Well, the meds did their thing, and I'm feeling enormously better. It was one of the longest months I can recall. To those of you who were so kind as to inquire about how I was doing, a hearty thank you.

To bring this ridiculous saga up to date, I stopped taking my longtime meds about three months ago. I don't really know why, maybe it was so I could have cheese on my pizza again, or a goddamn ham and cheese sandwich. What I didn't count on was the depression, which I guess had been held at bay all those years, would come back - with a bloody vengeance!

About two weeks after I stopped taking my medicine my mood began to change. At first I thought it was just a bad day, like we all have from time to time. And sure enough, the next day I felt a little better. But for the next week I really plunged into the bottom of the well - the well where I sat alone while the world went by above. It was awful, beyond words awful. It's impossible to explain depression to someone who's never experienced it. It's like, take your worst day and multiply it times about 25. It got so bad that I would have traded an arm or a leg , anything, to make it go away.

When my sciatica flared up one weekend, after an acupuncturist sent electricity through my ass-cheek, I was ready to take drastic action. I thought about suicide a bunch of times. Why: it was the only thing I could think of to make the pain go away. I nearly went to an emergency room for lack of anything else I could think of - to make the pain go away. Somehow I made it through the weekend, got to my spine doctor, and unloaded on him. He responded with a bunch of prescriptions, mostly for pain.

But about two weeks ago I awoke one morning and I knew it was over. Even before I opened my eyes I could tell someone lifted the black cloak that had been laid over my world. It was amazing in its definitiveness. In my opinion Nardil (my drug of choice) is a wonder drug. You hear a lot about how terrible it is that we have to rely on drugs so much in our society. Well, this one's saving my life, literally.

So how do I feel now? Normal. I'm in the state of desperation we all live in on a day to day basis. I still hate growing older, hate that I can't seem to attract a beautiful woman to live my life with, hate the state of my finances, the empty nest syndrome I'm facing. But it all seems like just normal stuff. Before, all those things were so totally overwhelming, so far beyond anything I could possibly deal with, that all I could realistically envision was my own death. Thank God for my MAO inhibitor!!!