How I Am Currently Responding to Current

Two weeks into ECT and I'm not doing very well. I feel in danger of complete relapse. What precipitated it was my sister's generous suggestion to have a driver take me home for the weekend to Mendocino. My sister's too good of a soul to say, "It's been almost three weeks and you're a space eater and I'd like my house and nuclear family back," but that has to be part of it, too, and I understand. Even though I try to make myself scarce, hiding in the basement with a book, going for walks, I am nevertheless an interloper, a species not native to this house, like a northern pike in a trout lake.

The thought of seeing my one true love, Kathleen, while still depressed, was too much to bear. I so want to get well for her; I want her suffering to end, and because of the love she bears me her suffering can only end when I am stable and my depression is in remission. As my illness began on April 1, 2006, it will soon be of two year's duration, with only two partial and brief remissions. I'm a sick puppy. I can't imagine being in Kathleen's position; I have been with her during her depressions but she's never had one this protracted and treatment-resistantant since I've known her. Nothing makes me sadder than the thought that my presence will sadden Kathleen. We had such hopes for this treatment! Obviously I need more, but how much will be enough? And I'm wondering if I shouldn't be on stronger medications as well to try to help stabilize my mood during treatment.

In any case I broke down in tears in front of my sister after treatment today, not a good thing. I also forgot a lunch date I'd made with a poet from San Francisco; the overwhelming emotion of my situation caused me to forget. I did call him and told him I had a good excuse for forgetfulness: "Sorry, I had electroconvulsive therapy this morning." He likely didn't need to hear that and was probably relieved not to have lunch with me afterwards, though he said he still wanted to meet. Oh well. I wouldn't have been very good company in any case.

I just finished Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which my sister recommended. Atwood's work always humbles me and I did find this book alluring.

I got a note from Sam Rasnake today that soon a new issue of Blue Fifth Review will be out and had forgotten that I had a poem in it, "Home Surgery." I'll have another poem in Barnwood (a paying venue) and three in Umbrella. Niederngasse has also accepted a poem, as has Barefoot Muse. These are all pretty good venues and I'll post the links again when my work comes out. (Meanwhile you don't need me as an excuse to visit these fine e-zines!)

See that? Talking about something besides myself, like literature, helped the tears dry up. (I try to explain to Craig that he's not worth crying over but he doesn't get it.)

So, having mentioned a number of poems you can't see yet, here's one I wrote the other day in San Francisco:


Something Christian

Rheumy eyes, mahogany head;
tan polyester coat, white shirt;
no tie; septuagenarian
tiny Chinese-American
stood on a folding two-step
stepladder of aluminum
in Union Square and preached:

"Homo sick! Queer go to hell!
“AIDS wrath of God”

I must say I've never understood
why Jesus hates queers
more than other men.
Besides, if God has time
to invent new scourges
to punish the innocent--
babies guilty of birth,
patients guilty of transfusion,
doctors guilty of defective gloves--
maybe I'm on the wrong side?

"The city is filled with sin!”

How must it feel behind those rheumy eyes
to hate and think God's work is being done?

"You look unhappy,” I offered,
"Your eyes are filled with hate.”

“I hate the devil and I hate sin,” he said,
his thin lips set in a Maginot line.

"No, no, you hate yourself,” I said.

His look of incomprehension
was almost beyond redemption.
I should have passed and said nothing
like the other pedestrians
but something Christian wanted out.


Pray for me in whatever way approximates prayer for you; if you are an atheist you can wish for new treatments for depression, for instance.

In need of a miracle,

CE

From Lobotomies to Creeley. New Pics!

Here's a recent picture my friend Kelton unexpectedly sent me, from inside the Headlands Cafe in Fort Bragg:




Today I have my fifth treatment at 4PM, due to surgery scheduling. Lobotomies take longer than ECT and we have to make room for all the ECT failures.

Pray for us, though I always forget the saint of lobotomies. Did I say that already? Oh well, being vacuous doesn't come easy, I'm sure he or she must have suffered a feeling of emptiness at the least.

Yesterday I flew my $10 Costco Space Shuttle kite at Coyote Point on the Bay, and the wind shifted during the afternoon so that it flew it in both directions, as one would expect of a manic-depressive's kite.

I'm not through crying over my daughter and the fact that I can't see my grandson, I expect to take those tears to the grave--but they are not hopeless tears. I can be a part of Jacob's life once I get well. I intend to make it a priority. Wouldn't you? Just look at the tyke!



What a relief, the tears of grief. Cleansing, wholesome, life- and love-affirming. How different from the bitter tears of depressions, where one is overwhelmed by one's unworthiness to such a degree that the most painful thought is the idea of someone wasting their love on you.

If I had a lobotomy I could finally write like Robert Creeley, reams of anti-poetry bereft of music and metaphor. But we wouldn't want that, would we? Let me give it a try:

When they strap the electrodes to my head
and the anesthesia burns
I know I will wake up foggy,
hope I don't pee myself.

Creeley is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated by the Academy of American Poets; he was truly an emperor with no clothes. Anti-poetry. What will they think of next? Oh, right, John Cage already did anti-music and Pollock did anti-art. The difference between them and Creeley is that they truly had talent and chose to go in a certain direction; Creeley's lack of talent left him no choice.

Norm Ball and I have been trading e-mails about this lately. If there are any fans or defenders of Creeley out there, please stand up and we will give you a fair hearing. I think my next critical essay (and I mean critical) will be, "Robert Creeley, Minimalist Fraud?" Were it not for his theorizing with Charles Olson we would have forgotten him, as history surely will. As has been well said, Robert Duncan was the best Black Mountain poet and you don't hear about him much. Better to be weird than good.

Speaking of which, I thought: What about a return to rhythmic poetry, not necessarily rhymed, ala Swinburne and Vachel Lindsay? I see so much "chopped prose," even where I am assured it is a "better board." What happened to the kind of poetry that makes you speak it in a certain cadence? Isn't that what poetry's about? It's certainly the origin of poetry, the chant and the drum. Let's see if I can change my Creeley poem into a different sort of example:

Strap the electrodes to my head
with a twist and tweak and a hey hidey ho
I"ll take the current and play I'm dead
with a drool and a stool and a hey hidey ho
Though the anesthesia burns like crap
with an ouch and a grouch and a lickety-split
I won't be deprived of my battery nap
let my brain be the plain in a lightning fit!

OK, so this comes perilously close to rap, but look, in a more subtle way, how good poetry makes you conform to its rhythm when read out loud, rhymed or not:

"I like its heft, I like to stretch
my knuckles against its links and feel
the ache of constant use relax."

(from my poem, "About the Bracelet," published in niederngasse, whose archives I can't find or I'd post a link).

These lines are regular blank tetrameter. I flatter myself to think that the language sounds like the stretching of a bracelet. In all my work I try to define my rhythms, though they are not alway so obvious as this.

So I digressed from lobotomies to Creeley. That's a sign of health. Endless digressions and indiscretions, the bloviator's club. You like me, you really like me!


Thine in Truth and Kilowatts,

Craig Erick

Music and Valentines

I've got Hendrix on the earphones, always a bad idea when trying to write. I can't help it if my comfort music includes Jimi as well as Frank. My tastes are eclectic. Still, I generally require of a performer two qualities: expertise and soul. I've always had problems with U2 and Neil Young for that reason, as they have soul but their musicianship is at best, average. Dylan, for that matter, knows how to pick a good backing band, and in his recordings there is enough soul to overcome occasional musical missteps and turn them into a rustic charm. I've been trying to make peace with U2 and Neil Young for years, as they are outstanding stylists despite ham-handed guitar work and the fact that “The Edge” (a title which irks me) couldn't even play his way out of a twelve bar blues break. I guess it's one of those “sum of the parts exceeds the whole” thing.

My ultimate comfort music is the Beatles, whom I listen to each Sunday morning with “Breakfast with the Beatles,” a longstanding California tradition and radio show. Once a week for a couple of hours the Beatles are plain therapeutic. Their genius becomes more firmly established with each new year of Grammys for songs with no melody to speak of. Fun that Aretha got a special award this year, though I blame here for introducing white and black America into endlessly toying with each note, sometimes over three octaves, as if to impress the American Idol judges. Whitney Houston and Beyonce' just took it too far, IMHO.

