Copyright © 2013 David Blistein
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eISBN: 978-1-57826-430-8
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Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan
The author would like to thank the following authors for permission to quote from their work:
Peter Schjedahl, Jerod Poore, Susan Orlean, and Sid Mukherjee.
“Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1975 Bruce Springsteen, renewed © 2003 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP) Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
Jane Kenyon, excerpts from “Credo” and “The Suitor” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.
Harriet Rubin Excerpt Reprinted with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from Dante in Love by Harriet Rubin. Copyright © 2004 Harriet Rubin.
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v3.1
For Wendy
Together Wendy we’ll live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul.
—Bruce Springsteen
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DAVID’S INFERNO
“Beyond the obvious—that it’s a travelogue of an emotional journey, a Fodor’s Guide to the troubled soul—the great insight of David’s Inferno is that life and literature are interwoven, that we can look to even ancient books for wisdom, diagnoses, and hope. Blistein’s frenetic, torturous—and surprise, funny!—tale offers all three in just the proper dosages.”
—J.C. HALLMAN, author of Wm & H’ry: Literature, Love, and the Letters Between William and Henry James
“Why would I want to read so much about another person’s life except that it’s self-revealing, honest, illuminated with humor, and urgent. It has a reason for being; a perfect storm of a book.”
—KABIR HELMINSKI, Shaikh of the Mevlevi Order of Sufism and Co-Director of the Threshold Society
“There is no hushed reverence, no self-aggrandizing, no simple tried and true cures … just a shared battle and a stunning honesty.”
—WILL ACKERMAN, Grammy Award winner and founder of Windham Hill Records
“Warm and compassionate, often hilarious, and full of hope and encouragement … If you love someone who is depressed (or who you think might be), read this book.”
—CAROLINE CARR, author of Living with Depression: How to Cope When Your Partner is Depressed
“David Blistein takes depression—something scary and overwhelming—and makes it approachable through this remarkable new book. He brings to his story a great deal of practical and scientific information without ever losing sight of the human element.”
—REBECCA JONES, MD, Founder of the Vermont Greenprint for Health, and Vermont Director for Doctors for America
“This record of a writing life, a talented man’s self-examination, a marriage, all enduring the scalding tides those beset by depression know, stands out particularly for its articulated wisdom and graceful prose. It is plain-spoken, funny, and at times almost heartbreaking. But insight is what gets us all by and the most insightful writing is always help in need. David’s Inferno, with its wit and thoughtfulness, is a gift to be cherished.”
—ROBERT STONE, winner of the National Book Award for Dog Soldiers and Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Bear and His Daughters
“From Plato to Plath, the great literary minds of our era have written about the descent into madness, but only one book both chronicles and heals, providing us a helping hand while also promising that we are not alone: David Blistein’s David’s Inferno. For anyone searching for meaning in this fragmented world, this profound, brilliant, compellingly fresh memoir is your siren call home. Don’t miss it.”
—SUZANNE KINGSBURY, author of The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me and The Gospel According to Gracie
“There are times when it seems that the storms will never end, that the vortex of madness will devour all hope—but there is tomorrow, and this is the story and promise of David Blistein’s David’s Inferno.”
—DR. MICHAEL CONFORTI, Jungian Analyst and Founder/Director of The Assisi Institute
“Blistein’s book is a searingly honest and deeply researched account of a mysterious and pervasive illness. He takes us into the heart of his Inferno, combing through the clinical and scientific literature and plumbing personal testimonies to create a vivid, unforgettable image of this very personal form of hell. This is a wonderful and important book.”
—SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
THE DARK WOOD
Words Fail
LIMBO
Fifty-Three Years, Four Months, and One Helluva Week
Make Up Your Mind
HELL
Looking for Traction
Road Trip
Diagnosis
PURGATORY
Hard Turns and False Tops
The Wit and Wisdom of Neurotransmitters
Prescription Medicines
Alternative Medicine
Self-Medication
Who Knows?
Visible Means of Support
Married to the Madness
Therapy
Strange Obsessions and Glimmers of Light
HEAVEN ON EARTH
The Labyrinth
PARADISE
Miracle of Miracles
Crazy Wisdom and Creativity
Depression and Spirituality
THE DIVINE COMEDY
Beholding the Stars
Psychiatric Notes
Annotations, References, and Random Notes
Chapter Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Foreword
NOT FAR from where David Blistein lives in southeastern Vermont is a pretty good Chinese restaurant. It moved to its current location near the interstate a few decades ago, taking over from a failed business, also an eating establishment. For years before the good folks from China took over the place, on a large yellow sign with black letters visible for a least a mile, the old restaurant owners advertised their strong suit with just one word: “STEAK.” When the new owners came in, they very simply removed the “S” and the “K.” (That leaves “TEA” for those of you not paying close attention.)
