Tears and Loathing in Lower South Wraxall

Life in my sauce

Part I - Depression

I first thought about killing myself when I was thirteen years old. Forced to attend a school I loathed, I repeatedly ran away or refused to get into the car in the morning and had to be dragged, literally kicking and screaming. My father’s solution was ruthless but effective. Having initially acquiesced to my demand to be a 'day boy' in an all-boarding school, he made me return in my second term as a boarder. Life in an English boarding school in the 1980s was far less brutal than it had been even a decade earlier. Older boys were still, however, given the authority to order younger children to take ice cold baths at seven o’clock in the morning for minor breaches of school rules and, until the end of my second year, 'fagging' was still de rigeur (the Wikipedia article on this subject is an adequate introduction, if you are not familiar with the practice, now largely extinct).

"It never did me any harm.” Was the refrain of adults who had been broken by the system or naïve men like my father, whose parents had been unable to afford an independent education for him, and who was determined that his children would enjoy that privilege. Of course, it did immense harm, as the few friends I retain from those days will universally attest. The theory of evolution saved my life. I had few talents but I excelled as a biologist, a subject I had loved since before I knew the word. Biology wasn’t taught in the first year at Sherborne, so when I graduated to the fourth form my pent-up enthusiasm was unleashed. In a rare stroke of luck I found myself assigned a teacher, Byron Henry, who responded to and nurtured my undisciplined fascination with nature through the rest of my school career. He taught me how to be a scientist, a gift beyond price. I don’t think I’ve ever recorded in writing the debt I owe him, an omission I am glad to rectify now.

I have been thinking about suicide on-and-off ever since that early-adolescence crisis. Generally these thoughts take the form of fantasies. I imagine myself, post-suicide, thumbing my nose at the world I have left behind. I cannot imagine being dead because it is impossible to get into the subjective perspective about the objective fact of being extinct, so my brain conjures up a sort of avatar that comments on the situation as my body dies. So far, I have remained sufficiently tethered to reality to grasp that death and, more pertinently, dying wouldn’t be that way. As the wheels of the train rolled over my brain, whatever memories, ideas and wisdom those cells had accumulated would be forever and instantly extinguished. So far, the idea of having my essence smeared across a few metres of the Chippenham to Paddington tracks has been less attractive than the alternative.

But not much. I have actually attempted suicide only once, as recorded elsewhere on this blog. It was a pretty feeble attempt, if truth be told. I have enough pills in my medicine bag to kill a rhinoceros and I took only sufficient to ensure that I slept soundly for a very long time. I was playing a coward’s version of Russian roulette. The only other occasion when I came close occurred a few days before my precipitous departure from the City. Driven mad by the monotony of the commute to a job that I hated with a passion so profound that words have not been coined to describe it, I went to a bar with the explicit intention of screwing up my courage to jump in front of a train. By the end of the first bottle, I reckoned that another bottle would do the trick. By the end of the second bottle, I found that the idea of a third seemed attractive and by the time that was empty, I had lost the will to die. In a way, therefore, booze saved my life. At least, it postponed the inevitable.

So here I am, more-or-less alive, thanks to Charles Darwin and ethanol. I’ve been reading a short book, How Sadness Survived by Paul Keedwell. It is a brave attempt to argue the positive case for depression. This isn’t anything like as crazy as it sounds. Life consists in a series of trade-offs among various awful alternatives and natural selection takes no account of human values when wielding her scythe. Sickle-cell anaemia is common in some parts of Africa because carriers of a single copy of the relevant gene are resistant to malaria. Unfortunate carriers of two copies die young but natural selection will keep the gene in circulation until malaria is eradicated. I once engaged in an online discussion with a Christian who could not understand how a gene detrimental to its carrier could spread (1). I gave the example of the gene(s) responsible for making beef taste delicious to humans. These genes are now more numerous than almost any other in mammals but that fact is presumably of scant comfort to the cow in the queue at the abattoir.

Keedwell produces evidence to suggest that depression is both ancient and a human universal, contrary to the stereotype that only the current, enfeebled generation of adults in the West is susceptible. If true, and if mood is influenced by genes, for which there is abundant evidence, this implies that some benefit associated with depression may be causing the relevant alleles to persist in human populations.

