{"id":562,"date":"2007-10-16T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-16T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html"},"modified":"2007-10-16T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-16T10:30:00","slug":"owen-wilson-darkness-invisible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html","title":{"rendered":"Owen Wilson: Darkness Invisible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to reader Larry Parker for directing me to the story “Darkness Invisible” by Daphe Merkin in the New York Times Magazine last month<\/a>. It is a powerful commentary on the public\u2019s response to the suicide attempt of Owen Wilson<\/a>. I\u2019ve included below the entire article, because I couldn\u2019t figure out which paragraphs to excerpt. All of them are important.<\/p>\n

Here is the question lurking behind the recent news of Owen Wilson\u2019s suicide bid: In a culture that encourages outing everything from incest to pedophilia, is depression the last stigma, the one remaining subject that dares not gossip its name? Does a disclosure about depression, especially from someone who seems to have it all, violate an unspoken code of silence \u2014 or, at the least, make us radically uncomfortable with its suggestion of a blithe public face masking a troubled inner life?
\nMost of us have experienced the everyday, transient blues \u2014 the emotions nibbling around the edges of depression (whether they manifest themselves as a sense of malaise, dejection or comic-tinged despair) that can be brought on by a shift in the weather or an unfortunate event. They may be chronic yet benign, the sort of moroseness that causes the narrator of Camus\u2019s \u201cStranger\u201d to stand around listlessly puffing on a cigarette. Sadness is probably more endemic to the human subtext than sanguine spirits, which is why funereal songs like Billie Holiday\u2019s \u201cGloomy Sunday\u201d strike a universal chord and why Freud conjectured that \u201cordinary unhappiness\u201d (as opposed to what he called \u201chysterical misery\u201d) was the best the talking cure could hope to achieve.<\/p>\n


\nThe romance of melancholy \u2014 a style of self-presentation marked by an appealing air of ennui \u2014 has been with us since Hamlet. It is perhaps best expressed in the opening of Chekhov\u2019s \u201cSeagull,\u201d when Masha, asked why she always wears black, replies, \u201cI am in mourning for my life.\u201d But a poetic conception that tethers creativity to a despondent temperament is also misleading, discounting as it does how unproductively crippling the malady can be.
\nDepression \u2014 the real hard stuff \u2014 is not chic, and it doesn\u2019t sell tickets. It is a clinical illness urgently requiring treatment, usually hit-or-miss medication that tinkers with serotonin or dopamine levels. I am referring to the sort of condition that subverts lives, making it difficult to talk to people and impossible to leave the house. At its worst, it can spiral into the sort of suicidal ideation that requires hospitalization, or into suicide.
\nFrom a young age, I have intermittently found myself in this painful, barren zone. Each time it occurs, I am struck by how paralyzing and isolating the experience is; it remains essentially impenetrable to people who can\u2019t (or don\u2019t care to) distinguish it from a random bad day. For all that it is acknowledged to be a disease afflicting millions \u2014 we are as much a Prozac Nation as a Fast Food Nation \u2014 depression remains culturally quarantined. The revelation that Wilson may be afflicted with a physiological vulnerability to the downward pull \u2014 to the sort of self-annihilating impulse best described in William Styron\u2019s \u201cDarkness Visible\u201d \u2014 simultaneously fascinates us and causes us to avert our gaze.
\nWilson, a 38-year-old light-as-air actor and sometime screenwriter, was a golden-haired member of the Frat Pack, the last person you would associate with a long, concealed history of this disease. He suggests that more familiar construction: a bachelor who ran in a fast crowd, used hard drugs and flipped when his romance with another movie star went sour. According to this scenario, Wilson slit his wrist because he spotted a candid of his ex, Kate Hudson, smooching a new man in a grocery store \u2014 as if life obligingly played itself out as a series of press-ready storyboards: Girl dumps boy. Girl moves on to new boy. Ex-boy tries to kill himself. Shoot and print. He becomes just another funny man harboring an inner sad sack \u2014 a \u201cTears of a Clown\u201d syndrome \u2014 alongside Robin Williams and Richard Pryor.