Both David and I have long recognized, in big ways and small, the importance of subtraction; that is, less equaling more in most things connected to the odd set of events we all call the human experience. But there are times when more is … well … more—and a good thing. This happens most often when we need each other. I need David Blistein.
Over the more than forty years we’ve known each other,
we’ve shared many things: LOVE, good times, laughs (lots of them), women (no comment), alcohol, drugs, and GOD. But our madness or our depression—“Black Care,” Theodore Roosevelt once called it—has been something we’ve had to endure mostly alone. Not that we weren’t without help. We had it. Not that we didn’t help—or try to help—each other. We did. But we were essentially alone. All alone.
I’m not surprised that his brain betrayed him so mercilessly. (Or perhaps, all of this has also been the best blessing ever for him—and for us.) His mind works so wonderfully, so differently, so fast, and so generously that it was bound to trip over itself, bound to need a spare part not easily found in the usual places, bound to need a bit of rewiring, rebooting. But it was the depth of it that scared us, the way it cancelled out his own superb cleverness, the way it usurped his own strengths and sapped his normally prodigious life force, the way it scared him.
It took a lot of hard work, and a lot of love from others and from David himself, but he did get better. And the hard work he did was a marvel to those of us who love him so unconditionally. Because he has always been for the world in a way too unique to accurately describe here in a few words, his way out of his hell had to include helping others out as well, without judgment, without making someone or something wrong. That is this book. It takes us deep into the mysteries of depression, and its power to transform our relationships, our creativity, and our very selves—a remarkable achievement.
Courageously and honestly, he has revisited the terrifying places, and while not smothering the terror in bromides and platitudes (it is really frightening—and should be), he has given us all a map and some basic instructions for doing the hard work we may need to summon when the inevitable vicissitudes of life threaten even the most controlled and controlling among us, i.e., when shit happens.
In this book, David often evokes Dante, who shares with my friend a sustaining curiosity about the places most of us hope we never encounter, the circles of Hell we trust will not be our lot. During the Great Depression (get it?), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, no stranger to overcoming demons and afflictions of his own, himself quoted Dante at his acceptance speech for his party’s re-nomination of him for the Presidency in 1936: “… Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.” David Blistein has written a warm-hearted book that can help deliver us all—thank God—from the cold-blooded fear that now and then invades the perfection of our own solitude.
—Ken Burns
Walpole, New Hampshire
Preface
RIGHT NOW, I am not depressed, manic, hypomanic, dysphoric, bipolar, cyclothymic, or agitated. The stories and insights in this book are primarily based on experiences between 2005-2007. Except for the occasional blip, as long as I take my meds, I rarely experience the symptoms anymore. My official diagnosis is: Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, in Partial Remission.
I guess that means I’m a person living with major depressive disorder … in the same way that someone might be living with HIV/AIDS, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or some combination.
Hey, we’ve all got problems, right? And most of us have cupboards full of supplements and prescription drugs to show for them. Until there are reliable one-step cures that work for just about everybody all the time—or, as futurists expect, can be customized to work for each individual virtually all the time—most people accept the fact that they need to keep taking their anti-virals, insulin, beta blockers, or statins indefinitely.
But many depressives, myself included, still consider major depression a temporary condition, not a chronic disease. I don’t see myself taking these drugs for the rest of my life. Instead, I think about when it would be a good time (spring) and a good year (well, not this one …) to start tapering off. Although, if I’m ever convinced the apocalypse is right around the corner, I will rush downtown to the drugstore to stock up on all my meds—at full retail if necessary—before I bother with milk and eggs.
Unfortunately, while there are fairly objective ways of measuring HIV, insulin, blood pressure, and cholesterol, depression is just too subjective a disease to define what it would mean to be “cured.” That doesn’t stop people from trying: In an independent, double-blind study of website results (i.e., I just did it), “Depression Cure” beats “Coronary Cure” by 30 million results, and even “Breast Cancer Cure” by 15 million.
So, I suppose, whether I realize it or not, I’ll always be living in depression’s shadow. Then again, maybe we all are. Considering how little we know about the brain’s potential—and the rich complexity of human intelligence and creativity—that may not be such a bad thing … within reason.
