Self-Nonmedication

Long autobiographical essay in the NY Times today by Bruce Stutz, a writer on science and the environment, titled Self-Nonmedication.

Seven years ago, not long after my father died, with my editing job lost, my finances frail, my 26-year marriage failing, a child in college and a mortgage to pay, my brain seemed to lose its way. Sometimes it could barely think at all. Sometimes it tortured a single thought for hours. And sometimes, in desperation and without aim, it released a barrage of anger upon itself.

I could come up with a hundred descriptions of how I felt — as if the train I’d been riding had gone off track, as if the ground beneath me had given way and swallowed me up, as if I were in a black hole being compressed to nothingness — none of them very original, I suppose, because this was not, for a man just past 50, a very extraordinary midlife situation. But it was mine, and I saw no way out of it. Immobilized by indecision or agitated to the point of exhaustion, I could enumerate every stressful circumstance, but I was simply unable or unwilling to resolve any of them. Instead, I dithered miserably while I staved off creditors, struggled to write, sparred with marriage counselors and rued the emotional havoc I was wreaking on myself and everyone around me. Frustrated, I felt angered and at times utterly hopeless. I needed help.

READ MORE @ New York Times