I'm no Robin Williams, but ...

Los Angeles Times

Some people think I'm pretty funny. Much of the time, I am one of those people.

Maybe that's why Robin Williams' suicide has hit me so hard.

Many of my friends and even members of my own family probably don't know this, but I have suffered from depression, at times severe, since I was about 12 years old. It wasn't diagnosed until I was 32. Before and since then, it has caused upheaval in my life, skewing my thinking and hampering my ability to make good decisions. If My Lovely Wife were not a superhero, it would have killed our marriage long ago.

It has come close to killing me more than once. I've never attempted suicide, but during the blackest, foggiest passages of the abyss I have contemplated and even planned it. The irony is that the depression robbed me of the initiative to go through with it.

It pisses me off because at various times I have thought I was free of this depression, but it always comes back.

About three years ago I tumbled into one of the deepest, darkest emotional pits I've ever known. I could barely function; somehow, by the grace of God, I managed not to get fired from my job during this period. I had daily panic attacks, and I couldn't hold my bladder. I thought about death, obsessively, every day for months -- usually in a positive light.

Thank God I was able to ask for help. An attentive and compassionate doctor put me on a particular medication, but it had no effect. We switched to a different drug, and almost immediately I started showing symptoms of mania.

I was freaking out, believing that I was slipping down a well-greased slope to full-on psychosis. I didn't want to be that nice, smart, funny guy who went crazy and spent the rest of his life as a friendless, homeless lunatic bothering people on the train. As my irrational mind reasoned it out, it seemed better to me to go to my eternal rest than to spend my remaining years as an object of pity and horror.

That's when the miracle happened. Miracle, thy name is Prozac.

I know Prozac (fluoxetine) has gotten a fair amount of bad press over the years, but I can tell you in no uncertain terms: Prozac saved my life. Now I take a fairly hefty dose of it every morning, paired with timed doses of Buspar (buspirone) that help keep me on an even keel throughout the day.

I also have been seeing a therapist on a regular basis. For a while, just last year, I was placed in intensive (outpatient) therapy, where I met a number of other people who were struggling as I was, each in his or her own way. These were private battles, but we were all in it together, and somehow that was comforting.

And now, with these therapies and after making some desperately needed changes in my life, I am happier and healthier than I've been in a very long time. What had seemed impossible has become my daily reality. I'm me again.

When one drug or therapy or therapist doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean you're beyond help; it simply means that particular drug or therapy or therapist doesn't work for you at this time. There are plenty out there, and it's worth trying out as many as necessary to find one that helps you start feeling normal again.

And that's a key understanding: These are not "happy pills" that artificially raise your mood and turn you into a grinning idiot; they are chemotherapy that kills the cancer of depression that makes you feel abnormally bad. They pull you back to normal.

I had forgotten what normal was. Although I was still quick with a comeback or a one-liner or a wry Facebook comment, I had forgotten what joy and peace felt like. I thought -- I really believed -- they were lost to me forever.

That's the lie that depression tells you, over and over again like the relentless beat of house music: It's never going to get better; things will always be the way they are right now, or worse; there is no hope.

But that's a lie straight out of the pits of hell. ("He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies." John 8:44b)

There is hope, even if you can't see it right now. Fight for your life. As the poet Charles Bukowski wrote, "Your life is your life. Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission. Be on the watch: There are ways out. There is light somewhere."

If you feel profoundly sad, or hopeless, or angry, or listless, or confused, or forgotten, or lonely, or worthless, or anxious, please, please, talk to someone. Talk to someone who will listen, someone who is willing to walk alongside you on the winding path to getting better. These feelings seem completely real, but they are not normal, they are not right, and there are ways out.

I'm testimony -- living testimony -- to that.

I am heartbroken for Robin Williams and for those who loved him. But I am grateful for the many gifts he gave us, not least of which was an opening for this conversation.

Beloved, seek peace and pursue it. "You are marvelous; the gods wait to delight in you."