Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Dear William Styron,I write to you today knowing that you died in the Autumn of 2006. Hopefully you will not resent my intrusion into your long and much deserved rest.After talking for many years about the shortest book of your extinguished writing career, you should be pleased to know I have just finished reading "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" and it is clear to me, perhaps much to your undeserved distress, that we have been brothers in the arms of the Devil named depression.Being somewhat younger now than you were when you passed on, I came to know you in likely the least admirable way from your perspective, by the motion picture "Sophie's Choice" via Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, followed by reading the book, and then your other books "The Confessions of Matt Turner" and "The Long March.I see by your admission in Darkness Visible that you might believe that depression was in your soul from childhood. This I do not dispute but we do not share similar backgrounds.The monster that I have come to call "the hole" came to me in 2003 and eventually swallowed me up by July. As I look back, as you did in your book, what was besetting me day by day for 6 or 7 months was a mystery to me, a surprise over time from an unexpected and most unwelcome visitor. I really did not understand what was happening or where I was headed.Like you, I eventually came as most depression sufferers do to the wall of death aka suicide, and like you, but for apparently different reasons, I was able by the grace of God, or luck, or total accident to retreat and save myself.Round two came several years later. Previously hardened by wrestling with this monster, even though the ideation of doing myself in was a daily companion, I made an oath to my soul and to those who love me even at my worst that suicide was a bad joke I would laugh at for the rest of my days. Feel like dying? Oh yes. Suicide? Not on my to do list.Lucky me, I have climbed out of the hole again and life is better and richer and more creative and more interesting today than it has ever been. I am confirmation of your postulation that there can be a "shining world" upon recovery.I lost my great friend and brother I never had, James Travis Cackler, to depression induced suicide in April of the year of your death. I was the eulogizer at his funeral, the hardest job I have ever had to do. I loved this man so much.To you Sir William, I say thank you for exposing the bare and tender underbelly of your soul, your dreadful fall and triumphant rise from the suicidal grips of this insidious disease.And to those of you who are in this dreadful state of mind and body, and to those of you who are falling but do not yet know to what depth you will descend, I can tell you that depression is Hell. But, you can and most likely will escape and recover. But, if you choose to kill yourself - and it IS a choice - all hope is lost.We who have been to the far side of Hell and back, and in many cases more than once, can tell you better than anyone why suicide is a very bad idea. Because we have suffered as you are suffering and returned and did not do ourselves in, we are proof of something that is hard to imagine, especially the first time you are in the hole.The old theme song from the TV series "MASH" says that suicide is painless? Perhaps you can turn your lights off permanently without too much suffering, but you will NEVER in Heaven or Hell be able to undo the pain you cause to those who love you and fellow sufferers of depression who love you even though they have never met you.By hook or by crook or by luck or by miracle of miracles, find yourself a brother or sister who has been in the same hole you are in and has survived. William and I are both able to tell you that there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not an oncoming train.Hope is your reward earned by enduring unimaginable pain. You can be whole again and you can honor your good fortune by helping others survive and prosper, as our colleague in suffering William Styron has done in his most eloquent and excruciating book. Read, live and prosper. After all you have been through, you more than anyone deserve this.Thank you so much, William, for helping us help ourselves. I love and salute you. And to my fellow compatriots, 5000 IU of a good quality vitamin D-3 per day is what works for me. I have never taken pharmaceuticals for depression, and I never will.If you are a fellow sufferer, or if you know someone who is, read Darkness Visible, save a life.

