David's Inferno

by David Blistein

  The previous spring, I’d slowly reduced my dose over about six weeks: from 60 mg every day, to 60 mg one day and 40 mg the next. Then 40 mg both days. Then 40 one day and 20 the next. Then 20 each day. Then 20 every other day. Until eventually I stopped altogether. It went smoothly.

  I planned to go back up the same way. 20 mg once a day for a few days, and so on. Maybe stopping around 40, or continuing up to 60. I knew the drill. I didn’t even bother telling my psychiatrist I was starting up again. I had a refill left over from the spring and figured he wasn’t going to tell me anything we hadn’t discussed before.

  But, by Sunday, I was sitting on the floor with my head in my hands, my agitation barely managed by Valium, telling a long-time friend that there was no way I could get on a plane and join him for a business trip to California.

  I could barely talk.

  The phrase “nervous breakdown” is inadequate. The experience is way beyond “nervous.” It’s a rampant agitation that careens from constant low-level anxiety to gut-wrenching, dry-heaving despair. After the worst attacks, I’d feel like I’d just been spit up, Jonah-like, on the shore, wondering if next time the whale would be a shark.

  Breakdown is way too static a word. Every day is spent on roiling waves. Occasionally—for an hour or two, maybe even a day—those waves buoy you up high enough for a gasp of blessed air, only to sweep you back down into such a fierce undertow that drowning, while terrifying, at least holds out the promise of peace.

  For the next two years, only my own desperately flailing will and the determined surround of family, friends, and guides kept me from being institutionalized or far worse.

  As I wrestled with this relentless onslaught, a procession of compassionate and insightful healers: doctors, psychiatrists, acupuncturists, astrologers, tarot readers, homeopaths, Craniosacral specialists, medical intuitives, and a dear friend who guided me through soul-rendering wails in the Southwest desert, did everything they could to help me stay on the treacherous path that I’d chosen—yes chosen, whether subconsciously or karmically—without wandering so far into the wilderness that I’d never find my way back.

  HAVING FOLLOWED VIRGIL OUT OF THE DARK WOODS, Dante arrives at the infamous Gates of Hell. This is a pretty chaotic place. Most people are waiting to catch a ferry while trying to ignore a sign telling them to abandon all hope.

  The docks also swarm with lost souls who, during their lives, were unable to choose between good and evil. They’re joined by a host of cowardly angels who couldn’t decide which side to root for when Lucifer rebelled against God. (That would seem to be a no-brainer.) They’re not even allowed on the boat. Instead, they’re running around naked, carrying meaningless banners, and screaming their lungs out as stinging insects swarm all around them.

  To make things worse, while Virgil is persuading a reluctant Charon to give them a ride across the River Acheron—in spite of Dante’s less-than-gung-ho attitude and the minor detail that no living person has ever made this crossing before—the ground begins to shake and the wind starts blowing something fierce. If I found myself in that God-awful place, I’d reach for the nearest benzodiazepine. Dante does the next best thing. He faints. When he wakes up, he’s in Limbo.

  Limbo is one of the most convoluted theological constructs in history. The early Fathers (the Mothers probably knew better) took a simple suggestion by Matthew that Christians should be rewarded or punished based on performance, and transformed it into an organizational chart only a consultant could love. As if that weren’t bad enough, at some point they realized that they hadn’t set aside a safe place for unbaptized babies or perfectly good people who had the misfortune to be born before baptism was invented—like Socrates, Plato, and Hippocrates.

  Limbo—neither here nor there, neither damned nor saved—was their compromise. It’s the first stop in Hell. Yes, Hell. Even though, counterintuitively, people don’t really suffer there. At least not in the gory ways people in the other realms of Hell do.

  People in Limbo are depressed. Really depressed. They sigh all the time. For the simple reason that they can’t experience the pure light and love of God—or, to put it in non-denominational terms, be graced with inspiration and enthusiasm. This type of yearning is the hallmark of pure depression—i.e., depression without any apparent cause. Or, as Dante puts it, “Sorrow without torment.”

  In Limbo, you can feel Dante trying to clarify his own vision and questioning his ability to pull it off. In fact, while there, he consults with four great classical poets: Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. Oddly, he says he shouldn’t repeat the things he talked with them about. Why not? They’re totally supportive. In fact, the whole scene is a backhanded way to get their blessing. So, what’s the big secret?

  It’s not that he shouldn’t talk about his dialogue with four of the greatest minds in the history of the Western World. It’s that he can’t. He doesn’t know how yet. He says that his words aren’t equal to the experience. This problem—which has tormented writers throughout history—will plague him for the entire twenty years it takes to write The Divine Comedy. And probably continues to plague him to this day.

  The poor guy is wrestling with shadows. Very real shadows. Dante may share top billing with Shakespeare as the best writer of all time, but he faces the same challenges all writers face:

  He has to find his voice.

  He has to make the tools of his trade conform to his vision. In his case, that means eschewing Latin and, instead, trying to bash together a mess of regional dialects into a single vernacular that all his compatriots can understand.

  He has to find a way to convince people his stuff is worth reading … maybe even good enough to toss a couple of florins or hunks of bread and cheese his way.

