The anxiety was like poison ivy. It took nothing to set off that mental itch-a chance remark, remembering an event from the day before-but once it started I found it impossible to stop the cycle. My thoughts twisted in a circle, my pulse hammered, I couldn't concentrate.

I yearned to get better; I told myself I was getting better. In fact, the depression was still there, like a powerful undertow. Sometimes it grabbed me, yanked me under; other times, I swam free.

The anxiety was like poison ivy. It took nothing to set off that mental itch-a chance remark, remembering an event from the day before-but once it started I found it impossible to stop the cycle. My thoughts twisted in a circle, my pulse hammered, I couldn't concentrate.

I don't know when the idea of suicide first occurred to me. In some ways, it had been in the back of my mind for years. Yet, oddly, I would never have thought of it as an option. It was the perceived lack of options-the final, unacceptable solution to a grave and insoluble dilemma. I had always thought of it in the same way: If all else fails, if I have nowhere else to turn, I can do this.

Even at this stage, my preparations were like strapping on a parachute in an airplane that was about to crash; the whole time I was preparing to hurl myself out the door, I clung to the hope that something would happen at the last minute to forestall that terrible necessity I felt-not hostility, as psychiatric texts would say, or vengeful rage, or a desire for attention. This was done in secret, out of a need to alleviate pain which was as implacable as thirst.

Having a mood disorder is not synonymous with having artistic talent, but it is true that people in the so-called creative professions-writers, actors, artists, musicians-have a higher than normal incidence of such illnesses, and there are also a disproportionate number of alcoholics in these fields whose drinking may be an attempt to medicate the anxiety of depression.

Better to inflict pain on myself than to let other people do it.