The Brotherhood of Depression

I spent most of May recuperating from a major depressive episode, one which my psychiatrist recently categorized as a “good setback.”

For the past several months, I took 5 mg of Abilify per day and 100 mg of Lamictal. Abilify messed me up, but it made me scarily productive. I’d wake up intermittently throughout the night raring to go write, but I’d make myself wait until 4:15 a.m., although by 3:45 a.m. I'd had more than enough sleep.

My creativity was peaking and expansive. I was full of ideas and, most importantly, I could execute them even with three children (all under three) preoccupying many hours of my day.

Here was the downside of Abilify: Every morning before breakfast and every night before dinner I’d have panic attacks. They vacillated between minor (“my chest feels tight”), and psychotic (“I must get to the ER because two fish oil capsules are caught in my throat and I am about to die”). The former was annoying and the latter disturbing.

I’d also self-diagnosed esophageal cancer, testicular cancer, and a mysterious deteriorating bone disease. One time I thought I’d accidentally poisoned my whole family with carbon monoxide because I left the car running in the garage for about 30 seconds. I was nervous about driving, flying, and even gardening because of rattlesnakes. I only ended up in the ER once–and there were no fish oil capsules stuck in my throat.

Still, my writing output had never been better. Who needs sleep when the fire’s burning? My psychiatrist wisely switched me from Abilify to 50mg of Gabapentin to better regulate my sleep. She also upped the Lamictal to 150 mg.

After the switch, I cratered. I became overtired during the day and listlessly awake at night. I reverted back to a terrible sleeping habit where I’d lay face down on the couch all night with the television on at very low volume. I sleep-watched hours of Bosch, which is to say I didn’t sleep very well at all.

****
When I was drunk and alone, I’d always sleep-watch things on the couch, mostly $12 pay-per-view movies I never wanted to watch in the theater. I justified the expense because the movies helped me sleep better. It was cheaper than Ambien.

But now my four-month-old son is at the other end of the couch snuffling peacefully on his LeachCo Podster. Sometimes I’d forget he was there and accidentally kick him in the face with my foot. We nevertheless made it through five and a half seasons of Bosch.

For those who don’t know, Bosch is an LA-based cop show on Amazon Prime that is both very good and also extremely terrible. The titular lead character played by Titus Welliver has a bizarre value system where he shoots first and asks zero questions later. He has white croppy hair and shimmery blue eyes, and he has a strange gait in that it appears he either has no torso or his legs are attached backward. He’s constantly reprimanded for bad-cop behavior yet everyone at the department overlooks it because he’s a “great detective.” He loves jazz, prefers being alone, and is a reprehensible parent to his teenage daughter, but she loves him anyway.

I recently spoke at a men’s stag AA meeting, and before it began most of the men–all well over 60–talked about Bosch the same way my wife and her friends talk about Normal People. So that’s Bosch’s target demo–old alcoholics.

There’s an undeniable comfort in Bosch, the kind I imagine most men of a certain sunset age get from Clive Cussler novels and Tommy Bahama pullovers. Maybe it’s lame and deeply uncool, but at this point in life’s journey it’s more important not to care about those opinions.

This fanbase combined with Detective Bosch’s unoriginal love of jazz and violence reminds me of this wonderful George Bilgere poem called Blues for Cleveland:

There’s something about
middle-aged white guys
Who idolize black jazz and blues musicians
That always makes me uncomfortable.

Charlie Parker, they’ll say, pouring the wine.
Bird. Mingus. Oh yeah. They get this
Dreamy, faraway gaze, they exchange

Signs of the brotherhood. Coleman. Monk.
Brother Miles. Their wives
Look away, wait for the subject to change.
Outside it’s getting dark.
The streetlights flicker into life.
We switch on the security systems.

****
During a recent Zoom follow-up session, my psychiatrist drank water out of what looked like a Riedel Chardonnay glass as she asked me if had any urges to kill myself or any hypomanic episodes. Part of me wanted to lie.

Historically, most of my depressive episodes have been extreme and doomier, full of nihilistic behaviors and constant suicidal ideation. This recent one flashed warning signs but basically stayed above the surface–and that is why she called it a good setback.

I (only) felt half-depressed, which I’m deeply ashamed about because I remain unconvinced that I can’t just snap out of it when I get this way, which is what my most negative, bullying inside voice screams at me to do. I can’t, though. I’m unwilling and unable to move forward. I’m just boneless and bored. There is no light.