  He also has to find a way not to overly antagonize the Powers-that-Be—powerful men who are more than willing to toss any suspicious writing into the flames (and sometimes the writer along with it), as well as potential patrons who might give him a few months or years of peace so he can get this thing written.

  In the Dark Wood, Dante learns there’s no turning back. At the Gates of Hell he sees that you’re either on the boat or you’re not. By the time he makes it through Limbo, he is fully aware that his life’s work is to be a clear channel for an illusive, inchoate, ineffable—all these adjectives are necessary—vision that will make him a medium for something far more transcendent than even he can grasp. And that, with all due respect to Virgil and the other great writers who’ve gone before him, he’s on his own.

  He accepts the challenge. He accepts enduring an indescribable, cataclysmic personal experience. For what? To come back to tell the world so that they, too, can discover what LOVE really is.

  He begins the descent.

  Fifty-Three Years, Four Months, and One Helluva Week

  It is quite true what philosophy says: that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards.

  —SØREN KIERKEGAARD

  THERE’S A FINE, but significant, line between intense creative focus and fanaticism. And an equally fine, but significant, line between contemplation and creative despair. Lines that I’ve crisscrossed with reckless abandon since I was a kid.

  In many ways, hypomania (mania-lite … hold the psychosis) has made me what I am today. Symptoms include the pressure to keep talking, thoughts racing out of control, and easy distractibility. Or, as psychiatric manuals officially put it: “involvement in pleasurable activities that may have a high potential for negative psycho-social or physical consequences.” All of which I’ve always considered charming personality traits. (Inflated self-esteem is another symptom.)

  Many professionals would probably consider the phrase “controlled hypomania” a contradiction in terms. But, thanks to an academically-disciplined family and a lifelong obsession with being, or at least appearing to be, perfect, I’ve usually been able to harness it to my advantage—whether it was graduating with high honors from Amher
st or running a successful ad agency with, typically, about a dozen employees, twenty clients, and 50 to 75 projects.

  In fact, a little hypomania is virtually a job requirement for the latter.

  In any event, by managing/juggling my periods of depression and mild hypomania, I was able present myself to the world as someone intelligent, trustworthy, confident, and stable.

  Even during periods when the job became all-consuming and I had to squint to see a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel, I resisted taking antidepressants. I took solace in the knowledge that I was part of a distinguished line of brooding, whiskey-drinking creatives. Maybe someday I’d even have my own table at a café on Boulevard St. Germain. In the meantime, I’d just take some B vitamins, work out really hard, drink a little more coffee, tea, or alcohol, and try to be clever and amusing enough so that, even on my worst days, my family and friends liked having me around.

  When those days stretched into a week or more, I’d get a massage, have an acupuncture treatment, or go to a homeopath. All of which would at least help temporarily.

  And during the periods when I was “wired”? It just made me more productive. Plus, I’d been meditating every morning since I was 18. So I experienced at least a little calm every day.

  These mood swings did have their drawbacks. I hated deadlines because I had no idea if the creative guy would show up in time. (Even though I’d usually do the job right away because I’d obsess over it until I did.) I could be annoyingly ambivalent about going out to movies, having friends over, or even going for a walk. I tended to resist requests—whether it was coming up with a new headline or stopping by a store on my way home—even if I enjoyed doing whatever it was. Because my drive to please—not just other people but my own strict inner critic—could make the simplest of those requests a burden.

  Owning the ad agency didn’t make it any easier. It’s a business that can careen from being really exciting and inspiring to oppressively worrying and frustrating—often in a matter of minutes. Especially when one of your employees is your unpredictable self.

  I figured a lot of my emotional problems were due to what they call Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD—an acronym I’ve never liked because if you’ve really got it, you’re a lot worse than sad.

  Long before I ever took an antidepressant, my version would appear with heartbreaking clarity every year in late September or early October. I’d be on my daily commute—a 20-mile, full-fall-foliage ride with few cars and no traffic lights. As I rounded the corner at the top of the highest hill shortly after sunrise, I’d be overwhelmed by illuminated color, a crystal-clear view of Mount Monadnock, the thought that all was all right in my world, and a sinking feeling that started in the back of my brain and flowed like a viscous dark ooze into the pit of my stomach. The experience of it being so unspeakably bright out there and so dark in here is one of the most humiliating aspects of depression. As if you’ve failed the universe itself.

  Still, I figured that as long I could count on things getting better in the spring, I could “tough it out” with the help of my tried-and-usually-true forms of self-medication.

  This delicate balance finally fell apart one day in January 1999 when I made a presentation to a very skeptical audience. I was fearless. Inviolable. I swayed them with hyper-articulate rants. People who asked challenging questions wished they hadn’t. Back at the office, I heard one of my employees say to another, “I wish you’d been there. It was remarkable.” She later confessed it was also kind of scary.

  That afternoon, I was in the conference room reviewing an interesting project with a client I really liked. Yet I spent the whole meeting trying not to bolt from the chair, rush back to my office, close the door, and start screaming.

