the previous post), you can always retreat into the safety of your friendly neighborhood monastery.
     An “insane world” he says, implying that our time is particularly bizarre. Has he forgotten the holocaust (or fall of the Roman Empire, for that matter) so soon? Besides, madness was around back during days many would consider paradisal by comparison to ours.
    “Sane response?” Are we talking suicide? Terrifying visions? Paralyzing anxiety? Excruciating depression? Incapacitating bipolar? That’s ‘nuff said, unless you’re more contrarian than even I can imagine.
    Not to get overly academic, but “sane” isn’t really the right word anyway these days. The Romans used it to mean whole, healthy or sound; i.e., sound mind in sound body. But we’ve bastardized it to serve our obsession with cleanliness: sanitize, sanitary engineers, sanitary napkins, and even the rather troubling phrase: a “sanitary” military operation (that is performed with surgical precision). Even the word sanitarium evokes images of a place where you have to wear white and get sprayed with Lysol on a regular basis.
    Still, I don’t mean to make Laing wrong. While you clearly don’t want to scratch too far below the surface of his insight, he’s right that everything we do—from one perspective—is an attempt to stay in some kind of balance with the world inside and outside of us. From that same perspective, it’s interesting to look at mental illness as a chronic inability to find that balance.
    Even ordinarily well-balanced people can be thrown off by death and disaster. And a little anxiety seems to be a reasonable response to losing your job, home, life savings—or simply hearing something strange go bump in the night. (Picking up a weapon is an attempt to bring yourself back in balance with whatever's out there.)
    Mental illness, however, while it can be triggered or exaggerated by all of the above, is rooted, fundamentally, in some imbalance in oneself—like there’s an internal gyroscope that’s spinning out of control.
    Maybe that’s why people have such a hard time recognizing depression in others. When you sit on your bed all day, head in hands, (like those sanitized images from the TV commercials), the diagnosis is pretty easy. It’s even easier when you walk down the street ranting and raving about how you just saw Jesus drinking coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. (Although that’s a vision that frankly, seems pretty reasonable to me. Didn't I hear something about how he could turn bread into wine?)
     But when you manage, at least to all appearances, walk the walk and talk the talk while keeping that whirling out-of-control gyroscope out of sight, can you blame many people from being fooled much of the time?

2010-05-25T08:38:00.001-04:00

"What is now proved was once only imagined."
Even though I—like many people—occasionally think the world revolves around me, I’m nowhere near narcissistic enough to think I’m the Copernicus* of mental illness. Still, in the midst of all my reading, writing, and thinking about symptoms, causes, and cures, I enjoy entertaining ideas that are intriguingly unconventional. Each one deserves a blog post of its own—and will undoubtedly get one. But for now, I’ll just throw them against the wall and see which ones stick.

Mental illness is a sane response to an insane world.
Or as John Burdett casually writes in Bangkok Haunts, his wonderfully idiosyncratic Thai Buddhist mystery: “For a monk, what the world calls sanity is a whore’s compromise.” A great line, even if I had to read it three times before I really got it.
Historical Diagnoses and treatments are as accurate and effective (or not-so) for humans of their time as modern ones are for us.
After all, synapses and SSRIs will one day seems as archaic as black bile and bloodletting.
Depression and mania can be lodged in the mind, body, emotions, and/or spirit.
That’s why some people need a drug; others a drug and a therapist; others a drug, a therapist, and the spiritual purging of their choice. Hamlet felt the only cure was killing his two-timing Uncle Claudius. Unfortunately, the Prince didn’t live long to enough to see if it worked.
A prescription anti-depressive drug can treat “the whole person” as effectively as a holistic therapy.
Not all the time, of course. But the mind-body connection is real. And if you need a pharmaceutical to jump-start it, more power to you.
The things that people in mental institutions see are really there.
Really.
Mania and depression are as effective paths to the experience of enlightenment as sitting on a cushion and trying to still the mind.
To my mind, Danté and Blake say it best…but they have lots of competition.

* For the record, Copernicus wasn’t the first person—even in his generation—to “discover” that the earth went around the sun. By the same token, Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press. Nor did Bill Gates invent the first operating system for IBM personal computers.

2010-05-23T13:56:00.003-04:00

Hard Turns & False Tops.
There’s a a rural legend among road bikers in Vermont that, in the old days, when they were cutting roads up mountains, they’d eyeball the height and start wending their way up—at, say, a 6% - 8% incline. But, they tended to miscalculate a bit so, towards the top, rather than bother with another switchback, they’d just round the last corner and head straight up at a 12%+ pitch.
     More than one good biker has rounded that last corner only to realize he’s got no more gears on his bike or strength in his quads to make it.
     The other bane of a climber’s existence is a false top. As you work your way up, you catch glimpses of surrounding hills. Which gives you the illusion that you know how much further you have to go; not realizing that at the top, you still have a couple of gentle downhills and steep climbs ahead.
     Hard turns and false tops. I encountered both on my bipolar ride.
     I had a lot going for me when I returned from my road trip to the Southwest. It was spring, so sunlight was on my side. I’d gotten over my pharmaceutical paranoia and started on low doses of Wellbutrin. I had appointments for bodywork lined up. I started doing some interesting projects—even took a writing workshop.
    My e-mails from the time sound appropriately optimistic:

...this morning I had a cranial sacral treatment and came home and actually went back to sleep for an hour…catching up on that "million years" I wanted to sleep when you saw me in California.

It's a beautiful spring here in New England. Forsythia is out, the maples are leafing, the peach orchard across the street is just coming into bloom, and I'm starting to come up for air! Have started writing again a little, spending time outside, getting my feet on the ground.

Low dose of anti-depressant doesn't have me sleeping a whole lot more but does have me focusing better. And that sense of exhaustion is leaving. In fact, I'd guess I'd have to say that all the symptoms are getting lighter. It's time. I've had enough.

Actually, I had a year to go.

2010-05-18T10:02:00.003-04:00

Wellbutrin. Part 2.
While I was on the road, Wendy sent me a great quote from a New Yorker article about the pharaoh Hatshepsut:

"A thing is mysterious if you don't know what or how to feel about it and wish you did. Mystery is a lack not of information but of meaning. Indeed, greater knowledge of certain subjects can intensify rather than soothe emotional itchiness about them."

I’ve never taken a chemistry class. So, when I’m prescribed 100mg of something like C13H18ClNO•HCl (a.k.a. Wellbutrin/Bupropion) I usually just roll my eyes, roll the dice, and swallow.
    But, the more I reflect on my experience—and the more I explore the deep dark corners of the Internet—the more I want to have some grasp of what's going on in that twisted bundle of ganglia on top of my neck.
     I certainly don’t want to belittle the efforts of anyone who’s spent countless years and dollars trying to master the jargon and formulae of modern biochemistry. But, neither do I want to belittle the intelligence of any of us who take the drugs they give us. After all, especially in the case of antidepressants, we’re all part of a clinical trial.
     Just after I started taking Wellbutrin again in April, 2006, a friend who was in the process of setting the world record for hot flashes, wrote: “Have you thought about how your mental state might have a relationship to your hormones?”
     Although open-minded enough to entertain the idea that my emotional extremities might be exaggerated by a virulent case of vanishing testosterone, I didn’t take the suggestion all that seriously.
     But, on re-reading her e-mail the other day, I began to wonder about this hormone thing. I know that I’m about to play pretty fast and loose with conventional wisdom here, but that’s never stopped me before. Besides, I just spent almost a whole day trying to get a grasp of the following, so bear with me while I give it a shot:
     It turns out the difference between hormones and neurotransmitters is “really a semantic one.” A hormone is a molecule that’s synthesized in a gland and travels through your bloodstream in order to pass along critical information and/or inspiration to a receptive cell somewhere else in your body. A neurotransmitter is the same kind of molecule. But it hangs out at the end of a nerve in your brain until an electrical impulse sends it shooting across to the adjacent nerve terminal, creating a synapse. The article linked above, provides a more precise, albeit less user-friendly, description of this.
     Therefore, a drug like Wellbutrin—which appears to treat depression by keeping the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine from beating too hasty a retreat (re-uptake) from those synapses, may also have a hormonal affect on other cells in your body, no matter how hard the scientists try to target it to specific type of brain cell—a sleight of hand that has evaded all my attempts to grasp it.
     Norepinephrine, for example, is a molecule that tends to be attracted to cells which deal with stress. Some is synthesized in the adrenals and can increase your heart rate and blood flow so you can spring into action whenever you feel threatened: like when a car is heading right at you or—if you’re in the state I was in—you can’t find the top to the yogurt container.
     But the same molecules are also synthesized in neurons where, if you’re lucky, they'll jump across the great synaptic divide and help get you out of that catatonic funk.
     I’ve been arguing from the beginning of this blog that there are so many pieces of the mental-illness puzzle, that it shows more hubris than wisdom to assign any one cause. But the similarity between neurotransmitters and hormones may partially explain some things, e.g.:
     1) why there seems to be such a higher rate of depression among adolescents, postpartum women, and menopausal everyone;
     2) why drugs like Wellbutrin can cause so many different side effects that—after reading the prescription insert—you want to check into the ER before you take your first dose;
     3) why drugs that were originally developed for one thing occasionally turn out to be very effective for something entirely different. (For example, LSD was originally developed to improve circulation but proved very effective for seeing God;
    4) why different people respond to different doses of a drug with different degrees of success at different stages of their lives.
     Explanations like this—no matter how tentative—will undoubtedly raise many a professional eyebrow and, more importantly, might be totally irrelevant to someone in the grips of mental illness.
     But many depressives hesitate to talk about their experiences because, while their experiences feel painfully individual, people tend to treat them one indistinguishable lump of tortured clay. So, while this knowledge might not be power per se—and may actually cause a bit of "emotional itchiness," I hope that, in the spirit of the quote above, it also helps some of my fellow human head-cases find a little meaning in the mystery of what they, and they alone, are experiencing.

2010-05-17T15:20:00.005-04:00

Wellbutrin Part I.
My most vivid memories of coming home after my month-long road trip, are of the calmingly familiar smells, sounds, and textures of early Spring in Vermont. While I certainly wasn’t out of the woods, the comforts of home were at least keeping the vibrations in my chest and throat down to a dull roar.
     Still, it was clear that my careful synthesis of mind-numbing driving, mind-bending scenery, mind-altering shamanistic purging, and the kindnesses of strangers hadn’t significantly changed the strange brew of agitation and depression that was able to overwhelm any waking moment.
    So I began taking Wellbutrin (a.k.a. Buproprion). My doctor had prescribed 100mg/day the previous Fall, but, after my unfortunate run-in with Celexa-induced serotonin overload, I had been a little skittish of subjecting my fragile psyche to any more pharmaceuticals. Nevertheless, it was time to try something.
    Wellbutrin and I go way back. It was the first antidepressant I took. That was in 1999 after it became painfully clear that no one—least of all myself—could predict which Dave was going to show up the next day, hour, minute, etc. Even I had given up trying to juggle my erratic emotion.
     Back then, the drug did a pretty good job of stabilizing my erratic states. I was still mildly depressed, but the discomforting swings were gone. Eventually, I added—and then switched over completely—to Celexa, which proved to be a successful treatment for about five years—at which point I became living proof that that one man’s synaptic meat can, later, be the same person’s poison.
     This time, the drug did little more than blunt the occasional edge—just enough so that when I told folks I felt a little better, I didn't feel I was perjuring myself. But the change wasn't enough to keep me from tapering off after six weeks—at which point I began to juggle, with equal success or lack thereof, a combination of alternative therapies and hope—which was the strongest medicine of all, although also the least reliable.

2010-05-13T07:33:00.003-04:00

April 9th, 2006. Somerset, PA - Dummerston, VT. 561 Miles.
I arrived in Somerset, PA well after dark, and checked into the Budget Host Inn, where, to my dismay, I discovered that not all shabby hotel rooms are alike. After finding an ice machine deep in the catacombs—you had to take a big ice pick, both to defend yourself and chop off pieces—I briefly calmed my 14-hours-on-the-road nerves with a Jameson’s before staggering out like some refugee from a Camus novel in search of comfort food. Which I found at The Summit Diner: scrambled eggs and home fries, served by a waitress who was overweight, pierced, tattooed, but/and savvy. It only took her a couple of minutes to know everything she needed to know about me—just leave the guy alone, call him “honey”—more kindly than usual—and go give the other customers a hard time. The dinner was $4.50. I left a $2 tip.
    The next morning, I drove off into the sunrise on Route 219 towards Johnstown, and then cut over towards Altoona which I could see in valley off Route 99. Another town. Another world. Another universe I’d never explore. Later, as I drove along Route 220, barely avoiding Penn State, I was confronted by a series of signs that gave me pause: “Beware of Aggressive Drivers.” “Beware of Tailgating.” “Keep two dots apart.” (Don’t ask.) Culminating in, “Attention Drivers: High Crash Area.” They had no idea.
     After 230 miles, I stopped in Wilkes-Barre, PA to get gas at the Turkey Hill Convenience Store. Finally. My last stop. Just over 200 miles to Vermont. I filled the van, checked the oil and transmission fluid one last time, and went into the store to buy a protein bar, SmartFood, and bottle of Starbucks coffee with a big cup of ice (sorry…it’s the best choice when you can’t easily find the local coffee shop).
     I came back out, got into the van, took a big bite of the protein bar, and turned the key. The van didn’t start.
     I tried to stay calm. Maybe I’m not in “Park.” Yes I am in “Park.” Tried again. The van didn’t start.
     I remembered how we used to crawl under our old 1970 Volvo and tap the starter with a hammer. I found the crowbar and crawled under van. Couldn’t find the starter. Checked the manual. It didn’t know where the starter was either.
     I got back in the van and turned the key. Nothing. I took three deep breaths. Nothing. I tried ten. Nothing. I got out and started walking towards the store, Turned around and tried again. Nothing.
     I told myself not to panic. That it was OK. Just one extra day. I didn’t believe myself for a minute. I went in and asked the cashier if there was a repair shop nearby. She pointed to a tire place just a few doors down, which I’d managed not to notice.
     I went back and tried to again. Nothing.
     Reluctantly, I went over to the shop and pointed at the van. They said they could probably tow it over and take a look later in the day. “Later in the day???” They said that, of course, if it needed a starter, the couldn’t get it until tomorrow. “Tomorrow????”
     I handed him the key.
     I decided that I should go for a bike ride to calm my nerves. Oddly, there was a bike shop two doors down from the tire place. I stopped in to if they had a map. They didn’t, but gave me precise directions for getting to an area where the biking was good. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pay attention. I was on the verge of hyperventilating.
    I went back to the van. Realized I had a spare key in my backpack. Put the key in the ignition. Visualized all manner of positive things. Nothing.
     Called Wendy. Told her I guessed I wouldn’t be back that night. She was disappointed, but seemed a lot more concerned with how I was taking it than how she was taking it. If I’d been her, I would have been relieved that I had one more day of sanity before my deranged spouse walked in the door. To her credit, I don’t think she saw it that way.
     I went into the store to apologize for the fact that my car would be stuck there until they towed it. They told me no problem. (No problem for them maybe). Went back to the van. Tried to start it. Nothing.
     I decided to go for a walk before biking. That way I could keep an eye on the van in case it suddenly decided to start itself up and drive over to pick me up and go home. I started walking up a steep hill in a prototypical working-class neighborhood. No one was around—everyone was at work.
    At the top, I was able to see the whole town. Get my bearings. Kind of. A few blocks ahead I noticed a young man talking with an elderly woman. Jehovah’s Witness…no question. My first impulse was, of course, to turn in the other direction. But the lady looked so helpless. So I kept walking towards them, watching the drama unfold. She cleverly shook him off by turning a corner just as they were about to step off a curb. He hesitated, briefly flummoxed by this act of God, until he looked up and saw me—a miracle if he’d ever seen one.
     By then, I’d surrendered any resistance I still had left to whatever the universe had decided to throw at me. As he talked, I nodded my head and responded with genuine enthusiasm (what happens in a parallel reality, stays in a parallel reality) : Yes. Jesus. Great guy. Unbelievable. Son of God? Absolutely [son, daughter, I mean who isn’t?]
     Really? He says that? Good news to me. Huh? Of course I love him. What’s not to love? The money changers? Of course I know the story. He sure showed them. And the thing with the fishes?…it doesn’t get any better than that. Yeah. I know. Me too. Yes. Absolutely…Of course. Thank you. I’ll definitely read that brochure. And that one. And, sure, that one. Yes, that one too. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, I’ll take a good look. I’m so glad we met. Thank you.
     Satisfied he’d filled his convert quota for the day, he gave me a big smile and walked away. I turned around and said out loud, quite clearly, so my intention could not possibly be misunderstood, “OK Jesus, start the f-ing car.”
     As I walked down the hill, I invoked the names of several other saints, perfect masters, and gods incarnate of my acquaintance. I created a universe in which the entire notion of my van not starting didn’t exist. It’d be like anti-matter or something.
     Got back to the Turkey Hill Convenience Store, put my backpack on the ground next to the van. Dug around until I found the spare key again. Opened the door, got in, tossed the backpack on the passenger seat, put the key in the ignition and turned it. No deep breaths or anything. Just turned the key.
      God damn if it didn’t start.

