David's Inferno (34 page)

I
N LATE
F
EBRUARY
2007, an odd thing happened. Wendy and I were on the phone with Emily. Which, in those days, meant me lying on the bed with the extension to my ear while they talked. I had nothing positive to contribute to the conversation. I didn't even try. But I liked listening.

Toward the end of the call, Em started talking about a cat that some friends had to give away. They'd just gotten two dogs and the cat was totally freaked out. She said he was the most affectionate hunk of cat she'd ever been with. He'd curl up—all 20 or so pounds of him—against the nearest human body and respond orgasmically to even the mildest petting. Scratch his belly, and he was toast.

She encouraged us to take him.

I said yes right away.

We were all kind of shocked.

It was the first definitive decision I'd made in a long time.

Clearly Tito needed us. And the feeling was way more than mutual.

Over the next few months, I spent a lot of time with Tito. It was like he could take all 220 amps of my high-frequency agitation and step it down to 110 or lower without skipping a beat. For him, all that mattered was the scratching. The fact that I was dumb as a post and as wired as a fur brush made me the perfect companion.

On the Ides of March 2007, I ran into a friend on the street—a fellow sufferer in complete remission—who asked me how it was going. Being known for my articulate way with words, I answered the way I usually did back then … I started crying. Told her we were thinking about second opinions, about inpatient psych, about … about … about …

“Okay, that's enough,” she said. She didn't mean my crying. She meant the madness. “Call this guy. Make an appointment. Today.”

The next day she called and I told her I couldn't get an appointment for a month. “No. He's going to see you in a couple of days,” she said, like it was a done deal. “I'll call.” She made it happen.

And so, on the first day of spring, March 21, 2007, I sat in a different doctor's office with Wendy, my head down, eyes averted, again trying to describe how I felt.

Within a month, I began to feel the Titanic turn around. And just in time.

I know there are cases in which people feel immediate results from a medication, but, painful as it was, I accepted that it might take a while for me to work my way to the surface.

At the time, I was taking Depakote, Effexor, and Valium. I no longer really knew which was doing what, but little if any of them were doing much good.

I left the office with a prescription for Klonopin to replace the Valium, instructions for going off the Effexor, a plan to start on Cymbalta, and a special tri-fold five-week starter pack that held
precise blister-packed dosages of Depakote and Lamictal … steadily decreasing the one while increasing the other. I wish I'd saved it as a kind of mnemonic device. Because over the next month, that innocent little pharmaceutical package was as powerful as any totem. There was something reassuring about it. Like someone in some lab somewhere had figured out exactly what I needed down to the merest milligram. No longer was I taking a pill or two every day and hoping for the best. I was following a precise bread-crumbed road to salvation.

Toward the end of the appointment, the doctor suggested—that's putting it mildly—that I stop drinking.

“How long?” I asked.

“A month,” he said, and then paused. “Then another month.”

“Uh, okay,”

“Then another month.”

“Uh, okay … you know I really only have a beer or glass of wine a night. It's the only thing I can confidently look forward to every day.”

“Six months in all would be good.”

“Uh …”

“I mean, you're strong minded. Don't beat your head against the wall. If you have one you have one. But it will give us a purer trial … a clearer picture of how the meds are affecting you.”

I stopped drinking. Until one cold raw day in Nova Scotia, five and a half months later when I celebrated my newfound humanness by ordering a shot of Jameson's. Just one.

On March 26, 2007
, I wrote: “This is the first morning that I've woken up in months … literally months … when this living thing doesn't seem like such a bad idea after all.”

On April 3, I wrote: “I'm borderline better this
A.M
. I'm finding a little balance between keeping my head clear and optimistic and my body relaxed. Sure slept a lot last night.”

On April 22, I cracked completely. But it was different. It was as if I was slowly becoming broader and deeper—able to hold the flood within the banks instead of being overwhelmed. Later that
day, Emily sent me an extraordinary email that took my breath away and left me with a deep yearning to be whole again.

On April 29, I wrote: “The most important thing is I'm starting to have ideas again. I used to have to carry that little tape recorder because so much was pouring out. Now it's just a little pocket notebook to jot the occasional one down. It's a start, an important one. It connects with the ‘beautiful urgency' of writing, as someone said (maybe me!) I still have to be a little careful. I start to think about all the phrases I want to craft and the books I want to write and I get overwhelmed. Still, it's comforting to be able to look ahead. And I'm much more confident that, when the time comes, the words will be there.”

On May 5, I stayed in bed until 10
A.M.
Sure, I was visiting my mom's and had stayed up talking to her until midnight … which I never did at home. Sure, I woke up at 6
A.M
with a little agitation—the little agitation that used to be a big agitation. Sure, I took a little nibble of Klonopin. But, the fact was I stayed in bed for ten whole hours. To most people, that would seem ordinary at best and lazy at worst. For me, it was a major triumph over the vagaries of time, space, and adrenal glands.