  That’s when I accepted the obvious: I never knew who was going to wake up in the morning, walk into the office, show up for meetings, drive home, walk back in the house at the end of the day, or eat dinner that night. Would he be charming or sullen? Talkative or monosyllabic? Warm and gracious or irretrievably remote?

  My wife Wendy had been encouraging me to have a psychiatric evaluation for years. But I had resisted. That night I came home and said I surrendered. I’d had enough. By then, the classic indicator of depression—interferes with your normal functioning—would have been a walk in the park. Interferes? Interferes? We’re talking a major blockade.

  A few days later, I saw a psychiatrist and started taking antidepressants. It took a few months for me to really stabilize, but, for the next six years, they worked as advertised.

  Fast Forward: 2005. I sold my business in 2001, continuing as Creative Director until the end of 2004. I also regularly did some work for an import business I’d started many years before with a friend. But he pretty much ran it, so I had a lot of flexibility in terms of how involved I wanted to be.

  In other words, after 20 all-consuming years in business, I was free.

  The first eight months of 2005 were one continuous burst of creativity. Ever since college I’d been writing for other people, always saying that I’d do my own writing someday. Now there was no excuse.

  I started by taking a six-week trip in a VW Camper down the East Coast, over to New Orleans, and back: a classic right-of-passage for any writer.

  Adventures like that are never as romantic in the doing as in the dreaming. Much of the time you’re just driving … driving … driving … not quite sure where you’re going, and less sure where you’ll stay when you get there. It’s not so much lonely, as intensely solitary. Still, you get to meet people you’ve never met and will never meet again; stay in places no one you know has ever heard of; and have experiences that become legends in your own mind by the time you’re five miles out of town:

  There was the night in Appomattox when I was the only guest at a B&B owned by a very young, very sweet, and very Christian couple. That morning at breakfast, I was alone in their elegant antebellum dining room, eating a very large breakfast and reading a very large book about the Salem witches. Needing more coffee, and not wanting to bother them, I walked into the empty kitchen where I saw a Bible lying on a table opened to that day’s scripture. The witches and I beat a hasty retreat.

  There was the three-day weekend I spent at a Best Western next to I-95 in South Carolina, waiting for the local repair shop to track down a new fuel pump for my old van. It was a town where the women were large and strong, the coffee was small and weak and, since the weather was raw and my bike was my only form of transportation, options for food and entertainment were pretty limited. (By the way, what’s the deal with boiled peanuts?)

  There was the BBQ place at a campground in Mississippi with fantastic food, great blues, and character that wouldn’t quit. I can still feel the heat of the raging fire pit I stood in front of, eating ribs and drinking beer, a Northerner from another planet, surrounded by exuberant dancing—a synchronized conga line of blacks in one group; a separate but equally enthusiastic group of whites in another.

  That was just the beginning of how I took advantage of my newfound freedom.

  In April, Wendy and I went to the South of France with friends for one week and then up to Paris on our own for another week. A week of Rodin, Picasso, and Chopin. A week of trees in shameless bloom, churches in fading splendor, and architectural details that nobody’s noticed since some anonymous stone cutter chiseled the final touches hundreds of years ago. A week of strolling along the most famous river in the world, wandering the most famous cemetery in the world, visiting the most famous bookstore in the world … and having tea with its legendary owner. A week of bread, cheese, coffee, and wine. Bread, cheese, coffee, and wine. But, most of all, for both of us, a week of reminders that creativity is its own reward.

  In June, I took another solo trip, meandering out west to visit friends and rendezvous once again with myself. I stayed at a dank, dripping campsite in Woodward, Pennsylvania, next to one of the largest stalagmites in the United States. At Waunee Bay State Park in Ohio, next to some ki
ds who drank bad beer and listened to worse rock & roll. At a Super 8 in Madison, Wisconsin where I spent the evening at a bar near the state capitol, drinking gin with politicians and watched the NBA Playoffs. At the Municipal Campground in Adrian, Minnesota, where I biked to Iowa and back before dinner. At a long-forgotten motel in Pierre, South Dakota where I ate the most memorable dinner of the entire trip.

  I gazed into the eyes of Thomas Jefferson and the soul of Crazy Horse. I watched the moon rise over the Mississippi in Bismarck, North Dakota, and morning light race before me across the plains of eastern Wyoming. I approached Big Timber, Montana, in the shadows of the Crazy Mountains.

  One day I reached into the side pocket of my van, pulled out the receipt from a campground in Buffalo, Wyoming, and wrote on the back: “I cross borders. I traffic in ideas.”

  Through it all, I wrote with a vengeance. Day after day. Hundreds of pages.

  When I wasn’t writing, researching, or traveling, I was working around the house, going on long bike rides, doing a little bit of freelance work, and hanging out with Wendy and friends.

  To say that all was right in my world would be an understatement. After all those high-stress years, I was pretty much doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to do it. I was an extremely happy camper.

  My calendar from late summer 2005 doesn’t seem the least bit ominous: I went to a few meetings in New York. Wendy and I spent a long weekend with friends on a lake in Maine for our anniversary. I went to the horse races in Saratoga, won a few bucks, and knew when to quit. A large group of us went on our traditional Labor Day ±60 mile bike ride. I completed the first draft of a novel.