ONE MORE THING ABOUT DAVID FOSTER WALLACE.

My friend Eric sent me this from Salon today.

I know that my love of Infinite Jest was, in part, prompted by the accuracy and empathy of David Foster Wallace's writing about depression and addiction.

I too have suffered from clinical depression most of my life, and I too medicated it myself until I found recovery. I'm lucky in that my depression has rarely been as severe as his. And I'm also lucky that meds worked.

I didn't know his was so debilitating. David Foster Wallace's story is so sad, but unfortunately not unique: a long journey through multiple medications; horrible side effects; meds working and then not working. It's so hard.

I think that there's still a vein in American society that believes depression is just something to "get over." But in some people, it's not. And in some cases, it just becomes unfathomable.

Anyone who wants to understand what depression really can be should read "The Noonday Demon An Atlas of Depression
by Andrew Solomon "


Finally, I remembered this from Infinite Jest...one Kate Gompert telling a doctor why she smoked pot, but tried to kill herself because of the depression when she stopped:

"And then but no matter what I do, it gets worse and worse, it's there more and more, this filter drops down, and the feeling makes the fear of the feeling way worse, and after a couple of weeks it's there all the time, the feeling, and I'm totally inside it, I'm in it and everything has to pass through it to get in, and I don't want to smoke any Bob (pot), and I don't want to work, or go out, or read or watch TP, or go out, or stay in, or either do anything or not do anything, I don't want anything except for the feeling to go away. But it doesn't. Part of the feeling is being like willing to do anything to make it go away. Understand that. Anything. Do you understand that? It's not wanting to hurt myself. It's wanting to not hurt."

It just breaks my heart.