A good song doesn't need a bunch of embellishments to make it good; just straightforward, soulful singing will work. You know of what excesses I speak-- the runs and riffs that singers, especially female singers, wring out of notes today. “Won't you be-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee mi-hi-hi-hi-hi--i-i-i-ii-iii-ne for-ee-ee-ee-ee-ever.” I think our national anthem one tune extremely ill-served by such pyrotechnics. And I sometimes think all the playing around with the least syllable is a way of disguising the fact that many singers can't hold a true, honest note for more than a second or two. Some of my favorite singers? Fred Neil, the guy from Crash Test Dummies, Cat Stevens, Frank Sinatra (even Tony Bennet dolls up his tunes too much for me), David Byrne, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, Eric Clapton (I think he sings better than he plays), Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Streisand, Phoebe Snow, big, rich voices—although I'm also quite partial to Dylan and Lennon and their nasal tones and twang for some odd reason.

Yesterday's treatment went smoothly. Afterwards I hitched a ride into the city with my sister and wandered around, finding a pair of shorts and a new backpack at a four-story Ross Dress-for-Less downtown. It felt good to buy something for myself. As for food, I had a jumbo San Francisco dog with everything from a vendor near Union Square, a tuna sandwich from an Internet cafe', and some sushi from Safeway later, with a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a Lagunitas Seasonal Ale thrown in there somewhere.

I most enjoyed visiting hippie hill and the drum circle in GG park, where I danced, or moved rhythmically (depending on one's point of view) and let all my joints loosen up. The drum circle at GG is one of the best I have ever heard. Really good players come there. One guy specialized in three types of cowbells and several tambourines all mounted on a custom rack. Others had the usual congas. The whole effect was of a living, breathing organism, and it felt so human! No other animal can accomplish such diverse patterns of rhythm in a communal exercise. The complexity, the changes, the movement, the spaces, all very therapeutic. If music is the universal language, then rhythm is the universal touch. To let your joints dangle freely in response to multiple beats is good therapy. I truly felt a part of, not apart.

So the day went well, and I even had a chance to chat with my sweetheart for about an hour from an Internet cafe. Because of our new digs, Kathleen's captioned phone is not yet working. But the chatting brought back old memories, as in the winter of '99 after we had first met and we used to chat a great deal from LA to NY. I still have records of some of those conversations, just like I have hundreds of our early e-mails tucked away somewhere. I'd love to tell our love story sometime, as amazing as any love story I've heard. It seemed as if heaven and earth moved to bring us together and afterwards we could never be sundered.

There is true love, true Eros that can last a lifetime, but it is an anomaly, an anomaly I wish for all, pofor nothing is so good as to be deeply in love and have love reciprocated, or better, multiplied exponentially.

Here's the Valentine I wrote for Kathleen:


Valentine 2008

You are a granite waterfall, my love.
Your stone is slippery and sensuous.

I fall into a pool beneath your feet
And lie upon a thousand polished stones.

I look up at the alders overhead
And marvel at how you give yourself to them

Without diminishment, without attrition,
A steady miracle of sacrifice.

Downstream trout fingerlings mouth bits of algae
Because your pounding fed them oxygen.

The vines that weave the cliffs live off your spray.
Bright orange salamanders make their bed there.

The hummingbird hovers to sip your mist;
Droplets adorn his iridescent green.

A pale succulent grows in your cleft,
Its purple stalk a wand of yellow stars.

Inside the moss-lipped haven of your granite
I hide behind your thundering skirt of water.

Your clarity dissolves all self-deception.
I would not recognize myself without you.

The shelter of trees is never so generous
As your pouring and thinning of yourself

Into the forest air. I kneel and drink
And like the alder rise up satisfied.


If I can keep from any conflicts with my loved ones I may yet heal. I cannot bear to hurt or be hurt. I need comfort, not rigor, mercy, not judgment.


Thine in Truth and Art,

CE

Day 10: ECT Treatment #3: Poem from a Bus

This morning I had my third treatment, and man it was strong! I felt pretty damn fuzzy afterwards. "You had a good seizure," said the nurse.

I didn't know I was being graded. Now, as a depressive, I wonder if my seizures will ever be good enough. Don't they know how we twist such statements? I'm already blaming the patient for having inadequate seizures.

I did notice that after the last treatmen my muscles ached, especially in my abdomen. The doctors reassured me this was not from the seizure but from the muscle inhibitor, succinyl choline, which first causes muscles to contract before they relax. I expect I'll ache even more tomorrow.

One possible sign of improvement is that I wrote two poems yesterday, a love poem for Valentine's Day and the one below (I won't post the love poem until Kathleen receives it in the mail.) The poem below came after reading a good bit of Charles Simic. I wanted a regular rhythm (iambic trimeter) because I was in motion on a bus and Simic's rhythms are at best eccentric. But I love his honesty.


Lines Composed on a San Francisco Bus

Your ear buds counteract
the threat of close contact
here in the cell phone desert.
The world between your ears
that we're not privy to
expands and won't contract--
the genie fled the lamp.
Your lips are not sewn shut,
they're working very hard.
You rattle in Portuguese
about the price of beets
but cannot hear the beggar
and need not meet his eyes
nor try to avert your gaze.
Your world is tailor-made.

Charles Simic talks
to mirrors and trees and clocks
and gets away with it
like Strand shaving his beard
grown by somebody else.
But I've heard better verse
while captive on a bus.
A man was lecturing us
that America was born
with Castor and Pollux rising
which meant we'd always be
competing for attention.
(A nation of teenage clowns
in charge of nuclear silos
made perfect sense to me.)

That man got a free ride--
no justice on a bus
where public peace must trump
Puritan righteousness.
No driver wants to risk
his life and liberty
to shut a madman up--
no need to envy, either,
he paid in other ways:
no one gets a free ride.
I think we have to trust
karmic economy
or sanity's a bust.

All the years I spent
concentrating language,
were they, you think, well spent?
Most poetry is forgettable
as a four-legged dog,
Pulitzer Prize or not.
My personal albatross
is that this art should be
something that won't wash off
with salt and terrycloth
when all one really needs
for entry is a pen.
Since Gemini is rising
let P. T. Barnum sing
with Charles H. Bukowski
for literary bling.
“There is no competition?”
Not in the Yank tradition.


The only unfortunate occurrence today was that not long after I returned home from ECT, my middle daughter called, quickly became incensed and hung up on me. She likely will blame me for her behavior. Sometimes manners seem to degenerate in proportion to the degree of kinship one shares with the target.


With that Edisonian glow,

CE

Day 8, ECT #2; Roaches

Today I had my second ECT treatment. Although my alarm was set for 6:25 AM, I woke up several times beforehand and never needed it, due to anticipatory anxiety. Although my instructions, so I thought, were to show up at 7 AM at the outpatient surgery center, when I arrived I was mildly castigated for lateness and hurried to the treatment room in short order, except for my feet, which hung far over the bed.

The psychiatrist seemed more relaxed this morning and spoke with me longer, peering down with his half-glasses over the stainless steel railing. I think there are few positions more avuncular than a doctor at your bedside, especially given the vulnerability of a hospital gown. But was he more personable or was I less desperate? He told me the brief improvement from the first dose was typical, and that three or four doses into the treatment would be more indicative of the outcome.

The young anesthesiologist tried to tell me, somewhat awkwardly, that the procedure was “not without risks,” after I had already signed my life away and indemnified the hospital and doctors in triplicate. I informed him the mortality was in fact 1/20,000. He said, “Really?” and thanked me for the information. Amazing what they don't teach doctors anymore.

This time the short-acting anesthetic, whose name I could not parse, burned considerably upon entering my vein despite the local. As I felt woozier upon waking half an hour later, I assume the doctor increased the current discharge. The only hitch in the procedure today was emotional. The nurse who disconnected all my lines and wires after the doctors had left attempted light conversation, asking me about my children—where the recent death of my beloved Rachel instantly reduced me to sobs. But it was grief, not depression, as I was crying over her loss anew. It's something I'll never get over, something I can only get through. But its occurrence has complicated my case to a degree, because when I start weeping for good reason, I fear I shall soon be weeping for no good reason and plunged back into the Black Hole of Mybuttah.

