《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 17 (33):走出抑鬱大綱

And I will never forget Susan's face when she rushed into my apartment about an hour after my emergency phone call and saw me in a heap on the couch. The image of my pain mirrored back at me through her visible fear for my life is still one of the scariest memories for me out of all those scary years. I huddled in a ball while Susan made the phone calls and found me a psychiatrist who would give me a consultation that very day, to discuss the possibility of prescribing antidepressants. I listened to Susan's one-sided conversation with the doctor, listened to her say, "I'm afraid my friend is going to seriously hurt herself." I was afraid, too.

我永遠忘不了蘇珊衝進我公寓時的表情，當時大約是我打了緊急電話過後一個小時，她見我癱倒在沙發上。透過她擔憂我的生命所流露出的表情，我的痛苦反映到自己的眼中，此意象對我來說，依然是那段恐怖歲月中最最恐怖的記憶。我縮成一團，蘇珊打電話找精神科醫生，讓他當天給我診療，討論開抗憂鬱劑的可能性。我聽着蘇珊和醫生的單邊對話，聽她說“我擔心我的朋友會嚴重傷害自己！”我也很擔心。

When I went to see the psychiatrist that afternoon, he asked me what had taken me so long to get help—as if I hadn't been trying to help myself already for so long. I told him my objections and reservations about antidepressants. I laid copies of the three books I'd already published on his desk, and I said, "I'm a writer. Please don't do anything to harm my brain." He said, "If you had a kidney disease, you wouldn't hesitate to take medication for it—why are you hesitating with this?" But, see, that only shows how ignorant he was about my family; a Gilbert might very well not medicate a kidney disease, seeing that we're a family who regard any sickness as a sign of personal, ethical, moral failure.

當天下午去看精神科醫生時，他問我爲何拖這麼久才尋求協助——好像這麼久以來我沒嘗試自救似的。我對他說明我對抗憂鬱劑的反對與保留立場。我把自己已出版的三本書擺在他桌上，說：“我是作家。請別做任何傷害我腦子的事。”他說：“假如你患了腎臟病，你不會對服藥有所猶豫——卻爲什麼對此猶豫？”然而，你瞧，這隻顯示他對我的家族一無所知；吉爾伯特家族成員很可能不去服藥治療腎臟病，因爲這家人將疾病視爲個人、倫理、道德失敗的表現。

He put me on a few different drugs—Xanax, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Busperin—until we found the combination that didn't make me nauseated or turn my libido into a dim and distant memory. Quickly, in less than a week, I could feel an extra inch of daylight opening in my mind. Also, I could finally sleep. And this was the real gift, because when you cannot sleep, you cannot get yourself out of the ditch—there's not a chance. The pills gave me those recuperative night hours back, and also stopped my hands from shaking and released the vise grip around my chest and the panic alert button from inside my heart.

他讓我試着服用幾種不同的藥——“Xanax”，“Zoloft”，“Wellbutrin”，“Busperin”——直到我們找到不使我嘔吐或把性慾變成遙遠記憶的組合。很快地，不到一個禮拜，我感覺到心中開啓了一線曙光。此外，我終於睡得着了。這真叫人欣喜，因爲你睡不着的時候，便無法爬出陰溝——毫無可能。藥丸使我重拾恢復體力的夜間時分，也讓我的手不再顫抖，鬆開胸口的緊張和心頭的恐慌。

Still, I never relaxed into taking those drugs, though they helped immediately. It never mattered who told me these medications were a good idea and perfectly safe; I always felt conflicted about it. Those drugs were part of my bridge to the other side, there's no question about it, but I wanted to be off them as soon as possible. I'd started taking the medication in January of 2003. By May, I was already diminishing my dosage significantly. Those had been the toughest months, anyhow—the last months of the divorce, the last ragged months with David. Could I have endured that time without the drugs, if I'd just held out a little longer? Could I have survived myself, by myself? I don't know. That's the thing about a human life—there's no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.

儘管如此，服用這些藥物從未使我安心，儘管它們立即奏效。無論誰告訴我這些藥物是好主意，而且安全無虞，我卻始終覺得矛盾。毫無疑問，這些藥是我通往另一頭的橋樑，但我卻想盡快擺脫它們。我在2003年1月開始服藥。到了5月，我的劑量已大大減少。那幾個月卻是最艱難的時期——離婚的最後幾個月，與大衛之間殘破的最後幾個月。假設我再撐久一點，我能否不靠藥物度過那段時期？我能否靠自己存活下來？這就是人生——沒有控制組；若更改任何變量，我們便無從曉得自己會變成什麼樣子 。

I do know these drugs made my misery feel less catastrophic. So I'm grateful for that. But I'm still deeply ambivalent about mood-altering medications. I'm awed by their power, but concerned by their prevalence. I think they need to be prescribed and used with much more restraint in this country, and never without the parallel treatment of psychological counseling. Medicating the symptom of any illness without exploring its root cause is just a classically hare-brained Western way to think that anyone could ever get truly better. Those pills might have saved my life, but they did so only in conjunction with about twenty other efforts I was making simultaneously during that same period to rescue myself, and I hope to never have to take such drugs again. Though one doctor did suggest that I might have to go on and off antidepressants many times in my life because of my "tendency toward melancholy." I hope to God he's wrong. I intend to do everything I can to prove him wrong, or at least to fight that melancholic tendency with every tool in the shed. Whether this makes me self-defeatingly stubborn, or self-preservingly stubborn, I cannot say.

但我知道這些藥物稍微減輕了我的痛苦。我對此不勝感激。然而我對改變情緒的藥物仍深感矛盾。我懾於它們的力量，卻對它們的泛濫感到不安。我認爲在我這個國家應由醫師開立處方給藥，應當更適可而止地使用 ，而且必須與心理諮詢並行治療。以藥物治療任何病狀，卻未探勘其根源所在，是輕率的典型西方想法，認爲任何人都能因此好起來。這些藥丸或許救了我的命，卻是結合了我在那段時間內同時所做的其他二十種努力才得以奏效，而我希望永遠無須再服用這些藥。儘管有醫生指出，我一輩子或許得斷斷續續地服用多次抗憂鬱劑，因爲我有“憂鬱的傾向”。但願他是錯的。我打算儘自己所能證明他是錯的，或至少用盡一切手段對抗憂鬱傾向。究竟我的頑固是自毀或自保，我也還不知道。

But there I am.

Eat, Pray, Love

不過我就在那兒。