"To be forever hungry, this excess of desire, this wouldn't ever be held by a medical-pharmaceutical model of illness, but it would be held by a life dedicated to reading, writing, to art." —Suzanne Scanlon, Committed My 65th year began rather less auspiciously than one would want. Freshly discharged from the halfway house for recovering mental patients, I came home on (metaphorically) shaky legs to try to put my life back together. I had no idea whether I would ever fully recover and resume my creative life or return to the activities, like listening to music, biking, and birdwatching, that had given me so much pleasure in the past. I did resume reading, though I had to stick to relatively light material and avoid things that might invoke intense emotion. I was also more inclined to do simple activities like eating and short walks, and in general got out of the house more and spent time with friends other than my partner. In reviewing some Facebook memories recently I also discovered that I had begun posting and interacting on social media again. I still had little energy and felt a pervading numbness, but in retrospect it's clear that I was recovering. I was taking little pleasure in the things I was doing, but I was doing them. I slogged through autumn, spending a bit more time outdoors, eating and sleeping better, not feeling happy but at least less depressed. My anxiety eased somewhat as well, in large part because the worst of my delusional fears had not been realized. I hadn't lost my sons, I was able to spend time with them occasionally. And rather than being broke and facing homelessness or crippling medical debt, I was stunned to discover a sum in my bank account higher than any I'd ever had. Other than rent and the small amount I was spending on food, I had few expenses and I quickly ran though my medical insurance deductibles while my various sources of monthly income kept putting money into my account. The surest sign that I was recovering—again in hindsight—came at Thanksgiving. I was not in shape to travel to see my family in Texas, so my partner, her daughter and I decided to have an untraditional dinner at a local barbecue joint. Even though the food was far from the quality I would normally prefer, being a Texan, it was more than adequate and I actively enjoyed eating it. Even more unexpected, despite the fact that it was a very cold and cloudy day, I decided I wanted to take a quick trip to the river and look for birds. My partner, of course, was happy to go along and happily her daughter was willing as well, even though I offered to take her home first. I am sure she understood how much of a breakthrough this desire to birdwatch really was. We didn't see many birds, but again, the fact I even wanted to look was significant. Despite all these signs of improvement, I still didn't feel very well. I wish I could explain why I wasn't able to get the full emotional benefit from them, but I myself don't fully understand it. Which makes my full recovery seem even more miraculous as we will see. I traversed the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2018 finally noticing slight improvements in mood. As the holiday approached, my partner and I made plans to spend a few days on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, one of my favorite places. I was somewhat apprehensive about traveling even a relatively short distance while my emotions were still quite shaky, but after all my partner had done —and sacrificed—for me, I felt I owed it to her. I think I also wanted to take a leap and overcome some of my fears. Christmas Eve was the date that the miracle began to unfold. I was scheduled to spend Christmas Day with my sons at their mother's house. (We had been able to maintain a cordial relationship and work together bringing up our boys.) I went to bed and felt stirrings of something I thought I might never experience again: excitement. I slept reasonably well and woke up on Christmas morning and experienced a strange sensation ...happiness. I'd almost forgotten it was possible…happiness. I made the trek to my ex's home and drank a great deal of coffee, making up for lost time. After present opening, my younger son and I took a long walk around the neighborhood where I confided in him that I thought I might be truly out of the emotional abyss. (This walk provided the germ of a plan that he and I continue to this day that each of us occasionally checks in with the other regarding our emotional well-being, The suggestion came from him, which demonstrates his remarkable ability to mange his own turbulent emotions.) We returned in time for dinner, which I ate voraciously, finally able to savor the taste and texture of food again I was at first hesitant to divulge that I had come out of the darkness: I had some fear that it was a brief, temporary remission, and that I'd soon slip backwards. But a couple of days passed and I still felt good, listening to music, eating things I liked, and reading, especially poetry. So when my partner and I had checked into our motel in Cambridge, Maryland, for our mini-vacation, I spilled it to her. We spent the next several days exploring Cambridge and the surrounding area, including birding at Blackwater NWR, one of my favorite birding hotspots, and visiting the nearby newly-opened Harriet Tubman Museum. On my own, I discovered several fine coffee shops and partook as I had not in many months. In one of these establishments I drafted a poem inspired by a couple of lines from Ada Limón (current Poet Laureate and one of the finest in the US), whose book I had brought with me, another sign of recovery. That night I shared it with my partner who made some suggestions for revisions and thus I completed my first poem in over a year. It's been almost six years since my resurrection and I have not had any further episodes. I wish I could say that anxiety had completely vanished, but in fact, it's a constant presence along the periphery of my awareness, a kind of aura. But I don't let it guide my actions and I no longer allow