David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
The Lonely Disease
By Adam Duritz
May 2008
WebMD Feature from Men's Health
Counting Crows front man Adam Duritz reveals how he battled a debilitating mental disorder to record the best music of his career--and reclaim his life
It all fell apart within a span of 5 minutes, with one phone call and one text message. Of course there was the long downward slope leading to that moment, but I see that now only in retrospect.
The date was March 28, 2004. We'd had a gig in Perth the night before, the first of a tour that would take us across Australia. That morning, I received a call from a relative in America who told me that my grandmother had died.
Minutes later, I got a text from the girl I was in love with, saying, basically, "We've been around and around and I'm moving on with my life. You need to get on with yours."
I was my grandmother's firstborn grandchild. We were really close. But I hadn't visited her in more than 5 years. I was on the road all the time, so I had a lot of excuses. And even when she died, I still wouldn't be there. I had gigs. I wasn't there when my sister's twins were born 3 months early and almost didn't make it. Again, I had gigs. I've missed many things in my life because so many people's jobs depend on me being there. That, and because of a much darker problem I was facing.
So I'm talking to a friend about the funeral. "It's such a shame I can't go because I have to fly to Adelaide today," I say.
My friend says, "Dude, you are turning into such an jerk."
"What?" I say. I'm dumbfounded.
"Let's see," he says, "your mother's mother died and you lost the girl you love. When are you going to learn a lesson here? You have completely lost the plot. You've turned into such an jerk."
The jerk still flew to Adelaide later that day. The hotel gave me this weird penthouse room with sliding glass doors and a balcony surrounding it. That night, a massive thunderstorm swept through the city. I had all the doors open so I felt like I was hanging in the middle of it, 30 stories up, with lightning ripping all around me. I sat up all night. About 4 in the morning I called a travel agent and said, "I need to fly to Baltimore by this time tomorrow. Whatever you have to do, find a way."
Then I called my tour manager and said, "I'm leaving." Distance has always been a big thing for me. Not just physical distance, but emotional distance as well. By the time I reached Baltimore (15 minutes late for a funeral at which I was a pallbearer), I'd decided that I had completely lost touch with reality--and that I needed help.
This was not depression. This was not workaholism. I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job--in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it's not real, as if things aren't taking place. It's hard to explain, but you feel untethered.
And because nothing seems real, it's hard to connect with the world or the people in it because they're not there. You're not there. That's why I rarely saw my family back then: It's hard to care when everything feels as if it's taking place in your imagination. And if you're distant with people, especially women you're romantically involved with, they eventually leave.
What makes my case even worse is that every night I go out on stage and have this incredible emotional connection between me, the band, and the audience. Then, just like that, it's over. I go backstage, back to the bus, back to my hotel room, and sit there all by myself. That deep connection is yanked away in an instant. It's like breaking up with your girlfriend over and over again, every night.
A dissociative disorder worsens unless you take steps to fix it. First you treat it with medication, usually with mixed results. Then you learn to cope with it, which is a whole other challenge. I gained 70 pounds from the meds I was taking initially. You can see that pretty easily in photos of me from the past few years. I went from athlete to fat guy. Then I had to read in the tabloids about how fat I was.
Well, I'd rather lose the opportunity to run for elected office (an opportunity I'm ****************ing away by writing this) than feel ashamed about something that's not my fault. Actually, that's not true--it is my fault because I took so long to deal with it. But it's hard to make that choice. In the months after my grandmother's funeral, I felt much better at times, and I thought I would keep improving. But eventually I realized that wasn't happening. The lows were lower every time. My ability to relate to people was still deteriorating. Relationships that lasted several months went to monthlong relationships, which went to weeklong relationships, which went to, like, a date. That's all I could manage.
The end of 2005 and beginning of 2006 were pretty bad. I have gaps in my memory from the meds. During the first recording sessions for our new album, Saturday Nights, in June 2006, I was having a lot of trouble staying conscious. The meds put me in a sort of narcoleptic, insensible state. I would just collapse and pass out, but I could still hear everything that was going on around me, and sometimes I'd even speak.
I'd be asleep on the couch in the control room but I could hear [producer] Gil Norton and [drummer] Jim Bogios talking. One of them would say, "We should ask Adam," and the other would say, "He's out," but then I would answer the question. And yet I couldn't carry on conversations, open my eyes, or move. It was like I was dreaming the things happening around me and then reacting to them.
