Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

In this intimate memoir of a bout with clinical depression, William Styron (1925-2006) tries to answer the basic question, "How does it feel?", but admits that he cannot: "I was feeling in my mind a sensation close to, but indescribably different from actual pain...[it is] a form of torment...alien to everyday experience." (pp. 16-17). Instead, he chronicles his own battle with the demon by listing the familiar and not so familiar outward signs, including sleeplessness, lack of sexual feelings, and altered vocal quality. As his "madness" (his word) progresses, suicidal thoughts became impossible to ignore. Finally, seven weeks in one of the best (unnamed) psychiatric hospitals in the land restore his equilibrium. He ends with a message show more of hope to other sufferers: depression's "saving grace" is that "it is conquerable".

As the award-winning author of Sophie's Choice and other novels, William Styron led a life of more privilege than most of us experience, but his wealth, fame, and professional standing could not shield him from the mental illness that chased him all his life and finally caught up with him during his sixtieth year. He left behind this short but magnificent document that succeeds as well as anything I've ever read at describing the indescribable. show less

I have never read any literary work by William Styron. The only reason I picked this is because I have a personal interest in mental health -both for having been diagnosed with an illness which included cycles with depressive moods (medication made a radical and potentially life saving difference) and, because I now work as a Carer supporting people some of whom have mental health issues too. You won't need to be either so as to enjoy this book, though. After all, depression can strike anybody at anytime; it is, apparently, one of the major health conditions only matched by back pains when it comes to costs to society. His, in its unipolar form, hit him when he was in his early sixties.

They are brilliant insights. If you haven't been show more there, you cannot know how it feels like -it's not sadness or being down, it's indeed about 'failure of self-esteem... a general feeling of worthlessness' which is both painful and exhausting. It goes beyond a mood. It's an elusive disease which kills.

'Rational thought was usually absent from my mind at such times, hence trance. I can think of no more apposite word for this state of being, a condition of helpless stupor in which cognition was replaced by that "positive and active anguish". And one of the most unendurable aspects of such an interlude was the inability to sleep.'

Roots causes are near impossible to pin down. More likely, there are triggers that will tip you over the edge but won't be the main reason (he personally points to his sudden withdrawal from alcohol). How to treat it is also tricky; we're all different and so will be our needs. This was in the mid-eighties, and it's interesting to see him questioning both psychotherapy and medication as pill-fits-all. The stigma might no longer be as prevalent or so I think (he was advised against being hospitalised for fear it would damage his reputation and career, an advice he thankfully didn't take...). When it comes to thrusting pills as only solution, though, I don't think much have changed:

'Many psychiatrists, who simply do not seem to be able to comprehend the nature and depth of the anguish their patients are undergoing, maintain their stubborn allegiance to pharmaceuticals...'

This is not about denouncing medication (again: depression is a disease and pills do work to a certain extend). It's about acknowledging that many other factors matter for a successful recovery.

calling 'Chin up!' from the safety of the shore to a drowning person is tantamount to insult, but it has been shown over and over again that if the encouragement is dogged enough - and the support equally committed and passionate - the endangered one can nearly always be saved... devotion has prevented countless suicides.'

Being a writer, I also like how he relates to other authors for whom such disease was so intense it had led many to suicide. A link between mood disorders (as chronic conditions) and creativity has been shown. It's interesting to see him pondering on it; although he doesn't offer any explanation as to why this would be the case (this is a first-hand account of a personal experience, not a medical essay).For whose wanting to expand on that I personally recommend Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament .

All in all then, here's a nice testimony of a journey through hell. There are solutions and so it's not hopeless -he made it through, after all. Psychotherapy, medication, circle of support... It goes without saying, but seek help if you show symptoms; and don't brush it off if someone you know gives out signs they might be depressed. It's not about being down. It is, as this short read reminds all too clearly, about preventing death. show less

Subtitled "A Memoir of Madness", this is an expanded version of an essay Styron published in Vanity Fair after recovering from his own bout with a deep clinical depression. His insights into the illness, expressed in his exemplary prose, are enlightening, and much less "depressing" than I had feared when I chose to give this book a try. In the 35 years since Styron wrote it, I devoutly hope recognition, understanding, diagnosis and treatment have taken some significant steps forward. But the main take-away for me was that it is possible, even likely, for most sufferers to come out of that darkness, even without excellent treatment, if they manage to wait it out. Tough but valuable reading; if it isn't required of all medical students, show more let alone psychiatric residents, it should be. show less

Styron's description of his journey into and away from depression is heartfelt and unflinching. I feel I've only been in the outskirts of a place he's travelled through. There's no map that any other person can follow, no photos or artist's impressions of the terrain, as the landscape can't be described, only felt. Nevertheless, Styron's dispatch from his personal hell does bring some light to the darkness, a hope that if fellow travellers have returned from the dark bourne of depression, so might we.

