This has been a dark week for us in Cape Charles. We lost two of our best and most loved—one local, one far away in France. There is a pervading sadness that most of us feel, but this sadness is good. It’s healthy, part of life and resilience and moving forward.
For others, like me, it churns up some of the old crap, what Churchill called his black dog—depression.
When I was two, my younger sister Amy died. She was only just one, and the loss nearly immobilized my mother. For the next year or so, I was kind of on my own, being raised by a village of family, mainly my grandmother who had moved in with us. While everyone tried to cover, it was a sad home. Until my mom got pregnant and gave birth to my sister, a beautiful, happy and vivacious child (she still is).
I know my mom never really got over losing Amy, but things were still better and closer to normal.
I’m not sure that I was depressed as a kid, but I probably was. However, I was way too busy to notice. I played and watched almost every sport, and almost every minute of the day was filled with athletic activity. I was like this all the way to 12 or 13. But then I got in a bit of trouble and was shipped off to military school. I think the depression first started showing up there. I still played sports, but the environment was regimented, and my time was no longer mine. For the first time in my life, due to mandatory study halls and quiet times, I actually had to sit and be with myself. This didn’t go well, and I eventually got in a lot of trouble and was expelled from the school.
The depression was in place now, but I was back to my own devices. I still played sports but realizing the limitation of my body as my peers got faster and stronger, my interest waned. But I found surfing and the ocean, which provided the imagination and physical exhaustion I needed.
When I hit 15, I feel like things were starting to turn for the worse. It was at this point I began to self-medicate with DASS (drugs, alcohol, sex and, surfing). It’s really all I cared about, hence my awful scholastic performance.
Have I ever attempted suicide? I would tell you no, but there was this one incident in high school. A friend raided his granny’s medicine cabinet and lifted a bottle of Dilaudid, which is a very heavy narcotic. I took six before school, right after my mom left for work. Luckily, she came home after forgetting something and found me passed out. Dilaudid, taken in high doses can cause respiratory failure and death. My mom got me to the ER and they forced me to throw up the contents of my stomach. If my mom had not come home, would that be considered a drug overdose or a suicide? Or both?
I somehow graduated, and my dad enrolled me in community college. He was smart though—he put me in a school close to the Outer Banks. As expected, I partied like crazy, but made good grades and transferred to James Madison, where I met the best friends of my life…and partied like crazy. Even if I was depressed, I was rocking too hard to notice.
When I finally left Harrisonburg, I moved to Richmond where I married my girlfriend and got a stupid job in a camera store. Poor, bored, miles away from the ocean and not near any of my college buddies, things went south.
Depression began to take hold and eat away at me from the inside.
It became hard to get up in the morning, telling myself why bother, what’s the point? The depression can manifest in unusual ways–anxiety, anger, aggression, and irritability–you’ll be angry and not even know why, or the silliest little thing will set you off on a tirade. Or, you just clam up completely, shutting out everyone, even the ones you love the most.
And my poor wife was stuck with this mess as I tried to remember how to love her – and you wonder why she would ever want to be with what you’ve become. Eventually, she realized she didn’t.
Then I tried to find the things that once made me who I thought was. I struggled, but fell back into art and music, and moved to Washington DC to be closer to my old college friends and former bandmates. And I partied like crazy.
Back in self-medication mode, I was all about fun all the time. I joined a new band and threw all my creativity into it. All of this provided some insulation, only it wasn’t as strong as it was when I was younger. I drove a cab back then because I thought I needed freedom. I think I needed the freedom to hold off the parasite that was now living inside me. I knew I was depressed, but I couldn’t define it in any meaningful way. The weight and moroseness slowly piled on until you just stayed in bed, hoping for sleep. Or you partied like crazy.
The problem is, it’s not all the time. You find yourself dipping in and out of depression. But as I got older, I dipped into it more often.
