It's what I've called it for years.Sometimes he stays for a few days and sometimes he camps out for weeks.
Last week I learned that Churchill called his depression the black dog, too. So, along with the hard and fast rule to never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast, the late PM and I also have this in common.
Funny, it doesn't make me feel better knowing that I'm in such elevated company.
Perhaps elevated isn't the right word.
The roster of people who have lived with the black dog reads like an artist's who's who. TS Elliot wrote The Wasteland. Jesus, just the title alone makes you want to take a bath with your toaster. And music, while it may calm the savage breast, can also give you the blues. A friend said she can't listen to anything with lyrics when she's depressed. I understand. I turn on country radio and I want to drive into a train.
And could a playwright who wasn't depressed have created Blanche DuBois? I don't think so.
Then there are the novelists like Twain, Faulkner, and Hemingway. Hemingway put his sardonic finger on a lot of our troubles when he said, "That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward." Gee, low pay AND depression. Thanks!
Faulkner, ironically, said it shorter than Hemingway: "Only vegetables are happy."
My uncle, one of the smartest and funniest people I've ever known suffered so badly from depression that my cousin says it cast a pall over his entire childhood. So this definitely runs in the family.
Congratulations! You got your mother's eyes, your father's hair, and your grandfather's suicidal tendencies.
Of course, writers are prodigious self-medicaters. For myself, I find that with enough vodka I can't load my pistol or tie a decent knot, so I've been relying on this tactic for some time.
As most of my readers are also writers I have to ask, does it bite you? And when it does, can you write? Can you go out and be social? Are you a shit to live with when you're depressed?
And have you found a way to muzzle the black bastard?
If you're so inclined, talk to me. I could use the company.
20 comments:
Mine takes the form of incredible, crippling insomnia usually. I have had it since I was seven. In my attempt not to take anti-depressives but to get sleep, I am now taking anti-anxiety medication which usually lets me sleep (and seeing a therapist once a month). That is--if I don't think of something depressing before it takes over.
Another tactic that helped me this year was the purchase of a light screen at Costco, which helped with SAD. Boy, life is rough a lot of the time.
A friend who lost a wife plagued by both depression and cancer said the cancer was a walk in the park compared to the depression.
Nope, you're not alone in this.
Yes, it bites. Like a bastard. Seems to be gnawing on a lot of us recently, huh?
My latest theory is that funny and depressed go together because they both come from a mismatch between reality and point of view.
Or I could be full of shit.
Days I get my 20 miles of bicycle commuting, I'm in a good mood.
I do meditation. On a recent retreat, the teacher recommended a zafu (meditation cushion) with a seat belt for hard times:-) ha! I am not recruiting here. I just don't have the stamina to do enough substances to put a dent in the problems and I can sit in one place so there we are! Other activities that help are therapy, 12 step groups, playing loud music.
Hi David,
This may sound corney but [1] try not to drink too much as this actually fuels the emptiness within, when the alcohol leaves the bloodstream, which then makes you drink more, and the cycle perpetuates - also, try going for a walk with a bottle of fruit juice, a paperback in your back pocket for a few hours. A workout / or swim in the gym might help a bit also, as will meditation as well as sex, but usually the sexual urges are tempered when the empty-feeling is strongest.
Me, I just realise that there are cracks in reality and also consider myself hugely lucky not to be living in Darfur - that usually brings me back to Earth.
David, empty-feeling is highly personal and we all have different ways of filling the void.
The best method [for me] is to avoid alcohol for a few days, drenching myself in icy fruit juices, coffee, and as I don't smoke no more, chewing nicotene gum and going for walks / and exercise.
Also - Thrillerfets next week might help - and if you are meet me in the bar for a beer, OK beer in moderation also helps....
Ali
David -
This always cheers me up :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo
Ali
The malaise, the just out and out apathy, is the worst. No. Being up all night thinking everything to death is the worst. NO. Feeling completely isolated from all of humanity by chemicals in your brain is the worst.
I try to take the warrior stance and fight the fucking black dog with everything I've got. Sometimes he just lays on top of you and smothers you nonetheless....
Fight the bastard!
You are definitely not alone. Writing is actually one of the ways I deal with my own Black Dog. You should have seen what a miserable bastard I was before I started writing.
I also find solace on the attitude Ali describes, except mine is usually, "this would all be a lot worse if I was living in Richmond County."