In a section with the Pythonesque title 'What has depression ever done for us?' the book proposes two main benefits and a host of positive side effects.

1. Depressive realism.

In a recent article in New Scientist (The Grand Delusion. 2011. 210: 2812, pp 35-41), Graham Lawton reviews some of the many ways in which most people deceive themselves.

"One study found that 74% of drivers believed themselves to be better than average behind the wheel [not statistically impossible but highly unlikely to be true]...if you ask most people to rate themselves on almost any positive trait - competence, intelligence, honesty, originality...most put themselves in the better-than-average category. Ask them similar questions about negative traits and they will rate themselves as less likely than average to possess them...We also inflate our opinions of loved ones. Around 95% of people rate their partner as smarter, more attractive, warmer and funnier than average...optimism bias [is] a well-established effect characterised by unrealistic expectations about the future. Most people expect to live longer, healthier and more successful lives than average while underestimating their chances of getting divorced, falling ill or having an accident...The fawning doesn't stop there...In an ironic twist, most people believe themselves to be more resistant than average to having an inflated opinion of themselves."

I love that last sentence. What a deliciously succinct put-down of the cup-half-full crowd.

It turns out that patients diagnosed with clinical depression do not suffer from these biases. We rate ourselves, the way we are perceived and the likely outcomes in our lives more accurately than non-sufferers. It is plausible (but remains to be rigorously tested) that depressive realism could confer real benefits in certain conditions, perhaps more so in the very dangerous ancestral environments in which the structure of our brains largely evolved. Keedwell quotes one of my favourite psychologists, Daniel Gilbert: "Depression stops us chasing rainbows." And possibly also saber-toothed tigers.

2. Reflection.

Several of the symptoms experienced during an episode of depression - social withdrawal, intense introspection, feelings of worthlessness - are conducive to encouraging reflection upon the sufferer's life, goals and ideals. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,..." said Robert Browning before spoiling this brilliant observation by adding "or what's a heaven for?" In less poetic language, we aspire too much. Almost none of us will achieve all that he (mistakenly) thinks he is capable of. Most depressions resolve spontaneously within a few weeks or months and there is plenty of case evidence that many people emerge from such periods having abandoned unrealistic goals, redefined their aims in life or having had some kind of epiphany regarding the mistakes they had been making.

Keedwell thinks that the similarity of the symptoms and typical duration of grief and depression is not an accident. The main 'goal' of grief, in an evolutionary sense, is acceptance. If we were not overcome with sadness on the death of a parent, child or lover, our feelings for them could not have been very intense. But unless we 'move on' fairly swiftly our own lives would soon be forfeit too. Enabling us to move on is the function of grief and the reason natural selection gave it to us.

Perhaps an analagous function exists for depression, at least in its commonest manifestations which, as noted, resolve quickly. Perhaps it is an evolved mechanism that allows us natural born losers eventually to let go of unrealistic but cherished plans and dreams and to accept our limitations.

3. Ancillary benefits.

A miscellany of hypothesised benefits is discussed, without much analysis, towards the end of How Sadness Survived. Keedwell argues that depression actually aids coping with suffering, enhances your ability to feel empathy and compassion, induces humility (by prompting feelings of worthlessness) and encourages creative thinking. He quotes another great poet with the first name Robert.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Speaking from my own experience, I find these claimed benefits only somewhat plausible (I am attracted for obvious reasons to the idea that clinically depressed persons are creative geniuses but, being a depressive realist, I immediately dismiss it). They do, however, suggest a research program.

There are weaknesses in Keedwell's analysis. He is a clinician and is clearly biased by his compassion for patients. He argues, for example, that genes predisposing an individual to suicide could not spread because suicide is rare. This is, of course, nonsense. If a gene predisposing its carrier to take his own life is manifested sufficiently late in life then it will certainly spread in human societies living in marginal environments, where the sudden removal of a mouth to feed could tip the balance between the death or survival of that mouth's relatives. It is a good start, however, and should be seized upon by population geneticists and neuroscientists, who have the tools and skills necessary to identify the genes involved in mood control, track their distribution within and between populations and begin to understand how they affect the development and functioning of the brain.