2010-05-11T11:55:00.006-04:00

April 8th, 2006. Marion, IL. - Somerset, PA. 678 Miles.
Over the course of 7,633 miles, you listen to a lot of music. Which, when blended with a hair-trigger emotional life, can lead to terminal indulgence in feelings that can only be considered maudlin, mawkish, schmaltzy, or way-too-many of the above. Because you inevitably end up thinking all those songs are about you. Don’t you?
     Writing about your personal, music-emotional connections can be even more treacherous, since you’re in serious danger of using phrases like, “soundtrack of my life”—at which point you might as well go find another line of work. (I mean the phrase is accurate, but I defy you to find a way to say it that doesn’t sound tragically self-involved.)
     One problem is that while you’ll probably never lose anyone’s respect by saying you’re empowered by listening to Beethoven’s Fifth—or even Sympathy for the Devil, in its counter-intuitive way—the casual comment that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida or We Built This City on Rock & Roll make you feel the immensity and power of creation is bound to raise an eyebrow…and should.
     The difficulty in transmitting an emotion by mentioning a song title, involves not just personal taste but, more importantly, life experiences—not to mention whether you’ve actually listened to the lyrics. Perhaps the most famous disconnect, is the passion that belligerent Americans feel for the anti-war anthem Born in the USA. Speaking of which, not everyone had just met someone named Wendy when Born to Run was released in the ‘70s. Even though I never owned a motorcycle, I still thought that song was about me…Wasn't it? Wasn't it?
     There’s a really good Scottish mystery writer named Ian Rankin who tries hard to finesse the individual intimacy we feel for certain songs. During breaks in the action, his Inspector Rebus often goes back to his apartment and plays music that captures his mood. Even for someone like me who knows most of the references and has managed to follow the plot, his musical emotional life seem somewhat discordant.
    After all, if several million people feel exactly the way you do when you hear a song, you have to question just how special you are. Which is one of the great things about rock concerts, but can be problematic in memoir. At the same time, if you play your cards right, you can simultaneously experience the solidarity of those we-are-one emotions and your individual piece of the kaleidoscope. Which feels kind of good. Although, whether that excuses playing The Rose or Pachabel Canon at any more weddings is open to debate.
     Having offended enough people, and paved the way with enough caveats, I’ll now admit that there were two songs on this trip that inevitably brought to tears to my eyes whenever the satellite beamed them down.
     The first was A Long December (Counting Crows): “It’s late December and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better then the rest.” That one still puts me right back there—although now, I can step right back out. The other one was Fix You (Coldplay), “Tears stream down your face/And I…/Lights will guide you home/And ignite your bones/And I will try to fix you.”
     Hey, I know it’s about breaking up and/or making up (what song isn’t?) but I took it literally. So, when it came on just as I was leaving Marion, IL on another section of the “Trail of Tears,” well…say no more.
     678 Miles. Illinois to Indiana to Ohio to West Virginia to Pennsylvania. Still stuck in the moment…and I couldn’t get out of it.

2010-05-09T07:15:00.015-04:00

April 7th, 2006, Pratt, KS - Marion, IL. 659 Miles.
During this trip I grasped at a lot of straws (an appropriate phrase since it refers to a drowning man reaching for anything that might save him.)
     Almost a year before, in June, 2005—during a way-happier road trip, I crossed the Mackinac Bridge from the Upper to Lower Peninsulas of Michigan. No thanks to some show-offs in Japan and Denmark, it’s now only the 3rd longest suspension bridge in the world, but, with the winds blowing across the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, that was plenty long enough for my top-heavy van.
     On the other side, I picked up a 24-year-old ‘60s flashback of a hitchhiker. He explained to me he was on his way to the annual Gathering of the Rainbow Family which describes itself as “the largest non-organization of non-members in the world.” In the course of our conversation, he spoke glowingly of his base commune back in Cape Girardeau, MO.
     I thought back on this conversation occasionally in the year that followed until—through the miracle of mad mental alchemy—this, to me, obscure town on the Mississippi transformed itself into a cross between Cambridge, Berkley, and Lourdes; and was filled with people who combined the authenticity of Huck Finn with the wisdom of the Dalai Lama and the healing power of Mother Theresa. Or vice versa in all directions.
     Throughout this trip, I’d been secretly plotting how to make an innocent detour to spend a night there. By the time I left Pratt, KS it had become a obsession. I was convinced that on this warm early spring Saturday night, I’d be surrounded by laid-back aging hippies and their young acolytes, dancing to live music, trailed by hints of marijuana and incense. I was convinced that my enlightened spirit and tortured heart would prove irresistible to one or more of the "powerful circle of women" there that my hitchhiker had told me about. I pictured a comfortable futon. Maybe a massage. Cool, healing unguents (whatever they are) gently rubbed into my third eye. At the very least, some wine, tofu, and cute girls…I mean "righteous women."
     I don’t know what I was thinking. But, then again, I rarely did back then. All I knew was that my encounter with that ephemeral hitchhiker, who was undoubtedly an incarnation of some powerful Native American medicine man, was a sign that something magical would happen to me in Cape Girardeau.
     Arriving on the outskirts, I blasted through the commercial strip and soon arrived in the heart of the city, where I began slowly driving around looking for the counter-cultural hub of this valhalla.
     But there was nothing going on. A huge mural blocked the view of the Mississippi. The few people wandering around looked as disappointed as I was. The only real action was at two huge billiard halls and an Italian restaurant where a troublingly well-behaved 50's-style wedding party was gathering on the street.
     I checked out a few hotels but couldn’t imagine checking into any of them. I checked out a few restaurants, but couldn’t imagine eating in any of them. I finally found an incongruous wine/coffee bar that was virtually empty but at least had Internet.
     I had already driven 12 hours and 615 miles that day. Some of which, by the way, was on the “Trail of Tears.” To a town that I now learned (after some frantic web surfing to see where I'd gone wrong) was the birthplace of Rush Limbaugh
     This was, indeed, the last straw. Clearly, I was now so disconnected from my intuition that I was deludedly spinning profound portents out of simple encounters with dreamy hitchhikers.
     My disappointment was as palpable as it was irrational. I had to get out of Girardeau. And so I crossed the river into Illinois, where, after yet another hour of driving, I stayed in a non-descript hotel near the Marion Penitentiary, which is populated by about 50 death row inmates as well as members of the Aryan Brotherhood, El Rukns, the Mexican Mafia, and D.C. Blacks.
     I felt I had escaped.

FYI: This is the transcription of my prophetic conversation with the hitchhiker:

D: So, where will you go after The Gathering?
H: We're building our own community in Missouri.
D: Really?
H: Yeah. It'll be intertwined and interdependent and innerconnected with other communities that will be there. I mean it’ll be a whole subculture. It already is. I mean there are several communities in this area, several communities. Just upriver from us there’s another 1000-acre community.”

(I hadn’t heard this kind of idealism in long time and it was ‘60s music to my ears.)

D: Now when these people…these older people you’re doing this community with…is this something they did 30 years ago and went back in the world and now they’re doing it again?
[he shakes his head]
D: So they’re not like aging hippies?
H: Well, I shouldn’t say that. Raymond spent a lot of time with Stephen Gaskin at The Farm in Tennessee and at The Farm in New York so he was…and Debbie’s been in other kinds of communities but not com-mu-nal [slurs it out] living…you know what I mean. She’s a very powerful woman. She has a powerful circle of women that she's involved with in Cape…Cape Girardeau.
D: Cape Girado?
H: It’s a city, in Missouri. I assumed you heard of it. So, uh, yeah so we’re all just trying figure it out. Raymond is too, even though he has done this a lot you know. He has a relationship, awareness you know with community. but we’re all just trying to figure it out.
D: Is there a uh, uh, uh meditative component that’s like from Zen or TM or…
H: Yeah, mainly from native American spirituality, um, with some eastern Indian philosophy as well.
D: But none of these people were heavily involved in any particular spiritual groups in the 70s or 80s or 90s?
H: I would say no although there was a brother…he was living with us for a while…he’s out at the Lama Foundation right now. So I would say him, yes. But no, beyond that.
D: So tell me, when you see a city like Detroit or Cleveland…you see one of these big cities and, meanwhile, you’re trying to do this thing where 7 people or 20 people or even a couple of thousand or many thousand people at The Gathering, I mean how do you see it all coming together?
H: You mean, like what’s the glue?
D: No, I mean how do you see that community moving into a place like Detroit or Cleveland. You know, bringing real change to a big city?
H: my perception is cities, Babylons, societies, there’s this big ship and I see it as it has many holes in it, and there are a lot of people on this ship patching up the holes, but there’s a problem you see because the rate of the holes being created is far exceeding the rate at which they’re being fixed. So eventually what I see happening…what I’ve done to a large extent, not totally, because…I am still using money…is jumped off the ship, swam to the island and started planting coconut trees, you know what I mean?”
D: OK...
H: So that’s how I see how I’m having an effect on the cities and on that part of the chaos by creating a place for people to come and ground and fill up their cup spiritually.
D: OK...
H: And plan however they want to plan it and use whatever tools that I’ve been blessed with that I can share and whatever tools they’ve been blessed with. That’s really the vision of the land is to share the land and to share the tools and to share the ceremonies…sweat lodges and vision quests and things like that…drummings, chanting, stuff…but uh, I do see us abandoning the ship? Yeah.”
D: But how’s that going to save the world if you abandon it?
H: To me it’s not a matter of…well I go back and forth with my perception on that. Part of me feels that the earth is a self-cleansing organism and she’s going to cleanse the dis-ease that we’re creating you know and part of me is well are we going to destroy the earth? And well I go back and forth on that. I guess for me what comes down to with me is uh [5 second, pause…his longest during the conversation] to prevent extinction…”
D: OK. So a little bit of a Noah thing…Noah’s Ark.
H: Yeah…big time,
D: OK. You know the hundredth monkey story?
H: Yup…
D: So you’re a little bit of a hundredth monkey kind of guy.

[I was disappointed. I was hoping I could teach him something from my years in groups that were intertwined and interdependent and innerconnected.]

D: OK…what’s your relationship situation now?
H: Like as far as a girlfriend?
D: Yeah, I mean you have a partner you’re in this thing with? You were talking about kids. That’s why I mention it.
H: Yeah well, I mean that’s the no, no I don’t have a partner. I was involved with a sister in Augusta for a while. A very very righteous sister. Very much aligned on this. Very strong. Very much on her mission on her path. Um. She’s on her path…and our paths you know it’s not in the flow…because she’s in Augusta and I’m refusin’ to live in Augusta.
D: Uh huh.

[I admit I was a bit distracted, wondering whether any of my friends were "righteous sisters" (or brothers).]

H: And I’m not willing to do a long-distance relationship right now. So I stepped back from that. That was in February. [This was June].
D: Not that long ago.
H: One of the hardest things I ever had to do was step away from that.
D: How long had you been with her?
H: Just a year but you know it was deeper than anything I’d ever been in. We really grew a lot together and yeah we really did a lot together.
D: Cool. [Once again, I should have said "groovy", but I missed my chance.]
H: But uh, so right now I’m just, you know, I’m open to…I’m just 25 I’m young. I’m open to meeting that one. I definitely want to share this path you know? I had such a mystical night last night. I’d been invited to sleep at this kid’s house you know? And I’m walking the interstate knowing that that’s there for me, and I see the sunset and all kinds of purple and I see a hawk right then land in a tree. A red-tail hawk shwwooo…and knowing that the moon’s gonna rise and I’m wishing I had someone to share this with, you know? ‘Cause I do. I live a very mystical life, you know? And uh I want to share it.”
D: Yup. [Been that. Done there.]
H: I want to share it. I want to raise children, you know…not so traveling and hitchhiking and doing that but raise children in the mystical way, you know? Yeah, I live a fairy tale. [laughs]
D: Now you were in the commune…—you left Syracuse [where he'd grown up] when you were 18/19?
H: Yeah…I feel like I’m being interviewed…it’s pretty cool. [laughs]

D: Yeah, it’s what I do. And what did you do in that meantime? You’re 25 now…you didn’t go to college. So have you been on the road all that time? Or did you have a steady job for 3 or 4 years?
H: Oh yeah…I traveled for about 3 years. I set out, um, I had a car when I set out but then I started hitchhiking because I didn’t want have to worry about paying for gas and I just didn’t want the responsibility of the car any more. Actually, it’s interesting, because my first hitchhiking adventure was from Ocala, Florida to western Montana for the Rainbow Gathering.
D: Now is the Rainbow Gathering a different place every year? [he nods.] Oh I see.
H: A different place every year but then there’s regional gatherings at the same National Forest but a different spot within the National Forest…so I haven’t been on this road [in Michigan] since then…that first time.
D: From Ocala up to Montana you went this way?
H: So um so yeah I was seeing the family and I went to Gatherings and festivals and Northern California and smoked a lot of pot and made hash and survived. And stumbled around. Then 9/11 hit and I went to the Gathering and uh had…there was this one extreme situation at one Gathering that happened in southern Illinois where authorities busted in and took away half the Gathering at 4 o’ clock in the morning.”
D: Really…why? For drugs?
H: Yeah…well, because few people had it they took the whole camp.…and then I realized what I, what I wanted to plug into…so that’s when I went to the Ozarks and started plugging into communities.
D: So you been doing that the last few years…
H: Yeah…I love it.
D: Good deal.
H: I love it. I love the life.

I offered to buy him a motel room for the night but he wanted to keep trucking. Still, I felt so paternal, I drove back to that highway exit the next morning to make sure he wasn't still there. He was gone. Hell, maybe he'd never existed in the first place.

2010-05-07T11:07:00.002-04:00

April 6, 2006: New Mexico - Pratt, KS. 543 Miles. 
I spent about 200 of those 543 miles on US Route 50, which is known as “America’s Loneliest Road.”* Obviously, they hadn’t traveled my neural pathways.
     I’d left three weeks before. And while I’d had various places to go and people to meet, my real destination was a way different state. A place where some Taos juju, Roswell alien, California healer, Las Vegas strangeness, or beatific vision of the Goddess of Sanity (Beiwe), appearing in a toto-esque Kansas windstorm, would inspire my neurons to do the job they were born for.
    But, although my van was blown hither and yon in those vicious Kansas whirlwinds, my mind and heart stayed stubbornly true to course. So, while I still held out some vague hope for divine intervention, I was pretty much ready to pack it up and go home. Meanwhile, I kept listening to books on tape, farm reports on the local stations, and rock & roll on Sirius, scanning stations in a constant struggle to stay on the wild side of Dire Straits, Rolling Stones, Dylan—and even some recent bands—without falling into an abyss of Van Halen, the Doobie Brothers, or Metallica.
     Throughout my 12+ hours of driving—the last 4 hours of which were torn between my desire to stop and inability to do so—I dictated thoughts, sights, and sounds into my digital tape record. There’s something about the flatness of the words and use of the royal “we” (did I mean me and my VW or me and my many selves?) that bring it all back. A few excerpts:

Taos calls itself “The Soul of New Mexico.” But on the outskirts south of town, there’s still a 4-lane, albeit adobe-ish, road running into it. A Wal-Mart, some hip looking spas and tennis clubs, and fields full of strewn trash…plastic bags and stuff. The surrounding peaks look on without comment.

A dark canyon, mountain pass, heading east and there’s snow on the ground to my right as we go by all the Carson National Forest campgrounds. We keep climbing and climbing and winding and winding.

This appears to be known as the Enchanted Mountain. And it keeps on climbing.

Ski area straight ahead…called Angel Fire. Those ever-present crosses and the wreaths up against trees—it’s pretty easy to understand why so many people went off this road.

Through Eagle Nest with the incongruously crystalline lake on the right as you come out of what they call the “Enchanted Circle” of Taos, Eagle’s Nest, Angel Fire.

Sort of like being born, emerging from the narrow valley between the hilly Ponderosa Pine forest and the broad open plain. It’s the Santa Fe Trail. A few wispy clouds towards the east. None behind me.

About 10 miles out of Raton, I go by the Whitingham NRA Center. I’m holding on to the steering wheel for dear life because of the wind blowing/howling. No shots are fired.

I don’t get the impression there’s any rush hour in Raton, NM.

The first of what will undoubtedly be countless herds of cows on my left.

25 North sweeps grandly over the foothills, and cars pass me at 80MPH as the van struggles to stay above 40. This is the its biggest challenge to date…humiliated into crawling along at 35 MPH coming out of Raton to Trinidad. At the peak, I’m leaving New Mexico. Hasta La Vista the yellow and red sign says as they welcome me to “Colorful Colorado.

The low telephone poles, maybe 8-10 feet high, running alongside the railroad track in SE Colorado. The open fields more hypnotic than boring.

East 350. Been on it for 40 miles. The Comanche National Grassland. Virtually no cars. Sky’s overcast and it’s raining and I wouldn’t know what to do if I saw a tornado.

Been fighting through the winds of eastern CO. Now I’m in Las Alamas, last home of Kit Carson. Time for a break. This is tough driving.

Green fields 30 miles west of Lamar with the hugest tumbleweed I’ve ever seen. The sky is a dusty light tan/gray—people have their headlights on. Temp in the high 30s. Rough weather for early April.

Reservoir west of Lamar 20 miles…which might explain the huge field of migratory white birds. Every once in a while today swarms of starlings or crows or sparrows have swathed patterns over the newly planted alfalfa fields.

The high school in Lamar is home of the Savages. Our elevation is now 3622. The fierce wind continues to blow from the north.

Just went by the Amache Japanese American relocation center from WWII. OK. So we drove the innocent Natives out of here so we could drive the innocent Japanese immigrants in? Serious past-life bleed through. No comment. Although, perhaps, some karma.

25 miles east of Lamar: multi-car multi-mile—and I mean multi-mile—coal train to my left.
The smell of sulfur fertilizer and the huge long irrigation contraptions in the fields coming into Syracuse, KS.

On the outskirts of Garden City: Tyson Chicken, Finney (County) Plant…if that thing’s filled with chickens, that’s a lot of chickens. There’s also the biggest feed lot I’ve ever seen. Garden City considers itself "An Oasis in the Plains." An oasis for cattle on their way to slaughter, perhaps.

The wind howling and musak playing old rock songs on the downtown lamp posts. Crosby, Stills, and Nash. 100 miles ago Sirius was playing the Byrds. What, did David Crosby die or something?

Trash bags flapping in the high wind on all the barbed wire doesn’t quite give Garden City the warm branding it wants. Of course, it’s a cold day.

Listening to NPR story about water damage in Luxor…Amenhotep III. They could use a little water damage around here.

Outside the town of Mullinsville. Just saw the world’s largest collection of very large whirly-gigs. Good day for it. Allegedly they have the world’s largest coffee mug collection too. Coffee’s probably not that good, though.

Driving all day in this stiff north wind is appropriately bucking-bronco-ish. Every time a truck passes on my left the van shudders, sucked in and out of the void.