I felt a lot better that summer when we were on tour, but I deteriorated again in the fall and was truly disastrous by the end of '06. I was pretty much Brian Wilson . . . weighed in at 250 pounds . . . hadn't been out of bed for a long time. Finally, in December, I made my choice.
I'm not the suicidal type. I know life is a very rare thing. Especially my life. At 7 years old I stood in front of a mirror with a tennis racket playing "Can't Buy Me Love." And I made it. I'm a rock star. I respect that too much to toss it away. So I switched doctors and found a specialist who really understood my condition. It was terrifying because he suggested a number of dire possibilities. I remember him saying, "Electroshock therapy can be really helpful! Sure, there's memory loss, but the therapy can be really good for you!"
Okay, so he wasn't a bedside-manner guy, but he was really good about actually fixing things. He immediately changed my entire drug regimen. I stopped all of my psycho-active drugs cold turkey because it's easier to go through physical withdrawal than the mental withdrawal of going off something slowly. I spent Christmas '06 insanely sick--just horrific. I mean, I quit doing recreational drugs so long ago. I never thought I would go through a drug withdrawal again, 20 years later. I'm sitting there shaking, thinking, What the hell is this?
After New Year's I got a little better. We tried new meds and found the right stuff. Then I started working harder, really trying to figure my life out. I listened to some of our new music, specifically a song called "1492." It's about dissolution, a disintegrated life, where I was, where I thought I might be headed. Things really weren't much better early in 2007. I had a certain determination about things, some progress, but I knew I needed to stay home and get better. But I couldn't stop thinking about that song . . .
Saturday nights and Sunday Mornings is the double album that came out of my battle with dissociative disorder. Everything I went through is in there. The first part, Saturday Nights, is vicious and loud. Sunday Mornings is quieter--the day after. Saturday was recorded in New York City, Sunday in Berkeley. Two distinct sounds, two different coasts, two producers.
The first half is really visceral--the disintegration--and then it moves into anger and loss of faith. It's all about distance from people, even the songs on Sunday, which are beautiful but still bitter. I almost changed the title to I Don't Believe in Sundays. That's the vision: There is no day of rest, there is no Sabbath, there is no happy ending. I don't believe in any of that.
The thing for me was to make a real mark in life--to matter, to be here, to exist--and dissociation makes you feel like you don't exist. How do you make your mark if you're not even there? If you're invisible? There's a lot of Icarus imagery on this album. Which is not about suicide--just a guy who wants to fly so he'll matter. He doesn't want to feel separate from the world. Neither do I. So I made my choice. But making a decision doesn't fix anything. You still have to fix it.
I lost 62 pounds in 2007. I run, I box, I lift weights. I eat like an intelligent person. But most of all, I'm taking the right medication now. What I was on before made it impossible for me to lose weight, but when that changed? Well, like everything else, just because it's possible doesn't mean it's going to happen.
I made the decision, did the work, and lost the weight. Which is good, because, man, when the world's unreal to you and you're trying to recognize the guy in the mirror, it doesn't help if he weighs 70 pounds more than he's supposed to. But I feel great now. The work worked. I can feel all the time now. Life's like one big wonderful raw nerve.
That said, I am nervous about the future. I've never been this healthy before. Now I can have all the things I want. Though I'm not seeing anyone yet, I know I can stay with a woman now. I could see that person every day and be emotionally engaged. I could have kids (who would hopefully not be like me) and be there as they grow up. I have all these possibilities in front of me that were never there before. All of which is a pretty good reason to quit the band--and I've thought about it. I feel like a whole person. I'm no longer just the songs, which is how I felt for a long time. But we have this amazing music to play, and I want it out there so it's not misunderstood.
I also have hotel rooms to face during all those nights on tour. And I have a bottom I've reached that I don't want to reach again. Nothing is preventing me from going back down there except myself.
That's why I really didn't want to write about redemption in my songs, or even in this essay, because I don't think that's how it works. I've seen how it works: You decide to make changes in your life and you pay for that. It's costly. That's how it was for me. The decision to change in and of itself means nothing. It's the work that follows that means everything.