William Styron has written a very good personal experience piece of just what it feels like to descend into the depths of and crawl out of clinical depression.Of course, his view is just that, his view.But for many it holds its own personal twisted tale, causative factors whether they are known or not which are usually, most assuredly devastating.There are many books you could read out there written by someone who has suffered from this or that especially from a mental illness condition.They all tell the story of the daily grinding pit of doom which you could choose from.His is well written, it has flair and the author,a professional writer to boot, gives his personal touch which makes it a colorful palate, not all grey and an almost dramatic read.As someone who sees this condition maybe not daily but at least weekly and tries to treat it with its ever present,lurking,deeply occulting partner in crime, suicide, it was refreshing to read his take on the inpatient side of treatment.The initial resistance and trepidation of the patient, the negativity, the boring groups, the monotony which all are unfortunately part of the experience are all presented. But in the end he gets it.The purpose,the ends that justify the means to our treatment approach.No, it's not perfect by any stretch but it does work to a degree.Read this as a practitioner to get another pt perspective. Read it as a sufferer to know that you are not alone. Seek out treatment soon.This particular disease is cunningly pervasive and can sneak up on you when you least expect it or you may have been dealing with it for years and just not have known it.In any event, it is short, well written and can be digested in a few hours of your time. Its not the end all book on personal suffering but does justice to a most credible, real, hard to treat, fearsome condition that can do you in merely by its relentless onslaught and its daily attack as well as shield itself with tomblike hopelesness and helplessness as dark as the grave itself.Remember, help is out there. We professionals will catch you before you slip and fall into it. At least we will try.The book shows that cure is possible once denial and avoidance is banished and frustration is cooked to well done.

I had read "Angle of repose" years ago and loved it. Now I find that Styron suffered from a mental health problem, like many others: Churchill, Van Gogh, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln...

Written by one of America’s acclaimed authors (Sophie’s Choice), his personal struggle with depression and the trajectory of it and positive outcome is so powerful.

Mr. Styron is a beautiful writer. Unfortunately, that's ultimately the problem with this book. His eloquence allows him to write 96 pages of which 80 are froth. The book reads like an ode to depression. Mr. Styron falls into the habit of indulging in overwrought metaphors and figurative language that leave him lamenting against the melancholy ghosts of his spirit, ones which haunt the crisp chilly winds of his subdued soul, and so on and so on.While the book is interesting and it does contain some insight, it just feels like a shame that Styron's mannered style got the best of him in what should have been a simple and earnest account of his battle with depression.

This book is great describing the symptoms of depression in easily understandable concepts. It will be a guide to anyone who suffers from depression. Take control of your life again. You are not alone.

William Styron was able to express in words this sickness which is depression, most always originating from a sens of loss, most often coming from an incomplete mourning process.

Every other paragraph is highly introspective. Every one should read very early in their lives. Much lost the later you read

Para entender la depresión más allá de lo que creemos que es o escuchamos o leemos en otros medios. Un libro necesario para quienes la padecen y para quienes conocen a gente que la padece. En lo personal me ha ayudado bastante. Es un libro que se lee rápido y es sencillo.

It comes as no surprise that many a talented artist – writers, poets, musicians, playwrights etc. have often had their name scribbled crudely across the devil’s book for being loose around the edges, as if the contract for a consummate flair for the art is the pawning off of one’s sanity, as a matter of consideration or currency. While Styron mentions the likes of Plath, Hemingway, and Camus, more contemporary examples can be found in the dearly departed Chester Bennington, or Robin Williams.Reading this book sparks interest in the work of some French crackerjacks. For example, Styron talked about Camus’ The Stranger, Baudelaire’s intimate journals, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – all sharing a common theme of death, depression, darkness. I bet those who have read these would be able to appreciate this memoir better. I certainly was.“If our lives had no other configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish; if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy. But one need not sound the false or inspirational note to stress the truth that depression is not the soul's annihilation; men and women who have recovered from the disease--and they are countless--bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable.”That clinical depression is idiopathic and likely to be different in each of its victim, is sufficient reason to rebut the notion that it’s always conquerable, of course at the risk of sounding pessimistic. I applaud the late William Styron’s layman grasp of America’s neuropsychiatry especially in the 90s, and his insistence that hospitalization should never fall into the abyss of societal stigma.A short and sweet memoir that people who don’t understand depression can benefit from reading. The prose is reminiscent of Ocean Vuong when he speaks.