Good luck, brother. Call me if you need anything.
"Comes on in the midnight, like those mean old shakin' chills.
If you never had 'em, pray to your god you never will."
-Robert Johnson/Robert Kidney
The black dog visits often, despite the fact I kick it hard in the ribs with steel-toed boots.
I bleed it with my writing. I drive it away listening to dark music. I torment it with humor (and like an idiot, I'm going into standup, which only makes the black dog follow you home.)
Once in a great while, I'll drown it in booze, but only to make it stop barking. Most of the time, I simply see it as an adversary and refuse to let it control me.
Bad dog. No Tom Waits.
[Black dog whines.]
You're so not alone. Sadness, blackness, hopelessness, what's-the-fucking-pointness.
It got bad enough that I took anti-depressants twice. They do work. Can be lifesaving, in fact. But in my case, they came with a price. After I started on anti-depressants, I stopped reading and writing fiction. Just stopped. After being off them for a year or so, I started reading fiction again, but I've never been able to write it since. The characters who used to live in my head have never returned.
Now I keep it at bay with non-pharmaceutical means. I actually find that alcohol helps - in very limited amounts. If I have one drink a day, I tend to feel better. No more than that, but one glass of wine is good for me.
Pretty sure I'm a shit to live with even when I'm NOT depressed...
Like Patti, I can go days with little sleep when I'm in a funk. I try to get outside as much as possible - sunshine - and yeah I know how lame that sounds - tends to be the only cure to shake it.
Really the trick is to know that dog well enough to train it, and train it as best as you know how with whatever skills you may or may not possess. Take that fucker down and stay on top of him, don't let him up until he knows that you're very old friends. That he knows that his existence ends without you.
I thought I was the only one until I started talking about it as though it were nothing more than like taking out the trash every day. Then, I find that the black vucker gets all around the neighborhood. Medication helps, but who whants to be somebody else the rest of their life? So I take a vacation and become Mr. Organized Efficient Upbeat for 9 months or a year or so, then I go back to having fun and writing mischief. The thing is, the black bitch ain't never got as much bite as she wants you to believe. She's a great deciever, so just don't ever believe 'er!
Dread
Guess my other comment didn't make it. Oh well. you play music, right? Music is such an exuberance ...
...David, this is getting too serious. Yesterday you asked if I was going to hell - and today you want to know if I've been visited by a black dog!
What kind of hooch or moonshine are you drinking? Listen, go out and splurge on a good single malt, Irish or Scotch - I don't care (what's the difference anyway?)...
Aren't there any Irish pubs in your neighborhood? They are the psychological counselling centers of the planet (don't you just love the alliteration?) - no I haven't been drinking - so I'd better go rectify that.
Oh my God! I just saw the largest black dog outside. Looks like a cross between a pit bull and sasquatch! Did you send him?
I'll get you for this! You can depend on that!
Slan go foill,
Pat.
We all joke about it, but its a beast that pulls the wool over our eyes and makes us see things as much worse than they are. So, bad things get really bad... really bad gets really really bad... et al. This last round was my worst and it took the wrenches of medication and a good woman to pull me through. The cliche is true, we laugh about it to keep from crying, and I've done my share of that too.
Dread
You think I got to weigh this much by being happy all the time? I tend to self-medicate with Ben & Jerrys.
The black dog has visited me since I was a kid. Sometimes he stayed for years, but mostly months. Now he manages to get his paw in the door for only a day or two, and sometimes not even that if I'm diligent.
There is a line in the book "The Courage to Write" that goes something like: Quarterbacks and prom queens do not make good writers. (Sorry if that's a bad paraphrase, but you get the picture.)
Well, the black bastard hasn't run off with your sense of humor. That's something.
I'm not a writer but I am an artist by natural ability and schooling. My creative urge has been gnawed on for the last 17 years or so by this unruly mutt.
I have been in therapy and on meds with varying degrees of success. One thing that has made a huge difference in my life is the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (yeah, T.L.C. - too cute isn't it?) program for dealing with depression. The University of Kansas psychology dept. runs it and accepted me into this 12 week program last February. After so many years of not making art - I'm finally back at it.
It's a pretty common sense approach to beating depression and well worth checking out. It takes work but it with effort you'll be a regular Michael Vick and your dog won't have a chance.
You can also read my blog for tips I've learned -
www.walkingtheblackdog.com
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