Pratt, KS. 7 pm. Time to stop. A whole lot of Miss Kansases have come from Pratt. I eat at a Mexican restaurant near the Days Inn. Called Playa Azul. Young waiter boys who are eager to please but not to learn English. Can't say I blame them. $9.63 for another dinner that will also serve as breakfast.

*There’s a great guidebook for people like me doing trips like this—whether they’re deliriously happy or seriously psychotic. It’s called Road Trip USA. The writer has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on America’s remaining two-lane blacktop highways and has unearthed a wealth of little-known places to stay/eat, fantastic facts, and truly bizarre attractions—some of which aren’t all that attractive, but interesting nonetheless.

2010-05-04T10:40:00.004-04:00

April 6, 2006: New Mexico. Part 2.
As a famous man once said, "One man's miracle is another man's matter of fact…and vice versa." So I tend to treat the extraordinary as if it were ordinary and the extraordinary as if it were ordinary.
Some people think that all petroglyphs were drawn by ancient Native American tribes. Others think they were drawn by, or at the direction of, the kind of aliens that even Arizona can't deport.* Of course, some could be graffiti created by wild packs of drug-crazed teenagers sometime between 1000 AD and 1969. Before you reject any of these theories out of hand, you might want to take a look at some pictures.
On this particular morning four years ago, a friend took me to see some petroglyphs that she'd found to be power spots, so I could dig down deep and see what I came up with:

Picture this: Two relatively normal looking 50-somethings, wearing hiking boots, jeans, and zip-up sweatshirts—no beads, sacred stones, amulets, or feathers in sight—stroll across and occasionally clamber up and down a rocky hillside. They're catching up, telling stories, laughing—doing what old friends do.
Every once in a while, she stops: "I know it's around here somewhere. Ah..." She proceeds to direct me to a rock that has a strange drawing on it. I walk over to said rock and instinctively start issuing your run-of-the-mill blood-curdling screams. After 30 seconds or so—maybe longer—I take a couple of deep breaths and follow her to the next one, continuing our conversation as if nothing had happened. Perhaps a casual comment: "Oh yeah…that was a good one." We do this a half dozen times, until I'm spent. Then we leave and go have a cup of coffee.

From my perspective, screaming with a friend in the desert, isn't a whole lot different from going to some guy I never met, telling him all my problems, and having him give me a pill. Besides, back in the 1970s, a guy named Arthur Janov popularized "Primal Scream" therapy. And there almost as many places where you can "rebirth"** these days as there are maternity wards. Those therapies, however, are designed to help people deal with traumas that go back to when they were born. I was trying to deal with traumas that went back about six months…or, perhaps, lifetimes.
Still, it was quite a walk on the wild side. And while we spent a lot of the time laughing at ourselves, we took the process with a quiet seriousness. We knew we were dealing with something that was bigger than the both of us.
Did it work? I don't know. Forty-eight hours later, I found myself on the literal and figurative "Trail of Tears." But for a while, my relentless agitation became mild restlessness and my despair was transformed into a kind of wistfulness. And, long term, who knows what subtle changes in my brain chemistry we effected or demons we exorcised?

* I tend to refrain from political commentary, but before you go calling anyone an illegal alien, you better take a close look at your own gene pool.
** There are all kinds of sites that talk about rebirthing. But since I also tend to refrain from recommending any particular therapy, I'd just point you to Wikipedia to get the general idea.

2010-05-01T09:31:00.002-04:00

April 5-6, 2006: New Mexico. Part 1.
What we call diseases arise from some combination of mental, emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual, environmental, genetic, nutritional, past life, cultural, astrological, lifestyle, and many other factors that I'm blissfully unaware of.
   Fundamentally, all medicine—Western, Eastern, traditional, complementary, alternative—deals only with how diseases manifest in the physical body, whether it's something you can feel…like a headache…or something only the practitioner can identify and try to treat, such as weak chi, black bile, blockages in craniosacral blockages, or other energy imbalance. So, while I agree it's great to treat the causes of a disease not just the symptoms, anyone who tries to do so has his/her work cut out for them.
   Even people with psychic abilities…even channeled entities…would have to figure out how what they see relates to the specific causes of a specific illness. And, to make matters worse, human energy fields are in constant flux. Can you blame your favorite psychic if he/she throws up their hands and tell you to take two aspirin and call them in the morning?
   To add conundrum to complexity, different treatments work at different speeds. So, while one of those little nitroglycerin tablets under the tongue might make your angina go away in minutes, an herbal remedy or pharmaceutical anticoagulant may take a little longer; a genetic disposition may require the latest breakthrough in gene therapy; and that past life when you had a stake driven through your heart? Jeez. It's amazing you even make it through the day.
   This is why I'll never say a treatment "didn't work." I see them all as part of a mysterious continuum that ultimately (at least for now) relieved my symptoms.
     And that includes the couple of days I spent with a dear (and equally crazed) friend who, as far as I'm concerned, has some serious shamanic chops...

2010-04-30T15:03:00.006-04:00

April 4, 2006: Phoenix, AZ - Gallup, NM (via Canyon de Chelly, AZ). 452 Miles.
A lot of people told me I had to visit Chaco Canyon in NW New Mexico to get a sense of Anasazi history/culture and what the local hunter-gatherers had been up to back in the BCs. They also said I’d be overwhelmed by its mysteries—both geological and human.
     Unfortunately, I kept on reading that you had to drive miles on hot, dry, rocky roads to get there—which conjured up images of me crawling, skeleton-like, along the side of the road as my poor VW van went up in flames behind me.
     So I took the less-traveled road to Canyon de Chelly in Arizona—less spectacular perhaps, but still no slouch in the shock and awe department.
     Some people think that one reason so many people are depressed these days is that we’re out of touch with nature. And it’s true that none of the human figures I've seen in petroglyphs looked particularly sad to me. But maybe, while their more scientifically inclined friends were drawing astronomical symbols, some ancient folks were just disconsolately doodling on rocks.
     Certainly, people in other ancient cultures—Egypt, Hindu, Chinese, etc.—weren’t strangers to depression. They suspected it was caused by everything from sorcery, imbalance of bodily fluids (serotonin’s just another word for nothing left to lose), bad humors that weren’t the least bit funny, and gods—or being forsaken by one in particular. Let’s face it, Job was even a less happy camper than I was.
     Back then, they tried the same kind of cures we do today—magical spells, hallucinogens, acupuncture, herbs. Even trepanation (cutting holes in your skull to release god-knows what), which goes back to Neolithic times, just sounds like over-the-top electroconvulsive shock treatment (ECT)—and may have been just as effective.
     Often, during this trip, I’d go to relatively well-known tourist sites, and there’d be no one else in sight. But as soon as I was done, people’d appear. Chelly was no different:

The universe is conspiring to give me privacy. I was alone, the only non-native at the bottom of the White House Trail, able to converse with the spirits in peace and quiet.
But as I left, at least a dozen people passed me by, talking in loud voices: including a mother and father followed by two pouty teenage girls who also appeared to be looking ferociously inside. Hearing an incongruously modern engine, I turned around to see a guide in his open-top jeep with another family, plowing through the stream, seemingly oblivious to the silence. On the way out, I stopped at Mummy’s Lookout. As soon as I arrived, two old women moved off the rocks…I have no idea where they disappeared. Generations of Navajos haunt this valley.

I spent that night at the El Rancho Hotel on Route 66 in Gallup New Mexico, a fabulous place where many old-time movie stars used to stay while shooting in the Southwest—and still have their names on plaques at each door to prove it.
I had one of the few rooms with a balcony. There was a neon sign right out the window. The strange homeopath back in Anaheim had said that “Neon” might be the right remedy for me. I sat next to it for a long time. Maybe too long. Maybe not long enough.

2010-04-27T21:19:00.007-04:00

April 1 - April 3, 2006: Phoenix, AZ.
I spent the next few days at a trade show in a “destination” resort outside of Phoenix, where I’d re-rendezvous’d with Joe, my business partner, close friend, and partner-in-crime (just two as I remember), along with his wife Maggie who’s my close friend, business partner, first serious girlfriend, and even mother of my goddaughter.
     I.e., we’re family…and a fairly functional one at that.
    Which meant I could relax a little, secure in the knowledge that they’d hustle me out of harm’s way if I started staring catatonically, ranting deliriously, or both at the same time—no mean trick.
     As I implied a few days ago, a trade show isn’t all that bad a place to be bipolar. Every few minutes you get to try out your latest imitation of a perfectly-sane human being on someone new. If you screw up, you can just mumble an unintelligible but relatively inoffensive comment, and let someone else repair the commercial damage, if any. Next victim!...
      Besides, from my perspective, everyone at the resort was easily as deluded as I was. I mean the idea of vacationing at a place on the edge of the desert, where—except when you’re playing golf—you hunker down in air-conditioned comfort worrying about skin cancer, is easily (no disrespect to LSD) as weird as anything that’s ever gone on in my head.
     Every morning at sunrise, driven out of bed in my par-for-the-course morning frenzy, I found myself virtually alone on the trails under some seriously spectacular skies.
     Still, call me narcissistic (on top of everything else!), the memories of how I felt inside—that ever-present waxing and waning shadow in the back of my throat—remains easily as vivid as any of the colors of those dusty desert sunrises.

2010-04-23T11:06:00.006-04:00

March 31, 2006. Sedona to Phoenix, AZ. 142 Miles.
Before we leave Sedona, I should wrap up the story about my life as a reckless, authority-questioning, sharped-tongued writer with a touch of crazy wisdom. We’re talking ancient Egypt, of course.
WARNING: As before, this material may not be suitable for rational minds.

When we last visited our blogger, he was being strangled to death just before dawn for speaking his truth in some past life or other. Which was causing a certain degree of discomfort in his throat chakra during this life…not to mention frequent manic frantic-ness around 4 a.m. every morning.
Proving that I can slug it out in the past-life trenches with the best of them, I gave this matter some thought and even consulted with various experts in said things, before writing back to my friend:

"My intuition is that I wasn't actually killed in that life, but was strangled to the point of near death, and then released with the promise that I wouldn't write any more. But I'd 'backed up' a copy on papyrus that someone hid. Learning how to express myself freely has been an ongoing theme in many lifetimes since then. In fact, you could say that the book I'm writing now is an "etheric" copy of or sequel to what I was working on then.

My friend responded enthusiastically, sending me a link to a news article from the day before about The Gospel of Judas. The papyrus on which it was written had just been officially radiocarbon dated from between 220 and 340 AD, right before the Council of Nicea gathered to get on the same doctrinal papyrus. Which means they may very well have suppressed this one, because it painted Judas in a significantly different light than the other gospels (not to mention Leonardo). According to this gospel, Jesus asked Judas to hand him over to the Romans in order to fulfill his God-given mission. Cue Rod Sterling:

“Holy smokes!" my friend wrote back. "Don't you see a connection?! This Judas/Jesus story is written on papyrus…and is written in Coptic...a form of ancient Egyptian! AND it was written 300 years after Christ died, so it could have been written (and probably WAS written) by an Egyptian. I seriously think YOU wrote it! It is such an extension of your current book. Why is it coming into the light NOW, even though it was discovered in the 1970's? I think you are bringing it out. Call me NUTS and FLAKY, but I really think this is true. And the whole story of Judas being ASKED by Jesus to help rid him of his body so he could ascend to his next purpose, just FEELS true. So Judas was so-o-o-o the catalyst, and not the weak-willed traitor."

Well, my friend may well be NUTS and FLAKY (it takes one to know one), but I always kinda thought Judas got a bad rap and, besides, you gotta love anyone who can still use the phrase "Holy smokes!"—especially in this context.

(Thanks, Deb.)

2010-04-21T11:18:00.005-04:00

March 30, 2006 #2: Sedona, AZ.

I wouldn't say I had unreasonable expectations for my stay in Sedona. My thinking went something like this:
1. This place is allegedly one of the earth's big-time power spots.
Therefore, I shall be healed.

2. The true power of Sedona has been enshrouded in New Age babble. I am cynical about said babble and need to be taught a valuable lesson in humility.
Therefore, I shall be healed.

3. I've heard that viewing the sunset from the airport is a transforming experience. And, while many tourists will be there, I will hear the beat of a different drummer.
Therefore I shall be healed.

4. I will be able to escape the maddening crowds by waking up early in the morning and taking a solitary walk to Bell Rock, which is a famous energy vortex (that's a good thing, right?)
Therefore, I shall be healed.

5. While driving here, a song came on the radio with the chorus: "Put the message in the box, put the box into the car, drive the car around the world, until you get heard." I heard the last word as "here" not heard.
Therefore, I shall be healed.

After my walk to Bell Rock, I hurried back to the van and drove on.

2010-04-19T20:59:00.002-04:00

March 30, 2006: Zion National Park to Sedona, AZ. 303 Miles.
Back in Laguna Beach, I had dinner with a friend who has never experienced a day of depression, but whose daughter has had a whole lot of them. So we began e-mailing each other about it.
     Clearly, my friend's years in Southern California have surrounded her New Jersey roots with a serious veneer of New Age optimism…but she has a good sense of humor about both.
     In any event, I've promised to provide every perspective I can on depression and this is certainly a unique one. Whether you take it as a good story, the absolute truth, or utter nonsense, it's worth reading. It's certainly as interesting as the "stories" about serotonin receptors, stagnant ch'i, and/or holographic brain patterning. As far as I'm concerned, all these perspectives are useful and accurate..
     By the way, this e-mail came the same day I arrived in Sedona...

When we visited the other night I told you I could see the torture inside you. And I use that word to really mean "deep pain". The immediate hunch I got, which I told you in an email, connected it to your father and feeling unworthy. I've meditated a few times on this but the info was sluggish in coming, until this morning.
     I have 2 decks of cards that I use for helpful insights from time to time. One deck brought out the cards: "Father Healing" and "Worthiness". The other deck brought out the card "Spiritual Growth". The father healing card has to do with the male energy. It's expansive and energy-giving energy, and, if we're 'unhealed' in that area, the universe can seem ungenerous toward us.
     The Worthiness card has to do with feelings of not deserving, and it tends to block manifesting your desires. And the Spritual Growth card means pretty much what you think it does. When I meditated on this, the first few times, nothing really came forward. I was puzzled but kept asking to 'show me what needs to be seen in order to pass it along to David.'
     The 'father' issues don't have to do with your father. It has to do with a father you would call "God" or whatever your idea of a god is. There are unresolved issues around the feelings of your connectedness to God. I saw a triangle, and it was you, God, and your BOOK [sic].
     I looked up just then and saw the clock. It said 5:55. Five is the number of communication, so it was appropriate that the three 5's were the triangle of communication between you, this god figure, and your book. Your book is you, 'speaking your truth'. In past lives, you have paid high consequences and suffered for speaking your truth. This is the source of the disharmony you are currently experiencing.
     I saw a life in ancient Egypt. You were a young man, and you were putting forth your inner truth. I'm not sure if you were writing it, or just speaking it, but it was reaching people. And this did not go over well with all the people, especially those in power. As you lay sleeping, two people came in and strangled you to death. It was early morning but still dark. The feelings of your heart racing, throat chakra, and anxiety and not being able to sleep are related to this incident. As you are currently writing your book, you are realizing on a deep level that you are speaking your truth once again, and it may result in death. At least that's what your soul is thinking. Why not put the book aside for now, and work on the soul level to release the limiting thoughts of fear for speaking (or writng) your inner truth? Once this is done, then you can go back to writing. But stop for now.
    Now is the time to resolve issues that revolve around your beliefs with the ultimate ("God"), speaking your truth to the public, and releasing the fear of being punished or killed for it. Once this is released, much of the current physical symptoms will also resolve. In addition, the book you are working on, or perhaps even another book, WILL manifest into published form, and see your desires come to fruition. There will be a huge sense of completion or 'completeness' when this occurs.

2010-04-14T11:23:00.008-04:00

March 29, 2006: Zion National Park.
It takes an impressively contrarian emotional life to feel claustrophobic about the idea of going to the Grand Canyon.
     But I kept imagining my road-weary VW bus being hemmed and heckled by loutish RVs; throngs of tourists jostling me dangerously close to the edge; and out-of-control scenic-ride planes strafing me on their way to the bottom of the Rio Grande.
     Further proof that rational thought wasn't my strong point back then.
     So, I ended up at Zion—which may be more human-sized than the Grand Canyon, but still makes you feel like you just got unceremoniously shoved into the dispassionate face of God or a reasonable facsimile.
     I spent two cool, drizzly days there, wandering, biking, hiking, and uttering the occasional pro forma blood-curdling scream, when I was sure I was alone.
My notes from those days meander seamlessly from the geological to the spiritual:

I keep getting to places where it looks like there's no way to go any further. Until I spot a little path under an overhanging rock that looks like it was cut out just for me a moment before.

At times, I wish I could focus on the outer scenery as ferociously as I focus on the inner.

Of course, you always come down a mountain a different person than the one who went up it.

The last was clearly wishful thinking, as the time-lapsed picture I took of myself shows. Like I've said, you can always see it in the eyes.

2010-04-11T21:16:00.003-04:00

March 28, 2006: Las Vegas to Zion National Park. 175 Miles. You I think I’m crazy. Part 2.
I love picking up hitchhikers. I know people think it’s dangerous. But, as Hunter Thompson made perfectly clear, every writer needs some serious strangeness to get the juices flowing. Besides, most of the ones I pick up are in far more desperate physical and psychological straits than I am. I figure the least I can do is give them a ride. I hadn't seen many on my trip so far, but I hit the jackpot in the middle of a spectacular nowhere corner of Arizona, surrounded on every side by intense stratified and scarified rock.

D: So watcha doing here?

Hitchhiker: This guy picked me up …I’d gone in to get a cup of coffee. And he says how much did you win or lose? And I said, I didn’t gamble, I just got coffee. And we got into Vegas and he said you really don’t gamble? Well you’re going to gamble today and he stuck a .45 in my rib and pushed me out the passenger side door and they shot him to death… 

D: [shocked] Who shot who to death?

 H: The security guards shot him to death.

D: When they saw him pull the gun? 

H: We parked out in the open parking lot. And he’s got his gun.

D: So they saw his gun and shot him?