Sadly, vested interests in the pharmaceutical and psychotherapy industries will probably kill any such research stone dead. The reason for this, if it not already obvious, is that typical depressions should probably not be treated, either with anti-depressants or psychotherapy (which is largely bunkum anyway). You would not 'treat' grief because it is not an illness. Rather it is a perfectly normal and helpful reaction to a deep loss. Why then would you treat depression, if Keedwell is on the right track?

Part II - Malignant sadness

Lewis Wolpert wrote a brave book, Malignant Sadness, about his own experience of depression. Wolpert is a physiologist and understands how anti-depressants work on a level that I can't reach. He's an enthusiast and attributes to their influence his survival of the experience of depression. Wolpert contrasts ordinary sadness - a normal, perhaps everyday experience for everyone - with depression, which he regards as a disease, a pathological variant of sadness.

Keedwell draws a distinction right at the beginning of his book between typical (he might say 'heatlhy' depression) and persistent or recalcitrant depression. His analysis addresses the former. I think he is right when he implies that lifelong or suicidal depressions are generally pathological and it is then appropriate to regard sufferers as having a disease and attempt to cure it, if the patient wishes to be cured. Like the ex-leper in The Life of Brian, not everyone wants to get better (see clip).

Based solely in my own experience, I think that Keedwell is closer to the mark here than Wolpert in where he draws the line. I'd wager a case of Champagne to a pint in the King's Arms that Keedwell's thesis is essentially correct. I also suspect (but cannot begin to prove) that there exist unlucky individuals who have inherited too many allelles of too many genes that predispose them to experience depression. These individuals - people like me - really are 'marked for death'.

Last night, as a result of a recommendation from my plumber (who else), I watched on iPlayer Choosing to Die, a documentary made by Terry Pratchett about assisted suicide. This subject is much on (what is left of) his mind because he has early stage Alzheimer's and will soon be unable to make for himself the decision to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and be given permission to die. He is clearly in turmoil as he wrestles with the terrible dilemma: die legally, before I want to or die at the right moment, when someone else will have to help, rendering them likely to be prosecuted for murder.

I think this is the most moving piece of television that I have ever watched (see it here). I was in floods of tears at the end, not for the two courageous men who's deaths were documented, but out of a strong feeling of solidarity with the family members and lovers who accompanied them to their bitter ends (apparently the killing drug tastes foul). In one case, a young, terminally ill man's mother accompanied him to Switzerland, so that he would not die alone. In the other, a wife of 40 years squeezed the hand of her husband as she watched him die.

Part III - Me

As I look back on my life, I see that it is a story full of loathing. Perhaps contempt is a better word. Contempt for my teachers and the arbitrary rules they unthinkingly enforced; contempt for my peers and their pathetic enthusiasms for sport, fashion and popular music; contempt for anyone less able intellectually; contempt for the adults too stupid to understand that the world was on the brink of environmental catastrophe and, later, contempt for the single-issue environmentalists too stupid to see that their obsessions aren't very useful. I am contemptuous of laws, lawmakers and law enforcers, of bureaucrats and the wage slaves who do their bidding. I despise the commuters who herd themselves like semi-autonomous sheep to and from contemptible jobs. I despise the system and also the spongers, like me, who parasitise it. I detest organised religion viscerally and feel physically sick when I contemplate the fact that my children are growing up immersed in its influence. I hate psychoanalysts and Supernanny and well-meaning friends who offer to pray for me.

Of course, above all, I loathe myself. The handful of people who read this blog are all kind enough to deny that I am a worthless sack of cells, with a decaying brain, a rotten heart and a rotting liver. I'm afraid, my friends, that I know better. I am, after all, a depressed realist.

Whatever happens next, it wasn't your fault.

1. Richard Dawkins, in one of the finest phrases he has ever coined, describes this sort of thinking as 'the argument from personal incredulity'.

Desperation

'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.'

