“. . . and Dore Schary,” I added. I accepted my Oscar and stumbled off the stage.
When I got back to my seat, Dona said, “That’s so wonderful. How do you feel?”
How did I feel? I felt more depressed than I had ever felt in my life. I felt as though I had stolen something from people who deserved it more than I did. I felt like a phony.
The awards went on, but from that moment, what was happening on the stage became a blur. Ronald Colman was holding an Oscar and talking about A Double Life. Loretta Young was thanking everyone for The Farmer’s Daughter. Everything seemed to go on forever. I could not wait to get out of there. On what should have been the happiest night of my life, I was suicidal. I have to see a psychiatrist, I thought. Something is wrong with me.
The psychiatrist’s name was Dr. Judd Marmer. He had been recommended to me by friends who had consulted him. I knew that he had many patients in show business.
Dr. Marmer was a large, earnest man, with silver-gray hair and probing, blue eyes.
“Mr. Sheldon, what can I do for you?”
I thought of how I had run away from the meeting with the psychologist at Northwestern University.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“Why did you come to see me?”
“I have a problem and I don’t know what it is. I have a job I like at MGM. I’m making a lot of money. I won an Oscar a few days ago and—” I shrugged. “I’m just not happy. I’m depressed. I fought hard to get there, and I succeeded and . . . there’s no ‘there.’”
“I see. Do you get depressed often?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “but everyone does. I’m probably wasting your time.”
“I have plenty of time. Tell me about some of the things that have depressed you in the past.”
I thought about all the times when I should have felt happy, and instead felt miserable, and all the times when I should have been depressed and was happy.
“Well, when I was in New York, a songwriter named Max Rich . . .” I talked and he listened.
“Have you ever felt suicidal?”
The sleeping pills from Afremow’s drugstore . . . You can’t stop me, because if you stop me now I’ll do it tomorrow . . .
“Yes.”
“Do you feel a loss of self-esteem?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a feeling of worthlessness?”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel that you don’t deserve your success?”
He was reading my mind. “Yes.”
“Do you have feelings of inadequacy and guilt?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me.” He leaned forward and pressed a button on the intercom. “Miss Cooper, tell my next patient that there will be a delay.”
I felt a cold chill.
Dr. Marmer turned to look at me. “Mr. Sheldon, you’re suffering from manic depression.”
I hated the sound of it. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It’s a brain deviation that involves episodes of serious mania and depression, where moods swing from euphoria to despair. It feels as though there’s a thin screen between you and the world. So, in a sense, you’re an outsider looking in.”
My mouth was dry. “How serious is it?” I asked.
“Manic-depressive illness can have a devastating effect on people. At least two million Americans suffer from it, one in ten families. For some reason, it seems to strike artistic people. Vincent Van Gogh had it, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, to name a few.”
That made me feel no better. That was their problem.
“How long will it take to cure it?” I asked.
There was a long pause. “There is no cure.”
I started to panic. “What?”
“The best we can do is to try to control it with drugs.” He hesitated. “The problem is that sometimes there are bad side effects. Approximately one in five people who are manic-depressive eventually commit suicide. Twenty to fifty percent attempt suicide at least once. It’s a major contributing factor in thirty thousand suicides a year.”
I sat there, listening, feeling suddenly sick.
“There will be times when, with no warning, you will lose control of your words and your actions.”