David's Inferno (6 page)

O
N
M
ONDAY
, O
CTOBER
17, 2005, I got up off the floor, called my psychiatrist, told him I'd gone back on Celexa and, in a masterpiece of understatement, reported that things weren't going very well. He asked if I was taking anything that might be causing an interaction. I told him about the Chinese herbs. He told me about serotonin overload.

“Serotonin overload?” a good friend asked disbelievingly a few days later—this being a guy who had done some serious self-medicating in his day … a day that continues up to the present. “Shouldn't that be a good thing?”

Perhaps … if all we were dealing with were the hippocampus and a few of the other animals running around in our brains. But there are a whole lot of other physical processes that involve serotonin, including little things like blood pressure and breathing. Plus 90% of all serotonin receptors are in your stomach where they play a major role in digestion and trigger things like “gut feelings.” Thoughts really
do
affect our digestion, which can affect our moods, which can affect our thoughts again. In fact, scientists now consider your stomach to be like a “second brain.”

So if you jack your serotonin system up too much too fast, both your first and second brains can start behaving the way that, well, mine were behaving.

This official diagnosis is “Serotonin Syndrome,” and it can be fatal.

While my case was nowhere near that severe, it obviously triggered a significant imbalance. In fact, my behavior was remarkably similar to that of someone who “flips out” on LSD.

No knock on Chinese herbs, my psychiatrist explained, but there was a chance they were working synergistically with the Celexa in the serotonergic system (say it three times fast). He suggested I go off them, at least until I had stabilized on the SSRI. He encouraged me to continue taking the Valium if I needed to calm down and sleep. No encouragement needed.

So there we were. Me and Wendy. She wasn't working that day. I wasn't functional that day. Both of us were stuck in the house with someone who wasn't a whole lot of fun to be around. Someone who took up a huge amount of psychological space.

She suggested we drive to Northampton. Just to get out of the house. Go somewhere. Change of scene.

I sat in the passenger seat the whole way, hands folded, head down, monosyllabic responses—like grandpa being taken out of the home for a Sunday afternoon drive, physically incapable of dragging my awareness from the lump in my throat, darkness behind my eyes, and a tenacious agitation that could attach itself nettle-like to the most trivial sensation or thought.

I followed her into various stores. Did my best impersonation of someone who was interested in something … anything. Survived the terrifying decision of whether to have a cappuccino or a latte. And, in general, tried not to make Wendy's life any more distressing than I'd already made it.

Most masters of meditation would undoubtedly disagree, but being aware every moment isn't always all it's cracked up to be. One of the “blessed curses” of being in a state like this is that wherever you go, there it is. No special technique required.

A week later, I called my psychiatrist back and told him that, even though I'd stopped taking the Chinese herbs and remained at a very low dose of Celexa, I was still extremely anxious, had frequent
crying jags and, most important was running out of Valium. He said to stop taking the Celexa and come see him the next day. I arrived in his office, agitated, emotional, tearful. With that wired feeling in the pit of my stomach. Five pounds lighter than I'd been the week before.

There's a particular sensation when you're about to get something you crave. The mouth-watering anticipation of being mere inches from that first bite of your favorite dessert. The equally moisturizing sensation of being on the verge of some serious—or not-so-serious—sex. The gentle relief in the back of your throat when you pour yourself a beer after work and begin to lift it to your lips. The more intense urgency of being on the verge of taking that first drag of a cigarette or line of cocaine. (Those days may be well behind me, but just saying the words evokes the sensation.)

When you're that bent out of shape, watching your psychiatrist write a prescription is just as intense. You believe with all your heart that you're one trip to the pharmacy and a dose or two away from relief. Realizing he
isn't
going to write that prescription is heart-breaking. But my doctor, undoubtedly wisely, said I'd better stay off the Celexa until “I felt myself again.” Valium was a consolation prize. It meant we couldn't even get to square one until we had a chance to sort out the pieces.

To my surprise, things got better immediately. In email after email I announced my return to the free world:

On Halloween evening, I sat in the same chair as I had the week before, in front of the same fireplace, drinking what might as well have been the same glass of wine, and waiting with childlike (i.e., immature) anticipation for the first trick-or-treaters. We never get trick-or-treaters. We live too far out in the country. But it's an excuse to buy a bag of serotonin-boosting chocolate. After eating my fair share and asking Wendy to hide the rest, I reflected on how my every thought was a mirror image of the week before:

In retrospect, my “Last Weeks” sound a bit melodramatic. And my “This Weeks” too simplistic. Regardless, when you're walking that razor-sharp line between the two, you can't help but be aware that behind each thought of opportunity, interest, or humor, lies a shadow of hopelessness, apathy, or sorrow. And, more happily, vice versa.

When you bounce back from a major mind-altering experience, you get a “double shot” of pleasure from the most ordinary activity. You not only enjoy what you're doing, you enjoy the fact that you're enjoying it.

I was particularly thrilled that I was able to have interesting conversations with strangers in crowded rooms—a high-wire act of such courage and creativity that I received standing ovations from other parts of my brain: He walks! He talks! He makes sense! He doesn't have to rush off and go to the bathroom to pee or throw up! Chatting up the car repair guy? Piece of cake. Having lunch with friends who thought you were about to be committed? No problem. Contentious meeting? Bring it on!

