It wasn’t the sudden realization of the many ways that I had managed scupper so many of the good things in my life that finally sent me to seek a guiding hand last autumn. Many of those around me – those perhaps inclined to be generous – might find it fair to describe the sum of the last 25 years of my life as a bas-relief of good intentions with a few peaks and many troughs. Others have remained content to have a little snipe here and there. I’m no longer concerned with the snide remarks of the latter and, with due respect, I’m not here to thank the goodwill of those who have been better disposed towards me. To come to terms with the fact that I might be suffering from some form of chronic, aggravated depression was hard work in itself; it took months of introspection and spiritual peelings before I had the courage to call my doctor. Having spent years heaping denial over denial, I was, of course, one of the last in my entourage to face the issue and I suppose not many around me were surprised once I had started to come clean with them.

In all honesty, I think that the smoldering pestilence of this black dog has been with me since my early ‘teens although, for understandable reasons, those early indicators were quite probably misinterpreted at the time as teenage angst. I appreciate that at moments my family and closer friends must have felt reasons for concern, as I waxed and waned with the various tides in my life, but at no moment has there been a collapse on my part. In fact there was no detonating factor of any kind that led me to seek help last year. Rather it was the result of a casual comment – without the slightest hint of malice – made by Barbara over a garden lunch at Taheer and Mafalda’s early last spring. She lit a slow fuse within me that, as I observed and projected it in my mind’s eye over the following months, seemed not to lead to a keg and a bang but rather appeared to hiss and spit at the heels of my timid pace to presumably end in a slight puff of nothing at the end of my life. This is the image that shook me.

The day last October I went to see my GP I had no idea what it was I was going to tell him and I was quite apprehensive of what it was I was walking myself in to. Was there a role I had to play? Mark Twain once wrote that if you always tell the truth you will never have to remember anything and this seemed like reasonable advice in this instance. I suppose I must have talked for the better part of the thirty minutes that Catsalut considers adequate for a one-to-one with your doctor; he interrupted me a few times to inquire about this detail or that but mostly he let me carry on. What we then discussed remains between him and I but suffice to say he immediately put me on a course of mid-range anti-depressants and referred me on to a mental health clinic that I was to contact over the coming days to request an appointment. He took the time to talk me through the meds and what their side effects might be – none too severe but none of them all that nice – and my subsequent experience with them has proved him right. I left his surgery, prescription in hand, and went straight to the nearest chemist’s to get my initial thirty day course of pills. The sullen pharmacist handed me a box and said “that will be fifty-three please.” I instinctively handed him my credit card. He slid it back to me over the counter and hissed sarcastically “for fifty-three cents?” My look of surprise must have been clear and he must have also noticed the Latin-American lilt to my Spanish; as I dug in my right hand trouser pocket for change I seem to remember him venting under his breath about the subsidization of healthcare, taxes, all those abusive immigrants and such. I thanked him and smiled a polite “fuck you!” The subscription I had was for an initial 30 + 30 days on a certain dose, with a subsequent subscription doubling the dose for month three. I’ll get back to this.

The clinic that Dr Arenas had asked me to get an appointment at happened to be just across the road from my flat as luck would have it. I called them the next day to explain I had been referred to them but they declined to give me an appointment over the phone and asked me to show up in person with all relevant documents. I gathered my affairs, went down the six flights of stairs, hung a right on leaving my building on Giriti, another right on Argentería and crossed Laetana at the lights. I walked passed Dunne’s and the bingo, pushed open the heavy doors of number 19 and walked up to the first floor. I rang the bell and was buzzed in to a scene from “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”. The banks of ply-wood seats were occupied by rows of people with glassy eyes who seemed to be on heavy meds of one sort or another. I’m quite sure I drew a breath because I remember quite clearly the blood draining from my face and wondering whether this was really where I now belonged. The receptionist sits behind an armoured bank of wood and a pane of thick glass that rises up above chest level all the way to the ceiling. There is a decent sized slot for prescriptions, I suppose, and above that half a dozen holes drilled through the glass at head level for one to shout through. Above the receptionist’s head, taped to the inside of the glass, I remember a sign in Catalan stating that neither violence nor aggression to any members of staff would be tolerated and might be prosecuted to the full extent of the law if deemed appropriate. The pane of glass looked stained with dried spittle. Feelings of hitting rock bottom, indeed!

As it happens my condition has been steered away from all of that and counseling has yawned and had me join the ever growing herd of oat-fed, middle class brats who suffer from “ennui” and seem to need a cuddle. I was told not to worry too much with regards the happy pills; if I felt they made a difference I should carry on taking them. To be frank, I’ve never felt “the love” and all I can say they actually ever gave me was a lingering head-ache and the shits with Germanic punctuality at minute 45. So I left them behind. I did however have a moment of doubt the other day as my last box was coming to an end and went around to the chemist’s, prescription in hand, only to be told that the prescription had expired and I would have to be see my doctor in person to get it renewed. I took it as a sign.

I wasn’t meant to be running late when I left the flat at eight yesterday morning but the next 75 minutes of my day played themselves out in the manner of a farcical comedy sequence. I’d taken the last of my happy pills with my morning juice, as an act of closure more than anything, and left the house with plenty of time, a fifty euro note, a pocket full of coppers, an expired rail card, a bank card and two credit cards that – as luck would have it – none of whom wanted to play. I had a coffee and brioche at “La Boulangerie” and pretty soon the caffeine and meds started to kick in with a vengeance. I pegged it up the hill to Muntaner and dropped down into the station to buy my return ticket from one of the machines but none of them wanted to take the fifty off me. The Benny Hill tune started to play in my mind as I then spent the next 20 minutes running around the neighborhood trying to get someone to break a fifty for me…at eight fifteen in the morning; no luck, I was late for work and starting to get desperate. I ran back to the station, emptied my pockets and managed to get a single ticket, plugging the machine with shrapnel to the impatient sounds of a line of huffers and puffers standing behind me. The twenty minute train journey was agony and I thought I might have an accident at one point. When I got off at my station the shuttle bus would not take me as the single ticket I had bought did not cover the next zone. Off to the nearest café to buy a couple of packs of nasty fags, I then managed to get on the next bus, Yakety Sax playing hard and fast in my head, and just managed to slip into base at the other end. Of course I was late for work!