The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1996. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

Okay, so here's how it works:

I wake up about eight, so hungover that I touch my head to confirm that iron spike that someone's driven into it. I groggily reach for the phone, call my boss to tell them yes, I'm still sick, I don't know, I can't seem able to shake this bug, I hang up the phone and go back to sleep.

I wake again about noon, light a cigarette, and try to figure out one, just one solitary reason why the hell I should get out of bed today. I actually search my mind, come up with a list of things I could go do, things I could accomplish, things that just seem like necessary things to do, like eat, or go to the bathroom. But none of these things seem important enough, so I stay in bed.

I turn on the TV and continue smoking and eat whatever food might be left over from snacking drunk the night before and left at the bedside. I watch dozens of commercials throughout the afternoon about how they have lawyers on their side, so why shouldn't you, and how DeVry Business School is for a higher degree of learning and how I can declare bankruptcy with no money down and no credit? Bad credit? No problem! and how the Money Store is more than happy to consolidate all my bills into one, easy to pay monthly statement and I sit in bed and think about what a piece of shit I am, and how it really wouldn't matter if I was dead or not, sure, a number of people would be upset, but they'd get over it, and they'd get to a point where they would only remember me one day a year, probably the anniversary of my death, and the other 364 days a year they'd be just fine.

Invariably at some point in the afternoon, some commercial will come on like that AT&T one where the whole family will surprise their parents with a birthday conference call, or that stupid fuckin' Saturn commercial where that girl's buying her first new car and everyone at the plant starts applauding and they take her picture, and this commercial will trigger a fit of crying that will last sometimes for an hour straight. I cannot control this, and the entire time I cry, I relive in my mind every single bad thing I have ever done to another person throughout my entire life.

About five or six I get up, put on some clothes, walk down to the corner and get some food, decide what I'm going to do that night. No matter what it is I decide, I always walk by the liquor store on the way home and decide instead to just stay home tonight. I pick up two 40 ouncers of malt liquor, a pack of cigarettes, and spend the evening watching sitcoms and drinking, drinking and watching, and about ten I start playing my stereo really, really loud, CD's I know beforehand depress me, sing along, until midnight or so, by which I usually have fallen asleep from the liquor. Eight hours later the whole process starts all over again.

I have been battling depression since the age of eight, but it wasn't until last year that I finally recognized it for what it is. Since that moment, I have been fascinated with going back through my life, pinpointing and recognizing those periods in my past where I was going through depression and didn't realize it, trying to disseminate the symptoms and reasons in the vain hope that I can conquer it.

I think the greatest thing that I want you to know, that I want you to understand and take home with you tonight and remember, is that I am not a sad person by nature. I rarely feel sorry for myself, especially in the last two years. I don't like to languish in my own inner angst and wear all black and quiet moan to all my friends about how sad I am. I personally consider myself a rather happy guy.

But I get these... fits, I guess you'd call them. It's like the flu -- something triggers it, and much like when you go to bed one night feeling fine and chipper and healthy and you wake up the next morning with a sore throat and a fever and think you're going to die, so I too go to bed one night feeling fine and wake up the next morning lethargic and uncaring and I think I'm going to die.

I don't know what triggers these fits, but I'm starting to get some guesses. Losing a job always triggers it. When I was in college, failing a class would always trigger it. Sometimes losing a girlfriend has triggered it -- but then again, sometimes not. And, as I've said, sometimes nothing at all will be wrong in my life -- things can be going wonderfully in any and all facets of my existence you could name, and I still wake up one day and just... don't get out of bed.

These incidents always last for a duration of one to six weeks. At no time can I do something specific to jump out of it, because, believe me, I've tried just about everything. I drink like a fish during these incidents -- amounts I can scarcely believe later when I look back on it.

I have never seen a doctor about this, because 1) I have some sort of weird mistrust and scorn for psychologists that I've never quite figured out the root of, but must have something to do with inept counselors in grade school; 2) I never wanted to be one of those people who will stand up at an open mike and say shit like, "Okay, I wrote this next piece while I was in the hospital, suffering from depression," like they're proud of the fact -- I mean, I don't understand the concept of being proud of the fact that at one point you were suicidal, just like I can't understand being proud that you were once an alcoholic or you were once addicted to heroin or you once were a child abuser; and 3) of course, I haven't had health insurance in about ten years, so I couldn't have gone anyway.

Likewise, I have never taken medication for these incidents, again because 1) I am deathly afraid that pharmaceuticals will kill off my creative drive and serve as some sort of chemical lobotomy; and 2) I never wanted to be one of those people who actually knew what it felt like to be on Prozac. The concept of taking Prozac is a great one to make jokes about, and somehow, actually taking it dilutes most of the humor involved with the joke.

I do not use these incidents as an attempt to get attention -- indeed, the opposite could be said, in that, for the most part, I spend the entire time in my apartment, I lock my bedroom door if I have roommates, I don't go out with my friends and I take my phone off the hook. In the course of my life, because of these fits I have lost three jobs, one girlfriend, and have attempted suicide on two separate occasions. I tell you this because... well, I don't know. I just have this feeling that you are sitting there, thinking to yourself that this has been a self-imposed depression, and I feel this need to convince you that it is not.

I tell you this particular story tonight for a fairly simple reason -- over the course of the last few weeks, I have come to realize that these simple little stories that I started writing for Sweet Alice originally to ease my writing block on my novel have turned into these great little snippets of confession, theory and entertainment, and is probably the best personal essay work I've ever written. I have decided to publish a book of the twelve best stories I've read here, and I wanted that to include a story on this particular topic tonight.

We all have our demons to wrestle, and I won't presume to know what yours are. This tonight was one of mine. Regular listeners have already heard of a number more, and future listeners will hear of a whole host yet to come. Just as I don't pretend that I can understand all of your demons, so too I don't expect all of you to understand mine. However, I leave you with this thought -- the next time you hear a voice on channel 9 telling you if you don't get help at Charter, get help somewhere, stop giving the TV the finger for a minute, stop and realize what that commercial really means, and realize that it only takes a minute to call that friend that you haven't heard from in a number of weeks.