\nHowever you parse Wilson\u2019s desperate act, it is clear that in an instant-fix, cure-all culture \u2014 one in which we habitually reduce fraught real-life dramas into smart-alecky quips on late-night talk shows \u2014 we want instant-fix, cure-all answers. Addiction and recovery sagas are by now more boring than heartrending, but they go down smoothly and are media-pleasing. These versions of psychological mayhem sidestep the complex interior drama of self-destruction \u2014 Lindsay Lohan\u2019s father visits her in rehab! \u2014 and thereby allow us off the hook. How much thought can you give to yet another celebrity who checks in and out of a $1,600-a-day rehab center as if it were Canyon Ranch?
\nPut it this way: It\u2019s one thing for Wilson to draw upon his familiarity with \u201cthe black dog\u201d (as Winston Churchill called it) in order to co-write \u201cThe Royal Tenenbaums,\u201d a darkly funny movie about an unhappy family of grown-up child prodigies that includes a lovelorn sibling (played by Wilson\u2019s own brother, Luke) who tries to kill himself. That\u2019s entertainment, diverting in a poignant way. But it\u2019s another thing to be the guy with everything who tries to take his own life. That\u2019s threatening, suggesting a failure of will that might prove contagious \u2014 or worse, capsize box-office investment.
\nPeople who want to end it all have lost the necessary illusions that make life bearable; the sources of their pain are impossible to pinpoint but all the same infect the air they breathe. The defining tragedy of severe depression is that it comes without an objective correlative like a white plaster cast. This makes it easy to mistake those who suffer from this disorder for people who, with a little coaxing \u2014 a dinner with friends or a distracting movie like \u201cWedding Crashers\u201d (starring, Lord help us, Owen Wilson) \u2014 might bounce back the following day.
\nPerhaps this is what makes depression dangerous to scrutinize too closely. If we don\u2019t keep it at arm\u2019s length, it might implicate us in a way that the coked-up antics of the Rehab Gang fail to. Which is why it is all the more important that when it ravages those who seem as if they should be riding high, it isn\u2019t spun merely as a side effect of addiction or heartbreak. It is an illness that deserves to be given its due, uneasy as it may make us.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to reader Larry Parker for directing me to the story “Darkness Invisible” by Daphe Merkin in the New York Times Magazine last month. It is a powerful commentary on the public\u2019s response to the suicide attempt of Owen Wilson. I\u2019ve included below the entire article, because I couldn\u2019t figure out which paragraphs to excerpt.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"yoast_head":"\nOwen Wilson: Darkness Invisible - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Owen Wilson: Darkness Invisible - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thanks to reader Larry Parker for directing me to the story “Darkness Invisible” by Daphe Merkin in the New York Times Magazine last month. It is a powerful commentary on the public\u2019s response to the suicide attempt of Owen Wilson. I\u2019ve included below the entire article, because I couldn\u2019t figure out which paragraphs to excerpt.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-16T10:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Owen Wilson: Darkness Invisible - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Owen Wilson: Darkness Invisible - Beyond Blue","og_description":"Thanks to reader Larry Parker for directing me to the story “Darkness Invisible” by Daphe Merkin in the New York Times Magazine last month. It is a powerful commentary on the public\u2019s response to the suicide attempt of Owen Wilson. I\u2019ve included below the entire article, because I couldn\u2019t figure out which paragraphs to excerpt.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2007-10-16T10:30:00+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html","name":"Owen Wilson: Darkness Invisible - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-16T10:30:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-16T10:30:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/owen-wilson-darkness-invisible.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Owen Wilson: Darkness Invisible"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. Borchard","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75","name":"Beyond Blue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","caption":"Beyond Blue"},"description":"Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}