Afterwards I had a delicious omelet at a local cafe, the “Omelette Monterey.” It was a thin, three-egg omelet containing artichoke hearts, chicken apple sausage, green onions, mushrooms, Monterey Jack cheese, and smothered in Hollandaise sauce. I ate half of it for breakfast and half later for lunch. Re-heated it was not as good, naturally, and the toast turned to rubber. Do not nuke old toast, especially if you wear dentures.

So much useful information I have to impart!

I napped for two hours then went for a walk after the late lunch (whose deficits made me wonder whether the famous “rubber chicken” so prized at conferences could be improved to “super rubber chicken”). I was interested in buying a pair of shorts, but in this tony suburb of San Francisco the cheapest pair I could find was $50.00 and the only pair I liked was $70.00. And you thought it was just the housing that was expensive in California, when indeed it is a locale where a man cannot afford to lose his shorts. Nevertheless I bought myself a new Lakers hat and a slim volume of poems by Charles Simic, Sixty Poems—a new collection of favorites in homage to his being poet laureate. (He was born in Yugoslavia and emigrated at age 16, which may explain his relative lack of lyricism. What, aren't there enough native-born poets to choose from? I think I'll start a jingoist movement against him. Has England ever had a laureate who was not a native? Hmmph.) As further evidence of my kindness to myself I also had one scoop of lime daiquiri ice at Baskin Robbins, a chain now perhaps better known for its crusading vegetarian heir than its ice cream.

Another good sign? I didn't really feel like blogging tonight because of my interest in other matters. I didn't need the therapy. And I almost forgot my medications today, a sure sign of improvement. Yet however superficially improved I appear, I know that the demon of depression is still burrowed deep within my soul and lives on. It will take more current to render me emotionally current than I have received as yet, as this disease is sneaky and if not properly extinguished can quickly and exponentially multiply again like roaches in my brain--which reminds me of two unpublished poems, one about depression using a roach as a metaphor and one purely about roaches.


Kitchen Talk

The world's expert on melancholy
cringes in the corner.
“It's just my mood,” he says
then scurries under the refrigerator,
safe in the compressor's hum.

Herky-jerky he scales the wall.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“While that sweet motor still sings in my head
like the blessed cicadas, I must seize
this absence of self-absorption to scavenge.”

“When will you return to human form?”

“When my shell chafes and I crave light
and faces don't look alien anymore.”

“What about my face?”

“Don't make me look.”



Roaches

Silent and sticky, yet awkward and almost blind
their glistening shells scatter at light,
their frenzied, diagonal courses unwind
in the kitchen, foraging at night.

They come in all sizes; the larger, the more repulsive:
Oblong brown jewels with pearly yellow highlights,
motile, feelers twitching, bodies convulsive
at any sounds, at any human sights.

When you smash them with a shoe or a book,
white squish exudes from their armored hulk--
and then you wish you hadn't perhaps looked
so closely at their wriggling bulk,

Bulk on an insect scale, I mean, their size
only sickens because insects should be small--­
O God! I hate their tiny primitive eyes,
the way they zigzag on a bedroom wall!

(written in Galveston, TX)


Unrateable,

CE

Day #3: My First ECT Treatment

I was just rudely awakened at 5 AM from a pleasant dream where I was laughing in a bar with my brother. The dream also involved, without carnal coupling, a lovely young woman who I knew was to replace my first wife. The nightmares of my first marriage recur from time to time, though my nightmares of being a doctor and medical student are more frequent when depressed—if I dream at all. I can't remember when I laughed in a dream.

The nurse took my pulse and her face registered displeasure because my pulse was only 48. She asked me if this was normal for me and I told her yes, that bradycardia was normal. It's funny that when I use medical terms with staff they are never curious about how I know them. I assume my slow pulse may be in part from my aerobic exercise, though I have fallen off of late. Still, swimming a mile within the last two weeks might have some lingering benefits. Else I am unlike the grandfather clock, and instead of keeping good time and coming to an abrupt end, I am slowly winding down. If only life were that gradual! Mine has always been composed of starts and stops; I've been either ahead or behind. What would it be like to have a life of gradual transitions, say get married at 30 instead of 19 and not already be a doctor and father times two at 25? I've always felt pushed by some invisible hand, propelled to excel, whether from anxiety and inferiority (most likely) or some innate property of my disease—I've always been in a hurry to get to the next step, even if the next step is undesirable. I have been the proverbial hare to the tortoise, and let me tell you, the tortoise, though slower, does a much better job at life, though not as well at E-Harmony.

After my vitals the nurse gave me a shot of Rubinol in my left upper ass. It didn't burn much but began to itch afterwards, slightly. She explained the drug was to dry my secretions and prevent nausea for the procedure. I'm sure that's what they told Soviet dissidents.

Afterwards came the hospital gown, a puzzle I'd never solved before. But in remembering how my wife puts on her bra, I tied it in front then took it off and reversed it. I was proud of myself for such a neat solution. Too bad the gown is designed for someone much smaller. If I don't get another one, more than my crack will be out in the breeze; the moon will likely be half full.

I didn't wake up crying today. One change, even before the procedure, is that glimmer of hope. I know I'm getting what I need and I hope never to find myself in a position again where I need ECT but cannot obtain it. Depression is a a severe brownout and full power needs to be restored.

Last night I watched a video for patients on ECT. Patients kept repeating how their memory was fine. I thought they'd never stop.

Actually the memory loss of ECT is consistent with the “post-ictal” phase of naturally occurring seizures. Memory of the procedure itself remains fuzzy not just because of the seizure but but because of the anesthesia. Long-term memory is not affected, but please don't ask me my date of birth.

My roommate, who had ECT in September of 2006 and is here for it again, is a pleasant fellow who resembles Jon Stewart. He was admitted after turning the gas on in his apartment at night. The only problem was that he had roommates, but no one was hurt. He now regrets that oversight. The ghost of Sylvia Plath must have been watching over him. Unlike her, he didn't stick his head in the oven but just let the gas run. That's certainly a sign of depression--the laziness in carrying out a procedure. When depressed, no matter how well you do, it is never right, so you often end up doing a shitty job out of despair. But that tendency can apply in general to a life like mine, always taking things too far in overcorrection. In second grade, for instance, I pushed the crayons so hard against the paper that they broke and the picture smeared. I marveled at he girls who colored so lightly and neatly. Maximum intensity of color was what I sought, maximum effect. The result was sloppy, I admit in retrospect, but it reflected my nature, just as my love of purple and red reflect my romance with the far limits of the spectrum, just as I was born manic-depressive.

Oh, and my MRI was “normal” except that I have sinusitis. Since I don't have any symptoms, I assume that is the effect of weeping too much and too frequently. Maybe the Rubinol will dry my sinuses out. It's certainly drying my tongue out as I write.

Dressed in one hospital gown but with the advantage of a pair of underwear to civilize the view of my posterior—(that's periphrasis, btw—“to cover my ass” would be better English), my escort arrived with the obligatory wheelchair to take me down to the dungeons, as most surgical theaters are located in the basement of hospitals. Why, I don't know. In case of war? Because you can't get any lower? For ease of a sterile environment? To best protect all the expensive equipment? One thing I do know. As we descended on the elevator to lowest floor the air became at least ten degrees cooler. The only thing colder is the morgue, and that's convenient since one can easily lead to the other.

The ECT staff was quite solicitous. They wrapped me in heated blankets. (I asked for a facial but there wasn't time.) They hooked me up to the monitors and I got to follow my pulse, oxygen saturation and blood pressure at my leisure. It wasn't Katie Couric in the morning but I don't much go for cuteness anyway. They also stuck oxygen prongs in my nose, which I found slightly uncomfortable, like snot freezing inside your nostrils on a very cold day.

