I emerge from my three-week-long ECT treatment to discover that I am not only this Princess Leia creature but also several-sized dolls, various T-shirts and posters, some cleansing items, and a bunch of other merchandise. It turns out I was even a kind of pin-up—a fantasy that geeky teenage boys across the globe jerked off to me with some frequency. How’s that for a newborn-how-do-you-do damsel in very little cinematic distress?
To wit, one afternoon in Berkeley I found myself walking into a shop that sold rocks and gems.
“Oh my God, aren’t you…” the salesman behind the counter exclaimed.
And before he could go any further, I modestly said, “Yes, I am.”
“Oh my God! I thought about you every day from when I was twelve to when I was twenty-two.”
And instead of asking what happened at twenty-two, I said, “Every day?”
He shrugged and said, “Well, four times a day.”
Welcome to the land of too much information.
On top of all this celebrity parents and Star Wars stuff, apparently I was once married to a brilliant songwriter, a rock icon of sorts. I mean, this is a man who wrote an array of beautiful songs, and even a few songs that were about me. How incredible is that? And get this—I had always been a really big fan of his music. Huge. As a teen, it was just him and Joni Mitchell. And, as I couldn’t marry Joni, I married him. I loved this man’s lyrics. They were one of the reasons I fell in love with words.
How can you not love someone who writes “medicine is magical/and magical is art/ think of the boy in the bubble/and the baby with the baboon heart”? The answer for me was I couldn’t. I couldn’t not love him. I apprenticed myself to the best in him and bickered with the worst. And to top it off, we were the same size. I used to say to him, “Don’t stand next to me at the party—people will think we’re salt and pepper shakers.”
And wait’ll you hear this—I’ve written four novels. Seriously! And two of them were best sellers. My first novel, Postcards from the Edge, was adapted into a film directed by Mike Nichols, starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep, basically playing a sometimes better, sometimes worse, dolled-up version of my mother and myself.)
I could go on and on—because there are certainly a lot of other cool things. The coolest being that I’m the mother of this amazing daughter named Billie. She’s my most extraordinary creation.
It occurs to me that I might sound as though I’m boasting. I promise you I’m not. It’s just that ECT has forced me to rediscover what amounts to the sum total of my life. I find that a helluva lot of it fills me with a kind of giddy gratitude. Some of my memories will never return. They are lost—along with the crippling feeling of defeat and hopelessness. Not a tremendous price to pay when you think about it. Totally worth it!
But now that we’ve established that I’ve had ECT, I have a list that I thought I’d share. A list of the electroshock treatment gang who have also benefitted from ECT.
I do this because I find that I frequently feel better about myself when I discover that we’re not alone, but that there are, in fact, a number of other people who ail as we do—that there are actually a number of “accomplished” individuals who find it necessary to seek treatment for some otherwise insurmountable inner unpleasantness.
I not only feel better about myself because these people are also fucked up (and I guess this gives us a sense of extended community), but I feel better because look how much these fellow fuckups managed to accomplish!
So here are a portion of the folks with whom I share electrocompany:
Judy Garland
Bill Styron
Sylvia Plath
Cole Porter
Lou Reed
Vivien Leigh
Yves St. Laurent
Connie Francis
Ernest Hemingway
Dick Cavett
Kitty Dukakis
I should also add that a lot of these people also show up in the alcohol addict line-up and bipolar crew (chapter nine), giving some of these multi-listers and myself the admirable distinction of having a trifecta score.
These fine folks are:
Bill Styron
Vivien Leigh
Frances Farmer
Sylvia Plath
Ernest Hemingway
Dick Cavett
Kitty Dukakis
Yves St. Laurent
Cole Porter
Why did I feel I needed ECT? Well, it had been recommended by several psychiatrists over the years, to treat my depression. But I couldn’t bring myself to consider it as it seemed too barbaric. My only exposure to it was Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which wasn’t exactly an enticing example. From the seizures to the biting down on a stick to the convulsions, it looked traumatic, dangerous, and humiliating. I mean what do we know for certain about it? Aren’t there a bunch of risks? What if something goes wrong and my brain blows up?
But I’d been feeling overwhelmed and pretty defeated. I didn’t necessarily feel like dying—but I’d been feeling a lot like not being alive. The second reason I decided to get ECT is that I was depressed. Profoundly depressed. Part of this could be attributed to my mood disorder, which was, no doubt, probably the source of the emotional intensity. That’s what can take simple sadness and turn it into sadness squared. It’s what revs up the motor of misery, guns the engine of an unpleasant experience, filling it with rocket fuel and blasting into a place in the stratosphere that is oh-so-near to something like a suicidal tendency—a place where the wish to continue living in this painful place is all but completely absent.
So, when weighing the choice between ECT or DOA, the decision is easy to make. Not only because of my daughter and the rest of my family and friends, but for my formerly high-functioning self. In the end the choice couldn’t have been easier to make. Electricity as opposed to game over. I decided to ride the lightning instead of extinguishing the light of life that had once shone out of my eyes. I keep my wick lit for my daughter, Billie, for my mother, my brother—for my entire family—and for each friend I’ve made with both hands, one heart, two moods, and a head crammed with memory. Memory I must now reacquaint myself with.
Perhaps now is as good a time as any to share with you the message that currently greets all callers on my answering machine, crafted by my friend Garrett:
“Hello and welcome to Carrie’s voice mail. Due to recent electroconvulsive therapy, please pay close attention to the following options. Leave your name, number, and a brief history as to how Carrie knows you, and she’ll get back to you if this jogs what’s left of her memory. Thank you for calling and have a great day.”
Each night I do a show where I entertain with tales of my dysfunction. I’ve done the same show dozens of times in an assortment of cities, yet somehow—depending on the audience—it’s always a little different. Adding myself to the dearth of damaged celebrities that seem compelled to share their tales of their time spent circling the drain.
Wishful Drinking—both the show and the book—chronicles my all too eventful and by necessity amusing, Leia-laden life. I tell this story, partly as a means to reclaim whatever I can of my former life. What hasn’t been eaten by electroconvulsive therapy—and partly because I heard someone once say that we’re only as sick as our secrets.
If that’s true, then this book will go a long way to rendering me amazingly well.
1 SHORES OF EXPERIENCE BOTH DARK AND UNFRIENDLY
I have to start by telling you that my entire existence could be summed up in one phrase. And that is: If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.