Dosed by Kaitlin Bell Barnett

Author:Kaitlin Bell Barnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press

Alex, age eighteen

LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK / 2006

Alex’s troubles reappeared precisely as he was getting ready to move on, when his life seemed, in some ways, to be taking a turn for the better. He had attended an elite, all-boys’ Catholic high school where most of the student body was far wealthier than he, a distinction that dogged him, as he thought the other boys failed to recognize their own privilege and lacked genuine intellectual engagement. He made excellent grades, but was frustrated that, unlike most of his classmates, he had to choose the college that provided the best financial aid package rather than the best education. To save money by living at home, he applied only to schools in the New York area. As it turned out, the best offer came from a private college just a few miles from his old high school, which meant Alex would have to make the same two-hour commute he had made all during senior year, when the family had moved to Brooklyn so that his stepfather could take a job at a real estate office there.

Alex was disappointed to settle for a less prestigious school than he thought his talents and accomplishments merited, but he was optimistic, at least, about the way things were going with his stepfather. Later, with the help of therapy, Alex would classify his stepdad’s behavior toward him and his mother as emotionally abusive. For the moment, Alex simply considered him cruel and bullying. The taunts and putdowns subsided toward the end of his senior year, however, when it became clear that he would be putting himself through college with part-time jobs and loans, and therefore didn’t pose a financial burden. His stepdad even came to Alex’s high school graduation. Then, two weeks later, the spells set in.

For thirty minutes or so, a couple of times a day, Alex felt mired in hopelessness and self-loathing. During the first week of these episodes, he lost ten pounds, too anxious and unhappy to eat. He was working that summer on his former high school’s maintenance crew, helping landscape playing fields for the school’s grand and expanding campus on Long Island. The property had two baseball fields and was ringed with a line of trees. Alex spent most of his time on the periphery, weeding. He worked alone, which had the advantage of allowing him to fall to pieces when the episodes came on. He would sob in the weeds until he felt strong enough to pull himself together.

The episodes increased throughout the summer until one day Alex counted nine in a single day. He didn’t connect these dark, brooding moods to the problems he had had as a ten-year-old when, seemingly out of the blue, he had become obsessed with the thought that he was adopted. Nor did he draw a connection to the fact that he was no longer taking antidepressants. Alex judged himself to have managed fine during the two and a half years since his psychiatrist had him taper off Luvox.

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