The anesthesiologist and treating psychiatrist came by my bedside briefly to explain the procedure. The shrink was surprised, like all have been here, at the answer to “How long has it been since you had ECT?” “24 years.” The general consensus is that I had a good run, but the truth is that there were three times I could have used it since the initial treatment instead of fooling around with expensive pills. An ounce of electricity is worth a pound of medicine.

After my roommate emerged from the treatment room I was wheeled in on the bed. The ECT nurse put an oxygen mask to my face over the prongs, the usual hospital redundancy, just as I have been asked at least ten times since admission if I am diabetic. The anesthesiologist started an IV in my left arm while the psychiatrist fastened the rubber strap with large, steel electrodes around my head. Afterwards he took over holding the oxygen mask to my face, which he did so tightly I couldn't breathe (likely why he became a psychiatrist). I asked him to loosen it and he moved it so far away I don't know if it was doing any good. The idea is, I'm sure, that extra oxygen might prevent the death of brain cells. I know of no study to prove this but it seems like a nice precaution.

“Breathe deep four times,” the anesthesiologist said. I was hoping he'd say, “I'm going to inject you now and you will go to sleep in one... two... three... four seconds.” I like to know when my drugs are having their effects so I don't lose out on a new experience, but it was not to be.
ov
The next thing I knew I was recumbent and awake inside the recovery room, and the nurse said to me “It's over.” There are better words to utter to a depressive but I knew her intent. I couldn't count the times I've wished it were really “over!”

It seemed as if little or no time had passed when I awoke, though the return to consciousness was not as alacritous as from Diprivan, or “milk of amnesia,” which I recommend to all depressed persons as an excellent treatment (yet to be approved). After staying in recovery for a brief time I was wheeled back in the bed up to the ward on the third floor, I left the bed under my own power while a nurse hurriedly added a second gown to hide my posterior, despite the underwear. Then I was positioned in a large, blue vinyl chair facing the nursing station, along with my roommate, and served breakfast, though not the one I ordered, naturally. I turned in my choices yesterday but the hamburger of efficiency is sometimes slowly ground at a hospital. The nurses then observed us, presumably to make sure that we didn't choke on our food. I was in more danger of choking from the psychiatrist's heavy hand with the oxygen mask.

I felt tired and groggy but not mentally impaired--I remembered my new landlord's phone number to call him and my sister's as well. The retrieval of my sister's number, which I know so well, did take a little longer in my internal Googling, but I snagged it.

Supposedly I'll be discharged tomorrow and ECT will be continued next Tuesday, February 12. How I will stay amused between now and then will be my biggest challenge. The writing helps. Oh, and there's basketball to watch!

Unrated,

CE

From the Hospital

I am sitting in a hospital bed with a plum bedspread of rough cotton beneath me, my knees slightly elevated and the back of the bed up--the perfect couch potato lounger you see advertised on late night TV. They have wifi here in the hospital and I brought my laptop to communicate some of my adventure.

Tomorrow I will have my first treatment of unilateral (right-sided only) electroconvulsive therapy. Of course I'll be knocked out with with anesthesia when they plug in the toaster, but what they aim for is evidence of a generalized seizure ignited by the single burst of current. They'll start me at “50%.” I asked the doctor how many Joules that was (a measure of amperage, as in a car battery), but all he could do was draw pictures and talk about percentages, so obviously he didn't know. (It used to be 200 Joules.) He was the kind of authority who tries to give an authoritative answer even when he doesn't know it. Maybe he should run for office. (I'm voting for Senator Eagleton, who, if you are too young to know, was dropped from the McGovern ticket when it was discovered that he had had ECT. Don't supersize me, supercharge me!)

The psychiatrist responsible for a second opinion spent more time with me than my admitting psychiatrist, who asked me nothing about my history except as it related to ECT. I thought that odd, but I had typed up a history for the doctors to make sure they got the facts right and to make their dictations easier.

Why should they work for their money when I can do it for free?

Today I also had the unique experience of a brain MRI. Before my head and upper body were slowly eased into the white cylinder, the attendant put ear plugs in my ears. He didn't say, “Turn your head and cough,” just “Turn your head,” but a cavity was poked in any case. Why a patient can't be trusted with his own ear plugs is beyond me.

I think I went through two five-minute and two three-minute scans. What was most surprising was the noise, at one time a loud buzzing of eight bursts to my left followed by eight knocks overhead--over and over. It was as if someone were shooting a ray-gun at my head, followed by a troglodyte rapping me with a stick. The tech said this was due to the fact that they had to mechanically move the magnets around to get the scan. As you may know, the magnets align the positive hydrogen ions in your brain in one direction for the sensors to map out soft tissue. A CAT scan is still better for bone, but apparently they thought there was more to my skull than an empty shell. I look forward to proof of a brain.

I did feel something in my head as it happened, but it is too subtle to describe—like a little wave of energy slightly heating my brain. Luckily I had no psychic powers to lose, so that was not a problem, but the buckshot I'd stuffed up my nose as a kid tore a hole through my forehead.

When I was asked before the procedure if I had any metal or wires in my body, I almost felt embarrassed to say I had none, as if Borg status should have already been achieved by most humans. That's just my depression, however, making me feel inferior. In depression I am never concerned with what I have but always what I have in comparison to everyone else, which is never enough. How silly is depression? I can feel inferior for a lack of internal hardware.

After my first treatment tomorrow I will attempt to blog in that groggy, disoriented state in which I found others at group today. I will try to put the feeling down on paper but it may come out as just some retarded guy typing.

I especially want to thank and praise my wife, Kathleen, whose hard work to obtain insurance for us through employment made this treatment possible. She is the best (and you can't have her!)



I should also mention my sister and brother-in-law, who have graciously agreed to let me stay at their house and will transport me back and forth when I am converted to outpatient ECT.

With a glimmer of hope,

CE

At Rope's End

It's hard for me to blog and I don't know how often I'll be able to do it in the near future.

Presently I am pursuing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) at hospitals in the Bay Area, as there is no such treatment available where I live.

It saved my life in 1983. I hope it can do so again.

Since Kathleen left on a trip to NY for her mother's birthday, all semblance of emotional maintenance on my part has departed. There's no one I have the strength of will to appear well for. I hope to have the good news of my impending hospital admission when she returns. As she says, “I just want my husband back. I want Craig back.”

The uninitiated cannot know how bleak depression can be, how physical an illness it is. It's as if there is an eternal well of sadness in my chest and it takes very little for me to wet my face with it. I have no confidence in anything. Little tasks are daunting. Everything makes me sad. What makes me saddest is the idea that anyone could love me because I feel so unworthy. I'm such a downer I wish that those who care about me might never have met me. Like Job, I wish I had never been born. It's a terrible thing to admit but it's true. To be born only to suffer like this seems a waste of protoplasm. A weeping willow is much more useful than a crying Craig. One provides shade and aesthetic pleasure, the other only takes up space and continues to eat food and consume other resources for no good purpose.

I don't know what to do with myself. I'm very sick and very stuck. The record keeps skipping, the tape keeps looping back on itself, there is no up or down or forward or backward, just this hole I have fallen into.

I believe the body and mind ultimately know what they need in order to get well and that they lead us to that. Strange that in my case all the wisdom my body has tells me I need ECT. Too bad I live in a state with the most impediments to having the treatment. In California we'd rather let the mentally ill be shot by the police on the street than force them into treatment. Protecting the victim's right to be crazy is much more important than intervening for their welfare.

I have an appointment to see a doctor who does ECT on February 6, for which I am grateful. I can be grateful, strangely; in fact the least kindness shown me makes me want to burst into tears because I feel so undeserving of it. It has been hard work on the phone talking to so many hospitals and doctor's offices and insurance people in trying to get a doctor to see me who does ECT. It's not always easy to obtain. Stanford, for instance, has a two-month waiting list for the procedure.

I don't want to think about what happens if ECT doesn't work. It is the single most effective treatment for depression. Cross your fingers for me. But if you notice I have no reflection in the mirror, hold a cross up to me and please, drive a stake through my heart until it stops spasming.


8 Kilorats,

CE

Poem about Rachel

It's been almost six months since Rachel passed.



