Sandy Slaga

I am caught up in Lincoln’s Melancholy, which hit the shelves last year.

Joshua Wolf Shenk spent seven years researching this glimpse into Lincoln’s lifelong struggle with the Black Hole of depression. The result of Shenk’s toil is engrossing.

Shenk has allowed me to step inside Lincoln’s tortured mind and eavesdrop on his most private thoughts.

For those of us who have walked Lincoln’s path of pain, his story is a light in the darkness.

Keep walking towards the light.

One of the harder things to do when The Black Hole threatens to set up camp is to just do the day. Just do the damn day. The basics. Get out of bed. Shower. Brush the teeth. Feed the dogs. Navigate the people in your life without taking their heads off or running from their sight.

The Black Hole is a good place from which to do laundry. Mindless, robotic activity that asks nothing in return.

Today’s a good laundry day.

Chances are Dr. Edward Van Dyk was one of us. A person who has battled mental illness.

At its worst, every morning the alarm buzzes and your first thought isn’t what’s on the agenda today or did I make the kids’ lunches or even what sounds good for breakfast. Your first thought is - damn. I’m still here.

The Black Hole is all around you, and it’s of a depth and breadth you’ve not known. The ache in your chest is heavy and suffocating. Nothing can take it away except to silence it. You want to close your eyes and go away. Far away to a place where there is no pain. Just peace.

The pain of living has become unbearable and now outweighs the fear of the unknown. And you just want the pain to stop. You just want it to stop.

Most of your family and friends have no idea of your secret. Over the years, you’ve become an expert at faking it. So, it seems, had Dr. Van Dyk. Colleagues, family members and neighbors don’t know why he threw his two young sons and himself over the balcony of a Miami Beach hotel.

All they and we know is that yesterday Dr. Van Dyk’s father admitted that his son, sounding panicked and upset, had phoned him two days earlier. And we know that Dr. Van Dyk, a radiation oncologist, had three jobs in three states in the past five years.

There is oh so much we don’t know and most likely can’t even imagine.

Decided several weeks ago to get off antidepressants, hereinafter referred to as The Meds. Sidebar: not wanting my legal education and student loans to be in vain, I must occasionally speak legalese. Forgive me. I know not what I do.

But I digress.

Oh yes, The Meds. Don’t like what I’ve discovered about the known side effects, long term risks and the great unknown. Have come to distrust the pharmaceutical companies, hereinafter referred to as PharmSuits, and how they produce, direct and star in that increasingly popular feature, Psychiatric Meds - Why You Need Them.

Caveat: Lest I get noodle whipped for my callousness, deranged thought process or plain stupidity, let me say this about that. Never say never. There are, I’m certain, situations that warrant The Meds.

Having said this about that, the PharmSuits have, for the past several years, taken to the airwaves, barraging us with thirty second diagnoses and treatment plans. As if The Meds are the Second Coming. As if the complexity and wonder of the human mind and a human life can be so trivialized. Horse hockey.

For the past four weeks, I’ve tracked my withdrawal symptoms. Whoops, I mean “discontinuation symptoms.” Shame on me. Wyeth told me it’s not withdrawal.

The big girl label for Effexor XR is forty-six pages long.

46

Forty-six

Four tens and six singles

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Can we talk?