Somehow, our fun holiday had culminated in the very real possibility of his being involuntarily committed to a Romanian psychiatric ward. Visions of squeaking iron beds in cold mildewed halls, where the bodies that once belonged to some of Ceaușescu’s forgotten dissidents might still shiver, tapping fingers, mumbling the beginnings of words and then giving up. He started insisting that he was actually perfectly sane, which is very difficult to do convincingly once the issue’s in doubt.
Treating depression with S.S.R.I.s is only slightly less haphazard than trying to dislodge the sad parts of the brain with bullets.