H: I moved and I said, hey this guy’s got a gun and they shot him. Just unloaded on him.

D: Unbelievable.

H: I mean nothing personal but I’ve already been shot, I don’t need to get shot again.

D: [laughing, thinking he's kidding] When were you shot?

H: He shot me an hour earlier right below the kneecap.

D: You mean you knew this guy?

H: Well, we’d been riding together since Salt Lake.

D: And why did he shoot you the first time?

H: He got hot! We’d just got gas. I started to get out and I wish to hell I would have. I wouldn’t a got shot…He’s twice the size of me, stronger than hell. But he’s all hot, eating pills and smoking dope.

D: Oh I see [I laugh nervously…guess he's not kidding...]

H: And we didn’t need no gas until he got to Caesars and he was almost empty. In the parking lot. Got to the door and I’m thinking yeah, I know these security guys. They just gunned him down. Son of a bitch. Well I got my leg taped up and glued. Cops said well we’ll bag him and tag him. You know that dumb son of a bitch had $1200 in his wallet. He was just going down for the night. He had a room at the Tropicana, and he was going to stop at Caesars, the Pyramid, and the Tropicana and then he was going to leave early in the morning. He had a wake up call all ready at 5 or 6 in the morning.

D: Ended up dead.

H: Right. And they gotta have a hearing, you know, if there’s a shooting, there’s a hearing. And this cop asked what’d you do with that .45 he shot you with? Well they dug it out of the corner of the car door…low velocity…the ballistic man’s been here, and he’s got all kinds of shell tricks. He’s got a chambers he puts in that barrel. I went back over that. I knew the guy had one gun. I didn’t know he coulda had ten in a matter of seconds because he had gun parts everywhere.

D: Oh Jeez…so what were you doing in Las Vegas?

H: I spent the rest of the night there…oh this time? I stopped for a little bit. I’m on my way home to Council Bluffs, Iowa. What are you doing out here from Vermont?

D: Well, I had some business in LA…[I tell him where I’m going and he asks to be dropped off at the exit before]…That’s where you’ll spend the night?

H: Oh I don’t know about that.

D: Just a good place to take a break?

H: It’s been a bad trip. Scrounging for food. And if I find food, get my face washed. Still have daylight. I’ll leave if I can catch a ride. If not, I’ll go sit down and feed my empty belly.

D: Then you’re going to keep thumbing back to Council Bluffs?

H: Yeah, yeah. Probably, maybe spend the night here; I don’t know about the weather. I’d like to have been here earlier before the clouds rolled in.

D: Yeah, it doesn’t sound that great tonight. So what’s in Council Bluffs?

H: I live there.

D: You have a place to live there?

H I live under a bridge for almost 40 years.

D: Almost 40 years? Why’d you come all the way out here?

H: I had no winter clothes. Really. But now I’ll just suffer through the winter.

D: 40 years? How old are you?

H: 80.

D: No…really? C’mon. Your life? You’re not 80.

H [changing subject]: You can follow that dirt road all the way back to the town up there. I was crossing up there one time and an old black guy says, don’t touch my pot! He’s got a rifle and another guy’s got a shot gun. Two kids got…You here to pick our pot? No I’m here to…shit.

D: Sounds like you run into some guns in your line of life.

H: You run into lots of idiots who carry gun. A few of them, thank god, know when not to use them.

I can’t remember how much I gave him when I dropped him off. Probably a $5. Maybe a $10. Worth every penny.

2010-04-07T09:59:00.003-04:00

March 27, 2006: Laguna Beach to Las Vegas. 290 Miles. You think I'm crazy…
Las Vegas is a great place for a manic dysphoric. Because the agitation he feels inside manifests all around him—that insistent drive for the next moment, born of intense dissatisfaction with this one.
     Just as the vibration in my solar plexus is on alert 24/7 to demand "just one last" gasp from my exhausted adrenals, so the town is always trigger-hair ready to demand just one last gasp from any human fascination, compulsion, addiction, or obsession.
     The town truly never sleeps. Even at dawn, it tosses and turns.
     I feel right at home:

     The endless piped-in music. The insistent smell of fake flowers. The dazzling pumped-up colors of real ones. Guys polishing floors. Dealers polishing chips one by one.
     Monuments from the past rise again—daring you to mock their pretensions. The Arch de Triomphe. Eiffel Tower. Caesar’s Palace. Luxor Pyramid.
     Bob Dylan is playing here soon. Waylon Jennings is playing here soon. Wayne Newton, Don Rickles, Barry Manilow. Guys I never heard of are playing here soon. What, no women? I walk into The Imperial and G-l-o-r-i-a is playing right now.
     Revolving doors keep opening for you. Taxis keep waiting for you. Ramps and stairways keep appearing to shuttle you back and forth across the Strip.
     Guys keep handing you cards with pictures of naked women. They'll come to you. Direct to your room. Totally nude. $49. Special. Anything you want.
     I'm filled with lust…for comfort and joy.

2010-03-31T12:18:00.002-04:00

March 22, 2006 to March 26, 2006: Anaheim & Laguna Beach. Words fail.
Just up from the throwback Hotel Laguna, there's a long, narrow oasis of calm in the midst of the touristy storm. It's called Brown's Park. You'd think it was just an ordinary alley, except for the mosaic brickwork wall, bronzed chairs and table with book at the entrance. The walkway leads to a low ironwork railing, complete with stained glass, that overlooks the Pacific. The words, hard to read in my sunrise picture, are:

In this fleeting moment

what extravagant respite

as booming surf speaks its

mystical passage across

the undreamed depths.*

The poem…the view…the sounds of that surf…I knew I should feel some fleeting extravagant respite. But I didn't. It was like being given a gift you can't figure out how to unwrap. If anything, the experience just emphasized the divide between the poem's spirit and my own.
     I tried, really I did. I took ten deep breaths with my eyes closed and then opened them to the "booming surf." I did a few basic t'ai chi moves with a yoga Salute to the Sun thrown in for good measure (even though the sun was in the opposite direction.) Ultimately, all I could do was take a lot of pictures to try to at least capture the experience I seemed incapable of having.
     Back in November, I wrote a few posts about whether words can really describe the experience of depression. The other question is whether words can help alleviate it. I'm sure inspirational verses like the one above help some psychotics some of the time. And, as I've said, the mantra-like repetition of almost any phrase besides, "How much longer oh Lord..." occasionally soothed my soul.
    But frankly, I preferred really good rock & roll. Really loud.

*The borders are the word "sound." And the sculptor was Raymond Persinger. Although it's not clear to me if he wrote the poem, or if it was written by the "Brown" the park was named after, or by someone else entirely.

2010-03-28T21:11:00.005-04:00

March 22, 2006 to March 26, 2006: Anaheim & Laguna Beach. Part 2.
One day, during my visit to the greater (than what?) LA, I took a walk in the hills above Santa Monica with my cousin Ronni and her jet-black retriever.
     Like most geographically-distant relatives, we barely know each other, but are inexpressibly close. So, once we got past the basics—what our kids were doing, how they should meet each other someday but probably never will—we got down to the serious business of family not-so secrets and our shared gene pool. Which my father described thirty years ago, in a letter to her one-year-old son*: " I guess what I'm trying to say, and I'm not saying it very well, is that this family is emotional, but tries to keep the fact a secret."
     Over the years, my cousin and I have managed to keep our bouts with mania (more her style) and depression (my psychosis of choice) more secret than most. Probably, we just had more to keep secret—some of our siblings and cousins are disconcertingly sane.
     In any event, seeing as how we were in LA, the conversation meandered inevitably towards homeopathy. My experience has been that, like most alternative medicines, homeopathy can work, but it's hard to find a remedy that "holds." Which, as any good homeopath will tell you, simply means it isn't the right "constitutional" for you. But—not to worry—there are several thousand others to choose from and, given the nature of your various bodily functions, moods, thought patterns at different times of day, color of your phlegm, and that compulsive need to scratch your back at that exact spot under the shoulder blade, shouldn't be hard to find. (Sorry, homeopathic friends, you gotta admit, the Materia Medica is a pretty thick book.)
     In any event, in my never-ending search for my very own Jewish patron saint of bipolar, I stopped by a homeopathic pharmacy Ronni mentioned, and had an interesting conversation with a severe, but kind, Germanic woman, appropriately named Greta, who listened empathically to my symptoms and provided some interesting insights:

1) I was probably given Nux in the 1990s as a constitutional because I had a lot of anger. But it wasn't the right constitutional for me now.
2) She believed if a remedy is right, you can't antidote it. [Traditional homeopaths consider certain things, including coffee and mint, to be antidotes—which is a drag, seeing as how giving up coffee depresses me...]
3) There's a specific kind of obscure homeopathic-type modality called gemmotherapy—sort of a cross between a Bach Flower and a homeopathic that she thought might be ideal. She didn't have any, but suspected I'd be able to find it at the Natural Foods Show.

I told her that I had tried taking a Bach Flower remedy called Aspen. She thought I would benefit better from Oak because it gives you strong roots. Plus, she recommended White Chestnut for some reason I don't remember.
She also explained that taking it on the tongue (which I'd been doing) wasn't as powerful as putting drops in my water bottle and sipping it regularly. In fact, she said it's best to put the drops in, shake it lightly for a minute. Then, when that bottle is about done you can fill it with water again…in other words you create your own homeopathic dilution. Which, of course, I did compulsively for the next 72 hours. Nevertheless, the next morning I wrote:

I bought the White Chestnut and Oak and did what she said. By the time I got to the airport to pick up Joe an hour later, I was hungry for the first time in days. Last night I still woke up at 3:30, but I didn't mind lying there because my thought patterns weren't frantic. Finally took a little Valium because I needed to sleep. Woke up at 5:30, measurably better than usual. And the flutter in my solar plexus (it moves from my throat chakra to my solar plexus) was much milder.

Plus, I'm staying in this hotel room where you can hear the surf crashing all night long…very soothing and much better than staying in downtown Anaheim or next to some highway like I've been doing for the last week.

That particular feeling of well-being lasted a day or two. At which point I began, unsuccessfully searching throughout the hundreds of booth at the Natural Foods Expo for the holy grail of this thing called "gemmotherapy." But, within a few days, I'd hunkered down with good-old reliable ever-increasing doses of Valium, and was keeping on keeping on.

* My dad treated all children as adults—he wasn't always so generous with actual adults.

2010-03-27T07:04:00.003-04:00

March 22, 2006 to March 26, 2006: Anaheim & Laguna Beach. Part 1.
You'd think that a Natural Foods Expo going on within a precious-crystal's throw of Daffy and Grumpy, wouldn't be the best place for a manic-depressive. But, actually, as outer events go, it's not that bad.
   First of all, things are happening all around you, way faster than your brain can keep up or run away from. So, you're constantly distracted from the discomforting signals being sent by your errant neurons.
     Second, there are a lot of people who are convinced they can help you, by using top-secret natural processes to extract top-secret vital components that contain top-secret energetic vibrations that, if taken, in precisely the correct top-secret dosages and sequences can help even a blatant psychotic like myself.
   (While I didn't get to try everything, I have to admit that the free ice cream and chips cheered me up quite a bit.)
   But, most importantly, people constantly come up to your booth and ask deeply perplexing philosophical questions:
     1, "Is it natural?"
     2. "Does it have ________?" (Fill in blank with whatever recently-discredited natural ingredient some obscure magazine just said would shorten your lifespan by a matter of milliseconds.)
   3. "Is it cruelty-free?"

Which you have to strain your beleagured cranium to answer:

   1. "Well, depends what you mean by natural.." "You know...no artificial ingredients." "Which means what?" "Well, like stuff made from petrochemicals." "Petrochemicals come from way-ancient plants, you know."
    2. "Yes, it does have _____. Our French suppliers are having trouble getting it out of their formulations, because it's one of the primary ingredients in water."
    3. "Have you ever heard a flower scream when you pick it? Believe me, it ain't a pretty sound."

Excuse this lapse into affectionate sarcasm. From one perspective, that whole world of trickery and fear is kind of depressing. From another, it's kind of amusing. I was there for four days. Overall, amusing ones. And that was even before I talked to the Lebanese homeopath who thought my remedy might be "neon" …

(Thanks, Joe)

2010-03-23T09:36:00.003-04:00

March 21, 2006: Phoenix, AZ to Santa Monica, CA. 402 Miles.
When I wasn't compulsively switching stations on my satellite radio—looking for the perfect song for that very moment—I managed to listen to a few books on CD. Although, one of the challenging aspects of my compulsions was that if I missed a single thought, I had to go back and play it again. And again. And again. Until I got it. Which can be a bit time-consuming.
Susan Orlean's essays on traveling were easier to follow and, sometimes, painfully relevant. I tried to edit down the following excerpt, but it's just too good to cut…and, I'm sure, interesting for even the least-depressed writer and/or wanderer.

"Probably the most valuable lesson after these years of travel is how to bear being lonely. There’s nothing that has quite the dull thud of being by yourself in a place you don’t know, surrounded by people you don’t recognize and to whom you mean nothing. But that’s what being a writer requires. Writing is wonderful life, a marvelous life in fact. But it is also the life of a vapor…a floating in unseen, filling space and then vanishing. There are times when I’m traveling far from home that I’m so forlorn that I can’t remember why I chose this particular profession. I yearn to be home so fiercely that I feel my heart will pop out my chest. Then I step out and see the world spread out around me. I know where I’m heading. I’m heading home. But on the way there, I see so many corners to round and doors to open, so many encounters to chance upon, so many tiny moments to stumble into that tell huge stories that I remember exactly why I took this particular path. The journey begins again, the story starts over; I gather myself and go out to see what I can see and tell it as best I can and that thing of home is always forever there, just over the next horizon."
— My Kind of Place

I heard that, burst into tears, pulled into the next Rest Area, looked at the displays about Arizona Highways, and began to see where I’ve been. Over the next hour or two, I dictated the following:

You know what it is? Something in me just hasn’t surrendered yet. There’s too much to take in…too much to know. You can’t know every little thing. You can’t be aware of every little thing. I have a Talmudic brain and I’m trying to grasp instead of experiencing. I’m trying to remember things without even seeing them. I’m worrying my way across America, trying to parse out the lives of all the people I see and mine. What are they doing? Why? What am I doing. Why?
     It’s a Fool’s Errand. But who better?
     I love the way that roads head towards the mountains and then quietly curve around. So, one moment you can’t understand how you’re ever going to get through them, and the next moment they're on your left and then behind you. Maybe that’s a metaphor worth chewing on.
     There aren’t a lot of things that have gotten me excited on this trip, because I’ve been hiding from so many things—or, I guess, more fairly, so distracted by my inner states. Although these windmills [around Palm Springs] are pretty amazing...
     That’s the honest thing. Most of the time I don't know where I am. I don't know where I'm going to sleep. I don't know where I'm going to get a cup of decent coffee. I don't know the names of the plants. I don't know the names of the mountain ranges. I don't know what the people do who are in the cars around me. There's so much I don't know. That’s the truth.

2010-03-21T07:53:00.004-04:00

March 20, 2006: Lordsburg, NM to Phoenix, AZ. 305 Miles.
There are very few things from those two years that I really regret. Sure, some of the stupid things I did were maniacally stupid. And I did cast a pall over certain events that deserved better.
     But I do have some regrets from my visit to my godfather in the somewhat depressing Phoenix suburb of Sun City.
     Larry was 94 years old at the time, a well-known and even more well-respected, old-school labor organizer. Faced with intolerance, insensitivity, and/or idiocy (usually real, but occasionally perceived), he would get a guided-missile look in his eyes and start verbally eviscerating the offender.
     Still, he was among the most lovable and loving people I know. I'm sure he didn't approve of my long hair in college, many of my subsequent life choices, or even how I used a hammer, but those eyes just couldn't quite maintain that penetrating glare with me, and his heart couldn't ever manage to get fully behind the criticism. Being his godson forgave more sins than I care to remember. (His daughters weren't always so lucky...)
     During my visit, he told me his stories about organizing textile workers in the 30s, steelworkers throughout the 40s - 70s, and even the ferry workers at Martha's Vineyard. I mean, this is a guy who, as soon as he retired and moved to Arizona, started organizing retired union members, appalled by their inexorable political drift to the right.
     Sure: I'd heard most of these stories before; many were full of braggadocio and exaggeration; a few of his perspectives on people I knew, were a little skewed; and, of course, I could barely get a word in edge- or other-wise…which was a relief under the circumstances. But, hey, that's the whole point of hanging out with people who've been around longer than we have…especially when they have something to say that's still important for you to hear.
   So I regret that part of me was always wondering how much longer I could sit in the chair across from him without jumping up, moving my body somehow, screaming. I regret that part of me was always wondering how I could come up with a insightful, coherent, or even relevant response when so much of my attention was always being wrestled back to earth by this weight I was carrying.
     I'm sure my mother had made some reference to my bafflingly fragile state. But I'm equally sure that he would have considered it an affliction that, while troubling in someone you love, should simply be overcome—whether through medication, hospitalization or, preferably, sheer will. Certainly, he had more to be depressed about than I did. Most of his comrades in arms had died. Most of the citrus trees that had surrounded him and my godmother Lil when they moved there, had been replaced with developments (with the phrase "orange grove" in the name).
     That was, of course, the last time I saw him. I don't regret forgetting the stories. I'm terrible at remembering stories. I just regret not really being able to be there.
     But I know full well that this regret is more for myself than for him. And, considering the fact that self-pity was one of the deadly sins in his canon, I'll now stop indulging myself in his name. I think that'd make both of us happy.

btw: writing about Larry naturally makes me want to share his story. Memorials were held for him in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and Providence. But this link takes you to his obit in the Martha's Vineyard Times…which was his real home.