After I married my second wife, the euphoria of that love gave me a new lease on life. I really don’t think I felt depressed for a few years. It eventually did come back, manifesting itself in its stranger ways. My wife noticed, and also noticed that I was much worse in the winter months—she even bought me a sun lamp to help with the SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Nothing really worked, and I found myself self-medicating in what I laughingly called my search for the perfect martini. As a professional adult, somehow the martini seemed sexy, classy and widely acceptable. Of course, it’s like, “Dude, you know you just drank a whole bottle of vodka.” I even had my own thing called 6mb (six martini blackout).
No matter, it never leaves and is always down there. My mother’s death from cancer changed me forever. I watched her die. On Thanksgiving; so much for that holiday.
In my life, I had a beautiful and wonderful wife, two wonderful kids, a great dog, a nice house and a job and career I loved. I could smile and walk through it like a champ, but I was eating away inside, emotionally paralyzed only being set free after the second martini.
I knew it, but didn’t understand it. Why was I depressed? Was it from my childhood, from when Amy died? Did those formative years set me on that path? That probably has something to do with it, but I found out later it was mainly genetic.
After years of dealing with this, my wife finally forced me to try anti-depressants. I tried a couple but had no success at first, but then I tried Lexapro (escitalopram) which is an antidepressant in a group of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Serotonin is a chemical neurotransmitter; SSRIs affect serotonin levels in the brain.
As crazy as it seems, it works for me. After taking it, for the first time, almost in my entire life, I felt halfway like myself (whatever that is). I wish they put that stuff in the water. To be sure, it’s not a cure, and the depression is always still there, but the edge is gone, and things are manageable. I still self-medicate with a martini now and then, but the 6mb days are pretty much behind me. I’ve also learned that downtime is not my friend. And despite some injuries, I’m back in the water surfing again (just not well).
After this awful week, people and friends are questioning themselves. Why didn’t I see it, why didn’t I help, why wasn’t I watching closer, why wasn’t I there for them? None of this is anyone’s fault because you can never really see it. It’s a personal thing, something that even the depressed person will never understand, and may not realize themselves. You may be depressed, but you may never know why. You may not even notice it, you just think that’s the way things are.
In my case, I was lucky enough to have a person that knew me well enough to force me to take care of myself. There is still a stigma to mental health, yet no one stigmatizes it more than the person that is suffering from it.
It is very easy to ignore depression, to hide it, to push it down or party past it. Sometimes it can overwhelm, to the point that there is a real comfort in the quiet and warmth of oblivion. So it goes.
About the Author
Speaking from many long years of experience with the subject as a disabled Viet Nam war veteran, I would say that when you are depressed, that indeed IS the way things are, regardless of whether or not they could or should be something else in the opinion of the outside observer.
It’s a downward spiral many never escape from, which I have also had experience with in connection with other Viet Nam veterans, and non-veterans, as well.
Pretty depressing, when you think about it.
So if someone has escaped, and I don’t mean by going through life blotto on booze or drugs, which path many seem to choose, or maybe it chooses them, who can ever know, more power to them and those who were there to help and guide them.
Turn, Turn, Turn to everything there is a season (The Byrds). Now is the time to grieve a life cut short by pain.
Thanks for a poignant reflection.
Thank you for posting this! I struggle everyday with the obstacles of PTSD and regaining mental healthiness.
So do many in America, Kentoya Garcia.
As one so afflicted, I know well the struggle you describe.
And the road to recovery requires finding a sense of purpose that is yours, or so has been my experience of it.
Those without a personal sense of purpose in my experience have not been able to climb out, because to take your mind off of something, you need something stronger to place it on.
What was the cause for your PTSD?
I was in an air assaulting accident when I was stationed in the Amry, and also MST.
In what country did that occur?
Todd Holden, I must admit that I find myself curious as to where your line of questioning of
Kentoya Garcia, who @ August 4, 2019 at 12:21 pm posted, “I struggle everyday with the obstacles of PTSD and regaining mental healthiness,” and @ August 5, 2019 at 11:24 pm responded, “I was in an air assaulting accident when I was stationed in the Army,” is going.
