. . . she's a cheerful little soul. I struggled with depression many years ago, but it seems to have gone away. I can't assume "for good" but at least I'm in remission.
Posted on 04/21/2008 9:03:58 AM PDT by B-Chan
The Black Dog, symbolising depression and made famous by Churchill, was the bane of ad executive Matthew Johnstone’s life – until he put it in a book and brought it to heel. Interview by Catherine O’Brien
Matthew Johnstone’s meteoric career as a creative director in advertising took him from Sydney to San Francisco and New York, earning him a clutch of awards on his way. He was a man who appeared to have it all – and yet, for many years, he hid a dark secret. He was suffering from clinical depression. “Advertising is about being shiny and up. You are a showman, a people pleaser, someone who makes life beautiful,” he says. So although he often felt flat and empty, he learnt to hide it well.
Today, at 42, he no longer has to. I Had a Black Dog, the book he wrote about his illness, has become, paradoxically, the most prominent achievement on his CV. A slim volume of 38 cartoon-like drawings about a man whose life is overshadowed by a black labrador, it is already a bestseller in Australia and his native New Zealand. According to Stephen Fry, the actor, writer and well-known depressive, it says “with wit, insight, economy and complete understanding what other books take 300 pages to say”.
Black Dogs have been used as a symbol for depression since Celtic times. Winston Churchill famously used the metaphor to articulate his own struggle with melancholia. Johnstone’s book makes the leap from words to image with the deft resonance of an ad-man’s storyboard. The strength of his illustrations is their simplicity – the Black Dog that lay between him and his wife in bed suffocating their intimacy, the dog that chased away his confidence at social gatherings and the dog that chewed up his memory and ability to concentrate at work.
Johnstone cannot remember when he first began to think about his depression in Black-Dog terms, but he can remember, with absolute clarity, how the idea of the book came about. He was living in New York at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks and was a block away from the World Trade Centre when the first tower collapsed.
“I watched as several people jumped or fell from the large burning holes,” he wrote in a diary essay afterwards. “One man fell face down with his arms and legs outstretched, like a cat anticipating a jump, his tie flapping furiously over his shoulder. I remember thinking ‘that man is still alive’. It truly felt like the end of the world.” Like so many survivors, he found witnessing such dreadful scenes was a watershed. “I had been drifting along, not facing up to who I really was – and that was my wake-up call.” Six months later he went one Saturday to the empty offices of his ad agency “and in the space of an afternoon I wrote the book you have in your hand. It was the easiest thing I have ever done. It fell out of me like a boulder. It was like putting my lifetime’s experience on to the page.”
Johnstone now recognises that his depression first surfaced when he was in his early twenties. A farmer’s son from Christchurch, he was no stranger to the condition. His mother had been severely depressed during his childhood and his eldest brother suffered from bipolar disorder. After graduating, Johnstone moved to Sydney, where he worked for Saatchi & Saatchi. He found himself surrounded by men who “would rather pull their pants down drunk than talk about themselves sober”, and was happy at first to immerse himself in the fast-paced, work-hard-play-hard advertising industry culture. As he became more successful, however, he began to suffer from insomnia and lethargy. “It wasn’t like I was depressed all the time. It came in waves and while the waves were quite small, I could muster the energy to struggle on through. Most people around me had no idea. But the waves got bigger, and because I hadn’t taken care of myself, by my mid-thirties they were like a tsunami.” He made the classic life choices of someone with depressive tendencies. “I changed jobs regularly, relationships regularly and countries regularly. I had that thing ‘if I just do this, go there, I’ll be OK’. It was all about running away from what was happening inside.”
And his career path didn’t help. “I was a typical creative – an insecure perfectionist. Advertising is like the never-ending sand dune – you scramble to the top, only to tumble down the other side. You live in fear that you will never be as good as your last ad.”
At 32 he took a year out and went traveling. “I can see now that I was unwell. I had come out of a rough relationship, I was burnt out at work and I wanted to get away. I bought a Scooby Doo van and made plans to fly to America. At my leaving party, friend after friend told me what a brave and fantastic thing I was doing. But inside I was terrified.” He spent a year driving 15,000 miles down the West Coast from Canada to Mexico. “I just roamed and spent my time bumping into people in robes – cults and crazy people. I hung out with a guy who had spent ten years walking barefoot around America.”