I was saddened that Styron fell for the falsehoods of "chemical imbalances", a lie concocted at the desks of the marketing department, not in the pharmaceutical lab; and that the DSM has any legitimacy given its own editors admit that it show more has no scientific underpinning and is actually useless as a diagnostic tool. I hope anybody reading these sections won't take them at face value show less

This is a short, sometimes intense, account of the months leading up to William Styron's hospitalization for acute depression. When his body no longer tolerated alcohol, rather suddenly, and he was already taking risky medications to be able to sleep, Styron fell into a nearly fatal depression. The book outlines the lead-up and goes into the final crisis in which a bit of music made him aware that he wanted to continue and got himself hospitalized. In the hospital, the most dangerous medication was discontinued, and freedom from anxiety-producing expectations gave him space to heal. Which he seems to have done.This is not a generally helpful map out of depression; it is more a list of warning beacons to identify what is happening and show more reassurance that it can be bridged.

There is some speculation as to what losses may have triggered the depression, and like most explanations, I did not find it convincing. But as is also the case, having some explanation is useful for the sufferer. I'm not sure accuracy is all that important in most cases. show less

DARKNESS VISIBLE, by William Styron.
I read this "Memoir of Madness" in just a couple hours. At barely eighty pages, it's a quick read, albeit one packed with information about the dangerous disease of depression. Styron tells us of his long battle with what he calls a "despair beyond despair" and how it came to a dangerous head in 1985 resulting in his hospitalization for several weeks. He tells too of how the depression became worse after he suddenly stopped drinking at the age of sixty, after forty years with the bottle, and wonders if that cutoff from the crutch of alcohol may have been one of the triggers. Or was it a long-delayed reaction of unresolved grief at losing his mother at the tender age of thirteen? Then there were the show more antidepressants and the therapy sessions, which sometimes helped and sometimes didn't. He cites the unwavering support and understanding of his wife, Rose, as the most important part of his recovery.

Reading this 1990 book now, in March of 2015, I was struck by one passage that read -

"But with their minds turned inward, people with depression are usually dangerous only to themselves."

Unless, of course, that person is a co-pilot of an airliner full of innocent passengers, and his despairing determination to kill himself blinds him to the multiple and far-reaching horrors of his act of flying that plane into the side of a mountain. Twenty-five years after the publication of DARKNESS VISIBLE, Styron's words about a much feared and misunderstood malady are, sadly, still all too meaningful.

William Styron got help in time for his black and suicidal despair. He died from pneumonia at his home in 2006.

This is a thoughtful and still very relevant look at a mental illness that continues to devastate lives and families. Highly recommended. show less

A well known book in the literature of mental illness, when it came across my desk I decided to give it a read. A slim book, it is a one-sitting or one-day read. Styron, I found, does indeed give an account that will ring familiar to many people.

I felt myself entering the afternoon shadows with their encroaching anxiety and dread... my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.

And then later:

I had now reached that phase of the disorder where all sense of hope had vanished, along with the idea of a futurity; my brain, in thrall to its outlaw hormones, had become

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less an organ of thought than an instrument registering, minute by minute, varying degrees of its own suffering.

How much of this will be truly comprehensible to people who have never experienced it, I don't know, because as he states several times it seems impossible to describe it to someone without that direct experience. But it is a valiant attempt. He also emphasizes that there is no one approach to recovery that works for everyone. Unfortunately for Styron he was one of those for whom no medications, each with their 4-6 week waiting periods before an effect can be felt, worked, and he came perilously close to suicide before checking himself into a hospital, which for him proved the salvation.

The book seems useful for those in the midst of the "madness", offering proof that the veil will eventually lift, and for those who want to understand it. For those who have already passed through and emerged, it must be similar to how I imagine a recovering alcoholic might feel about reading an account of someone else's drinking problem: a personal sense of understanding, and an uncomfortable dread of slipping back there. show less