David's Inferno by David Blistein Read Free Book Online Page A

reassure him or herself she won’t be similarly afflicted.
    Sometimes I’m concerned that, by writing this book, I’m “profiting” (wouldn’t that be nice!) from my own pain. But when I ask Wendy whether, in retrospect, I’ve been overstating my symptoms, she says that, if anything, I’ve been understating them.

    In the Fifth Circle of Hell, the sad, depressed, and gloomy are eternally mired in the swampy mud of the River Styx. While I knew the feeling, I managed to cling to the assumption—then belief, then desperate hope—that my condition was temporary. While I’d never experienced this intense an episode of crazed instability before, I was confident that some medical intervention—Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern … who cared?—or act ofcosmological mercy would soon end this particularly virulent journey into my personal Hell.
    Over the first few months of 2006, I tried just about everything. Acupuncture, amino acids (SAM-e seemed to help a little—the others seemed to just make me more jazzed), B vitamins, Bach Flower remedies, t’ai chi, some yoga, avoiding caffeine, avoiding sugar, eating more protein, avoiding carbs, and so on. They all seemed to help and then not. Like my system couldn’t get any traction. I was still spooked by the idea of going back on meds. All I wanted was a little light at the end of the tunnel. Moments of feeling normal would trigger irrational optimism, followed by heartbreaking crashes.
    When you’re in that state, rational thought seems incredibly naive. The world is riddled with minor glitches, each of which is just waiting to build hurricane-like into a Class V disaster: elevators whose doors pause a second too long before opening, people whose names you’ve forgotten walking toward you, appointments you’re five minutes late for, checkbooks that don’t balance.
    Your car doesn’t start? Forget it. You’re toast.
    Every few days I’d crack completely. Utter hopelessness. Crying jags. I’d scream my bloody head off. Play squash as hard as I could. Sit in the sauna too long and then go into the shower and turn on the cold water full blast. Anything to earn me a few minutes of peace.
    All I remember is trying to act normal; trying to act normal; trying to act normal.
    By early spring, however, it became pretty clear that my uninvited emotional tenants, whom I’d been trying to evict using those various medications and therapies, had signed a long-term lease, were beginning to rearrange the furniture, and had no intention of being evicted. It was time to get out of Dodge.

Road Trip
    Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough
.
    â€”T HEODORE R OOSEVELT
    D RIVEN BY A LITTLE BUSINESS and a lot of mania, I got into my 1990 VW pop-top camper in March, 2006 and started driving towards southern California. I harbored secret hopes that some warm weather and spring sunshine would cook the agitated depression out of my system.
    I was neither Jack Kerouac nor Neal Cassady. I was fueled by neither cigarettes nor amphetamines. I just had to keep moving. As if, in some kind of Einsteinian thought experiment, if I could drive as fast as my brain was racing, it might appear that the latter was standing still.
    I typically drove 500 to 600 miles a day, during which I’d try to settle … settle on anything: which radio station to listen to, where to eat, when to eat, what to eat, where to pull over to nap, whether I
could
nap. When to call Wendy.
If
I should call Wendy. If I’d be able to call
anybody
without my agitated unease spilling over and drowning us both. Usually, I’d stick to emails at the end of the day. So I could edit out the more pitiful parts. Not that I was fooling anybody.
    As I drove, I’d occasionally dictate random observations into a digital tape recorder, obsessively transcribing my words each evening. If only to feel I was