What I am curious about is what the location where the accident took place might have to do with Kentoya admitting in here to struggling everyday with the obstacles of PTSD and regaining mental healthiness.
What I can’t understand is why would location matter at this point.
Isn’t it more important to give Kentoya some encouragement, regardless of where the accident happened, that there is another side – that one can traverse the “lonesome valley” and emerge on the other side as a whole person?
As to location, I have a friend who was an Army ranger in Big Bush’s Iraq War, and he was hurt in an air assaulting accident over here when the Chinook he was riding in crashed through some tree tops on the way to the ground.
He still suffers memories of the tree branches crashing though the floor and the hard landing that followed when he is in pain.
Should it be different because he was injured here, instead of in Iraq?
To its credit, the VA now has something called the VA Whole Health System for veterans afflicted with PTSD, which has become little more than a label in our times that can and does apply to everything under the sun, seemingly including bad potty training which apparently can leave somebody badly psychologically scarred for the rest of their lives.
It advertises itself as supporting physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and environmental elements that work together to provide the best quality of life for Veterans, as opposed to dosing us up on a bunch of pills and meds that don’t do ****-all for the PTSD symptoms which include intrusive thoughts and concentration difficulties,.
For improving attention, alertness, and information processing, one of the VA programs I would recommend to get one started with improved focusing ability is called bio-feedback.
The VA is also beginning to have programs in t’ai Chi and yoga, and there are many studies available on-line concerning the efficacy of t’ai chi in helping one deal with the symptoms of PTSD, which are very real to the person afflicted, even if they cannot be understood by the casual observer not so afflicted.
From: Women in the Military Flirting with Disaster by Brian Mitchell Regnery 1997
The average female army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 less pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit.
She has only 55% of the upper body strength and 72% of the lower body strength of the average male.
She is also at a significant disadvantage when performing aerobic activities such as marching with heavy loads and working in the heat, since fat mass is inversely related to aerobic capacity and heat tolerance.
Her lighter frame makes her more likely to suffer injuries due to physical exertion.
An Army study of 124 men and 186 women in 1988 found that women are more likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer fractures as men.
Women, are consequently, less available for duty.
There is without doubt a significant gap between the physical abilities of men and women.
Nothing has done more to cheapen rank and diminish respect for authority than cute little female lieutenants and privates. … The presence of women inhibits male bonding, corrupts allegiance to the hierarchy, and diminishes the desire of men to compete for anything but the attentions of women. Pushing women into the military academies made a mockery of the academies’ essential nature and most honoured values.
That reminds me of a recent CNN article entitled “Top US Navy SEAL tells commanders in light of misconduct: ‘We have a problem'” by Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent on 2 August 2019, as follows:
Gen. David Berger, the new Marine Corps. commandant, said he was “troubled by the extent to which drug abuse is a characteristic of new recruits and the fact that the vast majority of recruits require drug waivers for enlistment.”
He also said over the last ten years more than 25,000 Marines were dismissed from the service for misconduct, and drug and alcohol offenses.
end quotes
The times, they are not a’changing, Todd Holden, they have changed, and markedly so.
But I remain unsure as to how that new reality concerns Kentoya Garcia and the very poorly understood subject of PTSD, which is a bundle of symptoms given a fancy name.
Making it into an argument that women shouldn’t serve in the military is a distraction.
Maybe if America’s younger generation of males wasn’t so hooked on drugs that they need drug waivers to become Marines, itself a mockery of what the Marines used to be, there wouldn’t be a need for women to pick up the slack, if you know what I am saying.
If training and the middle east gives them ptsd, what would they get if they found themselves in WWI or Nam for that matter?
A good question, Todd Holden, and as was made quite clear in the war movie “Apocalypse Now,” VEET NAM fried the brains of a lot of Americans, especially those who grew up “protected,” or in a city, because it was simply too much reality for them.
