That Old Devil, Depression

A retrospective of macabre illustrations prompts memories of inherited despair.

The Administrator by Drew Douglas

Well, he wants you to hate and he wants you to fear,
Wants you to fear something that's not even there.
He'll give you your hate, and he'll give you his lies,
He'll give you the weapons to run out and die.
And you give him your soul.

—Talkin’ Devil, Bob Dylan.

PART I: Driven to Distraction

Love and depression share many characteristics; they are both, in their way, equally seductive. The seduction of love lies in the ecstasy of infatuation; the seduction of depression lurks in its distractions of despair. I say ‘distractions’, plural, because depression is a hermaphrodite that repurposes the agitated brain—already driven to distraction in the disordered sense of the word—as its reproductive organs. A parasite of unlimited libido, it spawns infinitely in the mind as impulses toward distraction of all kinds: sexual promiscuity (that shackles one in shame), self-medication (that numbs one in torpor), and thrill seeking behaviour (that inevitably imprisons on…