Feline Distractions

Mr red-haired daughter never looked this way.
Many are those who walk about in fear.
I get stoned and watch the catsies play.

Alive and stoned she looked, well, I can't say--
Sometimes rubbery from ear to ear!
My red-haired daughter never looked this way.

I kneeled, trimming dahlias where she lay,
Weeping, yes, but I was useful there.
I get stoned and watch the catsies play.

I'm not escaping, besides, there's no escape
From her long, oval face freckled in prayer.
My red-haired daughter never looked this way.

There's more than reconstruction underway.
Foundations are uprooted everywhere!
I get stoned and watch the catsies play.

How cold her lips were! (Pardon the cliche'!)
We paused to stroke her shining coppery hair.
My red-haired daughter never looked this way.
I get stoned and watch the catsies play.


Feel free to criticize the poem. It's just a first draft, I can't judge its quality.

I have given myself permission to take whatever medications make me feel better, even if some question their medicinal value. There is nothing I take that has not been used medicinally, of course.

I'm working at accepting my illness. That's where one must always begin.

"Expect less and accept less."


6 Kilorats,

Craig Erick

Sick F**k

I wish with all my heart that I could report some kind of improvement in my overall mood. I don't want to bore the reader with yet another post on depression, but I have little choice if I dare to speak of my real condition. Sometimes I do write without regard to my mood; sometimes I even attempt humor while overwhelmed with sadness and anxiety. Because depression is utterly boring. As for writing as therapy, I wrote this today:

Depression #34

Keep on bleeding, you die;
keep on crying, nothing happens.
I'm just a knife away.

Beware this sorrow, it can gut you
the way ants hollow out
the carcass of a grasshopper.

I cannot shake your hand,
my eyes are in my palms.
That contact is electric--

(I'll suck your positive ions out!)
I'll have the pie with no filling.
What flavor is air?

Art is a crock. Witness to becomes
witness for, as in the journalist who films
the beheading of his countryman.

He doesn't interfere with history,
why the murderers let him in.
Try interfering with me.

I am suicidal but I am not at risk for suicide. I know I have had far too high an opinion of myself over my life, a brittle defense against the collapse of self-esteem, but it's of no good to me now.

Two days ago I did something writers are supposed to do: I sent follow-up queries to magazines with outstanding submissions; this yielded two more publications. Another editor took a new submission gladly, promising to publish several, calling much of it "pure gold." None of this made me happier in any way.

Yesterday in a trance I sent off a number of new submissions to both paying and non-paying venues. I did it to keep busy, because it's something I know how to do, like washing the dishes. An automatic behavior. I have no hopes for the submissions, but afterwards I could point and say, "Look! I did something. There are six more submissions in my submissions folder."

Why do have this overwhelming need to justify myself to myself, as if some authority lived in my head waiting for a report? Why do I pray generically when only medical intervention has helped me in the past?

This is not redemptive suffering. This is the suffering of a dumb beast. I don't get stronger or wiser from it; I get dumber. Depression wrecks my mind, I have no confidence in the facts I've already learned and find new facts harder to digest. Maybe part of this is aging, I don't know. Stick a blade of dry ice in my heart, that's how I feel. Beyond broken. Broken and discarded. A headless doll by the roadside.

There are those who love me, but I don't call them for the most part, I'm too depressed. That doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate a call, only that I can't rouse myself to risk calling. What do I have to tell them, anyway? Only bad news. Eventually the depressive drives everyone but the most devoted away. I'm not a martyr and I'm not a saint. I'm just one mortal in the grip of a terrible illness, an illness that has destroyed better men than myself.

Today's post is not a turn for the worse but an admission of the elephant in the room. Beneath the plastic veneer of Adderall I am as sad as ever. Yesterday afternoon, after making it home, I began to weep. Beer drinkers know this as "popping the cork." When they first start to pee they're guaranteed to start peeing a lot. When I give into tears I'm guaranteed to start crying a lot, as I have most of today.

Logically, I responded to Cymbalta for one month, to Abilify with Wellbutrin and Prozac for nearly two months, and to Adderall with Abilify (and the others) for a few days. That anti-ADD effect I first experienced soon vanished. What I haven't tried is Abilify with Cymbalta. But I don't trust Cymbalta, it's so short-acting. Perhaps I should give Effexor a try again; formerly I couldn't tolerate it, but how could it make me any worse?

What I really need is ECT. Kathleen's insurance won't apply to me until March. That's when I need to get aggressive and insist on treatment, as April 1 will mark two years of largely being underwater. Not having medical insurance for a major illness is a terrible thing; it's also a terrible thing that insurance companies turn you down because you have a major illness. Insurance is so often for those who don't need it. How else can they keep their premiums down?

In all these years I've never thought of myself inwardly as disabled, despite the objective opinions of other doctors. That would have been too hard on my self-esteem. Yet as a doctor I would forbid me to practice medicine in this state, as I might endanger patients by my lack of confidence. (My back couldn't take a day's work in any case.) At least I've never broken down in front of a patient--and if I had, what would it matter in the grand scheme of things? And why do I mention this little accomplishment except to salvage a shred of pride for myself?

I just want to die, that's it. I'm tired of being sick. I've done all I can; I've taken my meds faithfully, continued to exercise, tried to stay busy, but for what? To pass the time. To kill time. I don't know how I fill a day but I manage to. I hate being a burden in print or in person, but here I am. I yell out "I accept myself as disabled" but there are no magic words. I am afraid of being accused of self-pity but it's not like that. I don't think, "Poor me, poor Craig." I think, "Help! Help! Help! Code blue! Somebody do something! Someone must be able to do something! There's a desperation under my skin and it's not silent. I know I'm sick.

Don't cry for me, Argentina!

7 Kilorats (I do feel a little better in the evenings, as in most depressions),

Captain Melancholy

Our Cats, for LKD

This is Topaz, a rather exotic beauty with a gem on her forehead. She is indomitable. If the day ever came when she did not do exactly what she wanted when she wanted the world would stop.

This is JoJo, a skittish athlete with an eating disorder--she eats too much. She and Topaz love to skirmish, sometimes leaping up into the air at the same time and colliding. We thought of calling Topaz "Cato" because she usually iniates the fights, as in the Pink Panther movies.

The cats are a welcome distraction from myself.

CE

Ambivalence

Two Stellar's Jays went skittering up two young firs this morning, half-heartedly pecking for insects, making dead branches bounce and spring. Their blue is iridescent, the male has a black crest.

The abalone shells I lay hollow down on the railing have been weathered until the mother-of-pearl shines through their coral pink external shell as well.

My failure is ambivalence. I fear to commit for fear of failure; I fear to commit for fear of success; I fear to risk my whole self publicly. I fear condemning eyes, electric sneers. My wife says, “Either swallow it or choke on it.” I'm definitely choking.

If you're not part of the problem, you're not part of the solution.

How Ringo's minimalist drumming so suits the Beatles.

Yes, it's Church of the Beatles Sunday.

What seeds did I plant yesterday? Dill, Creeping Dill, Italian Parsley, Thyme,
Snow Peas, Nasturtiums and Marigolds. They are now in the yard under the little white pup tent of a frost barrier with my poppy seedlings.

Why I know I'm depressed: If someone offered me ECT today I would go. One of
my depressive thoughts is always, “How can that bus driver (bartender, janitor,
waitress, cook, etc.) possibly perform her job? How did she learn to drive a bus?How does she do it?

After graduating from UCLA I took a job in a fabric warehouse schlepping fabric rolls. It was as painful as any job because of my own perfectionism, its dullness did not diminish my ambition to do a good job. Near the end of the summer they asked me to be assistant manager. I had to laugh. As depressed as I was, seeking refuge in repetitive employment, I was still singled out for advancement.

As for dwelling too much on my malady, if you had to piece reality together from past clues, as your present seems unendurable, you, too might seek your bearings on paper.

My kilorat scale is wrong, you know. Roger Dier was not too depressed to care for a thousand rats. If he were too depressed to care for any rats at all, he would be at zero rats, not ten kilorats. And as a behavioral measure it is utterly impractical. Even if well I would prefer not to care for a single rat. But how many _could_ I care for? ("Could" and "want" as rhetorical competitors are both superior to "have to.")

