David's Inferno

by David Blistein

  There’s a tendency to admire partnerships that survive the virulent extremes of depression. But any relationship that passes through this crucible is transformed. Whether the people stay together or not is their own private, intimate decision that nobody else is in a position to judge.

  There are support groups for spouses and families, including the requisite Depressed Anonymous, 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 for people with severely depressed partners: including the Bipolar Significant Others Bulletin Board (isn’t the adjective in the wrong place there?) and Mental Health Matters where they suggest you start by selecting a disorder, a phrase that sounds like a “Sophie’s Choice” to me.

  There are also many therapists for whom it’s a specialty. While we never considered turning to them (perhaps because we had our own strong network of trusted friends and advisors), I’m sure they can be extremely helpful. It’s important to realize that the person you’re living with can’t just snap out of it. And, just as important, that the frustration, exhaustion, and hopelessness you feel is real, understandable, and forgivable. Because even if your partner is working with an experienced, sensitive psychiatrist whose treatment seems to be going in the right direction, the two of you still have to continually find ways to survive the ups and downs, tentative hopes and heart-breaking despairs of potential cures.

  Unfortunately, unlike alcohol and drugs, partners of depressives don’t even have the option of either getting an award or doing an “intervention.” They can’t lock depression away or flush it down the toilet. They have to leave you or live with it. Ultimately, their only real cure is yours.

  Therapy

  The process of achieving a mature personality with an extreme minimum of defensive character armor ordinarily involves major (and stormy) personality reorganization.

  —HERBERT FINGARETTE

  IT’S KIND OF AMAZING that I’ve managed to get almost all the way through Purgatory without mentioning the word “therapy.” One reason is that, while I have had a good deal of experience in my life with therapy—individual, marital, and some group, I’ve never gone through any classic Freudian, Jungian, Transactional, Gestalt, or other formal analysis.

  But the real reason is that, while I certainly think I earned an advanced certificate in primal scream, therapy wasn’t a major part of my Purgatory. This isn’t as odd as it seems. An increasing number of psychologists believe that, in the case of major mental illness, it’s best to deal with chemicals first and personality or karmic issues second.

  We all got issues. We all have things we’re afraid of, people we’re trying to please, ways that we feel we’ve been wronged. Send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I’ll send you a list of mine. (But you better hurry … since I emerged from my breakdown I’ve been crossing them off as fast as I can!)

  At its best, therapy can help us identify the recurring patterns of thought, reaction, and behavior that keep us going in circles. It also helps us recognize and understand the triggers for those patterns, and ways that maybe we could do things a little differently next time around.

  Often we’re completely unaware that these patterns exist. Sometimes we have realized they exist but don’t want to mess with them because the cure might be worse than the disease. Other times we’d love to be free of them but don’t know how. And sometimes we know how but just can’t seem to do it.

  While I may not have done all that much traditional therapy, I have done a good number of what you’d call personal enhancement workshops. They’ve forced me to take long hard (or, sometimes, short and easy) looks at some of the things in my life that hold me back, and learn ways to be less at their mercy. While occasionally disturbing, grueling, and/or humiliating, for the most part these workshops have been fascinating and made life a lot more interesting … also, in most cases, more fun.

  Regardless, whatever work I did before or during my depression certainly stood me in good stead when I emerged. Partly because I was able to enjoy the fruits of this work, but also because I was not only more aware of, but also less susceptible to, the ways familiar patterns of insecurity and worry could trigger more serious episodes of anxiety or depression.

  Having been “reamed out,” as a friend put it, there were fewer “sticky” places in there that could grab hold of the smallest worry and transform it into a major neurosis. I realized not only that I didn’t need those things holding me back, but they weren’t really all that interesting any more.

  Ever since Socrates pointed out the importance of knowing thyself, people have seen the connection between self-knowledge and self-transcendence. Between being aware of who you are—in particular, how your mind, heart, and body tend to respond to different things—and being able to see your place in the whole thing with compassion and dispassion.

  Some spiritual traditions teach that self-knowledge comes before transcendence. My experience is that it’s a dynamic. The more you know yourself, the more you’re able to step back and see that you’re not the center of the universe—or at least no more than anyone else is.

  At the same time, the experience itself was enlightening, and if anything, made it possible to better integrate the work I’d done previously into my everyday life. As if all my understanding from 30 years of personal and spiritual work had been waiting for conditions to be right to come fully into the light.

  With all due deference to people who are considered spiritual “masters,” I would say that we all continue to get caught, Velcro-like, on stuff over the years. Those are the steps on our personal Purgatories. At the same time, as Dante discovered, the lighter your load, the easier it is to climb.

