Foxhole-prayers, antidepressants and a trip to the junkyard with a baseball bat helped award-winning journalist Christine Stapleton get a grip on her mental illnesses - alcoholism, depression and bipolar. Christine shares her experiences - from erotic dreams about George Clooney to dark plots of suicide-by-Prius-fumes - in this collection of her weekly columns, Kicking Depression, from The Palm Beach Post. The mentally ill are sick, Christine reminds us, not bad, weak or fond of "happy pill" wisecracks.
I was born in a small, rural community in northwest Wisconsin in 1958. I decided to be a writer at an early age, about the time I became obsessed with reading the backs of cereal boxes.
My first typewriter was an ancient Underwood. My next was an Olympia that weighed as much as a Mini Cooper. I graduated to an IBM Selectric but by the time I had mastered the erase ribbon I began writing on my first computer. It had a black screen about the size of a pack of cigarettes and little fluorescent letters. Then came the TRS-80, aka the Trash 80. Remember the couplers? Remember the old fashioned phones that worked with the couplers?