People have asked me if I really want to write this book. If I really want to expose my neural endings to the memories of that time. As if the very words carry a contagion. One to which I am particularly susceptible.
For the most part, I cavalierly brush off their concerns, saying that it doesn’t affect me to write about it. That, if anything, it puts me and the avenging angel—yes, angel as much as devil—on an equal footing. That I’m a storyteller and this is a story I have to tell; a story I have to stitch seamlessly into the other stories of this life … every holographic moment, from the everyday to the ecstatic.
At the same time, I knew I was on the right track when people who have been down or are still on these roads told me they couldn’t read it. For while I have practiced and deeply appreciate the detachment of meditation, dispassion and compassion remain only mental experiences without passion.
On October 10, 2006, exactly a year after this journey began, I emailed a friend:
Yesterday, I just became edgier and edgier throughout the day at work. Got into the car, sobbed all the way home, and continued for a while after getting there. I’m spent, buddy.
They say that life passes before your eyes when you die. If I’m going to squeeze the last drop of humanness out of this life, I hope it also passes through my heart.
—David Blistein
East Dummerston, Vermont
Midway upon the journey of our life,
I found myself in a dark wood,
For the straightforward path had been lost.
THREE OF THE MOST FAMOUS LINES IN LITERATURE. The mid-life crisis against which all others are measured.
Dante’s not in Hell yet. Hell, he’s not even in Limbo yet. But he’s lost his way. Big time.
For starters, he’s being tormented by a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf. And those are just the symbolic threats. His real life is much more perilous:
He’s been continually undermined in his attempts to mediate between Rome and the city-states, the nobility and the bourgeoisie—until he gives up and declares himself a “party of one.”
He’s been forced into exile from his beloved Florence, and reduced to wandering the solitary roads of Northern Italy, France, and maybe England—living off the kindness of patrons and occasional work as a tutor or scribe.
He’s wrestling with a philosophical split from his former mentor and friend Guido Cavalcanti. (Dante’s also feeling a little guilty since, back when he was in political favor, he was one of the Florentine magistrates who banished Guido—who died of malaria shortly thereafter.)
He’s continually disillusioned by the reigning popes who are guilty of the worst kinds of manipulation and greed. But Catholicism remains embedded deep in his genes.
He’s estranged from his wife and children. More significantly, Beatrice, the famously unrequited love of his life, has gone to Heaven and, it turns out, is in no mood to hear any excuses from a sinner like Dante.
He’s also driven by a conviction that transcendent Truth and Love can be experienced on earth; and that his mission is to reveal The Way by writing a masterpiece that will capture all the hopes, foibles, and dreams of man in a way that nobody else ever has. In fact, his original title was The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell.
In the midst of this tangle of woes, Virgil shows up. And makes it perfectly clear that the only way out is in. And the only way up is down. Way down.
Words Fail
Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
ON MONDAY MORNING, October 10th, 2005, I took a 40 mg tablet of Celexa, cut it in half, and swallowed. Presumably with juice or cold coffee. Or I just put my mouth under the faucet to wash it down—one of my less civilized habits.
This, unlike many things which followed, was not a particularly crazy thing to do.
Since 1999, Celexa had been a potent ally in my balancing act between streams of creative energy and a tendency to disappear into black holes. A cycle that I’d, previously, been able to “self-medicate” by using various combinations of exercise, cigarettes, diet, alternative therapies, liquor, meditation, and several varieties of non-prescription drugs. By taking Celexa, and at times Wellbutrin, I didn’t have to be so concerned about my shifting moods … about which version of myself would show up the next day … or hour.
During the summer of 2005, I decided to take a little break from Celexa. It seemed like a good time. My life was about as good as it gets. I’d just left a fairly stressful job. My wife and I continued to successfully negotiate the slings and arrows of a 30-year marriage. We owned our own home, and had virtually no debt as well as adequate savings. Plus, I’d begun doing the writing I’d waited many years to do. Why not take the summer to see if my depression was primarily caused by circumstance, stress, or both?
But, that fall, after nine months of creativity unleashed, my energy plummeted, my enthusiasm dulled, and the darkness began its inexorable descent. Clearly, my depression was chemical. Perhaps seasonal. But if the past were any indication, summers could be just as hard. And, while I had experience with many non-pharmaceutical ways to treat it, none of them had ever proved as reliable as a small pill two times a day. So, as the familiar foreboding sensation arrived—a soft, pre-gag sensation in the throat that flows up into the tear ducts and down through the chest to the pit of the stomach—I knew this was no time to take any chances.
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