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Have you ever found yourself in a room full of people, all seemingly enjoying each other’s company and having a good time, and you feel completely alone, like nobody even cares that you showed up? On the one hand, you just wanted someone to talk to you, to cheer you up a little, but at the same time, you just pushed everyone away and acted like you wanted to be left alone, and you don’t know why. All you know is it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
And you decided you were having no fun here, and you found yourself driving alone down a near-empty highway late at night, blasting Illmatic at high volume, approaching a bridge and pondering, just for a moment, what it would be like to crash into that big concrete underpass. All you had to do is turn that wheel a little to the left…
It’s a shit feeling, people. And I live with it. Every day.
Less than a year out of college, I had a psychiatrist tell me that I exhibited classic symptoms of clinical depression. It was something that ran in my family, along with various addiction issues. My grandfather was an alcoholic. When I was 13, I saw him a few months before he died. I never knew what a colostomy bag was before then. That’s why I never have more than one beer…
Anyway, said psychiatrist didn’t seem so interested in talking me through my problems, perhaps because he knew I was broke. So he put me on Zoloft. It worked for a little while. After a few months, though, I could literally feel that stuff rewiring my brain in ways that it should not be wired. That’s what clinical depression is, really. It’s bad wiring in your brain. It makes you shout at God and put the knife to your wrist. It also makes you want to just lie down and disappear.
Darwinism weeds this out of lesser species, since just lying down is fair game for predators. We humans have evolved into a slightly more compassionate species, though, so we try to help each other through it. We give out SSRI pills in the hope that they flip the right switches in our brain meat and make us “happy” again.
It’s a quick fix, though, and quick fixes don’t always work the way they should. In the long term, you simply have to accept that this is how you are and find ways to deal with it.
Vince Young hasn’t quite figured that out yet. He probably didn’t need to, consider how well he was doing in high school and college. He had quite the charmed life. Then he became an NFL quarterback. Last weekend, he saw himself failing at his job and heard 70,000 people voice their displeasure at him. They never did that in Texas, but maybe that was because he never struggled so much at football. He knew as well as anyone. Things were going all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
That feeling hits — the shame and guilt and melancholy that tosses you into a well and only gives you a rope with a noose at the end of it. As much as you want someone to help you, you also want to push everyone away. At that moment, though, Vince Young couldn’t push anyone away. He just wanted to lie down and disappear, but he couldn’t do that in a pit full of predators. Even his teammates attacked, calling him a quitter.
In a way, he is, but here’s the thing — he doesn’t really want to quit. He just can’t stop himself. His brain is telling him to stay down. All the Jeff Fisher pep talks in the world won’t fix what’s going on in his head, and what’s going on up there is real and painful and uglier than a dangling colostomy bag.
Compared to Vince Young, I was pretty lucky. I didn’t have mass media and hundreds of bloggers commenting on my every move. Having my mom try to help me didn’t lead to a string of “Your Mama” jokes on Deadspin. I was able to talk to a few friends about my bad brain meat without them judging me or thinking I was either a loser or a loony. I was able to read up about alternatives to those SSRIs, which made me grind my teeth and turned my sex drive to shit. Some seem a little extreme; I can believe that LSD really could help people, but I’m pretty sure Roger Goodell and the DEA would frown upon it around here.
Right now, I’m taking two of these every day. They took a little time to start working, but they do work for me, and there’s some science behind it. I probably could (and should) take more, but two a day are enough to keep the bad episodes at bay, and anyone who really knows me knows that I’ve had some pretty bad episodes in this lifetime.
Vince Young had a bad episode last weekend, too. He’ll have more before he’s done. The bad episodes don’t ever really go away. They can, however, be controlled, and the damage can be minimized. I didn’t understand that so well when I was 24, and I suspect Vince doesn’t, either. I hope he sticks around long enough to figure it out. I remember being a teenager and having the knife on my wrist and wondering why I shouldn’t start cutting. It was sports that stopped me — the thought of seeing the Pittsburgh Steelers win another Super Bowl or seeing Duke finally win an NCAA basketball title that made me put the knife down. These things could happen, and I didn’t want to miss them.
(And yes, I can hear all you haters out there thinking, “Christ, you’re a Duke fan? You should have gone through with it!” It’s okay. I’m used to the hate by now. All successful teams attract the haters. Bernard Pollard has a fan club for a reason.)