My main symptom now is an acute lack of confidence and a fear of filling the day.

Perhaps as a reaction to the above I sent out four submissions in the last two days, including a query for my novel. My approach to publication is completely illogical.

If someone sends me even a generic solicitation, I'll usually submit. Otherwise I can't be bothered--except when I go into a Duotrope's Digest fit and start submitting to all kinds strange zines, though for the most part I am unwilling to lick stamps, still a severe limitation. But not with The New Yorker!

If I wanted publicity, my main mistake was in closing Melic. Never believe that being an editor of a well-regarded magazine doesn't help you as a writer. People notice you. You have a certain amount of power and receive a certain amount of deference.

One reason I closed the magazine, besides the board's final destruction by the barbarians, was to focus more on my own writing. Ironic, hmm? I should have thought more about marketing.

Wait--now I remember the main reason I elected to close Melic: inadequate technical support. You may notice that many editors are also webmasters, a terrific advantage.

We can always open the magazine; it's officially on hiatus. All we need is a good and savvy webmaster! (Pay is low, job satisfaction high.) If this proposition interests anyone, write me!

When I felt better briefly two weeks ago, when I first started taking Adderall, the future appeared to me: I would expand my website to include sales and self-publish. It seemed like the right thing to do. It seemed obvious, in fact. But since my mood dipped again after the misunderstanding with Kathleen, everything appears impossible again--so I dabble and start some desultory queries in the groundless hope that someone might publish me. I have three rejections of my novel so far, the most damning being that in the Amazon "first novel" contest I didn't even make the cut of the top thousand--out of five thousand. Move over Charlie Brown, let me try to kick the football.

Just because my kilorat scale is mathematically incorrect doesn't mean that I don't still intend to use it.


At 4 kilorats but masked by Adderall,

CE

Relapse Threatens

Ten days of feeling like a person and boom! An imbroglio with Kathleen and I find myself crying Monday morning over the rupture, which appeared to trigger my underlying depression despite the neutral tones of Adderall.

I also cut my Wellbutrin dose in half for three days, having been too lazy to refill it, not knowing if my doctor wanted me to stay on it—yes, I know better, I should never alter a single milligram of anything in my regimen when improvement occurs—but let's not forget that I am a mental patient.

This is the interface of biology and psychology. There is a “kindling” effect in both mania and depression, whereby the more times the brain has been exposed to an extreme mood, the easier it is to provoke its recurrence.

I got my feelings deeply hurt by the one I love. I reduced the dosage of only one of five psychoactive medications and that just for three days—days dominated by a reason for sadness.

Everyone knows I'm in love with Kathleen.
.
Song

Naked among the stars,
whose center should we choose?

Orbiting you makes me
committed to planethood.

You are my cleansing sun;
scour my atmosphere.

As water loves stone,
wear me like a river.

I was near tears again yesterday and today but did not indulge my lacrimation.

My sadness may be normal but my brain is not, thus it tuned in too assiduously to the depressive channel after a brief exposure to one of its frequencies.

C'est domage.


Not rated,

CE

Church of the Beatles

I'm sad this morning because Kathleen and I had a little misunderstanding last night, whose reverberations greeted me upon awakening. I take my response for normal, but given my recent history, I may be forgiven if I fear relapse at the touch of normal sadness.

Two good signs: I wrote a new song this week, and this morning, violating my vow, a poem as well. At least I think it's a poem:


Treated for ADD (For Tiel)

For ten days my mind and body
have tasted synchronicity
(usually one runs before or behind
like the trains in Mexico).

Everything I’ve bruised, broken,
bent, spilled, shoved, poked or kno-
cked over--it was not a lack of Zen
that propelled and dispropelled me--
my RPMs were running amok.
God bless amphetamines!


I also stayed up too late last night, a carry-over habit from depression. While in the throes of the illness I feel better later in the evening, thus desperately try to avoid sleep, knowing I will be sick when I wake. It is not surprising that after our spat I reverted to this behavior--then maybe one has nothing to do with the other; for most of my life I have willfully resisted my body's signal to sleep. I feel as if I'm going to miss out on something if I sleep.

(I really need to feed the rhododendrons and azaleas today but there are so many and I have to do it bucket by bucket.)

I've been listening to "Breakfast with the Beatles" this morning, an old tradition of mine and perhaps a bit of a substitute for church. One hour of it was devoted to Ringo's new album, Liverpool 8. Are you surprised that this is his 14th studio album?

Ringo is an example of a celebrity by association; without John, Paul and George he wouldn't have made a single album. It could also be argued that without John and Paul, George would likely never have made an album as well. Hitch your wagon to a genius.

I should visit some friends' blogs. I joined Facebook at someone's urging but I still don't know how to behave or network through it. Some say this idea of a universal interactive platform, accessible from any computer like U-tube, represents "Web 2.0." I think there has been a more gradual evolution of applications (though the idea of a one-digit leap in net concept corresponds nicely to its digital nature).

"Love is all you need." You could do worse on a Sunday morning than to listen to the Beatles.


Good Day Sunshine,

CE

Bipolar with ADD?

"The National Comorbidity Survey showed that among adult patients surveyed ADHD existed comorbidly in 32 percent of those with a depressive disorder, 21.2 percent of those with BPD and 9.5 percent of those with an anxiety disorder."

So I start taking Adderall, a preparation of mixed amphetamine salts, and BAM! My crying spells stopped, I can stay home alone and be productive, and cleaning and organizing have never been so easy! I thought having three trains of thought at once was part and parcel of my bipolar disorder; now I think it is a symptom of ADD.

The paradoxical effect of "speed" on ADD and ADHD is counterintuitive, but the treatment response is 70%. Kathleen has always told me that I have a "busy mind." But now I can take one thing at a time, I can plan, I don't feel so rushed and fearful over each new task like I did just ten days ago.

In my family of origin I was the worst of slobs, but because of my high academic aptitude I was nicknamed "The Absent-minded Professor." Although my parents noted unusual powers of concentration in me, i. e. I could read a book with chaos all around, when it came to cleaning up my room I was flummoxed. And once I cleaned it I could never maintain any kind of order. This was hard on my brother, with whom I shared a bedroom for 16 years, as he was of an opposite nature. Literally one half of our room would be neat and the other a pig sty, I being the pig.

Since 3 to 5% of children are estimated to suffer from ADHD, that means that a bipolar child, particularly a male, has five times the chance of having the disorder. Lucky me!

I thought I couldn't have ADD because, for instance, during my senior year at UCLA I worked three jobs and maintained a full load and a 4.0 average without difficulty, thinking this a sign of some level of organization, though in truth I was rushing about in an agitated depression, seeking anything to fill my mind with something other than my mind.

To experience a brain that mainly assays one line of thought at a time is an incredible luxury for me; it is so much better than being driven by the chthonic winds of my associative whims.

My late daughter, Rachel, who suffered mightily from ADD, always insisted I had it as well. I think the girl was right, God bless her.

If there is a silver lining to this depression, it has to be the discovery of this other diagnosis. All my life my chief defect has been impatience. I always felt pushed, pressured to do things in the shortest amount of time--they had to be done yesterday! Now I am calm; my thoughts are not running ahead of me. I can't tell you how surprised I am at this; I thought my extreme impatience and fidgitiness were due to bipolar anxiety, not ADD. Now I think otherwise.

Here's a lesson: I suffered manic-depression without being diagnosed until the age of 30. I suffered ADD without being diagnosed to the age of 53. If I had been treated for both at an earlier age, God only knows how my life would have played out. For one thing, I think I would have been better liked, as my impatience feeds into my critical nature so that I share my opinions too frankly and too often. I'll beat a dead horse until it's powdered bone! So if you have serious questions about your mental health, do see a competent psychiatrist--even if you are successful by the world's standards.

Rejoice with me, provided this experience holds. (I have a strong sense that it will.) What will really be interesting is seeing those close to me notice my personality change. Maybe you can't teach old dogs new tricks, but you can get around it by giving them new drugs!


