Of all the books I have read on clinical depression, none is more comprehensive, personal, and exhaustively researched in my opinion than Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. When I was in the throws of one of the most cruel and overstayed visits from the unwelcome mid-day guest, it was, quite literally, my atlas for navigating an illness that was both new and frightening. I read simultaneously seeking understanding and solace. A strictly clinical book would not have sufficed. An overly-personal or anecdotal account I would have cut through as ripe trite. Anything resembling religious reading would have been lost on me at the time.
Solomon's book was an amalgamation of all of the above. He had street cred as an author and New York Times contributor, and I connected with his thoroughly journalistic style. His illness was bonafide, and its manifestations severe and gritty, but never dramatized overtly (unlike Andy Behrman's memoir of his manic escapades in Electroboy.) His research was substantive, his interviews deft; the book was a multi-year project of both clinical and personal significance.
Anyway, I happened upon the well worn and dog-eared copy of the book on my bookshelf this afternoon and was leafing through when I came upon an interview I no doubt connected with at the time I came across it for the first time. It as if the author had found my journal and copied it word for word in uncanny fashion, for I had experienced verbatim the very thing he wrote, at the same age:
"A year or so after graduating from college, Frank was at the movies when his first depression hit him.
'On the way home from a movie, I realized I was going to drive into a tree. I felt like there was a weight pushing my foot down, like someone was pulling my hands around. I knew I couldn't drive home because there were too many trees that way and they were getting harder and harder to resist, so I headed for the hospital.'"
I still remember the day I experienced the exact same thing. I had just graduated college about a year before and was living with my parents. I had taken a job as a youth counselor at a juvenile detention center, but was in such a heavy depression that I couldn't manage the work, and felt I was putting both myself and the kids in my care at risk. And so I resigned after only a week or so, and although the supervisor admired my transparency, I felt like a failure, and that such a failure was heaped on top of my already clinically depressed self so as to tip the scales towards destruction.
On the drive home on 611, I passed a row of sycamore trees, and felt the same tug, the same weight on the gas pedal that Frank felt. I was propelling the car forward faster and faster, and it was all I could do to keep the steering wheel from pulling right against my will and connecting the front end with the trees. I was only about a half mile away and managed to grit my teeth and make it home, throwing myself exhausted and spent from the white-knuckled experience of resisting self-annihilations onto my bed, not to emerge for a few days. It was the closest I had felt to not being in control of my body, as if I was temporarily inhabited by a demon of sorts. It was so strange, so scary, and so hard to understand for someone of sound mind who has never experienced such a thing.
When I read stories of demon possession in the bible, it can be tempting to draw parallels between the "fight for your mind" (and it is a fight, a literal matter of life and death) that takes place for those in the throws of depression, mania, acute anxiety, schizophrenia, etc, and the evil spirits that take hold of one's body as seen in the bible. I generally resist this temptation. Although I believe in the reality of demonic possession (and the ability to be healed from such legitimate possession through the rite of exorcism), I am firmly in the camp that recognizes mental illness as mental illness (to be treated clinically), and demonic possession as demonic possession (to be treated spiritually), distinct from one another. Science, medicine, neurology, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy...all can and should be utilized for treatment of mental disorders in the same way science and medicine can be used to treat bodily ailments, cancers, infections, etc.
While the human body is complex, the brain--the seat of consciousness--is infinitely moreso. Psychiatry is still a rudimentary science in many ways that relies on subjective markers of progress (i.e., "how are you feeling today, on a scale of 1 to 10?") and pharmaceutical trial and error. We are only scratching the surface in the field of neuroscience and "brain mapping," and an expansive horizon remains. Although we usually endure such a misguided accusation, Catholics are not, in fact, anti-science. I am hopeful about research and treatment for future generations of those who suffer from imbalanced neurons and receptors in their brain, and those whose physical lives may be saved from the irreparable tragedy of suicide.
It has been about 15 years since that experience driving home from the juvenile detention center, and by God's grace things have changed substantially. I have been symptom free for almost seven years; I take my medication religiously and see my doctor regularly. I try to exercise and limit substances that would interfere with the serotonin and dopamine levels in my brain, as well as doing my best to manage stress and keep it to a minimum. I gritted my way through grad school, even though there were times my mom had to pick my up from my apartment and physically take me to class, wait outside for me to finish, and drive me back. I have managed to be steadily employed for the past ten years or so in my field, get married, have children, and while mental illness is more like a cancer in remission--never really 'cured' in the traditional sense--I do live a relatively quote-unquote normal life in spite of it.
While the spectre of the phantasm always seems to lurk, he is for now benign. Is he resting, gathering strength? Has he gone away to make a home somewhere else? I don't know, and though I do not live in fear, I never forget. I guard my mind as if it were kin. For when your mind turns against you, how can you put it to death in duel and come out unscathed yourself? May God be praised for the gift of health--both physical and mental. I am so grateful for it.
"But Jesus rebuked the evil spirit, healed the boy and gave him back to his father. And they were all amazed at the greatness of God."
(Lk 9:42-43)
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