2010-03-19T22:23:00.004-04:00

March 19, 2006: Roswell, NM to Lordsburg NM. 317 Miles.
On the way out of Roswell, a friend called and told me that Teddy Roosevelt once said, "the 'Black Care' cannot outrun a fast horse." I laughed and said it seemed to be having a pretty easy time outrunning a slow VW Camper.
     I've tried to spare you (and me) from blatantly New Age perspectives but, when you travel without fixed destinations, it seems that everything is a manifestation of your inner state. Just after I hung up, I saw an arch of dark clouds with sun shining through in the center. Like I was about to enter heaven.
   I wasn't about to enter heaven. I was about to enter Las Cruces, NM. But I did manage to find a decent lunch and latte there, in two different non-descript shopping centers…although I only found them after many quizzical looks and finger pointing from people who'd never met a dysphoric manic from Vermont.
     By later in the day, the cognitive dissonance returned with a vengeance and, for reasons I still don't understand, I checked into a motel in Lordsburg, NM—a town that was only one "u," one "e," and one decent restaurant from being my salvation.
     I stayed there based on the rationale of the road rather than common sense. I wasn't due in Phoenix 'til the next day. And I didn't have another 600+ day in me. Even mania has its limits…sometimes.
     So there I was, stranded at a Best Western in a dry, cold, windy, lifeless-on-Sunday town in southern New Mexico. After checking in, I went for a jog. I hate jogging, but thought it might get the agitation out of my throat. It didn't. So I went back to the motel, took a cold shower, screamed a little—keeping it down so I wouldn't scare the family in the room next door. Then, I had a shot of whiskey, took a Valium, turned on the TV, and did my best imitation of a post-modern existentialist.
     Who knew that Teddy Roosevelt was depressed?

2010-03-18T19:35:00.023-04:00

March 18, 2006: El Reno, OK to Roswell, NM. 468 Miles.
Fifty three years, nine months, and three days after appearing on planet earth, I finally got to meet my people…in a place where humans make parodies of themselves in the process of trying to make parodies of "aliens." The humans also make a lot of money off said aliens without paying any royalties—something which could have some pretty interesting unintended consequences.
On my way, I drove through Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and past White Sands National Monument (first atomic bomb test).

I had a lot of trivial, amusing, and/or profound thoughts that day:
• It's pretty clear who the aliens are.
• The question isn't whether we should be afraid of them, but whether we should be afraid of ourselves.
• Sometimes all human manifestation seems like just the detritus of thought.
• If they are here to possess our brains, they're in for quite an unpleasant surprise when they get a hold of mine.

While driving I continued to listen to Michael Chabon's The Final Solution in which he points how the blitzkrieg would expose both the rats and small treasures that had been hidden in the building that had been bombed. That’s what cataclysm does. At the time, I could only hope he was right.

2010-03-17T21:24:00.002-04:00

March 17, 2006: Morton's Gap, KY to El Reno, OK. 768 Miles.
There's no legitimate reason to drive 768 miles by yourself in a VW Bus. Especially one with a reputation for blown gaskets, leaking fluids, failing fuel pumps, and countless other things that bump, grind, shriek or—worst of all—make no sound at all before stranding you in the middle of nowhere. Which is a place that, perversely, can be very claustrophobic. Still, I keep driving. And dictating notes:

Between satellite radio coverage of a Brattleboro murder trial, a very good Michael Chabon resurrection of Sherlock Holmes, and occasional rock and roll—primarily an homage to St. Patrick's Day from U2, Van Morrison and Sinead O'Connor—I keep going. Sometimes wondering what I'm doing. Other times just glad I'm doing it.

I figured I'd spend the night close to Oklahoma City, so I could drive through it in the morning; see if I could pick up any intriguing and/or illuminating vibes from one of America's many Ground Zeros of fear. I know I should be staying in Springfield, Missouri or maybe Tulsa but:

I realize at one point that for someone like myself who is always driven to keep moving forward, the good thing about traveling like this is that there's nowhere to go. You just sit in the car, and the car takes care of the rest.

You'd think, under the circumstances, a guy like me would know a thing or two about March Madness. But I've managed to forget that some of the Sweet 16 games are being played in Oklahoma City. There's also a NCAA wrestling tournament and a farm show going on. But I can be excused for not knowing about those.
You'd also think a guy who spent all that time and money buying a used VW camper would, upon learning all this, cop to the fact that he's gotta stay in the back parking lot of some Wal-Mart, open up the pop-top, and huddle in his sleeping bag as the temperature drops into the 30s. Instead I keep driving. And calling motel after motel. Finally, thirty miles past Oklahoma City, this voice says:

“You gotta bed."

After handing over the credit card, signing the form, and returning her cheery smile with a wan one of my own, I go to the room, turn on some basketball and write:

I keep thinking I have to be in some balance to write. But actually I don’t. I can keep writing just like I keep driving.

2010-03-16T08:07:00.005-04:00

March 16, 2006: Morgantown, WV to Morton's Gap, KY. 556 Miles.
OK. Everyone who's been to Morton's Gap, KY, raise their hands...c'mon, I know you're out there. Because I get a lot of visits on this blog from someone in Kentucky.
     After checking into a motel behind a truck stop, I went for an out-and-back bike ride. I prefer loops. Most bikers do. You get to explore the area a little. Just check a map, ballpark the distance, and go.
     You only do an out-and-back when 1) it's late in the day…so if you get lost you'll be literally in the dark; 2) you're in an area where you sense there might be a lot of strange dogs (and perhaps even people) who aren't used to bikers, and might consider you fair game.
     I ate dinner at Barthalomew's Restaurant in Madisonville—you can put your hands down now. Ordering Irish Whiskey in Kentucky is like saying the Shema Yisrael under your breath while everyone else says the Apostle's Creed. Which is something else I've done, and something else that makes you fair game for the locals. Fortunately, the next day was St. Patrick's Day, so they took pity on me and gave me some Bushmill's.
     I was always best during the evening. Probably the whiskey—which many will say you shouldn't drink when depressed…and/or the exhausted relief at having survived another day…and/or the anticipation of sleep.
     The mornings were the hardest. I'd always cry a little—not about anything; just something in the throat that would flutter now and then…it almost felt natural after a while.
     That morning, while driving the sweeping curves of I-79 in W. Va, I listened to an NPR story about Temple Grandan, the autistic woman who designs machinery so cattle are calm when they die. She uses the same paddle contraption to calm herself.* Grandan talks about the fight-or-flight syndrome in autistic people that makes it so difficult for them to be in a body…
     Some thoughts from the road that day:

The nature of this depression is that there’s such a fine line between agitation, despair, and a gentle contentment. Sometimes I’m dealing with the agitation. Sometimes I’m breaking down into tears. Sometimes I’m just happy to be out here in the middle of nowhere…albeit a little concerned for my sanity.

You wonder about putting labels on it…this is mental illness, this is depression…how that puts a box on it and it makes it more difficult to go from moment to moment, just being. At the same time, it's inexorably real. What is it now, 3pm? I’ve been wrestling with this "label" all day.

Then, at 3:58—after repeating "I feel great" for ten minutes or so—I had my first few moments of calm. In which I wasn’t wrestling with demons. I tried that same mantra an hour or so later. But my mind didn't agree. It became like some kind of discordant bluegrass call-and-response.

It's been a long day. A real long day.

* They just made an HBO movie about her staring Claire Danes

2010-03-15T00:01:00.013-04:00

March 15, 2006: Dummerston, VT to Morgantown, WV. 637 Miles.
Driven by a little business and a lot of mania—I got into my VW bus and started driving towards southern California.
I was neither Jack Kerouac nor Neil Casady. I was fueled by neither cigarettes nor amphetamines. I just had to keep moving. As if, in some kind of Einsteinian thought experiment, if I could drive as fast as my brain was racing, it might appear that the latter was standing still.

"In some ways, the time that you spend on the road is the only time you can really rest; the only time when there’s really nowhere to go…or, if there is, you're already going there."

I typically drove 500-600 miles a day, during which I'd occasionally dictate random observations into a digital tape recorder, obsessively transcribing my words each evening:

"I think about all the times I've heard of people with PTS or shell shock in a war. What do I know about their suffering?"

"I think of friends who have been incapacitated by drugs or mental illness, or mental illness caused by drugs. What do I know about their suffering?"

"I think about my own last 6 months, during which stringing together a few moments, minutes, or hours has been such a relief. Only in those moments—after maybe a week of constantly dealing with this physical anxiety-without-object—do I realize that I'm in pretty deep myself."

"Caesar exhaled his last breath 2050 years ago today."

2010-03-12T08:40:00.001-05:00

What do they know? Part 2.
I'm always surprised—and, of course, occasionally astounded or annoyed—when someone implies depression is caused by just genes, hormones, diet, drug/alcohol abuse, trauma, astrological chart, lifestyle, etc. Isn't it kinda obvious it's caused by some complex combination of the above that, for better or worse, is uniquely your own? Even if scientists—who are definitely "mad" in their own way—figure out how to rip that "depression" gene out of your personal DNA, I'm sure the laws of anatomy, biochemistry, or karma will find something equally challenging to replace it with
     Under the circumstances it's a miracle that any one treatment can help more than one person. Serotonin receptors, as I understand it—I'm walking the wild side of biochemistry here—come in 13 or more subtypes that vary in both their sensitivity and the effects they produce. I know that, to the best of their abilities, your psychiatrists/physicians have diagnosed you as having one or more of 297 disorders, based on the five axes of the DSM. And they've given it their best shot in terms of treatment.
     But, then winter comes...there's less sun...so you start producing less vitamin D which somehow affects your Serotonin levels. So you take a vitamin D supplement and feel a little better. And then you have a massage and feel a lot better. And then you're driving downtown one day and the thing comes roaring back out of nowhere. So you call your doctor and you decide maybe you should take 250mg of Lamotrigine every other day, and you start to feel better again. Whew!
   Lest I scare anybody who is currently on or considering meds (or has found some other successful therapy), it's actually rather rare—at least for me—that I find myself on that roller coaster.
   Interestingly, I can't remember a single "treatment" that didn't work in some way. And part of the reason may be that receiving "care" is often the most reliable cure of all. To me, the issue was whether the cure/care "held." Cranial sacral, homeopathy, heavy doses of Inositol or Tyrosine or 5-HTP might work for a few hours or days or even a week. In fact, at one point I realized that if I got an acupuncture treatment every day I'd probably do pretty well; if I could have daily blood tests or visits to a really experienced naturopath—and could adjust supplements accordingly—I might be closer to fine.
     OK, so I got lazy—three pills in the morning; one in the evening. The thing is that all healing involves trade-offs. But, since I spent a two-hour car ride with a friend sorting through the implications of that topic for us—not to mention the entire healthcare system—I'll save it for another time.

2010-03-09T09:33:00.003-05:00

What do they know? Part 1.
The March 1 New Yorker has a review of a two new books on psychiatry. It's the kind of article that drives psychotics crazy and makes depressives sad.

It's not the article itself. The writer Louis Menand is just the messenger…no reason to kill the poor Pulitzer-Prize-winning guy. In fact, he does a real good job of summarizing, comparing, challenging, and questioning the premises and conclusions of the books involved. The article is really worth reading.

It's just that it's hard for me to believe that anybody has the chutzbah, hubris, or, clinical narcissism to believe their perspective on mental-illness is better than any other perspective.
OK. I do have perspective that I think is better than any other perspective: Everybody who writes about depression should start their article, book, or blog with the following.

WARNING: I don't have a clue

about the real causes, manifestations, or treatment of depression,

but I'm writing this because:

I'm under the delusion I do have a clue
I'm fascinated by the subject
I have some shockingly subjective observations and have drawn some unsupportable conclusions but, from my experience, there's a chance they might help someone else
I went on (or am in the midst of) a wild manic-depressive ride and I need to write about it because, well, I need to write about it.
I need to get a Ph.D. or tenure
I need to sell something.

     These are all legitimate reasons. But, I must say that the health professionals and writers I've trusted have implicitly provided that warning and pretty much fell under categories 2, 3, and/or 4.

     All of the theories presented in the article are fascinating and worthy of serious discussion—which, unfortunately, I'm not in the "mood" to provide. For now, I can only comment with some wry humor, and hope it has a grain or two of truth. Here a few of the ideas from the article, with commentary.
     Antidepressants are actually placebos. Great! Where can I buy more???
     Pharmaceutical companies invent new diagnoses so they sell drugs. Frankly, we don't care very much what you call it. We care how you can make it go away.
     Spending on antidepressants is bankrupting our healthcare system. What isn't bankrupting our healthcare system? And, by the way, what % is of the total spending is on psychiatric drugs?
   Different drugs are popular during different decades [like tranquilizers in the '50s and '60s.] This implies that a lot of diagnosing and prescribing is based on what's trendy. What's wrong with being trendy? Bleeding people to get rid of that annoying black bile was trendy at one point and, by the way, probably even helped some people.
     The entire serotonin model of depression is clinically inaccurate. Undoubtedly, so are the acupuncture, nutritional, psychic, and many other models…if you insist on being clinical about it.
     Depression is a sane response to a crazy world. Glad to know I'm sane. Now, can I have my meds please?
     Glad I got that out of my synaptic system—even if it is illusion. I feel better already. Thanks for listening!

2010-03-07T08:19:00.007-05:00

Depression & Memory.
They say that one side effect of depression is poor memory.
Short-term, that's probably true. It's kind of hard to remember what you actually did or heard or said, when all you remember is what the demons were doing and saying to you. As I said before, if you want to become a master of "self-awareness" you might consider becoming terminally depressed—except you might want to find some other self to be aware of.
Starting around February, 2006, I realized that my uninvited emotional tenants—whom I'd been trying to evict using various medications and therapies—had decided to sign a long-term lease and were beginning to rearrange the furniture.
So my notes to myself and friends demonstrate the power of negative thinking lurking behind a veneer of optimism and a wry sense of humor that managed not to get completely trampled in the process.

2/8/06: "The Universe will indeed run you ragged."
2/10/06: "Feeling more Quixotic than inspired, but that goes with the territory...I mean, Jeez, what were we thinking when we chose the "creative arts?" Why didn't we start a rock band when we were young and cute? Is it too late?"
2/25/06: "Demons are on the defensive. Occasional counter-attacks, but I think we have them on the run, or at least a slow stroll in the opposite direction."
2/25/06: "Words are like mudslides. Nothing happens for a few days and then a heavy slow torrent.
2/26/06: "As a friend says: 'Not back is good these days.'"
2/26/06: I'm not bad. Mornings rough but bearable. I get better through the day. SAM-e does take off an edge.

And, one of my favorites, in terms of how depression affects creativity (a subject I keep saying I'll get to eventually.)

3/4/2005: I was splitting some knotty wood today. And I realized it was a perfect metaphor for the way my writing has been going lately. You just keep blindly whacking away at it, hoping a seam will open up so you can stick a wedge in and start blindly whacking away some more. Of course, it's smart to study the wood first and look for the path of least resistance....which I often forget to do.

When I remember actual things I did back then, it's always through emotional bifocals:

A trip to Burlington with a friend to see our respective daughters. A beautiful drive; fascinating conversation that ranged from farming to politics to writing to daughters; a wonderful breakfast and walk but...

all I remember is trying to act normal; trying to act normal; trying to act normal. So that when this wonderful day was over, I heaved a sigh of relief.

Friends up for a weekend of sleeping late, drinking coffee, reading coffee, and a long snowshoe walk...

during which I tried to describe exactly how I was feeling screaming.

The blessed self-absorption of making some presentations in NYC

between which I frantically tried to find ways to make small talk with the oblivious, PR person who was showing me around.

Of course, then there was Mick Jagger coming out at halftime at the Super Bowl...I can't remember a downside to watching that.

2010-03-01T08:02:00.006-05:00

A Day in the Life.
In Winter 2006, I put together some notes in preparation for an appointment with an alternative therapist:

Jitteriness starts every morning 5am. I sleep, but lightly. Sleep is a relief; bad stomach w/ first eating (acupuncture sort of has under control).
Sometimes hard indoor bike riding makes me barely functional.
Sometimes focusing on a project helps. Sometimes doing anything seems like a burden. Like having to make 100 beginnings a day.
Sometimes beyond all that I have complete debilitating breakdowns: 1 ever week or two.
Utter hopelessness; crying jags; how can I spend another 20-30 years like this?
Mornings worse. No real suicidal thoughts, but I know how people do it.
Trigger can be nothing external or something even mild external.
Honestly, valium is best remedy…reluctant to take.
Lost 10 pounds. Stopped virtually all caffeine. A little to clear head once in a while.

All I remember from the appointment itself was the very understated but equally compassionate: "Yeah Dave, the universe can run you ragged."
Don't worry, I'll write a perkier e-mail tomorrow or the next day…but I figured I was overdue for a reality check, in terms of what was really going on inside me back then.

2010-02-22T09:24:00.007-05:00

Drugs, Medicine, and Many Things in Between. Part 1.
A couple of weeks ago, I met two hot chicks from Dallas. (I use the description only because I'm sure they'd thoroughly approve.) If you wanted to tell these particular stylish books by their seemingly-flaky covers, you'd think they'd only be interested in money, clothes, where they'd been, whom they'd seen, and the latest trendy thing you can do with vodka.
     But, no, they were mostly interested in ayahuasca.
     Ayahuasca is to the '00's what peyote was to the late '60s. Different as they might be chemically, they are both used—ideally in ritual settings under the guidance of a shaman—to promote visions, insights, and healing…spiritual, psychological, and even physical.
     In the years since I smoked my first joint (1968), I've taken many drugs and medicines: mescaline, LSD, aspirin, Celexa, cocaine, antacids, nux vomica, MDA (and its popular bastard child Ecstasy), valium, Lamotrigine, codeine, Lorazepam, marijuana, Buspirone, Depakote, penicillin and its various antiobiotic colleagues, hashish, Versed, nitrous oxide, Welbutrin, ibuprofen, naproxen, acetiminophen, Clonazepam, some amphetamine whose name escapes me, a variety of chinese herbs and homeopathic medicines whose names I never knew, and, undoubtedly, several other over- and under-the-counter substances that I've completely forgotten.*
   I provide this shockingly extensive (even to me) list in such a jumbled way to make two points: 1) I will not be running for President, and 2) to remind us that the line between so-called recreational drugs, prescription drugs, and over-the-counter medicines is arbitrary and individual.
   People frequently distinguish between drugs that alleviate symptoms, those that physically repair the anatomical parts involved, and those that are taken simply for so-called recreational purposes.**
   In the case of my new best friends from Dallas, these distinction are irrelevant. Not only have they experienced deep insight and personal transformation by going to Peru and participating in these often-grueling ceremonies, one of them no longer needs to take medicine for depression. For them, ayahuasca is not a recreational drug, it is a medicine and a spiritual path.
     All of us who take any medicine or drug do so without knowing with 100% certainty whether it will alleviate our symptoms; actually fix what ails us; have significant side effects (including death); work for a day, month, year, or lifetime; and/or be fun.
   Despite our uncertainly, if not total ignorance, about these things I, for one, have an instinctive reaction, pro or con, to the mention of any drug. Some of those reactions are based on personal experience, forgetting it might be different next time. Some are based on things I've heard or read, forgetting I know little about the source. Basically, all my opinions and attitudes are based on the delusion that I know how these substances might affect me or someone else.
     Right now, I am taking drugs that are definitely alleviating the symptoms, may be healing the underlying physical cause, and, frankly, make my life a whole lot more fun. And taking them seems easier than taking annual (or more) trips to a place where I don't speak the language, in hopes that a particular shaman will be skillful and experienced enough to be able to provide the mixture of herbs and guidance that will cure me—and, unlike some drugs, not make it even worse..
     My first reaction to hearing my "hot chicks from Dallas" sing the praises of ayahuasca was that they were in way over their heads…they were heading for a fall…this can only work for so long.
     Since then, I've given it a lot of thought. And, now, I don't think what they're doing in Peru is any crazier than what I do every time I pick up a prescription at the pharmacy.