On May 7, I began using the phrase “significantly better” in emails and conversations.

On May 10, I wrote to a friend: “I don't say, ‘David's back.' I say he's forward.”

On May 11, I did my first new writing in months—(as opposed to desultory editing just to keep busy.) It was like my vision was coming back.

On May 21, I felt a strong dip, but managed not to follow it down.

On May 25, I felt confident enough to tell Emily I felt better and to make plans for my birthday since Wendy was going to be away.

On May 30, I crashed again. For about an hour. Screaming and dry heaving in the cabin. As bad as ever. Why? Why? Was it because I didn't feel I needed the Klonopin to sleep anymore so I'd skipped a couple of nights? Was it because I'd gone for a really hard bike ride the day before? Regardless, I came in the house, took .5 mg of
Klonopin, and lay down quietly. After an hour or two I was okay, shaky but okay.

On June 8, a tie rod on my lawn tractor broke. As I was crawling under it to see what was wrong, I felt a twinge in my back. I'd pinched a nerve. To both events, I said, “Oh well.” I simply called the repair place about picking up the lawn mower. (So the grass will grow a little, so what?). And arranged appointments with a chiropractor and massage therapist. (So my back/leg will hurt for a little while, so what?) The fact that neither upset me all that much was thrilling. Like I had found a way to sneak out of the darkness and none of its resident demons had noticed.

On June 15, I turned 55. Emily came down. I had something to celebrate.

On July 8, I wrote a friend: “I'm doing very well and enjoying the simple pleasures of just being able to write emails, read junky mysteries, watch baseball, work on our labyrinth, go for bike rides, etc. I'm even moving ahead with my writing. There's a lot of work to do, but I look at it now as a ‘feast' to engage in slowly, rather than feeling compelled to get done as quickly as possible. It's like I'm learning how to be in the world again.”

W
HILE MOST PEOPLE
don't end up writing masterpieces during periods of manic-depression, they often do things that make their friends think, “they're out of their minds.” They blow all their money in Las Vegas; get passionate about collecting golf balls; drop out of school; leave their spouses, etc.

While mental instability can trigger or be triggered by all of the above, it's rooted, fundamentally, in some imbalance
inside
oneself—like there's an internal gyroscope spinning out of control. These people aren't
out
of their minds, their minds are
out
of kilter. Depending on the adjustments they make—medical or otherwise—this behavior recedes and, in many cases, is integrated into who they are.

Maybe that's why people have such a hard time recognizing underlying depression in others. It's one thing when you sit on your bed all day, head in hands—like those sanitized images from the TV commercials—in that case, the diagnosis is pretty easy. It's even easier when you walk down the street ranting and raving about
how you saw Jesus drinking coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. But when you manage, at least to all appearances, to keep that chaotically whirling gyroscope out of sight, most people are fooled most of the time.

Sanity is simply the ability to function in your particular culture and society without pushing the envelope too far. Something that is far different—and often far more sophisticated—in an ancient tribal culture than it is on Wall Street.

Insanity (which should really be called un-sanity) is an inability to accept the story of reality that is being put forward by the overwhelming majority.

One of the hallmarks of
my
generation is that we
couldn't
accept the story of reality that was being put forward by the overwhelming majority. Back in the 1960s, when psychologist R. D. Laing said, “Insanity is the only sane response to an insane world,” novelist Kurt Vonnegut said, “A sane person to an insane society must appear insane,” and filmmaker Akira Kurosawa said, “In a mad world, only the mad are sane,” they were preaching to the choir.

We eagerly followed their lead by immersing ourselves in any form of psychological, psychic, religious, or spiritual exploration we could get our hands on or heads around. And there were many. In particular, we had ready access to LSD and other drugs that could cause temporary (hopefully) psychosis
and
to “secret” spiritual techniques from the East that had never before been widely available in America.

By making the experiences of both temporary enlightenment and mental illness available even to those who weren't so inclined, these developments made us question our fundamental assumptions about sanity; and in the process, become aware of the seamless continuum between insanity, sanity, and spirituality.

In a legendary story from the 1960s, one day Baba Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert, Timothy Leary's Harvard colleague) finally convinced his Indian guru Maharaji to take some LSD. For the next several hours, he waited patiently for his master to start “tripping his brains out.” All that happened is that Maharaji's smile
got a little brighter. Similarly, when Aldous Huxley took some LSD while on his deathbed, he smiled and said, “Just as I thought.”

My study habits during freshman year in college reflected this unconventional way of discovering the “secrets” of the universe. Before writing an important paper, I'd procrastinate as long as possible and then scan the required texts, highlighting or making margin notes on random passages that interested me. Then, about 48 hours before the paper was due, I would take some hallucinogen.