 Henry Thoreau

'Perhaps this is how the world ends, with people shouting past each other...' 

http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/

It is a matter of ineffable sadness that, a century and a half after Thoreau pointed up the silent misery in which most human beings endure the drudgery of existence, the only real change has been the noise level. Since 'rights' replaced 'wants' and 'needs' at the heart of human discourse we have suffered not in silence but in a ghastly screech, the pitch and volume of which has increased in inverse proportion to our ability to hear one another cry. The advent of blogging changed the medium and perhaps the timbre of the noise but, from even a moderate distance, it remains indistinguishable from static.

The British journalist and professional tosser Andrew Marr recently attracted ire and bemusement in equal measure from the blogosphere when he said, 'A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people.' He was only half wrong. He didn't mention that, in addition to the faults he lists, we are selfish, delusional, psychotic, fat and generally extremely average in the sack.

It is the supreme irony of blogging that, the more we write, the less we read (or listen). After a year devoting his weekends to writing the only blog I know that leaves me feeling enhanced rather than diminished after reading a piece, my friend R wrote the line quoted under Thoreau at the head of this article. 'Shouting past each other' captures better than any other phrase I know the spirit of our age. The louder we scream the more emphatically the universe gives us the finger. The more eloquently we make our case, the more our arguments are drowned in the clamour from other supplicants.

What I have been trying to write about, between the bits and pieces on plants, is my state of mind. To state it baldly, I'm a mess and I haven't the faintest idea what to do about it (do me a favour and DON'T send me your suggestions on a postcard). A few well-meaning people have suggested that I count my blessings. I've always thought that blessings, like dreams, retreat further the more you reach for them, so I view the activity of counting them with suspicion. The only unequivocal blessing that my personalities can agree upon is that we have discovered a depth and strength in several friendships that we hadn't suspected existed. Compassion has been ladled over me, like broth on a raw prawn, and it feels especially churlish, therefore, to make the following comment.

Perhaps we ought just to accept that there is no-one else out there. I realise that solipsism is the ultimately sophomoric philosophical position and that almost everyone grows out of it in childhood but, you have to admit, believing that you are the only thing that exists makes it a lot easier to understand why no-one seems to be FUCKING LISTENING. Writing a blog has certainly made it easier for me to empathise with SETI researchers (I suppose I should say 'empathise').

Making sense of the world is a notoriously tricky enterprise. We see through a glass darkly in life but I'm betting my immortal soul on the guess that the view from beyond the grave is occluded by six feet of earth. Mind you, given the state of my immortal soul, that's about as courageous a wager as putting a fiver each way on Red Rum to win the National. Socrates went to his death consoling his disciples with the thought that the 'experience' of being dead is much like the 'experience' of not having been born yet. Without wishing to alarm anyone (I'm too much of a coward) that sounds blissful.

A funny thing happened on the road to perdition

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or so it is said. Occasionally the Devil arranges sideshows, mainly involving black comedy and pathos, presumably for the amusement of fellow travelers, en route to eternity in the fires. Last week, I found myself unwittingly involved in one such vignette.

I'd had a cold, a perfectly ordinary one, from which I was swiftly recovering when Elsje, my daughter, fell ill. It was agreed that I would babysit her the following day and I duly turned up at my former home at 7.15 in the morning. For some reason (alcohol, for once, was not involved), I was feeling terrible and I warned my wife that there was a possibility I'd have to call her and ask her to relieve me. As an aside, I realise that any woman reading this will be feeling sympathy that, measured in degrees Centigrade, would make sudden immersion in liquid helium feel positively Caribbean but, hey ho, there it is.

Anyway, I was lying on the sofa, feeling even sorrier for myself than usual. Elsje was...extraordinary. She immediately recognised that an emergency was in progress and that Milly was the solution. Milly is a hot pink, fluffy cat and Elsje's absolutely inseparable friend. Milly spent about an hour stroking me and muttering (through the mouthpiece of her mistress) 'don't worry, daddy, we'll make you better'.

Milly, the sainted cat

Lying there on the sofa, with Elsje and Milly in my arms, I wished I could preserve the moment in aspic. And then, quite suddenly, I became aware of a stabbing pain in the top, right hand side of my chest. I started to sweat and my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. Flu, I thought, shit, my defences are down and now I've got flu. Then I started to feel worse. The sweat became menopausal and the pain in my chest seemed to clench. I noticed that my breathing was shallow. Fuck, I thought, I'm having a heart attack and I'm going to die in my five-year old daughter's arms.