* Some people reading this list will undoubtedly think: "The guy deserves to be depressed." Well, 1) I was depressed before I'd done anything more than aspirin and penicillin; and 2) Most people would be as surprised as me to see just how many drugs they've taken.
** Anyone who has ever had a "bad acid trip," knows it's about as recreational as biking 100 miles on a hot day without enough water—which can, by the way, also cause hallucinations.

2010-02-17T11:39:00.005-05:00

Visible Means of Support: Spouses/Partners #2.
I just got an e-mail from a friend, excerpted here, which makes an important point. I'll always remember the moment when someone asked my wife if she'd ever considered being screened for depression. While the idea seemed odd to me, it was like a piece falling into place for her.
     By the same token, after years of her suggesting that I might no longer be able to control my mood swings—and that there might be a chemical component—I remember the moment when I realized myself that things were getting out of hand. Something in me relaxed at that moment. Like I'd been holding up a weight that I no longer had to hold up all by myself...and might even, eventually, be able to put down.
     They say that the mark of clinical depression is when it's seriously interfering with your ability to function. And nobody is more aware of this than your partner. But there are so many shades of this, and there's such a natural inclination to resist the diagnosis and/or try to deal with it without medication, that it can remain the elephant in the living room (actually in every room) for a long time. Ignoring the elephant—or, what my friend calls that "third entity sitting at the table—has caused many marriages to break up. There but for the grace of a lot of things, including open discussions, go a lot of us.
     My friend wrote:

Accepting that there is a problem is a very important step. We now discuss freely which aspects of her behavior are "normal" and which are not. I don't even know if it matters whether we successfully identify which is which, it's therapeutic to have the discussion with the third entity (her mental illness) sitting at the table.

In the past, without "it" being fully acknowledged, there was always this phantom menace sabotaging progress. Naturally progress as it is now is uneven. Lots of little pit stops and minor breakdowns, but what a difference a diagnosis makes.

2010-02-14T07:06:00.009-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day.
I know that's sort of an odd title for a bipolar blog, but it seems appropriate, since my last several posts have been about the ways I was supported during my experience of major depression.
     You might not be fully able to "feel our pain." We may not be fully able to receive your support. But, you should know that, as I've said before—whether we show it or not…even if we turn away with that tortured look on our faces—we are aware and appreciate that you are there for us.
     Undoubtedly, you know people who are seriously depressed on this day. I sure do. In large part, I owe the fact that I'm not, to the support of family, friends, acquaintances, and professionals.
    I continue to use the not-so-royal we in a kind of solidarity with those who are currently living with their own breaking hearts and frenzied nerves. I hesitate to speak for them, but I will go out on a limb and say it actually pains us to realize we are making you feel bad—that we're casting a shadow over your life. Far better that you keep enjoying your own good humor, rather than letting us drag you down.
     I better stop before I get too schmaltzy but, rest assured, the best thing you can do is to smile (wryly, perhaps); acknowledge/accept the depressed as the not-exactly-happy-go-lucky people we/they are; and remain as happy and loving as you possibly can. If we don't look too ornery, you can even give us a hug.
     I mean, hey, it's Valentine's Day. Love, Dave.

2010-02-10T14:15:00.009-05:00

Visible Means of "Support": Suicide & Straightjackets.
Whenever I ponder these subjects, my mind rambles, looks tentatively down several narrative paths, and then retreats, unsure of itself, unwilling to say anything definitive. After all, suicide is unknowable for those of us still here, and I have no experiential knowledge of psychiatric restraints.
     Also, in writing this blog, I try to combine the compassion of someone who's been there, with the wry sense of humor of someone who is relieved to have one again. But it is difficult to justify having any sense of humor, wry or otherwise, about these subjects.
     If you imagine a continuum of responses to a major episode of agitated depression, suicide and straightjackets seem to lie at opposite extremes of "support."
     Suicide is an expression of someone who, through absolutely no fault of their own or anyone trying to help is simply unable to experience being supported by anything or anyone.
     Restraints are an expression of society's total imposition of its will, in a last-ditch attempt to "stop the [manifestation of] madness."
   While I don't have any experience of them. I do have experience of pondering them from "inside the bubble."
   At high levels of agitation—the very thought of restraint can be unbearable. Your body starts moving involuntarily, trying to find a Houdini-like escape route out of those vividly imagined belts and shackles. At the same time, even restraints provide a kind of support, in the sense that they support any desire you might have not to harm yourself or others. In fact, for some extremely sensitive people, restraints may offer a kind of relief.*
   As I've mentioned in other posts, even at my lowest, my thoughts of how can I go on living this way? never made it to I have to end this. But I do smile (wryly) when people say he/she had so much to live for, or ask how could he have done this to his family? I can't speak for him, but I'm fairly certain he could do it because the unremitting chemical processes in his brain made any other thoughts physically impossible. Literally. The only support left was the unsupportable.
     Yes, suicide is an unfathomable tragedy for family and close friends. But, when I hear of one, my response is never how awful. Rather, it's a kind of respectful huh: like the way you'd think about someone who went exploring, perhaps recklessly, in a distant and dangerous land…and never returned. I never wanted to go there myself, but I can see the attraction.

* I understand that for people with autism—another subject I know virtually nothing about—a certain kind of managed surround can be very soothing. The new HBO movie about Temple Grandin is probably a really good reference on this.

2010-02-04T12:08:00.011-05:00

Visible Means of Support: Close Friends. Part 2.
I can’t tell you what to do with your withdrawn, erratically moody, no-fun-to-be-with friend, but four experiences stand out in my mind. They may be cautionary, illustrative, or both.
    A long-term friend, after realizing just how bad I was, started coming over every Wednesday evening. He kept his own bottle of cognac at our house for the occasion and, on arriving, would pour himself a healthy shot. Emboldened, I might counter with a thimble of Jameson’s. Then he’d ask me questions about what it was like. A lot of questions. Having spent years exploring psychosis that had been induced by drugs and alcohol—in himself and others—he was genuinely interested. He had no agenda. In fact, he said he kind of liked me better this way. I looked forward to his visits.
    One day, another friend called, and could tell by my voice that I was way down a road he had traveled 25 years before. So he gave me a mantra I mentioned in an earlier post, but that bears repeating: “It will pass. Care for yourself. Ask for help.” To those he added one more: “Anytime Dave…day or night. Anytime.”
    Then there was the friend with whom I’d spent many years honing a personal, ever-evolving, comedy routine in which no fools, including ourselves, were ever suffered. As the months went on, we managed to find ways to incorporate even my most abject states into our lovingly biting verbal slingshots. Until, one day, realizing that he was suffering my despair almost as much as I was, I said, “Well, let’s not institutionalize my psychosis”—the irony of which didn’t escape either of us.
    Finally, there was the fellow sufferer—at the time in remission—who saw me walking downtown one day, took one look, and said, “OK, that’s enough. Call this guy. Today." The next day she called to check in and I told her I couldn’t get an appointment for a month. She said: "No way. I'm calling him. He's going to see you in a couple of days." And she made it happen. Turned out he was the right guy for me. And, within a month, I knew I was on my way.*
    We know we’re not a lot of fun to be with. But don’t let us scare you. We appreciate even your most clumsy attempts to spend time with us…because we do it every day.

* One thing that can be really frustrating for our friends is that we greet most suggestions with a shrug. So, if you really really believe that it will help, you might consider taking the matter in your own hands. Make the appointment and drive your friend there. Buy the supplements and make sure he takes them. Go over to his house and tell him (don't ask him) that you're going for a long bike ride. This isn't a general rule—I'm not sure anyone appreciates being committed to a psychiatric hospital against his will—but sometimes it's exactly what he needs to feel better…whether for an hour or, with any luck, a long time.

2010-01-31T22:14:00.003-05:00

Visible Means of Support: Close Friends. Part 1.
I don’t envy you. One of your closest friends, someone you see regularly, has become a giant emotional sinkhole. Sure, he’ll still play squash or go for a bike ride with you. Show some faint interest in business. Plan a road trip that you both know he won’t take. Maybe go for a walk. Watch a game. If you’re lucky, he might even have a drink with you, unless his shrink—what exactly are they shrinking anyway?—has convinced him that Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, Lithium, Cymbalta, Valium, or whatever should definitely not be mixed with alcohol. Which is an entirely different subject.
     You can ignore his behavior (or lack thereof), shrug it off, share ironic jokes about it, or get really worried and upset…there’s really nothing much you can do.
    Every time you see him, you take a quick look…see if maybe Dave is Dave again. Once in a while you see hopeful signs: he’ll actually laugh wholeheartedly; his wit doesn’t seem slashed in half. But it doesn’t last. There’s no depth. He hears some bad news, is late for a train, loses some money in the market, can’t meet a deadline, and he’s toast.
    You want to help, but how? Trying to cheer him up seems somehow insensitive. Suggesting the latest natural miracle cure—SAMe, 5-HTP, B12, D3, glutamine, tyrosine—only provokes a pained look. He’s tried them all and nothing worked. Maybe he even had a bad reaction to one (because, in truth, natural remedies, while undoubtedly milder are not absolutely free of side effects). You can be empathetic, but that can make you pretty damn sad yourself…which can, in turn, make him feel even worse.
    It actually helps if you’ve been there, ‘cause your depressed friend can’t just stay in his shell and act like you don’t understand. But what helped you might not help him and, unlike other people, you know all too well that there’s no magic bullet. So what do you do?

2010-01-30T12:10:00.003-05:00

Visible Means of Support: Children.
There's an entire industry devoted to describing what it's like to be the child of a depressive. But I'm not sure the same is true for the other way around—i.e., what it's like to be a depressed parent.
     For better or worse, I don't know much about it. While I certainly remember occasionally trying to cover up the fact that I was mildly depressed (or drunk or stoned) while our daughter was growing up, it was not a constant struggle. I.e., I'd be surprised if she ever writes an autobiography about how her childhood was tragically and irreparably damaged by her father's mood swings.
     Still, it seems pretty obvious that children are often far more affected by what's really going on than what you pretend is going on. I doubt you can ever eliminate their natural tendency to develop some level of defense mechanisms—whether it's to withdraw into their own world, lash out in anger, match your moods swing for swing, or come up with some other creative response.
     I do know that, regardless of your physical or mental infirmity, it is humbling to have your kids start parenting you—even though it may, to some extent, be unavoidable, and particularly hard to avoid in single-parent homes. Note, I say humbling, not bad.
     I think the most empowering thing for everyone concerned is simply "owning" your situation. It's not their fault—in fact, it's nobody's fault. It's your depression, not theirs. It's your responsibility to deal with it, not theirs. You appreciate their attempts to cheer you up, even when you're unable to respond in kind.
     Obviously, every parent, kid, family is different—and the phrase "age-appropriate" is more than buzzword—but, I'm a big fan of open communication regardless of the situation…even though it might be a good idea to have a little professional help along the way.

* * * * * * * * * *

During one of my darkest periods, our grown daughter called—by then, she was 25 or so—way beyond the age when I was concerned about how my depression might affect her. Still, when my wife handed me the phone, I prepared myself to tell her that I was feeling better; that the latest medication [vitamin, acupuncturist, homeopath] seemed to be helping—don't worry about dad. But, as soon as I heard her voice, I started sobbing. The only other time that happened was when I called to tell her that my mother (her grandmother) had died.

So now matter how old you or your child is, you can't underestimate the mysterious power of that connection. DNA runs deep.

2010-01-26T08:58:00.013-05:00

Visible Means of Support: Spouses/Partners.
Just as I was about to write what it was like for my wife when I was in the throes of bipolar, a friend of mine who's in a similar situation wrote it for me. I excerpt/paraphrase his words with his permission:

Marriage is so tricky because naturally there are issues that come up which are not caused by the depression, but I'm so sensitized at this point, it is almost impossible to separate the two. Everyone tells me I need to stop placating her as it just allows the behavior to continue, but I'm pretty gun shy at this point of provoking more battles.
I hope we are able to find the "cure combination." Perhaps it will involve a couple medications, plenty of rest, regularly scheduled time away, I can only guess, but I know we have yet to stumble upon the right combination on our own, and not for lack of trying.

     In two short paragraphs he highlights just a few of the challenges for spouses: figuring what's the depression and what's everyday partner stuff; being sensitive to the difference between "placating" (a.k.a. enabling) and supporting; and the need to endure the ups and downs, tentative hopes and heart-breaking despairs of experimenting with potential cures.
    There are a whole lot of other challenges where these come from. Which made me wonder whether there were support groups for spouses, etc. I didn't have to Google too far to find them. As you'd expect, there's Dep-Anon, a 12-step program "for men, women and children whose lives have been affected by a family member's depression. Members share hope, strength and experience in order to grow emotionally and spiritually."
   There are also plenty of online forums including the BPSOBipolar Significant Others Bulletin Board (isn't the adjective in the wrong place there?) and Mental Health Matters where you get to start by selecting a disorder, another phrase that troubles me in some inchoate way.
   I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or just shrug my shoulders.
     Laugh because, among other things, I am trying to find whatever wry humor I can in this illness—which I think is valuable as long as sufferers know you've been there.
     Cry because of the sheer number of people living with this disease one way or another.
     Shrug my shoulders because, unlike alcohol and drugs, depression doesn't come in a bottle or a pill...your partner doesn't even have the option of locking it away or flushing it down the toilet. They just have to live with it. Their only real cure is yours.

2010-01-23T07:11:00.004-05:00

Visible Means of Support. Part 2.
I was lucky. I was surrounded by a wide range of supportive people. Placing myself at the center of my personal psychotic universe, I see them radiating out in concentric circles:
     1. People, or, in my case, person who lived with me. (That would be my wife.)
     2. Friends/relatives who were aware of my state and saw me frequently.
     3. …were aware of my state but only saw/talked with me from time to time.
     4. …saw me so infrequently I was able to mask the symptoms.
     5. People I worked with.
   6. Health Professionals.
     7. Inpatient Psychiatry Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock—a well-respected place where I was invited to spend a couple of weeks but, respectfully (actually frantically), declined.
   Not only have I been the "subject" of these different groups, I've also been part of the first five. I.e., I've lived and worked, been friends with and related to people with major depression.
     Obviously, dealing with each individual depressive is different for each individual person, but I think it's fair to talk generally about the particular challenges each group faces.
     I have often said…some might say too often…that if you feel someone's pain, that's twice as much pain. In other words, what good will it do us if we're both depressed? So you want to find a way to be empathetic without getting totally bummed out in the process.
     On the other hand, excessive perkiness can be really annoying. So you want to find a way to remain upbeat without appearing to possess a total lack of sensitivity or remarkable capacity for denial.
     In other words, it is really hard to be with us. And, if it makes you feel any better, we know it.

2010-01-19T10:04:00.005-05:00

Visible Means of Support. Part 1.
I received several e-mails this weekend from people who have close relatives or friends struggling w/ depression—which can be almost as challenging as the illness itself.
     Everything you say seems to disappear into a bottomless pit. You wait for an opening—maybe a few good hours here or there—so, maybe, you can go to a movie, visit some friends; do something together that's actually fun. But you still feel like you're walking on eggshells—one innocuous comment and they'll start talking in monosyllables again…if they talk at all.
    You show up at dinners alone, making excuses that get tired after a while. You get tired of answering the well-meaning, "How's he doing today? This week?" You can't plan vacations. Or you can, but they won't have anything to say about it. They either don't care or are already frantic at the idea of getting on a plane.
    When you're not with them, it's such a relief—except, you kinda feel guilty about that.
Sound familiar?

2010-01-16T12:20:00.001-05:00

I feel like "myself" again. Part 2.
I enjoy entertaining many different points of view. I have them over for coffee. Take them on bike rides. Ask them to help me pass the time while stacking wood. Toss them around with friends. Let them run wild while writing.
     In the last post, I suggested that being successfully treated doesn't necessarily leave you feeling like yourself again—but rather like a whole new self; that depression, like any disease or personal calamity, can be as transformatory as it is painful.
     For sufferers, this fact may provide a modicum of reassurance that what they're going through is not a sign of weakness or indulgence; that there's not something "wrong" with them, it just hurts. For those whose life's mission is to treat or eradicate this disease, the same fact may be a helpful reminder that there is potentially great value in mania and depression—they are not simply evil destructive dragons that need to be slayed. Although a little taming may be in order.
     The question of "self" has a way of turning innocent reflections into ontological halls of mirrors. Many people, including myself, have spent years meditating and practicing other ways to become "more aware of self." Ironically, when you're really depressed, you can't help but be aware of your self…virtually every waking moment. In fact, you're aware of plenty of selves: the painfully sad self that imprisons you, the passably sane self you manage to project in the world, the self that's watching all this with increasing horror, and some quiet self, barely sensed…seemingly impossible to reach…that maintains a distance, a wonder, a curiosity, and even some hope in the midst of it all.