Unrateable,

CE

Another Chemical Miracle? Reversing the Garuda.

A Pacific storm (note the oxymoron) has caused a power outage at our place for five days, typical for the Mendocino coast in winter. Thus I have not had an opportunity to blog since I last saw my doctor. And lo and behold! From the depths of darkness a medication adjustment has raised me back to the world of normality for five days now. I quit drinking any alcohol and insisted going off of my long-acting oral morphine for my chronic disk pain, as either of these could possibly be contributing factors to my unresponsiveness. And in tears, telling my doctor what method of suicide I'd prefer while promising no intent, I said, "Can't we try a stimulant?" So, the doctor put me back on Abilify, which had stopped working, and added Adderall, a mixture of amphetamine salts. I took them the same day and felt better immediately. But what do I mean by better?

My depressive thoughts quit circling like sharks in the aquarium of my mind; my body felt normal, with normal energy; I had hope, I began to think of future plans; my crying spells stopped--just like that! Amazing. My fear is, of course, that this new cocktail, like the two others that worked then ceased working, will cease working as well, or that I'll develop tolerance. Or something. But maybe, just maybe, the third time is a charm.

It's a strange sensation, however, for one's body and brain to feel normal while the memory of the last nineteen months of horror remains in the center of my chest like a rubble-lined pit from a nuclear blast, my heart being ground zero.

My last post was signed with seven kilorats. That's the highest I've recorded in this blog, though I've been lower than that in previous depressions. I feel almost plastic in a way, the mood switch being so sudden and my heart still dragging behind me like an anchor. I am aware of the former emptiness in my chest but do not acutely experience it; my unutterable sadness suddenly feels like a phantom limb.

Suddenly the idea of a God of love seems imaginable to me. My religious torment has lifted. And in thinking of my correspondence with my Christian friend, I have to confess before God and man: My disease is more important to me than my religion. I can't help it. If my disease is not controlled I can't do faith except in a hollow intellectual sense. I can't pretend to be more virtuous than this.

As a man dying of thirst thinks only of water, so the severely depressed thinks only of annihilation, of an end; he is beyond hope of getting better but determined, at least in my case, not to kill himself because he remembers, as through a fog, recovering from previous depressions.

One thing I did to mark this miracle was to reverse my garuda. A garuda is an Indonesian mask carved in the form of an eagle-faced gargoyle, said to be the eagle who is the mount of the god, Vishnu, in the Hindu pantheon. It is meant to keep evil spirits out of a household. But I had hung it above my front door facing inwards when we moved into our new place on April 1, 2006, the day my depression began. As a visible sign of improvement, as an incarnation of hope, I have now hung the garuda on the wall facing the door. Now he looks out at the world and protects me and mine.

What was best about this change is that my daughter, Sarah, was visiting from LA and near the end of her stay she got her Papa back! And Kathleen got her Craig back. And I have myself back, though it will take time for me to trust the sensation of being me.

For those interested in a longer meditation on brain chemistry and personality, I recommend Listening to Prozac. We are all much more chemical than otherwise. If you were spared the gene for this devastating illness, you could never give proper thanks for not having it--and I am glad for you. If you suffer, all I can say is: hold on and keep seeking help. That's all I've done.

I'm tempted to sign this "kiloneutral" but am afraid to make such a claim for so short a period of recovery. Let us hold today's labeling in abeyance.

Gratefully,

CE

Weeping and the Glass Giraffe

My mind is blank from crying. Crying empties the mind and exhausts the body; it is a blessing under normal circumstances but in my case more of a reflexive seizure. I cried through most of my appointment with my shrink today; I think I conveyed the sense of utter hopelessness I experience. I have withdrawn from my pain medication and am not drinking, the former at my suggestion and the latter at his insistence. Whether his insistence is enough for my resistance is another matter. I fear not drinking; how else can I numb my mind at night in order to watch basketball on television, literally the only time in my day when I feel almost neutral?

In my present state it is hard to stay on one task for any amount of time. I try to read but find myself reading the same paragraph over and over. I am blank. The pressure will heat up again, however, after my brain begins to castigate me for all my failures and derelictions until a lump rises in my throat and the faucets come on again.

I did manage to throw out the Christmas tree last night. Being just a local redwood sapling it was rather sparse, but it never shed a single needle while it was up. I threw it out from the deck out back, and we (stepson Derek and daughter Sarah) put our hands on it to transfer the past year's sins onto its innocent bark as a convenient scapegoat. Afterwords I launched it like a spear out into the woods where it will feed the nitrogen cycle.

I ran across a curious article today in which it was shown that men who cease religious activities are actually at lower risk for anxiety and depression, while women who cease religious activities are more likely to suffer from them. They think it might have to do with different social networking styles. I thought it funny in light of my discussion with friend Eric about Christianity and my depression. Religion is toxic for me in this state, something he has difficulty understanding.

Wait--that little possessive adjective ("my") is part of my problem --I want this to be your depression, too! I should not hog all its glory for myself; you, too, can help carry the burden. So if any of you wish to undertake this, please write me and I'll instruct you in the fine art of breakdowns. Chemistry aside, there are some ways to achieve depression without being born into the disease, but it takes a big commitment.

When you get as bad as I am now, the main survival tool is to accept your depression. Like a winter tree, think of yourself as dormant, not dead. Oh, you feel dead, you feel worse than dead. It's a living hell. No one has described it better than Jesus, who said of hell "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," except that he left out the anxiety part. Simply put, the emotion of despair includes sadness, fear and anger, the anger usually self-directed. In psychiatric terms this constitutes dysphoria.

What surprises me about this depression has been its gradations; at times I can laugh, at other times not. Twice I had temporary responses to medications. In the past when the worm turned it was sudden and for a long time; I can remember distinctly noticing the beauty of a fern while hiking during another depression, and afterwards realizing that in that moment of aesthetic appreciation I had flipped out of my depression. Nothing had been beautiful up to that moment for the longest time. Suddenly I was well. This is why I don't get psychotherapy--it just makes the disease worse, since the complaints I bring to the therapist are mainly biological in nature. I wrote a poem about this once, below:

Glass Giraffe

When my soul was sanded so raw
the capillaries couldn't even seep,
I questioned the value of pain.
"You must experience your feelings of abandonment
until you are comfortable with them," you said.

When my suicidal doppelganger
turned me inside out, pulling my anus
through my mouth, you said,
"Now that you are stripped of defenses
you have a better chance of changing them."

When I called you up one weekend
to say I was terrified of inanimate objects
like doorknobs and tea kettles, you said,
"Stay with it. Globalized fear indicates
a necessary therapeutic regression."

Finally the antidepressants kicked in
and I felt like myself.
When I left you gave me another card
since therapy was “unfinished”
and I might be back
on your couch or another’s.

I gazed at your office figurines,
crystal leopards and pewter trolls,
porcelain ballerinas and kachina dolls,
and imagined the souls of all your patients
trapped inside them-- those, who like me,
sought relief through words
when only medicines would do.
I could have been the glass giraffe.

7 Kilorats,

CE

New Year's Sayings

Yes, you're all here tonight, all the plankton spirits and their keepers, the locavores praising their beets.

When you are confronted by monsters and every monster is a version of a human that you've met and every one of those humans gets inside your head and talks, yeah, that really sucks.

If your beliefs conflict with the truth, open your eyes and tame your heart.

I felt sorry for a man without feet until I saw a man with no knees, but when I met a man with no hips my compassion tanked.

If science can duplicate nature, why is "natural" still used as a promotional quality?

To train the young mind: music, math and essays.

I lay the stone of my foul heart in the lap of your fiery hem.

Aging is not for cowards.

The more critical a person, the more sensitive.

We labor under the illusion that life makes sense. All our fantasies, religious and otherwise, are directed toward supporting that illusion. If we have such a need to make sense, does it make sense that it really does make sense?

The traits you least like in others are your own.

The key to happiness is to be born with a sunny temperament.

God is not on your side. His is the only side.

The Internet is the virtual end of privacy. Either live by subsistence in the woods or drop your pants.

Does anyone today really want privacy? Only after celebrity has been achieved.