I retreated to bed. Elsje and Milly followed me. What would you have done? I called my wife, asked her to come home and described my symptoms. Call 999, she said. I demurred. If you don't, I will, she said. I called 999 (conversations with Corinne tend to go this way - no offense intended). Now, extreme hypochondriac that I am, I have never in my life previously dialled 999, except once from outside a pub in Chalk Farm and that was an accident, honestly (alcohol was, on that occasion, involved).

Within a minute I was following the instructions from the ultra-calm voice on the end of the phone, scrabbling through drawers looking for aspirin and absolutely convinced I was about to die. I told Elsje, as calmly as I could (blubbing like a baby) that, if daddy went to sleep, she should help herself to a drink from the fridge and wait for mummy, who was on her way. I also tried to tell her how much I love her and, oddly enough, I think she understood. When the ambulance arrived, Elsje (I worship the ground upon which she walks) went downstairs, introduced herself to the ambulance crew and showed them upstairs to the sepulchre where I was by now resignedly awaiting death.

The ambulance crew looked at me and then at one another. 'Bit of a chest infection then?', said one of them. I was hooked up to an ECG, Elsje watching, fascinated and my ticker was diagnosed as being in perfect and unreasonable good health. I'm sure that we have all had the experience of feeling like a prat but I sincerely doubt whether many of you have felt as immersed in pratishness as I did then.

Corinne came home, confirmed with the ambulance crew that no, they were not cross about being summoned to deal with a severe case of man flu and drove me to the doctor. To my great relief, he said that I looked very sick and prescribed an antibiotic, which seems to have done the trick.

There are two saints in this story, or maybe three, and one fool. The primary saint is Elsje, who came as close that day as anyone is ever likely to, to restoring my faith in humanity. Milly, her accomplice, deserves an honourable mention. The second saint is my wife, who looked after me for the next two days, despite the fact that she was suffering from a chest infection at least as bad as mine. I will leave it to you to identify the fool.

The seven shelves of man

Cometh the hour, cometh the special offer at Sainsburys. A mere £3.45 per 75cl equivalent on own label wine, packaged in one and a half litre bottles. I have finally discovered a use for those European bureaucrats whose job it is to instruct nations on the acceptable degree of bendiness in a banana and related labeling matters. They have enabled committed drinkers to estimate the most cost effective way of getting pissed, without recourse to a calculator. Ominously, the grape is not specified beyond being 'red' and the plastic bottle looks like its been recycled a few too many times. Those are small prices to pay, however, for dispensing with the inconvenience of having to locate the corkscrew after the first 75cl has been glugged. You watch, I'll be drinking wine from boxes before the year is out, possibly without the aid of a glass.

The trajectory of my path through life to an apogee that could most politely be described as 'nice try but decidedly sub-orbital' and subsequent ignominious fall to a place that I have a horrible feeling I'm not going to like when I get there, could be written in terms of the shelf to which I have instinctively reached when buying booze. I have ranged up and down seven shelves in the course of my life to date, an appropriately Shakesperian number.

All those years ago, when I started putting my liver through its paces, I didn't even bother to let my eyes wander above the Bulgarian cabernet sauvignon on the floor. Oz Clarke said it was OK and that was good enough for me. I think it cost £2.29 a bottle, which puts the £3.45 I'm spending now in context. Conveniently for the analogy implied in my title, this was the shelf responsible for the most mewling and puking in my journey towards oenological oblivion.

By the time I figured out that one's spending need not necessarily be limited by one's income, I allowed myself to stray occasionally to the knee high shelf, where wines whose contents were more valuable than their containers were to be found. I cringe to think that I probably thought myself quite sophisticated at the time. ‘Pretentious wanker’ is how my friends usually put it.

When I started my first proper job, I discovered to my joy that I was earning enough that I no longer needed to consider the trade-off between eating and drinking, when doing my shopping. This activity was conducted mainly on the shelf at pelvis level, where the categories available branched out from ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘Chardonnay’. Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling entered my world.