By Adam Duritz
May 2008
WebMD Feature from Men's Health
Counting Crows front man Adam Duritz reveals how he battled a debilitating mental disorder to record the best music of his career--and reclaim his life
It all fell apart within a span of 5 minutes, with one phone call and one text message. Of course there was the long downward slope leading to that moment, but I see that now only in retrospect.
The date was March 28, 2004. We'd had a gig in Perth the night before, the first of a tour that would take us across Australia. That morning, I received a call from a relative in America who told me that my grandmother had died.
Minutes later, I got a text from the girl I was in love with, saying, basically, "We've been around and around and I'm moving on with my life. You need to get on with yours."
I was my grandmother's firstborn grandchild. We were really close. But I hadn't visited her in more than 5 years. I was on the road all the time, so I had a lot of excuses. And even when she died, I still wouldn't be there. I had gigs. I wasn't there when my sister's twins were born 3 months early and almost didn't make it. Again, I had gigs. I've missed many things in my life because so many people's jobs depend on me being there. That, and because of a much darker problem I was facing.
So I'm talking to a friend about the funeral. "It's such a shame I can't go because I have to fly to Adelaide today," I say.
My friend says, "Dude, you are turning into such an jerk."
"What?" I say. I'm dumbfounded.
"Let's see," he says, "your mother's mother died and you lost the girl you love. When are you going to learn a lesson here? You have completely lost the plot. You've turned into such an jerk."
The jerk still flew to Adelaide later that day. The hotel gave me this weird penthouse room with sliding glass doors and a balcony surrounding it. That night, a massive thunderstorm swept through the city. I had all the doors open so I felt like I was hanging in the middle of it, 30 stories up, with lightning ripping all around me. I sat up all night. About 4 in the morning I called a travel agent and said, "I need to fly to Baltimore by this time tomorrow. Whatever you have to do, find a way."
Then I called my tour manager and said, "I'm leaving." Distance has always been a big thing for me. Not just physical distance, but emotional distance as well. By the time I reached Baltimore (15 minutes late for a funeral at which I was a pallbearer), I'd decided that I had completely lost touch with reality--and that I needed help.
This was not depression. This was not workaholism. I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job--in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it's not real, as if things aren't taking place. It's hard to explain, but you feel untethered.
And because nothing seems real, it's hard to connect with the world or the people in it because they're not there. You're not there. That's why I rarely saw my family back then: It's hard to care when everything feels as if it's taking place in your imagination. And if you're distant with people, especially women you're romantically involved with, they eventually leave.
What makes my case even worse is that every night I go out on stage and have this incredible emotional connection between me, the band, and the audience. Then, just like that, it's over. I go backstage, back to the bus, back to my hotel room, and sit there all by myself. That deep connection is yanked away in an instant. It's like breaking up with your girlfriend over and over again, every night.
A dissociative disorder worsens unless you take steps to fix it. First you treat it with medication, usually with mixed results. Then you learn to cope with it, which is a whole other challenge. I gained 70 pounds from the meds I was taking initially. You can see that pretty easily in photos of me from the past few years. I went from athlete to fat guy. Then I had to read in the tabloids about how fat I was.
Well, I'd rather lose the opportunity to run for elected office (an opportunity I'm ****************ing away by writing this) than feel ashamed about something that's not my fault. Actually, that's not true--it is my fault because I took so long to deal with it. But it's hard to make that choice. In the months after my grandmother's funeral, I felt much better at times, and I thought I would keep improving. But eventually I realized that wasn't happening. The lows were lower every time. My ability to relate to people was still deteriorating. Relationships that lasted several months went to monthlong relationships, which went to weeklong relationships, which went to, like, a date. That's all I could manage.
The end of 2005 and beginning of 2006 were pretty bad. I have gaps in my memory from the meds. During the first recording sessions for our new album, Saturday Nights, in June 2006, I was having a lot of trouble staying conscious. The meds put me in a sort of narcoleptic, insensible state. I would just collapse and pass out, but I could still hear everything that was going on around me, and sometimes I'd even speak.
I'd be asleep on the couch in the control room but I could hear [producer] Gil Norton and [drummer] Jim Bogios talking. One of them would say, "We should ask Adam," and the other would say, "He's out," but then I would answer the question. And yet I couldn't carry on conversations, open my eyes, or move. It was like I was dreaming the things happening around me and then reacting to them.
