The After Effects

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• November 28, 2015

FXX’s dark sitcom, “You’re The Worst” is absolutely killing it this season (season 2), after revealing one of the main character’s, Gretchen (played by the amazing Aya Cash), suffers from clinical depression.  “You’re The Worst” is about a new couple, who are essentially the worst: selfish, rude, cynical, self destructive, and shamelessly shameful.  It’s everything “Friends” isn’t, and that’s why it’s both brilliant and not for every one.

Here’s the trailer for season two:

You’re the Worst Season Two Trailer

But here’s a scene from season two, which takes the whole show to a completely different tone:

You’re the Worst gets REAL

“You’re the Worst” just got real with us.  It’s one of the most accurate television depictions of depression I have ever seen.  But, alas, I don’t want to write about depression today, I want to write about the after effects, because it’s a topic I don’t think is considered quite enough when depression is brought up.  It’s something I hadn’t thought of until I read Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Anthony Kiedis’s bio, Scar Tissue:

“There’s a peculiar thing that happens every time you get clean. You go through this sensation of rebirth. There’s something intoxicating about the process of the comeback, and that becomes an element in the whole cycle of addiction. Once you’ve beaten yourself down with cocaine and heroin, and you manage to stop and walk out of the muck you begin to get your mind and body strong and reconnect with your spirit. The oppressive feeling of being a slave to the drugs is still in your mind, so by comparison, you feel phenomenal. You’re happy to be alive, smelling the air and seeing the beauty around you…You have a choice of what to do. So you experience this jolt of joy that you’re not where you came from and that in and of itself is a tricky thing to stop doing. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that every time you get clean, you’ll have this great new feeling.

Cut to: a year later, when you’ve forgotten how bad it was and you don’t have that pink-cloud sensation of being newly sober. When I look back, I see why these vicious cycles can develop in someone who’s been sober for a long time and then relapses and doesn’t want to stay out there using, doesn’t want to die, but isn’t taking the full measure to get well again. There’s a concept in recovery that says ‘Half-measures avail us nothing.’ When you have a disease, you can’t take half the process of getting well and think you’re going to get half well; you do half the process of getting well, you’re not going to get well at all, and you’ll go back to where you came from. Without a thorough transformation, you’re the same guy, and the same guy does the same shit. I kept half-measuring it, thinking I was going to at least get something out of this deal, and I kept getting nothing out of it”

Kiedis goes on to talk about how he was addicted to getting sober, because of how amazing it felt.  A new high.  Now, most of us haven’t done even close to the amount of drugs Kiedis has (most people who have, have died. Check out his bio, it’s fucking crazy).  But I think he really tapped into something about being over the rainbow.

Sure, depression leads to substance abuse.  But all drugs aside, you don’t have to be a drug addict to be an addict.  Especially with depression.  I’ve found that after my depressive episodes pass, which can be relatively quick, or dragged out for what feels like eternity, there’s a limbo stage, where you kind of feel hung over.  Coming out of a depression is a funny thing, because you’re not actually sure you’re coming out of it.  It could be a respite, and tomorrow, you could wake up feeling nothing at all.  Sadness is not the worst part of depression, it’s numbness.  If you’re sad, you can be cheered up.  If you’re numb, you’re paralyzed to all jubilation.  That’s why the depression hang over is tricky.  You’re starting to feel normal again, like yourself, however normal that may or not be, with drips and of sadness and happiness leaking in.  But you don’t trust yourself, because, well, let’s face it, you’re a bit crazy.  You can feel both happy and sad, but there’s a filter to it, you’re in a fog, and you might at times, feel physically groggy because of it.  But if this is really the end of said depression, and not a fake out, something good is about to come your way.

The times I came through my worst depressions was some of the happiest I’d ever been.  Colors are more vibrant, you’re so grateful of your friendships, music doesn’t just sound amazing, if feels like a supernatural phenomenon, dancing to your heartbeat, fabrics feel softer, laughter ripples positive energy waves into the universe… it is like being on drugs.  Probably because you are on drugs, your built in drugs, of course: your brain, for some reason, has decided to release it’s endorphin’s and serotonin (granted, I’m not a scientist), and you feel great.  I mean, really, really great.

This feeling is fucking addicting.  Because like the low, the high won’t last either, and pretty soon, you’ll just be feeling normal again, and then, sometime after that, the low will return, but then the high will too.  It’s a goddamn merry go round of your sanity.

One time, during one of these after effects, I sat in a park and watched these little birds.  It was fall, and the leaves were starting to turn.  A leaf fell near me, and it was a Pollock painting of oranges and reds.  It was so beautiful.  I cried.  I fucking cried, looking at a damn leaf, because I was so taken by it’s beauty.  It was as if I were tripping on LSD.  Because that’s how powerful the after effects are.  All of a sudden, you love life.  I don’t mean just specifically your life, all life.  The miracle that Earth is among all of these galaxies, and it’s so goddamn beautiful, you’re grateful for all living things, including a stupid blade of grass.  While it’s an amazing feeling, it’s quite dangerous.  And it’s why many people with depression turn to drugs.  Because alcohol or weed was never the gateway drug, it was the chemicals in their own craniums.  Their minds are the gateway drug, which is why the war on drugs will never be won unless we start with helping people with mental illness.

I think, for a lot of people, the after effects are more dangerous than the actual depression.  It feels like a reward.  It feels like you’ve suffered, white knuckled pain, and now here’s your internal ecstasy.  Like a star on an essay in grade school, it’s your body saying, “good job.”  The fear when you’re in a depression, is that you’ll never come out… Never feel those after effects, or normal ever again.  In the after effects, you’re not quite as delusional.  You know it won’t last.  But you don’t care.  And that makes you appreciate it so much more.  It’s a miracle you got out of the depression at all.  It’s a miracle you were born.  It’s a miracle the Earth is so stunning.  And that my friends, is a dangerous, dangerous feeling because it’s always fleeting, and it only ever comes as an after effect.