More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Of the many dreadful manifestations of the disease, both physical and psychological, a sense of self-hatred—or, put less categorically, a failure of self-esteem—is one of the most universally experienced symptoms, and I had suffered more and more from a general feeling of worthlessness as the malady had progressed.
the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne.
the psyche’s perishability, its exquisite fragility?
Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
as the disorder gradually took full possession of my system, I began to conceive that my mind itself was like one of those outmoded small-town telephone exchanges, being gradually inundated by flood-waters: one by one, the normal circuits began to drown, causing some of the functions of the body and nearly all of those of instinct and intellect to slowly disconnect.
What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by
depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this caldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.
Loss in all of its manifestations is the touchstone of depression—in the progress of the disease and, most likely, in its origin.
The loss of self-esteem is a celebrated symptom,
There is no doubt that as one nears the penultimate depths of depression—which is to say just before the stage when one begins to act out one’s suicide instead of being a mere contemplator of it—the acute sense of loss is connected with a knowledge of life slipping away at accelerated speed.
I had now reached that phase of the disorder where all sense of hope had vanished,
In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come—not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
the walking wounded.
in garbage there was an annihilation of self appropriate, as always, to melancholia’s fecund self-humiliation.
A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self—a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it.
No more words. An act. I’ll never write again.
But even a few words came to seem to me too long-winded,
I was switched immediately to Dalmane, another hypnotic which is a somewhat longer-acting cousin, and this proved at least as effective as Halcion in putting me to sleep; but most importantly, I noticed that soon after the switch my suicidal notions dwindled then disappeared.
It was he who kept admonishing me that suicide was “unacceptable” (he had been intensely suicidal),
To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression,
if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy.