  While I didn’t focus on doing therapeutic work during my illness, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t being done. At the time of my breakdown, I was more than five years into a writing project in which various characters from history appear in my everyday life: from Agamemnon in our local coffee shop to Harriet Tubman on a park bench in Berkeley at the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement. My old new friends included the famous, the infamous, and the virtually unknown. Kings, queens, musicians, scientists, artists, philosophers, explorers. There was no need to include a writer. I was the writer.

  I wouldn’t “channel” these people. I’d just imagine them in my life today. And, as with many writers of fiction, at some point my characters would take on lives of their own, occasionally taking over mine in the process.

  Under the circumstances, I was more than willing to lay some of the blame for my mental instability on their doorsteps, figuring if I could get them to come to their senses, they might help me come to mine. For example, the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar had a big-time breakdown at the end of his life. Godfrey de Bouillion—the man who led the First Crusade—was definitely not a happy camper (although I sensed his depression was more situational … all that blood in the name of God). Similarly, the zeal of Torquemada, the first “Grand Inquisitor” of the Spanish Inquisition, suggests some significant mania, imposed upon big-time anger issues.

  I was particularly suspicious of Chopin—who had spent a lot of time trying to get my attention the previous spring in Paris when Wendy and I visited his grave at Père Lachaise and then attended a piano concert of his music later that evening. He had a lifelong pattern of behaviors that were diagnosed after-the-fact as classic manic-depression.

  Then there was the simple issue of whether it was a good idea to let so many egomaniacs (in the best sense of the word) run roughshod over my consciousness. Talk about issues!

  Still, since I was spending so much psychological time in the past lives of other people, I had to at least entertain the idea that my sickness might be connected with, well, some past life of my own. Especially when one of my friends of the New Age persuasion claimed she had a vision that in a p
ast life, I had been a scribe in ancient Egypt, and was strangled to death just before sunrise because I was about to spill the beans (or whatever they spilled back then) about the Sun God not being the be-all and end-all of creation. She suggested that the reason why I’d wake every morning at 4 A.M. with my heart racing and throat chakra vibrating was related to this incident; in other words, through my writing this time around, I was about to reveal certain troubling truths—on behalf of my characters—and I was afraid that some people wouldn’t be happy to hear them.

  Discussions of past lives have a tendency to veer into timeless narcissism. All I know is that I now write and speak far more freely than I did before. Whether that’s because my ad hoc primal screaming purged some psychological trauma in this life, or some subconscious process helped me deal with a past one, that’s about as good a therapeutic outcome as any writer could hope for.

  Strange Obsessions and Glimmers of Light

  Though this be madness,

  yet there is method in’t.

  —HAMLET

  FOR MOST OF 2006, I was simply miserable. I couldn’t write for more than 15 minutes at a time. I couldn’t make people laugh. I couldn’t finish the simplest projects. I felt totally stripped of my personal power.

  Now, years later, I have the temerity to present my experience as an everyman’s version of Dante’s journey. Back then, I not only felt I wasn’t getting anywhere, I felt I was regressing. I not only felt I wasn’t learning anything, I felt I had forgotten what I thought I’d known before.

  I still believed that there must be some meaning behind it, but only because, even in my most existential moments, I couldn’t believe that it was totally meaningless. I still believed it would end, but only because I couldn’t imagine the alternative.

  One day, I had a long talk with a friend who sympathized, using words that took my breath away: “Yeah, man, the universe will whore you out … It will run you ragged. The universe doesn’t put things in a human perspective.”

  He encouraged me to find whatever protection I could—be it comfort food, crystals, or simple walks in the woods—and hold on tight. Like everyone else, he insisted it would end. But by the fall of 2006, having tried various combinations of vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, homeopathic remedies, acupuncture, meditation, bodywork, meditation, and chicken soup, I pretty much threw myself back at the mercy of prescription drugs.

  My psychiatrist’s plan was to start by calming the anxiety and then slowly build up an antidepressant behind it, careful not to re-ignite the anxiety. Which made sense, since the same strategy had worked so well in 1999.

  We started on BuSpar—an anti-anxiety drug that, at certain dosages, helped a little, but at others made me more anxious. We added Depakote, a bipolar drug. It briefly stopped the madness, and gave me a few days of normalcy before I returned to agitation as bad as before.

  Valium remained my late-night drug of choice, but I also gave various over-the-counter and prescription sleeping aids a try—from Tylenol PM to Lunesta. But, as before, the problem wasn’t getting to sleep, it was staying asleep. So I’d end up feeling sedated but unable to sleep, drugged and wide awake at the same time. All the different parts of my body were going at different speeds. People were beginning to ask me with increasing frequency how suicidal I was.

  That’s when my doctor first suggested that the best course might be to check myself into an inpatient psych facility for a couple of weeks—get all of the meds out of my system in a safe environment, consult with some specialists, and then try again.