2010-01-13T21:01:00.015-05:00

I feel like "myself" again. Part 1.

"I [have] never treated a seriously afflicted patient who, on recovery,

said anything favorable about depression."

Peter Kramer, Against Depression

I've been saying many favorable things about depression. So, either I wasn't as depressed as I think I was, or else Dr. Kramer has been hanging out with the "wrong" kind of depressives! Actually, as one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject, he's been hanging out with more kinds of depressives than I can imagine. Still, since he questions so much conventional wisdom about depression, it seems worth questioning his.
For better or worse, his basic arguments are unassailable. Where I would say that depression has taught me many things, he would ask me to imagine what I might have learned without it. Where I would say that my suffering has somehow enriched my life, he would argue that concept is holding me back from what I could truly achieve.
Yes, depression is grueling. Yes, if I have a relapse, I will try everything I can to find a cure. Yes, it pains me to think of those who aren't fortunate enough to find relief—in particular, those who find relief only in suicide. Still, it seems to be a particularly western-medicine, goal-oriented perspective to say:

"The contrast between a patient depressed and a patient recovered is the contrast between absence and presence. The depressed lack roundedness. Their interests are narrow, their repertoire of behaviors is limited…willpower is missing, and spontaneity."

    At first, whenever I had a brief respite and, ultimately, when my meds started working, I did have a sense that I "felt like myself again." But, for me, that was soon replaced by a sense that I felt like someone very, very different. Depression had—as a friend put it—reamed out my "old self." My Blakean doors of perception had been cleansed. I was far more open and curious, and far less judgmental than I could have ever imagined being.
By the way, I was extremely present during my episode, and it was as big a test of my will as I've ever had—just ask those who walked beside me.
    That's why, whenever I read someone talk about curing depression "once and for all," I always want to ask, "But what would I replace it with?" In other words, how else would I have arrived at this "new self?"
    I appreciate Dr. Kramer's perspective. Really I do. It's the result of many years of work, curing thousands of patients. But it's important for those mired in the illness to know that their lives are not being wasted…that their experiences are as valuable as those of the happy…that these are not "lost years."

2010-01-10T11:25:00.006-05:00

Is Depression Necessary?
Is cancer necessary? Is heart disease necessary? Is diabetes necessary? Most people would answer those questions with an unequivocal NO. But they aren't so sure about depression.
Peter Kramer, the author of Listening to Prozac, is sure. He's written a bestselling book called Against Depression which ends, "How glorious it will to be to free ourselves from depression."
    Before I started reading it, the very idea seemed ludicrous—depression is just too seamlessly woven into my experience. Imagining my life without it is like imagining I had different parents.
   But his argument, while kind of circular, makes a certain amount of sense. He says that since melancholia has been around since ancient times, and the melanchoic creative has been ennobled, we think it's necessary. I.e., Since we can't imagine life (especially art and philosophy) without it, we can't imagine it not being necessary. He can imagine it. He can imagine turning our whole understanding of what it means to be a profound creative thinker inside out…with depression definitely on the out.
    He makes it clear that he is only talking about depression, not bipolar, acknowledging the intense periods of creativity that can be achieved during a manic phase. Having experienced both, it's easy for me to quibble with the the distinctions he makes between these different mental illnesses—as well as between mental illness and many other diseases.
    But, I need to think about this more. I need to jump headlong into the decades-old argument about depression's role in creativity.
   For now, and as a kind of preamble, I cay say I believe that if we are to make war on depression in ourselves or in others, we first need to make our peace with it.

2010-01-06T08:10:00.007-05:00

Depression v. Inspiration.

Wednesday morning. 6am. Sitting too close to the woodstove, waiting for the cabin to warm up. Legs really hot, fingers really cold.
    I'm feeling kinda off. For good reason. Last night I was troubled by some stuff—no big deal, just little things. So I decided to take the Law & Order Cure.
    This famous non-prescription treatment involves pouring a glass of wine or beer or two, sitting down in front of the TV, picking up the remote, turning on the USA Network, and watching successive episodes of Law & Order—one after another after another, until your mind is a blur of strange murders, the even stranger people who may or may not have committed them, and the deeply troubled detectives and lawyers who struggle to preserve some semblance of justice and sanity in the midst of it all. Detectives and lawyers—or, I should say, actors and actresses—who have perfected looks of tragic poignancy that would make any depressive proud.
    This treatment, although pleasant while it lasts, rarely helps over the long term. It's quickly followed by twisted dreams during the night and a headache the next morning. Clearly a case where the cure is worse than the disease.
    I'd like to go back to sleep, but I have too much caffeine in me. So I start looking around. My cabin is a mess. I still have boxes of childhood stuff that I've been meaning to sort through (i.e., throw out) for years. I have drafts of novels, piles of paper, and half-filled notebooks scattered all over the place. There are things pinned to the wall I haven't looked at in months. There are paper clips on every surface, photos in frames that have fallen over, tangles of wires near every outlet, little organizing contraptions that haven't organized anything in years.
    Four years ago, this scene of of chaos would be enough to break my heart. It could send me back under the covers, out on a manic bike ride, rummaging in drawers for a Valium or sleeping pill, calling every alternative therapist I could think of—to see if they could possibly see me today, preferably this morning, preferably right now. All while wondering if it was time to bite the bullet and risk another hazardous journey down the unpredictable paths of western medicine.
    Today, thanks to three different medications and, undoubtedly, many mysterious forces beyond my control, I have other options. I can sit still and keep looking around. I can have an idea. Then another. And another: OK...I'll move this here and that there and clear off that surface so I can start organizing this material here, and, in a show of remarkable courage, throw away every stray paperclip I see...
    Then I start thinking about writing this post. And then about going in the house and getting another cup of tea. And then coming back out and writing something else. And then having breakfast. And then taking a nap! Gee, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm feeling inspired. Why, you'd think I'd just come up with some brilliant insight into human nature—or, at least, my own.
    Actually, all I've done is some trivial thinking—that's barely worthy of the word "creative." But, for someone with a history of depression, there's nothing trivial about it. Because, at least for me, the opposite of being de-pressed isn't really being happy, it's being in-spired.
   And that may turn out to be a brilliant insight into human nature—or, at least, my own.

2010-01-04T07:41:00.018-05:00

"Even though an unexamined life might not be worth living,
an examined one might be too painful."

January 2, 2006 (cont'd.)
I’ve been looking for traction. I’ve been looking for some ground. I’ve been looking for a pill I can take or a thought I can have. Something that will last more than ½ an hour or so.
    Maybe I should just look at the whole thing as an adventure. I mean I don’t have to write first thing every morning—no one's making me. I just do it 'cause I think it will make me feel better about myself. But usually, the struggle just makes it worse.
    So instead, this morning, I went out and took down a collapsed structure in the woods. I’d been wanting to do it for five years. Sort of gave me focus, just knocking it down. Little things please you. Like I had seen the bolts days ago, sort of eyeballed them, and it turned out I brought out exactly the right size wrench. (Best of all, they came out.) Cleaned up the area. Marched back with all the boards. Took out the nails. Stored them in my pocket. A monumental accomplishment.
     Now I'm back on the screen-in porch. Even though the snow stopped yesterday at noon, most of the branches are still covered. It’s funny to see a little puff fall every time a branch shifts just enough to shake it off. I like the way hemlocks look laden with snow. Old tired handmaidens, brooms attached to billowing dresses.
    My best birdfeeder is the one I got for $2 at a tag sale. The birds have to approach it from the back, doing a 180 degree turn to get at the food before landing. But they do it so gracefully. Two or three come at a time. They bicker a little bit, vying for their favorite spot. Little bits of melting snow drip off the roof onto their heads. But they don’t seem to notice. The titmouse likes this feeder better. But the chickadees go to both. They'll even check out the slightly-rancid oat-cake cookies in there. Maybe birds are the ultimate humanists—what is, is. They’re sort of like Sundiata Keita.* They sing the tale, They dance the tale. They make of it a celebration. I guess that’s a good way to deal with depression, too. You sing the tale, you dance the tale, you make of it a celebration. It’s just that the physical sensation—that unique heavy pain—is so hard to ignore.
    The sun just moved past the roofline and it’s now full in my face. I’m just soaking it up through my eyes.
    At times like this, being depressed isn’t really all that bad. It's still there, but more like lying on the surface—there's nothing pushing it in further from the outside. So you can just wonder at the different colors of blue in the sky. Follow the birds back and forth at the feeder. Listen to the steady drip-drip. As if that was your job. Maybe it is.
    For the first two weeks after my breakdown I was so happy just to be in the now. Sitting here, I feel the possibility of starting to return to that…just being content to be wherever you are. Not to try to do anything. The Buddha thought it was a good idea, right?
    Still, even though an unexamined life might not be worth living, an examined one might be too painful.

* An African king from the 13th century. Founder of the Mali Emperor Known as the "Lion King."

2010-01-02T09:22:00.019-05:00

I'm in a coffee shop in Burlington, VT, staring blankly at a veneer of snow that fell last night. Our daughter is getting married later today. We're surrounded by friends and families. It's all very light, heartwarming, and remarkably unstressful. If you'll pardon the expression, I feel blessed. Even the homeless woman talking extremely loudly at the table next to me, makes me smile and feel beneficent.
I don't find any indication of depression in my writings from December, 2005, even though my recollection of that month—particularly the holidays—includes many in which I was trying to suppress that manic weight in my chest. Which, I suppose, simply proves that you can "mask" to yourself as well as others. By early January, 2006 I had blown my cover, at least to myself.
There have been tens of thousands of pages written about the depressed mind. But it's still a poignant mystery that I could feel this good today and exactly four years ago I felt so introspectively somber:

January 2, 2006
Sitting outside, screen porch, early January day. About noon. 30°. Looking at the 3 bird feeders. The nuthatch is working upside down on the almonds that I put in the screened-in-cage-like feeder. Chickadees come right up to the platform feeder. Going at the sunflower seeds that I put out there this a.m.
     We’ve had two 2-4” snows in the last week and there hasn’t been any wind, so every surface is snow covered with this thin layer. All the branches are white instead of black or brown.
    I took down the old crumbling “fort” that the kids who lived here built years ago. I like doing work like this. You can dig, pull nails, and whack away a reluctant board with reckless abandon. My energy's too erratic for any kind constructive work…destruction is another story.
    The sun seems a little higher in the sky. Some wispy clouds haphazardly making patterns…the kind of thing where the sun goes through and makes little spectra of color—purples and blues—through the prism of the clouds. I mean it’s really a fairyland out here. The tracks that Wendy and I have snowshoe'd out into the woods. The hemlocks and pines hang heavy with the snow that’s pushing their branches down. You can notice how one maple comes up and curves under the weight of the snow that sits on it so gently. Trite but true.
    How bright the snow cover is on the ground with the shadows of the trees on it. Little nests hanging off the branches. The soundtrack is the steady noontime-just-above-freezing-and-even-warmer-in-the-sun drip drip drip of snow melting off the roofs, hitting the little deck. Other than that there’s not really any sound except a plane way off in the distance, the occasional car coming down the road, and the fluttering of the birds' wings as they approach the feeder, stop, land, find a sunflower seed that suits their fancy, and then fly off to bang it against some branch to crack open the nut. They’re tenacious. I should be so tenacious.
     This depression has taken a lot of different forms, from a low anxiety in the stomach to a deep hopelessness about ever wanting to do anything again. I don’t ever know what’s going to come next...

2009-12-31T07:56:00.005-05:00

Do It Yourself? Positive Thinking.
Merry? Happy? You hear those words a lot this time of year. It feels good to hear them and to say them.
     But, you know how when you're eating that big holiday dinner, you think about all the homeless people? Well, whenever I hear those words, my heart goes out to all the people I know who are depressed.
    Having positive thoughts would seem to be a completely safe and low-cost treatment for depression. But, as proof of the illness's ability to turn English into a second language, they can have an equal and opposite effect.
    First, if you buy a lot of books and go to workshops on positive thinking, it can get pretty expensive.
    More importantly, they can be really annoying—the thoughts, books, and workshops. To mangle another metaphor: telling a depressive to have positive thoughts is kind of like telling an 8-year-old, "You can do it!" as he trudges up to bat against a 11-year-old who's almost 6' tall, has a 65 MPH fastball,* and has already struck him out four times. The kid would probably rather take a swing at his coach than the baseball.
   I have labored mightily to restrain from giving suggestions in this blog. But here's Dave's prescription for a safe, non-annoying way for depressives to approach positive thinking: Every day, you scrounge up enough energy to spend one minute saying to yourself "I feel great." The rest of the time you don't beat yourself up for surrendering to the power of miserable thinking.
    Maybe you can do more than a minute. Maybe you can do a minute ten times a day. Maybe you can repeat this prayer/mantra every waking minute for a whole week and be completely cured.
    I didn't have that kind of willpower. I just did it for a minute. And I have no idea whether, over time, it had any effect on my cerebral wiring. But, there was something empowering about doing it. Like I'd at least taken a swing.

* 65 MPH is really fast for Little League. The kid shouldn't feel bad…I probably couldn't hit a 65 MPH fastball either.

2009-12-29T07:58:00.011-05:00

Do It Yourself?
Everything we eat, drink, breathe, say, think, and do affects our moods. If there are exceptions, they probably prove the rule.
Many people who suffer from anxiety and/or depression do whatever they can to cure themselves before seeking professional help. Certainly I did.
    Some of the things we try are considered "self-medication." The term has a bad rap because it often involves things that society disapproves of—smoking, drinking, recreational drugs, and a whole lot of sugar in whatever form we can get our hands on. And, indeed, there are very clear biochemical explanations why these things can ultimately make the condition worse.
   There are other types of "self-medication," that we consider admirable—e.g., exercise, spending more time outside, meditation etc. And, indeed, there are equally clear biochemical explanations why these things can help.
   Then, there are what I'd call "self-therapies"—various combinations of vitamins, minerals, herbs, homeopathic remedies, and over-the-counter drugs that we take under the guidance of books, blogs, websites, suggestions from friends, and detailed, albeit caveat-laden, explanations from those nice people at the natural-foods stores.
    The most famous guidebook to self-therapy is called The Way Up From Down by Patricia Slagle. The subtitle is "Rid yourself of, low moods, depression with this easy-to-follow drug-free program of B vitamins and amino acids." It's a brilliant explanation of how depression works and why/how certain supplements can treat it as well as pharmaceuticals. It also has (at least our edition) 306 pages, a 34 page bibliography, and six appendices. Which makes it many things, but not "easy-to-follow." Yes, she does have a fairly straightforward "basic program" on page 56, but she spends the other 272 pages giving you information to help you understand and treat your specific condition.
   I'm not criticizing her work, or the work of others who have developed sophisticated diet-based therapies. I just want to point out the challenges involved in treating yourself, and the fact that the results can be as unpredictable as pharmaceuticals…if not more so.

2009-12-24T07:15:00.004-05:00

How Does It Feel? Part 2.
I remember a psychiatrist asking me if I was having any fun. I looked at him as if he were from another planet. Fun? What the hell is fun? To me, that was like asking a homeless person if they've eaten at any good restaurants lately.
In terms of diagnostics, however, I imagine it's an important question—for several reasons:
    1) Being manic is fun. I've been manic and I've had fun. A lot of fun. So the fact that the question seemed so bizarre during this period would suggest that I wasn't manic-depressive, just depressive. (At least, so I believed, until he explained that there was such a thing as dysphoria as well as euphoria.)
    2) Sad people can have fun. I know. I've been sad and still had fun. A lot of fun. In between the obsessive brooding, lack of energy, and tears, there's intermittent creativity, enthusiasm, and laughter.
    That's why they give you those multiple-choice forms when you stagger into the doctor's office. As I said in "Part 1", they need to quantify your state. That way they can can get on the same page as you…although they're reading the DSM IV ("Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition") while you're helplessly floundering in the Book of Job.
    So, people who have never been officially depressed shouldn't feel left out. You do have a good sense of what it's like. It is like being as sadder than you can imagine for longer than you can imagine. The only caveat is that the very fact you feel that way, adds another dimension.
    Here's an analogy: You can go to a bar and hear music. You can go to Boston Garden (I still call it that) and hear the Rolling Stones. But, while you can read about Woodstock, watch films about Woodstock, and listen to the music from Woodstock…it's like they say: you had to be there. (I wasn't.)
    In the same way, you can be sad. You can be really sad. Excruciatingly sad. But that's not the same as witnessing your own solo performance of "major depressive episode." Unlike Woodstock, however, believe me, you aren't missing anything.

2009-12-19T08:48:00.003-05:00

How does it feel? Part 1.
I woke up a little sad the other morning. No big deal.
    Half the people I saw that day probably woke up a little sad. It's a far cry—actually, many far cries—from a major depressive episode.

As the day progressed I became increasingly agitated. No big deal.
    Half the people I saw that day were probably agitated at some point. It's a far cry—actually, many bursts of inexplicable behavior—from a serious manic episode.

But today's experiences gave me the chance to ponder/study the differences more closely.
     Even though there's a strong physiological connection between the heart and mind, I don't experience emotions in either place.
     I experience sadness primarily in a swath of sensation that runs from behind the eyes—where tears form—to the base of the throat—where "lumps" form. Occasionally, I feel something called a "heavy heart" but, even that could be accurately described as a "heavy chest."
    My feelings of agitation, while also centered in the throat/chest, seem to radiate through the whole body.
    I assume these experiences are fairly universal—i.e., that I'm not just indulging in sensation-al narcissism here.
    So how do mania and clinical depression feel different from "everyday" sadness and anxiety? A lot of people, including me, have tried to describe it. There are even tests you can take to see if your emotions meet the clinical criteria. They ask questions about things like sleep, suicide, appetite, weight, ability to focus, and frequency/duration of sad feelings. (Hint: try to score low.)
   In other words, while researchers seem to have found ways to quantify certain hallmarks of mania/depression, those of us on the inside are far more concerned with our own qualitative experience: Is my sensation of sadness a thin scrim that could be lifted by a call from a friend; or a seemingly impenetrable dark curtain that could resist the efforts of a psychological bucket loader? Is my experience of agitation something I can get under control with, for example, a good workout; or does it send me catapulting out of bed at 4am and onto a frantic walk that just makes it worse?
There's a vast continuum between sadness and depression, minor agitation and mania. And everyone draws the line in a slightly different place.