Norm Ball understands these things, but we don't know if our insights are due to our competitive narcissism (and jealousy of celebrity) or clear-headed cultural observation.

At a psychological level there are no clean hands.

Though time is relative, Happy New Year!

CE

The Morality of Feeling Good?

Yesterday's post was, I admit, discouraging to say the least. To compound my sins I described to my daughter the method I would use if I were to commit suicide while of course promising not to do it. Such a sick mixed message. If my children weren't legally adults I shouldn't be allowed to be around them.

Happiness is contagious to a degree and so is gloom. Why they should matter to us so much is what I don't understand. Why do we all want to "feel good?" Isn't this the most basic of hedonisms? And why does an organism even harbor the expectation of feeling good? And if feelings are amoral, why do we judge our morality so much on the feeling outcome?

And yet bad feelings are the most painful of experiences, one reason why cutting is popular. The distraction of the physical pain is more pleasurable, or less uncomfortable, than an awareness of painful feelings. When badly depressed I rejoice in my back pain because it distracts from the holocaust of my heart.

I have had a couple of thoughts: First, if you're as sick as I am, and I mean really sick, it's very important to accept yourself as such instead of walloping your pride with the bludgeon of failure. My brain is sick; it is therefore unreliable and I ought not to listen to it.

And here: Why not pursue whatever beauty and truth has traditionally given you joy, even if you are at present incapable of experiencing joy? Surely it must prime the pump to some extent. I should try reading Eliot and Shakespeare and listening to Jimi Hendrix.

As for Christmas, I had a thought as well. What if I was not put here for myself, to pursue my art and interests, but for the sake of others? Christ was not sent here for himself. A healthy tenet of a Christian faith is the belief that this is true: we are gifts to others, not ourselves. The less we concern ourselves with our own gifts and the more we concentrate on being gifts to others the sooner we forget our misery.

In my philosophy, happiness and "feeling good" are not the purpose of life. They can be by-products of living a good life. Still, my actions don't confirm my beliefs--unless you admit I am only trying to feel "normal," not "happy," which is how I understand it.

The first mark of goodness is honesty, inseparable from humility. To have "a sober assessment of oneself" is the prerequisite reality check for consciously doing good. But how black our hearts are! As soon as we see ourselves in our place we begin, Walter Mitty-like, to imagine ourselves in a more exalted position. As a manic-depressive blogging for my own sanity I should have no illusions that what I do is noble; I do it to distract myself, to keep my brain from feeding on itself. That reminds me of a poem from the archives, let me see, yes:

How I Got Published

When I think of a fire I know what to grab
after my children are safe: not my Stratocaster
whose rosewood fingerboard is spooned
between the frets from loving use,
nor my irreplaceable pink paisley blazer
custom made in the 60s, but my poems
(see me run through coiling smoke,
cradling manila folders, arm hairs curled like fuses.)

In high school my writing teacher
(whose silver-brown wig stuck to her head
like a frozen salad) screamed at me:
"You will never be a poet, Mr. Chaffin!"
Shame stole my voice and made
my purple acne blaze so even the girl
I loved in secret looked away.

In college one professor called my poems
"a confused blur of images"
and was probably right,
though I comforted myself that he was gay
and taught Restoration Literature.

After my fourth trip to the bughouse
I started writing poems to feed my mind
something besides itself. Afterwards,
just as new drugs began to lift
my suicidal melancholy,
I was published.


(De-published by the Cortland Review)

Madness can be made into art and art into madness. To think we are all driven by a desire for good feelings, how very simple! Too bad that for some, good feelings only come at the expense of others.


5 Kilorats,

Dr. Chaffin

How I Really Am

It's hard to write. Since discontinuing the expensive wonder drugs, Lamictal and Abilify (they had stopped working despite increased doses), I've gotten worse. If I wake up at night I start crying. I can hardly speak to my visiting daughter without the necessity of strangling sobs. I feel so inestimably sad, it's as if all the sorrow of the universe could be poured in me and I would not overflow. I don't know what sadness and crying are for anymore. To me they are just an incapacitating signal I cannot turn off. Sure, I experience the feeling—a feeling like being left in the dark hungry with a dirty diaper by your mother when you're nine months old, something like that—but the feeling has no cause.

Sadness should be provoked by loss; free-floating sadness seeks an object for its own justification. So if I weep while thinking about my recently deceased daughter, Rachel, some dark part of me agrees, “Well, you're not just weeping for nothing.” But that's a lie. I am weeping for nothing and no one and everything and everyone; I'm just stuck, I'm a skipping record, the proverbial tape loop, the Mobius strip always condemned to be on one side of the equation: “I have seen the universe and it is dark. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Do I feel guilty about my illness? You bet. How about helpless? Worthless? Selfish? Self-centered? Of course. Then there are inner accusations that I'm faking it, I'm not trying hard enough, I'm trying to get out of life, I'm a coward--but willfulness has nothing to with it.

I think back to similar times in my illness and how I tried to cope. Once while taking a full load at UCLA I took on three jobs so that not a minute could be devoted to my thinking about myself. Later, after I graduated, I took a job in a fabric warehouse for the mindlessness of it. Even there they tried to promote me but I refused. I can't seem to do a job badly except the job of being myself, but that has gone way beyond being a job into some supernatural burden.

I can't be myself. Yet here I am with myself. My whole life seems a travesty. For the last ten years I have had the privilege of being able to write what I wanted, but I have nothing to show for it except hundreds of publications, mainly in obscure and non-paying journals. My new ambition to write only for money has been sincere, but even if I were to receive a six-figure advance for a book I would feel no better. I am a laughingstock to myself.

It's true in the last year and a half that I've had two brief remissions from my underlying condition, one with Cymbalta and one with Abilify plus the other meds. But in both cases the meds quit working, even when they were increased. It felt so good to be normal--I had begun to make plans, to look forward to the future—normal meaning the usual checkered existence of light and dark, not one or the other, which to me feels like heaven—and then cruelly, for reasons I don't understand, it was taken from me. The entire episode has now lasted 19 mos; if I subtract the three months of normal mood, it leaves me with a depression of 16 mos, which matches the worst spell in my life, at age 29, when I had to drop out of the last year of psychiatric residency. Don't worry, the irony is free.

There are new treatments available I'd like to try, but unfortunately my insurance won't kick in for another several months and locally there is no mechanism for me to pursue intravenous ketamine or Diprivan (the latter snapped me out of a minor depression some seven years ago during an endoscopy; there is great promise in these short-acting anesthetics). I've heard of a street drug called DMTT, a powder that you smoke, that has a similar effect as Diprivan but am afraid to try it, naturally. But I'm close to it. If I had more gumption I might go looking for it.

It is a joy to have my baby, Sarah (18), visiting. It is also a strain since I don't want to load her down with my leaden affect. “Suck it up, Craig. You gotta suck it up, at least until she leaves.” So I tell myself.

I am sick with a physical illness. I do not want people telling me how a model of “learned helplessness” or Freudian “anger turned inward” have anything to do with my condition. I've been through this many times before. One day the chemicals straighten out and I am fine. Then it turns out there was nothing psychologically wrong with me besides an artist's dose of too much narcissism, I suppose, but nothing requiring therapy. I just get well. EOS.

As for suicide, I won't do it. My father did it at 62; as I like to say, “Why let him win?” Maybe when I'm 63 I'll re-evaluate the idea. My main fantasy for a method of suicide is to plunge a butcher knife directly under my sternum into my heart and have a little consciousness before I go. In driving to pick Sarah up at the airport Thursday, I did have visions of driving off of the road into the river, but the drop was not precipitous enough to guarantee my demise. These are fantasies and tempting ones at that, but no one should assume I'm at risk for them. I'm tougher than that.

I wonder if incurable depression will ever be a justification for euthanasia?

I have always gotten better in the past, eventually, even miraculously, but how much damage is done to me and my loved ones and this organ called the brain in the meanwhile cannot be calculated.

If there's anything you can do for me today, cheer up a friend, lighten the day up a little for someone who is able to receive it. You will be happy you did and so will they--provided the brain chemistry is normal.


6 Kilorats,


CE