In early November, our daughter was sworn into the bar at the Vermont Supreme Court. I approached this important event with a certain trepidation. While breaking down in tears could be mistaken for relief that the law-school loans were in her name and not ours, it would have been a tough sell. Obviously, this day was about
her
. I would have felt guilty if my emotions were in any way a distraction. Turned out there was nothing to worry about. I was able to enjoy the ceremony—even the part that involved standing in a crowded room for a half hour or so—unencumbered by emotional baggage. I was just a guy who was proud of his daughter. And loved her a lot.

Even on my annual Thanksgiving walk with my brother—our once-a-year, no-holds-barred download about parents, wives, children, jobs, health, and the fate of the New England Patriots and
Philadelphia Eagles—I cavalierly described my recent depressive/dysphoric episode with the confidence of one who had worked his way down a fairly treacherous slope. Someone who'd figured out where the rocks were loose and likely to give way, where a hidden spring could send you ankle deep into the muck, or an inviting branch could lend a hand but might not hold.

I'll never be that cavalier again.

F
OR A GUY ON THE PATH TO DIVINE RAPTURE
, D
ANTE SEEMS
mighty opinionated, if not outright malicious. In the course of descending through the nine circles of Hell, he condemns former friends and enemies, popes and princes, the famous and infamous—with a degree of vindictiveness that should earn him a prominent place in his own Fifth Circle of Hell, where the terminally angry mix with the sullen, slothful, and despairing.

Inferno
is a young man's book. He isn't even forty when he first puts quill to paper, and he's been thinking about it for several years before that. At that age, your angers still feel justified … your frustrations of other people's making. All the major and petty inconveniences of your life are caused by external events, not your own inability to transcend them: If only she loved me. If only they paid me what I deserve. If only they'd change that law. If only he'd stop sabotaging everything I do.

And so Dante badmouths Cleopatra and Helen of Troy for the sin of Lust with as much hell-fire-and-brimstone passion as would any repressed soul (especially one who's in exile, continually exposed to temptation while separated from the wife he doesn't really like). He condemns three contemporary popes for fraud and a whole lot of faceless clerics for avarice with the same self-righteous indignation of a modern voter saying we should “throw the bums out.” He unceremoniously tosses a former acquaintance into the Circle of Gluttony for no apparent reason other than it lets Dante use the guy to predict the results of political intrigue in Florence after the events, thereby painting the poet's actions in the best possible light. And he shamelessly scatters others he disapproves of into whatever hellish realm he feels is appropriate for their perceived sins of commission or omission.

Dante tries to pin these judgments on forces way beyond his control—including Virgil, St. Augustine, and the entire foundation of medieval Christian theology. He even throws his beloved Beatrice under the bus—claiming that the only real reason he's being allowed to witness these things is that she wants him to come back and tell people what awaits them if they don't shape up.

But the book is written in the first person. There's no way Dante can escape the fact that he chose the examples. The fact that one of the most judgmental people in the history of the world should get a “Get out of Hell Free” card defies logic.

There are, of course, two sides to every story—in Dante's case a whole lot more than two. He knows full well where his epic journey is heading. In fact, one of the most amazing things about
The Divine Comedy
is that he's able to carry this spectacular holographic vision in his head for twenty years—like a warrior who learns to run with a mouthful of water and not lose a single drop. Sure, the basic Hell-Purgatory-Heaven, sinner-penitent-saved storyline has been around for centuries. But the comprehensiveness of his vision and the vividness with which he presents it is unlike any attempted before. And he knows it.

It's a little prosaic to point out there's at least a little lust, gluttony, avarice, anger, and fraud in us all. And there is no way—I'm throwing down the gauntlet here—that you can write that intensely about the entire spectrum of human experience without embracing it in yourself.

Having your mind spin wildly out of control makes that a little easier. You begin to appreciate how other people's strange behavior may be rooted in similarly random brain chemistry. You may not approve. But you understand.

By the time Dante is working on
Paradise
, he'll be in his fifties, no longer a young man by the standards of those days. Unfortunately, copies of the
Inferno
and
Purgatory
will have already begun circulating. He has to endure the curse of all writers—he can't take it back. He's stuck with those judgments. He's still stuck with them 700 years later. It's the price he has to pay for planting the
seeds of a new vision without alienating contemporary readers and patrons.

Still, he'll manage—particularly, later in
Purgatory
—to hint at the most glaring inconsistency in the entire Judeo-Christian vision: You can't get into heaven with duality boots.

It's all well and good to say that on the Day of Judgment, Christ will take the good (and appropriately penitent) with him to Paradise, while the evil remain in eternal Hell.

But who are we to judge what Christ or God or the Cosmos will ultimately do? How can we experience unconditional love if we put conditions on it? How can infinite mercy be so finite?

I understand that, for centuries, theologians have made careers of dissecting these points—frequently getting stuck, if not impaled, on them in the process. All I know is that a guy like Dante—a guy who so deeply understands the struggle to simply be a human on earth, a guy who knows both depths of despair and manic visions of rapture, a guy who knows the struggle between good and evil within himself (and how hard it is to reconcile them) would have never condemned anyone to suffer in eternal Hell.

He knows that he hasn't really been sent to put all these people in their place. He knows that, as the famous quote at the start of this chapter implies, the more he can experience and share their grief the more perfect we all become.

“Follow me! Follow me!” I hear him calling. “We'll get through this!”

The Church may have wanted those sinners out of the way for all eternity. But there was no way Dante would have abandoned them down there.

He wasn't going to abandon me there either.