The first time I spent ten quid on a single bottle while still sober I was, inevitably, trying to impress a girl. I took it (and the girl) to a party at my boss's house and she put it ostentatiously and immediately in a cupboard that clearly contained stuff she didn't want people to think she had bought herself. Damn, it must have been from the chest high shelf too.

I think I was probably 28 or 29 before I could regularly buy wine that I didn't have to stoop to read the label. This was also the era of when I bought the Good Food Guide, and used it regularly. My toes curl with embarrassment to this day, as I recall the first time I spent £50 on a bottle in a restaurant, La Tante Claire, on Royal Hospital Road. I do believe I actually asked the sommelier to steam off the label, so I could keep it as a souvenir.

Then came the glory years (or were they glory months, I can't remember) when I was able to reach, unembarrassed and unafraid, for the hitherto forbidden delights, dusty and generally corked, paraded across the top shelf. These were wines that came in boxes made of actual wood. All the porn in Lithuania couldn't hold a candle to the pleasures to be found there.

The fall has been an accelerated version of the rise and I may even have skipped a shelf or two on the way down. Frankly I'm happier drinking stuff hauled out of the wine lake in buckets than the crap on shelves two through four, but that is obviously just my bitterness speaking. They say you can’t find happiness in a bottle but few can have exceeded my diligence in trying.

On optimism

I have a friend – or rather had, because that, like almost everything else in my life, has gone to shit – whose catch phrase is ‘it’ll be alright’. If he were an executioner he’s the sort of bloke who’d say to a condemned man, while gently adjusting the noose around his neck, ‘just take a few deep breaths and everything will be fine’. Indeed, so suffused with a rosy glow are the lenses through which this man views the universe, he’d probably be saying the same thing to the hangman if the roles were reversed.

It’s generally considered bad form to piss in the pints of those irritating cunts whose glass is always half full but haven’t you ever been tempted? If not, like said individuals, you may be unfamiliar with the second law of thermodymanics, the only principle in science that does any real, deep explaining.

This law can be expressed in many ways. ‘No process is possible in which the sole result is the absorption of heat from a reservoir and its complete conversion into work’ is how Kelvin put it. He was a dry bird, however, and fortunately there are other ways of getting the gist across. In no particular order: Murphy’s Law; anthropogenic global warming; the steady cooling of the coffee in your (half empty) cup; the cosy crackling sound a good hardback makes as it burns; the extreme effort required to write a book or even a blog; the observation that whereas falling off a barstool requires little practice, balancing a barstool on your forehead after a night on the tiles is a seriously cool trick; and the fact that demolition crews earn less than architects are all manifestations of the undeniable fact that, whereas there are many ways to skin a cat, it’s tricky to stick the fur back onto a flayed feline in a way likely to satisfy the RSPCA.

Fucking up is easy. Avoiding fucking up is hard.

Vishnu - Destroyer of Worlds

All organisms, including humans, are little machines for temporarily and locally reversing entropy – the ineluctable tendency of everything to disorder – but sadly entropy always wins in the end. While some lucky sods seem to have the knack for deferring their inevitable appointments with entropy for years at a time, certain adepts progress through life moving seamlessly from one gigantic fuck-up to the next. Among these adepts I am a virtuoso. I am Mozart to the Salieri of really bad decisions. I am Jesus Christ to the George W. Bush of unintended consequences. I am J. Robert Oppenheimer to the Alfred Nobel of blowing things up. This blog is my story. 

Fish Face - Destroyer of My World

Oppenheimer, seeing the results of his work on the Manhattan Project, famously quoted the god Vishnu: ‘I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ It strikes me that Oppenheimer would have been closer to the mark had he said that death becomes us, we humans. It suits us. ‘In my beginning is my end’, as T.S. Eliot put it in ‘East Coker’. This story begins in the middle and shall end I know not where. Let me offer a friendly piece of advice right now, however. If you are the type who thinks ‘Notting Hill’ (the movie, not the place), is a heart-warming and inspirational tale of the redeeming power of love, may I suggest that you look away now?

It won’t be alright.