"Hell and Back" -Depression and life in New Orleans [View All]

[n2doc]

This is a sobering, compelling story. Please take the time to read.


Hell And Back
A chronicler of the storm is crushed by its sorrows. A skeptic on depression is consumed by a disease he doesn't believe in. A man teetering on the cliff finds his salvation in an unexpected place: modern medicine.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Chris Rose


I pulled into the Shell station on Magazine Street, my car running on fumes. I turned off the motor. And then I just sat there. There were other people pumping gas at the island I had pulled into and I didn't want them to see me, didn't want to see them, didn't want to nod hello, didn't want to interact in any fashion. Outside the window, they looked like characters in a movie. But not my movie. I tried to wait them out, but others would follow, get out of their cars and pump and pay and drive off, always followed by more cars, more people. How can they do this, like everything is normal, I wondered. Where do they go? What do they do? It was early August and two minutes in my car with the windows up and the air conditioner off was insufferable. I was trapped, in my car and in my head.

So I drove off with an empty tank rather than face strangers at a gas station.

. . . . . . .

Before I continue this story, I should make a confession. For all of my adult life, when I gave it thought -- which wasn't very often -- I regarded the concepts of depression and anxiety as pretty much a load of hooey. I never accorded any credibility to the idea that such conditions were medical in nature. Nothing scientific about it. You get sick, get fired, fall in love, get laid, buy a new pair of shoes, join a gym, get religion, seasons change -- whatever; you go with the flow, dust yourself off, get back in the game. I thought anti-depressants were for desperate housewives and fragile poets. I no longer feel that way. Not since I fell down the rabbit hole myself and enough hands reached down to pull me out. One of those hands belonged to a psychiatrist holding a prescription for anti-depressants. I took it. And it changed my life.

Maybe saved my life.

This is the story of one journey -- my journey -- to the edge of the post-Katrina abyss, and back again. It is a story with a happy ending -- at least so far.

much more:

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index2.ssf?/base/living-0/116149796856910.xml&coll=1