THE AFTERMATH
restaurant and order a simple meal! Once I just stayed home for three full days and nights, unable to leave my home or cope with ordinary things. It didn’t help that I kept this a secret from dad, feeling somewhat ashamed. Eventually, I was hospitalized. The prescribed treatment a series of electric shocks. After several treatments, I temporarily lost a great deal of my short-term memory. It seemed to help at the time, but, in retrospect, I do not think I helped myself much with this course of action. After my fifth treatment, about five years after leaving the army, I took the time to express what I thought was the reason for my depression. Once you read it, I think you will agree. I tucked this away in the locked drawer of my office desk for the rest of my life. (pages 200-220) After the hospital treatments, I stopped seeing the doctor for quite a while. I was cured, but eventually, the feelings returned, and I just could not break the cycle. I found another psychiatrist who set me straight for the rest of my life. His name was Doctor Sadwin. With his care, I was offered a choice: prolonged psychotherapy, a kind of talk therapy, or a new medicine recently avail- able, called Imipramine; it was the first of the drugs released to target control of serotonin in the brain. This drug was my savior. My depression gradually subsided. I remained on that medicine every day for the rest of my life. As the drug came to be more refined, I even- tually switched to Prozac; it conquered my depression, and I was ready to move forward. During that time, I did some dating. Among my prospects, I continued to corre- spond for a while with the beautiful Spanish girl I met in the islands. Her handwriting was magnificent; every single letter was a work of art. At some point, the letters stopped. After waiting several months, I wrote her sister to find out that she had died. I have no idea why. I usually dated girls from Philadelphia or Wilmington, rarely my hometown of Chester; however, I did have one girlfriend in Ches- ter who, were we both older, I might have married. Her name was Ruth Grotsky. I also had a few girlfriends while I was
The war was over, and the economy was in full swing. Rationing was still in place. Cars lined up at our station for two gallons of fuel. That didn’t get them too far. They got 6-10 miles to the gallon in the late 1940’s. The war took its toll on everyone. Just as my brother, Izzy, predicted, I returned to the same street, but it was a different world. My parents had aged, too. It took me months to readjust to civil- ian life. One of the habits I picked up in the Army was the persistent use of profanity in just about every sentence. Learning to stop was no easy task. Enrolled in Temple University, I got back on track with my education. I no longer yearned to be a doctor. Truth be told, I may not have been a good enough student. I decided to pursue a fresh start with a Bach- elor of Science Degree, in Marketing. The program included courses in marketing, advertising, statistics, logic and my favor- ite, English. With a full load of classes, I also worked full time. One of the places I worked at was The American Baptist Publishing Company, wrapping packages. I also worked at the family business. I‘m sure I must have clocked 30-40 hours each week besides whatever I did for school. With the war over, surrounded by a jubilant America, it took some time before I realized that I developed a severe case of depression. During those years it was taboo to visit a psychiatrist. The truth is I worked those extra jobs to have some money to pay the doctors without alerting my parents. I just couldn’t seem to stop the roller coaster of depression I was going through. I needed help. My problem was sublime. How do you describe a feeling? Anyone who has ever faced severe depression would undoubtedly understand how dangerous and overarching this disease can be; it can affect your entire world view. At one point I could not even go to a
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