I felt a lot better that summer when we were on tour, but I deteriorated again in the fall and was truly disastrous by the end of '06. I was pretty much Brian Wilson . . . weighed in at 250 pounds . . . hadn't been out of bed for a long time. Finally, in December, I made my choice.
I'm not the suicidal type. I know life is a very rare thing. Especially my life. At 7 years old I stood in front of a mirror with a tennis racket playing "Can't Buy Me Love." And I made it. I'm a rock star. I respect that too much to toss it away. So I switched doctors and found a specialist who really understood my condition. It was terrifying because he suggested a number of dire possibilities. I remember him saying, "Electroshock therapy can be really helpful! Sure, there's memory loss, but the therapy can be really good for you!"
Okay, so he wasn't a bedside-manner guy, but he was really good about actually fixing things. He immediately changed my entire drug regimen. I stopped all of my psycho-active drugs cold turkey because it's easier to go through physical withdrawal than the mental withdrawal of going off something slowly. I spent Christmas '06 insanely sick--just horrific. I mean, I quit doing recreational drugs so long ago. I never thought I would go through a drug withdrawal again, 20 years later. I'm sitting there shaking, thinking, What the hell is this?
After New Year's I got a little better. We tried new meds and found the right stuff. Then I started working harder, really trying to figure my life out. I listened to some of our new music, specifically a song called "1492." It's about dissolution, a disintegrated life, where I was, where I thought I might be headed. Things really weren't much better early in 2007. I had a certain determination about things, some progress, but I knew I needed to stay home and get better. But I couldn't stop thinking about that song . . .
Saturday nights and Sunday Mornings is the double album that came out of my battle with dissociative disorder. Everything I went through is in there. The first part, Saturday Nights, is vicious and loud. Sunday Mornings is quieter--the day after. Saturday was recorded in New York City, Sunday in Berkeley. Two distinct sounds, two different coasts, two producers.
The first half is really visceral--the disintegration--and then it moves into anger and loss of faith. It's all about distance from people, even the songs on Sunday, which are beautiful but still bitter. I almost changed the title to I Don't Believe in Sundays. That's the vision: There is no day of rest, there is no Sabbath, there is no happy ending. I don't believe in any of that.
The thing for me was to make a real mark in life--to matter, to be here, to exist--and dissociation makes you feel like you don't exist. How do you make your mark if you're not even there? If you're invisible? There's a lot of Icarus imagery on this album. Which is not about suicide--just a guy who wants to fly so he'll matter. He doesn't want to feel separate from the world. Neither do I. So I made my choice. But making a decision doesn't fix anything. You still have to fix it.
I lost 62 pounds in 2007. I run, I box, I lift weights. I eat like an intelligent person. But most of all, I'm taking the right medication now. What I was on before made it impossible for me to lose weight, but when that changed? Well, like everything else, just because it's possible doesn't mean it's going to happen.
I made the decision, did the work, and lost the weight. Which is good, because, man, when the world's unreal to you and you're trying to recognize the guy in the mirror, it doesn't help if he weighs 70 pounds more than he's supposed to. But I feel great now. The work worked. I can feel all the time now. Life's like one big wonderful raw nerve.
That said, I am nervous about the future. I've never been this healthy before. Now I can have all the things I want. Though I'm not seeing anyone yet, I know I can stay with a woman now. I could see that person every day and be emotionally engaged. I could have kids (who would hopefully not be like me) and be there as they grow up. I have all these possibilities in front of me that were never there before. All of which is a pretty good reason to quit the band--and I've thought about it. I feel like a whole person. I'm no longer just the songs, which is how I felt for a long time. But we have this amazing music to play, and I want it out there so it's not misunderstood.
I also have hotel rooms to face during all those nights on tour. And I have a bottom I've reached that I don't want to reach again. Nothing is preventing me from going back down there except myself.
That's why I really didn't want to write about redemption in my songs, or even in this essay, because I don't think that's how it works. I've seen how it works: You decide to make changes in your life and you pay for that. It's costly. That's how it was for me. The decision to change in and of itself means nothing. It's the work that follows that means everything.