People had trouble coping with the fact that, yes, there were people “out there” who wanted to kill them, given that they were really nice people who meant no harm to anyone and were only there because they didn’t have an out like Bill Clinton or Chuck Schumer and got drafted instead.
And a lot of those people whose brains got fried never saw combat, or even knew it was going on, as the ratio of support troops to grunts in the field was something like 12 or 15 to one in VEET NAM.
So how do you predict something, Todd Holden, that will result from someone being cast or thrown into an entirely alien environment, which could certainly include participating in air assault training, which is outside the ken of the majority of Americans, and a training accident can cause physical, mental and emotional trauma that can become debilitating later on in life.
And the way PTSD works, which is like a “DO LOOP” in your consciousness, where the same movie gets played over and over again, it would be likely that someone who suffered trauma of some sort in a training accident would end up with a big snarled and tangled ball of emotions in their head which would include why it was they enlisted in the first place, and many other unanswerable questions, as well, and the only escape from that tangled mess is to treat it as a Gordian Knot which can only be severed.
To “heal” from any trauma, you need to sever your connection to it.
Situations, like planets, have gravity, and it is that gravity that keeps people tethered to things in their past that were to them traumatic.
So, you have to escape that gravity to escape the continuing effects of the trauma on your mind.
To do that, you need resolve and discipline and belief in your self.
That would be my message to Kentoya Garcia.
Beautifully written. Thank you so much for sharing that with us as I am sure it will help many people.
This is beautifully written, both in the words and the message. Thank you to Wayne and to the Mirror for printing it.
You aren’t alone. So many people are fighting the battle of untreated depression. ZRT labs makes a neurotransmitter test to help find the right medicine to match your deficiencies that cause depression and anxiety. You can purchase it on Amazon and take the results to your doctor.
Thank you for sharing your story. Peace to you.
Wayne thank you for sharing and baring. I had a best friend who took her life when we were teens. It took me a long time to forgive myself and realize I could not help her.
Thank you for sharing your story. Thankfully God & the “right” meds keep me on mostly an even keel. It is a very sad time & healing takes time but grieving is necessary to move on in our lives. I just want ALL to know that if ever they need to talk. I am a good listener.
Thank you for sharing your life. It will help so many.
Your writing talent is up there. Book?
Hope Saecker
I have always admired your writing ability, and your endless search, like me, for the perfect martini ( but 1 is a good limit). Today was your best, honest, candid and I agree with other comments, few people have avoided periods of depression. Most people can relate to your experience.
Thank you for your transparency and openness about your journey. May your words bring comfort to those feeling guilty.
Your article on the Black Dog is spot on. Thank you for sharing your story. Depression can be so very difficult for the sufferer of it and the people closest to him/her. I have lived with it for many years. While it waxes and wanes, it’s an ever present part of my life.
My heart goes out to Shane’s family and friends.
Not once in your diatribe did you ever mention ‘Self Control”.
Was that not an option?
Note: Never had much of either. Kind of overrated anyway.
Thank you for sharing Wayne.
I did not personally know either of the beautiful people that were lost recently, but have friends that were shaken with the grief the whole community felt.
I too have struggled for a number of years in and out of “the valley”. In Jan of 18 I found myself in some trouble, my thought processes where scaring me enough that I reached out to several longtime friends, each checked on me and I must have fooled them enough they left me as they found me, alone. Only months before I had reconnected with a person I not only went to school with, but grew up in the same neighborhood, over 40 years of ” knowing” this person. When I reached out to them , they dropped everything and came to my aid. This person made sure I was packed, placed my 80 pound dog in the back of their car and drove me across the Bay to meet family and receive some medical evaluation.
I was lucky, I reached out and found a lifetime hero in my eyes. My Prayer is for those left behind, the families and friends. For those in “the valley” to call someone. For those feeling guilty, was not your fault.
Sadly the decision does not end the pain, it only transfers it.
While it will always be a part of me, it has come full circle for me, Life is Good.
Live, Love and Learn.