The things that become impossible for me to do are all the activities that separate healthy people from ones who sleep on top of full litter boxes: exercise, talking to people, showering, walking outside, smiling.

My doctor maintained eye contact our whole session and took perfectly timed sips of her water. I couldn’t maintain eye contact at all because I was so distracted by how I looked on the Zoom screen. I tried to speak with my chin up higher so my nose didn’t look so big. I also appeared to have some sort of Bell’s Palsy thing happening on the left side of my face. I remembered a line in a short story where the author described a man about my age as “ruined-looking” and that’s what sprung to mind as I stared at my mangy quarantine hair and neckbeard.

She set another follow-up session for six weeks because she was so pleased by the results of the new medication cycle. She asked if I had any questions.

Yes, I said.

“What’s wrong with me and will I be this way forever?”

****
My wife Julieanne is very popular on Twitter and recently one of her Tweets was liked by a follower whose profile revealed he was both a producer on Bosch and a “grateful recovering alcoholic.” It took everything I had not to slide into his DMs. I wouldn’t even know how to begin that conversation: Hello sir! You love my wife’s jokes and I just also happen to be both a Friend of Bill AND a Friend of Bosch….

It’s strange that Detective Bosch does not have a drinking problem. He's totally normal and fine, drinking beer in the safest most traditionally masculine way possible, usually after he’s solved a case or murdered the shit out of someone.

Season 4 is when I started to tire of Bosch's antics. He began to address everyone as “brother” and that annoyed me in the same way Bilgere was annoyed by the middle-aged guys rapping about jazz.

Even though I’d sleep through most of the episodes, I’d never feel like I missed anything. It was classic depressive behavior: I’d half wake up from sleeping on the couch, the boy conked out at the other end in his scratch mittens with my feet in his face, and instead of going upstairs to bed, I’d try to watch one more Bosch.

Then I’d be dead-ass asleep during the theme music, too tired to skip the intro. I got a feeling that I can’t let go.

****
My psychiatrist said the goal is to find the right combination that will eliminate the suicidal ideation and eventually get me to someplace where I’ll feel more like myself, even though I still have no idea who that person is. Between all the years of being untreated and all the years I spent self-medicating, I’m still in what losing professional sports franchises would call a 'rebuilding season.'

I also had other concerns.

“I’m afraid that I might be lying about the severity of the depression or downplaying it. I can no longer tell,” I said.

When I was in elementary school this kid named Pat had Leukemia and almost died. I think we had an assembly of some sort to make the announcement. Every one of the teachers was really busted up about it, but not many of our classmates were because Pat was not very popular. When Pat finally came back to class, they told us not to stare at him because the chemo had made his hair fall out. He came back and wore this weird Phillies baseball hat clumsily seated on his bald white head. He kind of looked like Nosferatu.

It didn’t matter how he looked, though. Everyone paid great attention to Pat, more than they ever did before. He was a total celebrity. I was so jealous. I wanted Leukemia so bad. I wondered if there was a way to fake an illness in some way to get that type of attention. Or, better, a way to contract it.

During this conversation with my psychiatrist, I thought of that kid Pat because maybe I was making this depression far worse than it actually was, that I secretly just wanted the attention and a month off from my everyday routine of life.

I asked her if it was possible if I had Borderline Personality Disorder. I’d read an interview with SNL comedian Pete Davidson about his struggles with BPD and some of his melodramatic lifelong anti-social behavioral patterns matched up perfectly with mine.

She looked back at me from the Zoom screen and didn’t appear fazed by the question.

“My diagnosis is still Bipolar II. I don’t know much about your history, though, so it’s definitely something we can puzzle out later.”

Puzzle out. I liked the sound of that. I should probably tell her about Pat.

****
During an episode titled “Salvation Mountain” in Season 5, two members of a fentanyl cartel Bosch infiltrated on an undercover sting tried to throw him out of a biplane. Bosch stabs one man in the throat with a knife hidden inside a walking stick and then he yanks out the eyeball of another one before arm-barring him out the plane’s open door into the Salton Sea. I could not stop thinking about it because it was so absurd. I also couldn't stop thinking about it because most of my days were spent thinking about Bosch until it was time for me to begin watching Bosch again. But after the George Floyd protests started and the uprising began I stopped. It didn’t seem very appropriate anymore. And as the depression began to lift it also didn’t seem necessary anymore. I went to bed.

I still haven’t watched the second half of Season 6. I can wait on that, maybe forever, or at least until my next episode.

– AJD