David's Inferno (2 page)

Both David and I have long recognized, in big ways and small, the importance of
subtraction;
that is, less equaling more in most things connected to the odd set of events we all call the human experience. But there are times when more is … well … more—and a good thing. This happens most often when we need each other. I need David Blistein.

Over the more than forty years we've known each other, we've shared many things: LOVE, good times, laughs (lots of them), women (no comment), alcohol, drugs, and GOD. But our madness or our depression—“Black Care,” Theodore Roosevelt once called it—has been something we've had to endure mostly alone. Not that we weren't without help. We had it. Not that we didn't help—or try to help—each other. We did. But we were essentially alone. All alone.

I'm not surprised that his brain betrayed him so mercilessly. (Or perhaps, all of this has also been the best blessing ever for him—and for us.) His mind works so wonderfully, so differently, so fast, and
so generously that it was bound to trip over itself, bound to need a spare part not easily found in the usual places, bound to need a bit of rewiring, rebooting. But it was the depth of it that scared us, the way it cancelled out his own superb cleverness, the way it usurped his own strengths and sapped his normally prodigious life force, the way it scared
him
.

It took a lot of hard work, and a lot of love from others and from David himself, but he did get better. And the hard work he did was a marvel to those of us who love him so unconditionally. Because he has always been
for
the world in a way too unique to accurately describe here in a few words, his way out of his hell had to include helping others out as well, without judgment, without making someone or something wrong. That is this book. It takes us deep into the mysteries of depression, and its power to transform our relationships, our creativity, and our very selves—a remarkable achievement.

Courageously and honestly, he has revisited the terrifying places, and while not smothering the terror in bromides and platitudes (it is really frightening—and should be), he has given us all a map and some basic instructions for doing the hard work we may need to summon when the inevitable vicissitudes of life threaten even the most controlled and controlling among us, i.e., when shit happens.

In this book, David often evokes Dante, who shares with my friend a sustaining curiosity about the places most of us hope we never encounter, the circles of Hell we trust will not be our lot. During the Great Depression (get it?), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, no stranger to overcoming demons and afflictions of his own, himself quoted Dante at his acceptance speech for his party's re-nomination of him for the Presidency in 1936: “… Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.” David Blistein has written a warm-hearted book that can help deliver us all—thank God—from the cold-blooded fear that now and then invades the perfection of our own solitude.

—Ken Burns
Walpole, New Hampshire

R
IGHT NOW
, I am
not
depressed, manic, hypomanic, dysphoric, bipolar, cyclothymic, or agitated. The stories and insights in this book are primarily based on experiences between 2005-2007. Except for the occasional blip, as long as I take my meds, I rarely experience the symptoms anymore. My official diagnosis is: Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, in Partial Remission.

I guess that means I'm a person
living with
major depressive disorder … in the same way that someone might be
living with
HIV/AIDS, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or some combination.

Hey, we've all got problems, right? And most of us have cupboards full of supplements and prescription drugs to show for them. Until there are reliable one-step cures that work for just about everybody all the time—or, as futurists expect, can be customized to work for each individual virtually all the time—most people accept the fact that they need to keep taking their anti-virals, insulin, beta blockers, or statins indefinitely.

But many depressives, myself included, still consider major depression a temporary condition, not a chronic disease. I don't see myself taking these drugs for the rest of my life. Instead, I think about when it would be a good time (spring) and a good year (well, not this one …) to start tapering off. Although, if I'm ever convinced the apocalypse is right around the corner, I
will
rush downtown to the drugstore to stock up on all my meds—at full retail if necessary—before I bother with milk and eggs.

Unfortunately, while there are fairly objective ways of measuring HIV, insulin, blood pressure, and cholesterol, depression is just too subjective a disease to define what it would mean to be “cured.” That doesn't stop people from trying: In an independent, double-blind study of website results (i.e., I just did it), “Depression Cure” beats “Coronary Cure” by 30 million results, and even “Breast Cancer Cure” by 15 million.

So, I suppose, whether I realize it or not, I'll always be living in depression's shadow. Then again, maybe we all are. Considering how little we know about the brain's potential—and the rich complexity of human intelligence and creativity—that may not be such a bad thing … within reason.

People have asked me if I really want to write this book. If I really want to expose my neural endings to the memories of that time. As if the very words carry a contagion. One to which I am particularly susceptible.

For the most part, I cavalierly brush off their concerns, saying that it doesn't affect me to write about it. That, if anything, it puts me and the avenging angel—yes, angel as much as devil—on an equal footing. That I'm a storyteller and this is a story I have to tell; a story I have to stitch seamlessly into the other stories of this life … every holographic moment, from the everyday to the ecstatic.

At the same time, I knew I was on the right track when people who have been down or are still on these roads told me they
couldn't
read it. For while I have practiced and deeply appreciate the detachment of meditation, dispassion and compassion remain only mental experiences without
passion
.

On October 10, 2006, exactly a year after this journey began, I emailed a friend:

They say that life passes before your eyes when you die. If I'm going to squeeze the last drop of humanness out of this life, I hope it also passes through my heart.

—David Blistein

East Dummerston, Vermont

Midway upon the journey of our life,
I found myself in a dark wood,
For the straightforward path had been lost
.

T
HREE OF THE MOST FAMOUS LINES IN LITERATURE
. The mid-life crisis against which all others are measured.

Dante's not in Hell yet. Hell, he's not even in Limbo yet. But he's lost his way. Big time.

For starters, he's being tormented by a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf. And those are just the symbolic threats. His real life is much more perilous:

He's been continually undermined in his attempts to mediate between Rome and the city-states, the nobility and the bourgeoisie—until he gives up and declares himself a “party of one.”

He's been forced into exile from his beloved Florence, and reduced to wandering the solitary roads of Northern Italy, France, and maybe England—living off the kindness of patrons and occasional work as a tutor or scribe.

He's wrestling with a philosophical split from his former mentor and friend Guido Cavalcanti. (Dante's also feeling a little guilty since, back when he was in political favor, he was one of the Florentine magistrates who banished Guido—who died of malaria shortly thereafter.)

He's continually disillusioned by the reigning popes who are guilty of the worst kinds of manipulation and greed. But Catholicism remains embedded deep in his genes.

He's estranged from his wife and children. More significantly, Beatrice, the famously unrequited love of his life, has gone to Heaven and, it turns out, is in no mood to hear any excuses from a sinner like Dante.

He's also driven by a conviction that transcendent Truth and Love can be experienced on earth; and that
his
mission is to reveal The Way by writing a masterpiece that will capture all the hopes, foibles, and dreams of man in a way that nobody else ever has. In fact, his original title was
The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell
.

In the midst of this tangle of woes, Virgil shows up. And makes it perfectly clear that the only way out is in. And the only way up is down. Way down.