myself to believe that any difficult emotions of the moment are permanent. Sometimes it can be dispelled by a song or a poem, sometimes by a walk or bike ride; sometimes I just have to be patient and go on with whatever I'm doing until it dissolves. My experience and my extensive reading in the literature of madness have led me to believe that there is no cure because mental illness, the emotional disorders at least, are not an illness. The biomedical model of treatment has largely failed and has yet to discover any internal cause for depression and its related conditions. Psychiatric meds, properly prescribed and monitored, can certainly mitigate symptoms sufficiently for the patient to take on the hard work of symptom management, therapy, and coping strategies. In my case, a deliberate and conscious return to the activities like reading, music, birdwatching, biking, and walks that have always been sources of sustenance and joy has been a major coping mechanism. Making the effort to interact with fellow humans beyond the simple exchange of money for goods or requests for information is equally important. I now enjoy chatting up baristas, clerks, museum docents, and fellow attendees of cultural events. I have gotten to know many of my neighbors in the building in which I reside, including young children who I have known since birth. My regular check-ins with my son mentioned above are also mutually beneficial. My most important tool and one that both derives from and makes use of all of the above is my writing. I have no intention of wading into the question of whether madness leads to creativity or vice versa. It's a ridiculous question as well as probably unanswerable. However, there is no doubt that the correlation is strong. To return to Carl Jung's assertion with which I began this memoir, "There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire." My (admittedly sketchy) hypothesis is that madness and creativity exist in a circular relationship. The symptoms of emotional disturbance often spark the creative impulse, possibly through some instinctive awareness on the part of the artist that creating art is a powerful tool for managing difficult emotions. These turbulent feelings themselves can provide powerful material with which to make art. At the same time, the naked openness to experience and the need to go deeply inside oneself to tap the wellsprings of creative energy carry a great risk to many of us "blessed" with the divine gift, especially if we are also touched with madness. As poet Frank O'Hara says, "You go on your nerve." And so the wheel turns: If we are fortunate enough, if we persist, we can ride rather than be crushed under it. In any case, the efficacy of writing in my case is reinforced every time I write, including my work on this piece. Each poem, each creative non-fiction piece in which I engage with my deepest emotions, including joy as much as those more challenging, provides that needed "momentary stay against confusion" that Robert Frost describes. And I am far from alone. In addition to Suzanne Scanlon's experiences, alluded to in the above epigraph and elaborated in her book, I could instance many examples from friends and colleagues in poetry and other creative writing. I choose the following because I happened to encounter this poet and her work just as I was beginning to think about this memoir. I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Cynthia Marie Hoffman at a literary festival earlier this year. Her remarkable book Exploding Head relates her lifelong struggles with OCD that continue to this day. The fact that she has been able to produce a marvelous body of work while sustaining a marriage and raising a child are testimony to the power of artistry in managing and even making use of madness as a creative spur. In a recent interview, in response to a question regarding whether writing the poems had been part of learning to manage her condition, she responded "I think this turning point happened in such a gradual way in my own life that I couldn't recognize that it was happening. It wasn't until I really had these Exploding Head poems laid out in chronological order that I could see clearly, OK. Wow. You can pat yourself on the shoulder a little bit. You're doing OK. You've done OK. You've gotten yourself through this. You're continuing to get yourself through this. So, in a big way, finding the right order of poems for this book was a healing experience." (The full interview, found at https://www.full-stop.net/2024/06/18/interviews/lizakatzduncan/cynthia-marie-hoffman/ is well worth reading in its entirety along with the book.) I could hardly have done better describing my own ongoing need to produce creative work, manage symptoms of madness, and maintaining a balance between those endeavors and living my daily life. Regardless of how one looks at these issues, for me and I imagine many other creatives, it's a one-day-at-a-time situation that requires constant awareness and regular rebalancing. It can be exhausting, but the outcome both in terms of handling madness and producing art has great rewards. not only for the artist but, one hopes, for the world at large. Notes and Resources Committed by Suzanne Scanlon (Vintage Books, 2024) is the single most important inspiration for this memoir. I had been wanting to write something about my experiences related herein, but was uncertain where and how to begin. Scanlon's unflinchingly honest narration of her own struggle with madness and the mental "health" "system" and the lessons she drew from it crystallized and clarified much of my own up to them inchoate thinking. I can't recommend it enough for anyone interested in alternative views of madness and its interplay with creativity. Cynthia Marie Hoffman's book Exploding Head is available for order here: https://www.perseabooks.com/exploadinghead I would also recommend visiting the Mad in America website for extremely provocative, challenging, and useful perspectives on mental illness in general: https://www.madinamerica.com/