  The writer in me wishes I had taken him up on it—after all, some of the best writing of the last fifty years has been about going in or out of mental institutions, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Darkness Visible. Of course, from that perspective, my survey of twenty-first-century treatments for depression should also have included electro-shock treatment (ECT).

  But that’s the writer in me. The guy who was getting increasingly desperate in late 2006 was pretty freaked out at the thought of being institutionalized.

  While slowly nudging the Depakote dosage up to standard therapeutic levels, we replaced the BuSpar with Seroquel, which is primarily indicated as a schizophrenia drug. It had some uncomfortable side effects—particularly dry mouth and some weird visual shakiness, but calmed me down enough to stop taking Valium. I even began to remember having dreams—which, as I understand it, indicates reduced mania.

  Eventually, we seemed to have found a decent combination of Depakote and Seroquel. I still felt like a zombie. And was still a bit shaky. But it was a start so we tried lifting my mood with a little Effexor—which works on both serotonin and norepinephrine synapses.

  Within a few days, I was as agitated as ever and had to start taking Lorazepam three times a day to calm back down.

  We began to discuss inpatient psych again.

  So, what did I do all day? Looking back, I wonder the same thing. Even on the days when you feel almost human, you can’t walk away from agitated depression. Wherever you go, there it is.

  Even though I eventually 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 TV, I did watch some. Even though I wasn’t all that functional, I did manage to work a few days a week. Even though my words were primarily monosyllabic, they did come out of my mouth. And even though I wasn’t much fun to be with, I did have some fun with people, and I like to think vice versa.

  Figuring a few small victories at home might prove that there was a bright side to having a fairly dysfunctional husband, I started a variety of long-delayed projects: Washing every window in sight. Cleaning up the basement. Sorting through boxes of memorabilia. Matching all the socks and throwing away the orphans. Most of these projects never got done. Although I did make some progress on the socks.

  There were, however, a few projects I did finish—with a feeling of accomplishment way out of proportion to the physical labor involved. Projects that felt as symbolic as they were practical. Projects that still remind me in an oddly fond and visceral way, what it felt like to do them. And, how, in the midst of it all, I could almost always find glimmers of hope.

  Project #1: Stepping Stones. April, 2006. The stepping stones to my cabin don’t lead straight 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 asked me to put them like that. Particularly in the spring when I often have to hop-step to avoid the saturated ground after rainstorms. Many muddy shoes and vaguely annoyed thoughts later, I’ve finally seen what she saw back then: 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 (Dewey’s decimals be damned), it can’t help but follow its own mysterious, decidedly non linear logic.

  Back in 2006, I didn’t care where she told me to put them. I just wanted to be overwhelmed by weights heavier than my heart. As soon as the ground dried out, I began going around the property with my lawn tractor and cart to gather rocks from 6 inches to 9 inches thick, with one flat side at least 18 inches wide. Rocks that had been cast aside by glaciers or farmers sometime in the last ten thousand years. I even copped a few from a tumbled-down stonewall out back. But only ones that had tumbled down on our side. Stealing rocks from stonewalls around here is akin to rustling cattle out west. But I figured a few from our own land would be forgiven by the Gods, and hopefully, the neighbor whose border we share. I bring it up only because it’s an example of the kind of thing I’d worry about with Talmudic obsession.

  Unlike the borderline boulder I’d wrestled with after my road trip (and which, in better times, eventually became the front step of my cabin) 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 a cart and bri
ng them over.

  Setting stones may be physically exerting but isn’t very mentally taxing:

  Position rock on ground. Outline ground with spade, staying a few inches back from the rock so you’ll have wiggle room. 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 to 30 minutes, tell yourself it’s good enough and move on.

  It sounds simple. But to my mind it was high drama, requiring several more essential steps:

  Decide exactly where to put the stone. Eyeball the depth exactly on the first try. Debate with self whether it looks exactly right—that is, like it had risen gently out of the ground after that last glacier and was 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?

  Most of the time however, I didn’t care what anyone thought. All I cared about was digging deeper into the ground, moving rocks I could barely move, and the feeling that I could purge my psychosis with sweat.

  Project #2: The Footbridge. June, 2006. We also have a seasonal stream—about 8 feet across, that runs between our house and the cabin. Shortly after we moved in, I built a platform bridge to cross it—just 2 × 4’s nailed onto 6 × 6’s. Occasionally, during the spring runoff, it had rained so hard I had to clear the leaves and gravel that were damming the upstream side. The rest of the time, it did just fine on its own.

  One day in late spring 2006, the rains were so strong, the waters actually lifted up the bridge and deposited it 10 feet away on the lawn. Instead of just putting it back, I realized I should build a small arched bridge so the spring runoff could run underneath.