What concerns me the most here, though, is that Vince Young doesn’t have a knife. He has a gun, and guns make it too quick and too easy. Guns don’t give you enough time to consider and realize that life, for all its faults and craziness, is still a lot better than the alternatives, and this bad situation you’re in now isn’t really as bad as you think it is. It’s a little harder to see that when you haven’t lived long enough.
So keep living. Figure out how to deal with your bad brain meat, and just try to enjoy the rest of it. After all, you never know what’s going to happen next. Your team could win a Super Bowl. You might as well stick around and see if it happens.
Hang in there, Vince. I’m right there with you.
10 responses so far ↓
1 W A // Sep 11, 2008 at 10:04 am
Thanks for this, Dave. As someone who’s dealing with this as well, I know it’s not easy to broadcast like this. I keep hoping it’s just a misunderstanding, but it seems more and more likely he needs some help. Here’s hoping he gets it.
2 sarah (aka TheStarterWife) // Sep 11, 2008 at 11:02 am
As a society, we expect the high-profile breakdowns from politicians and artists. Something about an athlete who struggles mentally… Well. Unfortunately too many fans don’t expect athletes to have any brain meat at all, or at least one that cannot function beyond, “run faster, jump higher.”
I’m often surprised we do not see meltdowns more often considering the amount of pressure put on any one game.
On a personal note, looking for any sort of treatment is huge commitment to oneself and I’ve always thought it was a sign of strength. So you – and now hopefully VY – are better for it.
3 Blake // Sep 11, 2008 at 8:33 pm
It took a lot of guts to post this, on a blog that people will read publicly (and therefore judge). Coming out of depression recently myself, I understand what you and Vince have gone/currently go through. It feels like everything in your life could be done better, and failure becomes your baseline feeling – a feeling of anxiety, but no idea how to fix it – turning into confusion and hopelessness. Just waking up everyday becomes harder and harder. One day you’ll get through it…one day you’ll get to a point where the attacks may not come back. And after you’ve been at your lowest – the rest of life just doesn’t seem so bad. I hope you and Vince get there soon.
4 joejoejoe // Sep 12, 2008 at 12:58 am
Great post Dave. It’s always great to see depression discussed honestly.
5 Vince Young Is Back And (Apparently) Not Depressed | MOUTHPIECE Blog // Sep 12, 2008 at 10:21 am
[...] the defintive take on this whole situation, I’d like to refer you to Dave Warner’s most excellent post. Go read it; you’ll be a better person for [...]
6 brandon // Sep 12, 2008 at 11:15 pm
i still cant believe on espn that he said what he did about committing suicide. just terrible. my fav. qb in the nfl.. and team…
7 Brian // Sep 13, 2008 at 8:16 am
Dave, thanks for this grown-up, nuanced response. It’s so easy to dehumanize athletes and turn all their problems into crude ethical caricatures–he “quit on his team,” etc. It’s a lot harder to give them their humanity back and identify with them when everyone else is rushing to judgment. This is the bravest and most valuable thing I’ve seen write or say about this whole sad story since it began.
8 a. miller // Sep 14, 2008 at 8:04 pm
“In the long term, you simply have to accept that this is how you are and find ways to deal with it. ” Dave Warner
Dave — I excerpted the above quotation from your column, because it neatly condenses the reality of chronic, lifetime depression (not the short-term type of pain that comes from a divorce or death of an elderly relative). Like you and countless others, I have accepted that this is how I am. I have not, however, found a way to deal with it. Fish oil, as you note, does, indeed, have science behind it as a treatment for depression. Maybe I’ll try that.
9 Adrian // Sep 15, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Dave, as someone who deals with his own “head binkies,” as a former colleague liked to call them, I totally relate — to both you and Vince Young. Although I don’t condone it, I so understand why VY is getting thrown under the bus. This is a man’s man’s sport, and you don’t show weakness, ever. It’s too bad that we don’t allow these guys to be human. We expect them to be warriors, with nary a chink in their armor. And we turn on them as soon as things start to go bad for our team.
Unfortunately, as a football player, VY just might not be cut out for the ridiculous pressure of the pro game — I think it still remains to be seen. But as a human being, I hope he gets things sorted out so he can live a somewhat happy and productive life.
BTW, Google “sceletium tortuosum.” I had to get off the pharmaceuticals for reasons similar to yours, and this stuff has treated me pretty well. Best of luck.
10 Borrowed Suits // Oct 3, 2008 at 11:43 am
Hello, fellow traveler.
And well done on the VY aspect.