* Note: I'm always a little hesitant to write about what professionals know or don't know, have or haven't figured out. I don't read the scientific literature on the subject. Which is probably just as well. So please correct me if I've (as my father always said) gotten "my mental exercise by jumping to conclusions."

2009-12-16T19:47:00.005-05:00

I tripped Santa Claus and he fell on his butt.
There. I've said it. True confession.
    It was four years ago today. During a party at the end of a manic day that I'd been trying unsuccessfully, and probably unwisely, to manage with Jameson's. On the rocks. No water.
     Unfortunately, it wasn't funny. It caused one person to almost quit her job, in spite of my groveling; and several of my nearest and dearest—who were well aware of my capacity to embrace the absurd—to look at each other, deeply unsettled. Not that I could have done such a thing, but at the erratic energy that had made me do it.
    Although I no longer cringe at the memory, I do now shake my head along with them.
    The details, while curiously humiliating, do not bear repeating. Fortunately, Santa, living up to his reputation for jolliness in the face of adversity, took the whole thing in stride, and found my penitential offering of a bottle of expensive cognac a little over the top.
    It was an accident, right? A trivial event in the scheme of things. But, for me, it was a tipping point that unhinged the fragile balance I'd maintained for the previous six weeks. A few days later, I wrote an e-mail that was cloaked in a veneer of optimism:

"So, right now I'm not taking anything and functioning fairly well. I have good days and I have OK days, but very few bad days. Interestingly, this weekend I went through another "little episode," caused by a series of trivially stupid events that I began to obsess over, but I seem to have rounded that particular corner. Ah…the mind is a terrible thing…to waste or not."

They say—and I agree—that clinical depression is not episodic. If your psychological immune system is in relatively good shape, you'd brush off an event like this with an apology. The very fact that such a "little episode" could trigger such intense emotions, said things I didn't particularly want to hear.

2009-12-07T07:56:00.006-05:00

You Saw the Snow, Right? [Or, Do Words Really Fail? Part 4]
If you live around here, you did. We had about 5" Saturday night. The heavy-but-not-too heavy kind that transforms even the most ordinary surface into a shameless exhibitionist. All day, I watched trees engage in friendly wagers to see who could hang onto their powder the longest. The hemlocks won.
Does this sound like a depressive talking? Well, you should have heard him four years ago! Same place. Similar snow:

"What’s particularly…humiliating seems too strong a word…about depression is that I'm looking at what has to be one of the nature's most amazing little performances and all I can see is darkness. .9999% of the people on earth don’t have a place this spectacular to sit and stare—to enjoy just being alive—and here I am wrestling with a bunch of brain chemistry."

     I remember the guy who wrote those words. Remember exactly where he was sitting, exactly what he was seeing, and exactly what he was feeling. And I'd like to tell him to stop equivocating: humiliation was not too strong a word. Humiliating, frustrating, overwhelming, tragic…none of them would have been too strong.
     If you're cold, sick, and starving, melancholy makes sense. I wasn't cold, sick, or starving that day. I was just miserable. It made no sense then. It makes no sense now. Depression always trumps the mind's ability to reason with it.
     As a friend wrote me around that time:

“Those that have never felt those states…you can feel how they do not quite get it, even though their concern is welcome.” (And even those of us who do feel those states, can, between episodes, wonder what all the fuss was about.)

   Sometimes, writing this blog, I'm concerned my attempts to wrestle these elusive feelings into submission may actually give me too much distance from them…as if this all happened to him not me…that I'll become someone who "doesn't quite get it"; has no business writing about it as if I do.
     Then a morning like this comes along and the visceral memory is right there, hovering over my right shoulder like a disconsolate angel looking for a home. Fortunately, I don't have to give him one. But he can stay right where he is...keep me honest.
     Did you see the moon-snow sparkling just before dawn?

2009-12-03T06:07:00.329-05:00

Emoticons have always troubled me. :-/
Maybe it goes back to my father's oft-repeated editorial edict: if you need exclamation points, the words probably aren't strong enough!!!
    Maybe it's because I've always had a visceral reaction to smiley-faces.
    Maybe it's because it took me more than an hour to figure out how to get one of those smiley-face images into this blog (and I still don't know if it will show up on your computer screen).
    Or, maybe it's because I was in a guidance counselor's office recently talking to a kid whose parents are fighting over custody. He was a little sad, a little angry, a little confused, a little agitated, a little frustrated...and more. After he left, I looked at the poster of emotions on the wall. I didn't see him there.
    I understand that these charts of emotions—which are available as drawings or photos—really help kids communicate how they're feeling. If I were a teacher or guidance counselor or psychologist, I'd use them.
    I understand that emoticons are tremendously useful when space is limited. (The text ones we use today can be traced back to Morse code.)
    But even 1,000 emoticons can't capture the subtleties of our individual emotional lives…can't reveal what's really going on behind that smiling face.

Some notes on emoticons:
1. I'm pleased to report that when I searched for an emoticon for "troubled" on a site with "+1000 Smileys & Emoticons, I got the message "Emoticon not found." I used the one for "upset." Clearly, the exception that proves my rule.
2. There are several sites including http://www.clicksmilies.com/ that have a truly troubling number of them…in German as well as English. You can even make your own.
3. One site that's really worth a look is the seriously tongue-in-cheek http://piology.org/smiley.txt. There, you can find 250 text emoticons including:
:-|:-|  Déja vu.
+-:-)  User is the Pope or holds some other religious office.
(-)     Needs A Haircut.
(They sort of make sense when you rotate 90 degrees to the right.)
...But even that site didn't have an emoticon for "troubled."
:-7    User just made a wry statement.

2009-11-30T12:27:00.003-05:00

So when did you start feeling this way?
I've never been a big fan of the nurture-nature argument. I'm just not an either-or kind of guy. I accept that we have genetic tendencies. I accept that we get whacked around from birth by the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." I even accept the possibility that we have past lives which trump everything that's happening this time around.
Still, it's interesting to look back:

I’m 11-years-old and all I care about is running.
     Kids my age play baseball, touch football, basketball—even soccer is a stretch in the ‘60s.
     Not me. I run. And, like everything else I do, I’m fanatical about it.
     I don’t just run, I run at least 3-5 miles a day. Otherwise, I have failed—not only myself but some inchoate gods whom I unknowingly worship.
     I don’t just run, I keep a running diary: how much I slept, my morning pulse rate, how much I weigh, what I ate, how far, how fast, how I felt—every physical and emotional response I can wrap my mind around.
     I don’t just run, I do specific workouts: combinations of sprints, jogs, and everything in-between, that I’ve determined days in advance, by carefully consulting the works of famous runners.
     I don’t just run, I run with a stopwatch that I live by and a pedometer I don’t trust. (Which means I have to convince my parents to drive specific routes as I frantically try to estimate precise adjustments for unavoidable short- and long-cuts.)
     I don’t just run, I own a pair of running shoes. Not sneakers. Running shoes. There’s only one kind back then—Addidas. We have to go to a store 20-miles away to find them. (No, I do not run home). I also own a pair of track shoes—a college sprinter’s cast-offs—one layer of black leather with five long cleats that dig into cinder tracks with an unmistakable crunch.
     I don’t just run, I go to college track meets. Find ways to convince myself I’m being useful. Keep careful stats on each runner, which I share with a seriousness that would make any coach proud.
     The distinctive musty, wintergreen smell of locker-room liniment is the closest thing I’ll know to orgasm until I experience the real thing.

While, I may have stretched the point (I stretched a lot of them as an 11-year-old), most kids get obsessed with some subject, sport, game, group of friends, or whatever small world they can make their own. This kind of developmental narcissism seems kind of healthy to me. It'll probably evolve into an obsession with sex in a few years anyway.
Nowadays, my running might be considered an overdose of self-medication for incipient manic-depression. I might be sent to a therapist. Or prescribed a little Zoloft. But I'm not sure it would have made all that much difference in how I am now.
There's a fine, but significant, line between intense creative focus and fanaticism. A line I've criss-crossed many times since I was kid. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. After all, let he or she who's never been without some form of obsession cast the first stone.

2009-11-28T18:46:00.013-05:00

It's All in Your Mind. (Part 1).
But what exactly "it" is, what causes "it," how to fix "it," what "fix" even means under the circumstances, and whether it even really is "all"…well, there are a whole lot of angels dancing on the heads of those pins and, if you're going to write about depression, you're going to have to dance with quite a few of them.

About ten years ago, I came across an article in Scientific American entitled "The Neurobiology of Depression." After reading it, I convinced myself and many unsuspecting friends that I understood how antidepressants worked. My spiel went something like this:

"Basically, your neurotransmitters (whatever those are) aren't doing a very good job of getting your brain cells to communicate (synapse) with each other. To remedy this sorry state of affairs, there are:

1) MAO blockers which block the enzyme that devours these well-meaning neurotransmitters before they're done making strong connections (synapses) between your pre-synaptic cells and post-synaptic cells;
2) Tricyclics which keep neurotransmitters from being sucked back (re-uptaken) too soon from whence they came; and
3) "Selective" reuptake inhibitors (SRI's) for Serotonin (SSRI), Norepinephrine (SNRI), Dopamine (SDRI) or some combination.

Since then, researchers have learned a lot more about these processes. And (although I still get a little thrill from throwing these big words around) I've learned a lot more about how little I know.

Still, I've always liked the "biochemical model," because it objectifies the disease in a way that helps eliminate any guilt you might have about taking antidepressants.

It may not be "all" in your mind. But that's a really good place to start.

2009-11-26T08:25:00.009-05:00

The holidays are the best of times and the worst of times. Particularly for those struggling to make it until the turkey/valium/whiskey kicks in. (Don't try this at home...or anywhere, for that matter.)
    At least, on Thanksgiving, you don't have to deal with the everyday stresses of work. I.e., it seems perfectly reasonable to say, "I think I'll go to my room and take a little rest," as opposed to, "I think I'll skip this meeting, go to my office, close the door, and hide under the desk."
     On the other hand, you have to deal with the stresses of being with a lot of people who haven't seen you all year. Which means masking your symptoms in entirely new ways—unless you want to spend all weekend watching mom and close relatives give you deeply concerned, if furtive, looks.
     I assure you, however, that a lot of those "looks" are in your imagination (along with a familiar toxic brew of other paranoias).
    You may think you're broadcasting your fragile state at full-volume. But, for the most part, it's muffled by the cacophony of conversation, laughter, china, turkey, TV, and the occasional frustrated expletive. (I get to say "occasional" because our family is fortunately more functional than dys-).
     I remember my traditional Thanksgiving walk with my brother in 2005. It was the first time my nephew joined us. Being able to pepper him with questions about school, sports, music, and the latest technology gave me a lot of "cover." My brother did see through some of the act—a few weeks later I came somewhat clean in an e-mail to him. But, even now, he admits to not really understanding what I was going through until he started reading this blog.
     Rest assured, even people who can tell there's something wrong have a hard time figuring out how serious it is, especially when you respond with the:

Traditional Thanksgiving Depressives' Disclaimer:

"Yeah, I had a bit of a hard time a while back,

but things are getting much better."

Depending on your circumstances, you might want to add one or more of the following:

"I just started:
- taking a new drug
- doing yoga
- seeing a new psychiatrist
- planning a trip to the south of France."
- writing [painting, weaving, sculpting, baking, and/or having sex] again.
(Do try these at home. But probably not all at once.)

Regardless, always speak quickly and finish the run-on sentence with:

"...So hey, how are you doing?"

Now that I'm better, I can honestly say I give more than lip service to the thanks in "Thanksgiving." And, in honor of the occasion, I will even surrender my resistance to New Age visualizations/affirmations, and surround all of you still in the trenches with intense white light and offer the prayer I received from a friend early on (and will repeat with some regularity in this blog):

"It will pass.

Be kind to yourself.

It's OK to ask for help."

2009-11-24T06:16:00.008-05:00

This morning I received two e-mails. One quotes a famous Persian poet:

Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deeply.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

-Hafiz (1315-1390)

I quote from the other (with a lot of poetic license and I hope her tacit permission):

I can remember feeling alone
in a crowd of people.
I would fake being ok,
and silently scream inside
for someone to notice.
Suffering in silence is NOT the thing to do.

They are both right.

2009-11-21T06:00:00.072-05:00

Usually I can tell by the eyes.

I'm out West. With a bunch of people. All very supportive of this haunted figure walking among them. Supportive and kind. Not interfering. Giving me space. There's a lot of space out West.
I'm walking towards a woman I've known for years. I see it in her eyes. She sees it in mine. There's nothing to say. But it makes us both feel better. If she can take it, I can take it. If I can take it, she can take it.

When it's a mild case of depression you just see it in the eyes—the way they look in more than out. As the depression goes on longer or gets more serious, it invades the edges…drawing squint lines that resemble "crinkles" but are the opposite.

There's a picture of me. When I look at it, all I see are the eyes. Looking through them, I can see exactly what I'm thinking. "I'm still here." (Even if I feel like something a whale just spit up.) "Don't worry about me. I'm OK." (Not really…but you know what I mean.) "I can't believe you people are still putting up with me." (Not like I'm giving you a whole lot of choice.)

I've been inadvertently "outing" a few friends with this blog...or at least made it possible for us to acknowledge to each other what we've known all along. If gaydar is the ability to tell when someone's gay...is crazydar the ability to tell when they're depressed? In both cases, it's kind of a relief to not have to pretend otherwise, isn't it?

2009-11-17T08:29:00.004-05:00

"I've gone from the most excruciating mental state I've ever experienced to one of the calmest, most productive, optimistic. Jeez, the mind...
-- e-mail to friend November, 2005

When you bounce-back from depression/dysphoria you can get a "double shot" of pleasure from the most ordinary activity: you not only enjoy what you're doing, you enjoy the fact that you enjoy it. (We may never forget how to ride a bike, but we may have forgotten the exhilaration of doing it for the first time.)
     I was particularly thrilled that I could have interesting conversations with strangers in crowded rooms—a high-wire act of such courage and creativity, that I received standing ovations from other parts of my brain: He walks! He talks! He makes sense! Anyone who's taken a mind-altering drug has a taste of this experience—at least after a good night's sleep and a lot of caffeine.
   Even over the holidays in 2005, I would cavalierly describe my recent depressive/dysphoric episode with the confidence of one who has worked his way down a fairly treacherous slope. Someone who knows where the rocks are loose and likely to give way; where a hidden spring could send you ankle deep into the muck; or an inviting branch could lend a hand but may not hold.
   I will never be that confident or cavalier again. I may have a sense of some of the factors that might bring a person to the brink; and I have some experience with the ways that might help you get down. But, I know the therapies that helped me could have an equal and opposite effect for someone else…or even for me the next time.
     Jeez, the mind...

2009-11-15T11:41:00.005-05:00

Phobias Part 2.
Everybody has phobias. There are certainly enough to go around: http://www.phobialist.com/reverse.html lists ±600 of them—most of which, I'm happy to report, I've never had. For example, I've never been afraid of paper (papryophobia), progress (prosophobia), or puppets (pupaphobia). Although, as a child, Pinocchio was pretty frightening, and I'd prefer not to to be in the presence of certain Popes (papaphobia) or politicians (politicophobia).
     Still even at my worst, I don't think my high-anxiety about being on airplanes or in crowded elevators or locking myself out of the car was any worse than that of anyone who has that specific phobia.
      The real difference is that, when you're in the throes of agitated depression, it's as if your entire psychological immune system is compromised. As indicated in the last post, I got to the point where I was able to have a paralyzing phobic reaction to just about anything—or even the thought of anything…especially anything that couldn't be fixed: typos in e-mails I'd already sent were the worst. (Typophobia?).
     Fortunately, the only thing more worrisome than the phobia itself was having anyone around me be aware of it. So I got pretty good at collecting enough particles of will (or Valium if available) to make it through.
     Yes, everybody has phobias—it's just a matter of degree. And fortunately, there are cures, or at least ways to make them bearable—from visualization to meditation to medication. The only thing I'm pretty sure doesn't work is being told to "just get over it."

2009-11-12T08:28:00.004-05:00

Phobias Part 1.

This morning I'm sitting in a small cabin in Montana, drinking tea and writing. Outside, it's snowing. Big fluffy flakes. The Grateful Dead's streaming onto my laptop from my favorite station back East. (I know it's an insult to the silence but, hey, I'm trying to wake up.)
     It doesn't get any better than this.
     Four years ago, it would've been a nightmare:
     My flight home is in 24 hours...what if it keeps snowing...what if my ride can't get here...what if we spin off the road into some pasture where we won't be discovered until next spring, except maybe by the coyotes...what if the flight is canceled...what if the plane skids off the runway...wait, did I just smell a little smoke...must be a forest fire…didn't they say that if there's a fire out here everyone has to stay and fight it (and this snow doesn't have enough moisture to put out a match)...I'm going to be here for days, maybe all winter...and that's if I don't get engulfed in flames…calm down Dave, check the weather, maybe it's not that bad (I would have actually done this right away, if not sooner). Oh my god, it says an 80% chance of rain and snow becoming all snow after 11am!!!
     Had enough? It goes on. When you have some form of anxiety-laden depression, rational thought seems incredibly naive. The world is riddled with minor glitches that can trigger massive anxiety: elevators whose doors pause a second too long before opening, people whose names you've forgotten walking down the street, appointments you're five minutes late for, checkbooks that don't balance, typos in an e-mail you just sent...
     Your car doesn't start? Forget it. You're toast.
   Obviously, I'm relieved to be able to make light of this on a now-for-me peaceful snowy day in Montana. And I hope my words bring at least a wry smile to the face of anyone who knows exactly that of which I speak.