He ended up in San Francisco, where he got a job in advertising again. “But then the Black Dog came back into my life.” The pictures in his book illustrate more eloquently than he can in words how his depression felt. It confronted him when he looked in the bathroom mirror in the morning. It ruined his appetite and woke him in the early hours, forcing repetitive, negative thoughts into his head such as “I am a loser”, and “I wish I could just disappear.” At its worst, he says, “depression isn’t about feeling down, it’s about being devoid of feeling altogether”. Over the years he had contemplated suicide several times, but he never attempted it. “I think suicide is like the stop sign at the end of a long road. For me, the thoughts were never about leaving people or life behind, it was about wanting peace and quiet. There were moments when I just craved tranquillity.” While in San Franscisco he finally sought help and dysthymia was diagnosed – a chronic major depression.
The condition being officially diagnosed was devastating. “Obviously I knew something was wrong, but it meant I could no longer pretend, to myself or to others, that I was basically OK.” He was prescribed antidepressants and had therapy – an experience about which he has mixed feelings. “I spent too long seeing a horrible psychiatrist who didn’t even say hello or goodbye. One of the crucial things is to find someone you can relate to.”
He credits Ainsley, the woman who is now his wife, for steering him through to recovery. They had known each other in Sydney, where they worked for the same agency and had a brief office romance. They met again in America and began living together, first in California and later in New York. “Ainsley was great. It is not easy loving and caring for a depressed person. But she is a pragmatist, very grounded and solid. I’m lucky that she was prepared to stay the course.”
About one woman in four and one man in eight will suffer from depression at some point. Research suggests that it can be triggered by chemical imbalances in the brain, but as an abstract illness it can be hard to explain to others. Paul Gilbert, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby, says Johnstone’s method of visualising a Black Dog helps by externalising the depression. “He presents it as something that happens to you, rather than the ‘real you’ and that can be constructive. It helps patients to see that they are not at fault or a failure, and to realise that they are not alone.”
Depression isn't what most people think it is. Those who do not suffer from the disease should read this article — this guy gets it exactly right.
I think of my own depression as a black, numbing fog rather than as a dog, but the effect is just the same.
Waiting for the scientologists and other anti-psychiatry cranks to start ‘howling’ ...
Yep. It’s just a matter of time.
Thank you for posting this. Bookmarking.
I thought of mine as a fog as well.
It tok me years to figure out how to manage it, but sometimes I can still feel the fog lurking around the edges.
My pleasure.
Don’t forget the deniers.
Ditto here. For years I thought it was just me feeling sorry for myself. But the lethargy, the numbness, the irrational bad decisionmaking, the longing for nonexistence — that goes beyond mere self-pity. No normal brain has thoughts like that on an ongoing basis.
The Black Fog is kept at bay by drugs, Jesus, and the love of my family these days. But it is always there, lurking, waiting for a chance to envelop and crush me. I won’t let it win.
Let them deny. Depression is as real as diabetes, or any other chronic disease.
I myself am not seeking anyone’s pity, by the way. I just hope that articles such as this one can help educate non-depressive people about what the disease really is.
Exactly. Thanks for posting this. Hopefully some will realize that it truly is a disease, and not something people can just “get over”.
I’m off the drugs and had much success with acupuncture of all things. I never would have believed it, but it worked. It’s still out there and every once in a while tries to sneak back in, but I’m better prepared to battle it back.
Until I actually was on the drugs for sometime, I never realized people were actually happy. I thought everyone was miserable but just were better at hiding it. I truly didn’t know that it was not a natural state to be depressed all the time.
Good luck on the continuing battle!
Wow, that’s really interesting. I have heard of acupuncture being used to treat nerve and muscle problems, but never depression. I’ll look into it.
Thanks!
I agree with you. It will probably be no time at all before people jump on this thread to say depressives need to man up or something, and talking about the dangers and ineffectiveness of drugs.
Drugs work. I’ve seen it in my daughter and it’s a miracle.
However, using a black lab, the sweetest and friendliest of dogs, has been very offensive to my lab, Bubba.
. . . she's a cheerful little soul. I struggled with depression many years ago, but it seems to have gone away. I can't assume "for good" but at least I'm in remission.
HA! Me too!
Yeah, that’s one reason I could never think of my depression as a black dog. Dogs are a good thing!
Yes, the drugs do work. My physician explained it this way: “There’s no more shame in a depressive taking SSRIs for a brain chemistry problem than there is in a diabetic taking insulin for a blood chemistry problem”. I thank God I have access to drug therapies; I grew up in the pre-drug era, and suffered greatly (both directly and as a result of horrifically bad life decisions) from the lack of treatment.
Thanks, and my prayers for your friend.
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