Things that have influenced me "later" in life… a wandering essay on the continued relevance of Orwell's classic novel "1984"

According to most memoirs, pub-time reminisces, and celebrity sound-bites, all the attention goes to those novels, movies and ideas that have changed us during the formative years of our late teens and twenties. Who didn't read Slaughterhouse-Five in college and feel the depravity that life’s absurdities sometimes throw at us? (OK, I haven't actually read it yet and I have no idea if that's even the emotion it would evoke in me...)

In fact, I've neglected a number of classics over the years which should not have been missed. At school I was usually too involved with authors I had discovered on my own, and after school.... well, for many year it just felt too much like school...

However, in recent years, I've found myself actively searching out many of the works I'd neglected early on, in part to better understand my own times by listening to the voices of the past … and partly because I'm tired of being snubbed at the montly Mensa tea parties...

Recently, I picked up George Orwell's outstanding novel 1984. My brother has been going on about it for years and it's been on my "to read" list anyway…

I immediately got caught up in the story and its central theme: a warning of the menacing potential posed by the loss of individuality and identity in a future society governed by propaganda and indoctrination. The novel has constantly been praised for its insight and prescience in predicting the world of the later twentieth century, and how its themes still resonate so strongly in our own times.

As I read it I thought about this, and about the novel's ability to relate to several very different generations over the last 60 years. There's no doubt that some of its images are uncannily relevant to what is going on today in our country, but 1984 hasn't just recently become a classic. It has grown into classic status over time, certainly and deservedly so, but the book was lauded (and hyped) even in its own time.

In 1949, when the book was published, the Allies had only recently defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. Tales of the Nazi death camps and its policies political assassination and suppression were still being read of in America and Europe with skepticism and horror. Stories of the German Gestapo and their secret files, and rumors of similar practices in communist Russia, were causing fear and panic among Western countries even on the crest of their wave of victory.

In America, McCarthyism was running rampant and that particular wake-up call wouldn't come until almost a decade later.

The entire world must have appeared on the brink of turning into Orwell’s vision of 1984 when he published in 1949, irrespective of the future development of freeway cameras and reality TV.

Perhaps he wanted his novel to be a warning of the future rather than a comment on current society, or maybe he hoped that setting it in the future would help maintain its relevance to future generations, which it certainly has. Or perhaps its future setting simply allowed its readers the illusion of emotional distance, as it still does today, and is, I believe, both its most enduring strength and its most alluring weakness.

On the surface, 1984 delivers a warning of what we might become; but its continued relevance, to the last five generations, tells a more important story about what we already are.

It is the illusion of progression that must be done away with. We are not on our way to some metaphorical 1984; and neither were those reading it upon its original release. The monster is here already, and has been living among us for many, many years. Orwell capturek not an intolerable future, but rather an enduring present.

The moral of Orwell's book is not to be found between its pages, but in its lasting appeal. The warning we should take away with us is not of impending doom, but of the fear of maintaining a bearable toleration-threshold.

The themes in 1984 that resonate with us today do so for the same reason they have resonated with readers ever since its release.

The revelation of the novel is not, "The End is near!", but instead, "The End is here!"

The fear that should grip us is not the nearness of the end, but the continuity of our endurance.

The Beginning of the End: My Experience in America’s Criminal Justice System, part 1

WARNING: What you are about to read is a TRUE story. It may disturb you. It may make you angry. Perhaps it will even stir your empathy. Above all, I hope it will give you insight into a world that most of you will never have the misfortune to experience.

Hi. My name is Eric, and according to the state of California, I'm a dangerous criminal.

This is my story.

On the afternoon of July 31^st, 2004, my life changed in the blink of an eye, and by the end of that sunny, Saturday afternoon, nothing would ever be the same again.

But my story doesn't truly begin on that day. To really start at the beginning, we have to go back a few years, to the spring of 2002.

I was twenty-six years old, married, and living in a comfortable two-story townhouse in the cushy Southern California neighborhood of Thousand Oaks.

I held the position of Vice President of Enterprise Technology at one of largest banks in the nation and enjoyed a cool three-figure income.

But things were not quite as neat and simple as it might have appeared on the surface. For about a year, I had been experiencing wild and unpredictable mood swings. These mood swings would fill me either with limitless energy, full of creative vitality, little need for sleep and endless optimism – or I would fall into a dark, bleak depression with barely enough energy to make it through the day. In my dark moods I withdrew from everyone, including my wife, and in euphoric periods I exhausted and overwhelmed those around me. These swings were beginning to come more frequently and to reach greater extremes with each new episode.

By the spring of 2002, it was beginning to tear apart my marriage and had begun to affect my performance at work as well. My life was fast approaching the breaking point.

Without much enthusiasm, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist specializing in mood disorders, referred to me by a co-worker who was going back to school for her degree in psychology.

After an intense, 2-hour diagnostic session, I walked away with a diagnosis of Type I Rapid-cycling Bipolar Disorder, also known as Manic Depressive Disorder. I was told that it was a disorder that often shows up suddenly in a person's twenties, but once it appeared, it would likely be something I would have to deal with for the rest of my life.

If I thought that diagnosing the problem would be a first step in repairing my marriage, I was very, very wrong. It seemed my wife was even less enthusiastic about my diagnosis than I was, and within weeks of that fateful appointment she had moved out and served me with divorce papers.

The two years that followed were not easy ones for me, although, in hindsight, they were nothing compared to what was to follow. I was put on medication after medication and it was always the same: suffer through the side-effects, followed by a time when things seemed to be getting better, followed by another debilitating episode of either mania or depression, requiring an adjustment to my meds or completely new drug which would start the cycle all over again.

By the time this story really starts, in the summer of 2004, I had already been on dozens of different medications and combinations of medication and still had not found anything that worked on a reliable basis. I began smoking marijuana as an aid to manage my mood swings. It calmed me down during my manic episodes, and helped to take the edge off during my depressive ones – something that none of my various medications were able to do.

Through all of this, I had kept my diagnosis secret. Aside from my ex-wife, only my parents were aware of my diagnosis. I felt as though I was living two separate lives: one was the professional, responsible executive I played at work, and with my close friends and co-workers, and the other was a secret, shameful life that only existed in the dark corners of my mind.

Skip forward to 2004.

The summer of '04 saw me coming out of one of my most intense and debilitating depressive episodes. It was so extreme that I was not able to function at the necessary level to do my job, and it was becoming more and more difficult to keep it hidden from those around me. Unable to offer an explanation to my superiors, I had already been written up for a lack of performance and was in danger of losing my job altogether. My psychiatrist tried to convince me to go on disability until I could get a handle on things, but to do so would have entailed disclosing my disorder to my superiors and co-workers, and I was afraid and ashamed at the idea of revealing these issues to those around me.

In an effort to pull me out of this downward spiral, my psychiatrist had upped my Effexor medication to 600mg, and almost unheard of dosage. I was also taking 600-900mg of Seroquel to combat incessant insomnia, and for the first time in several years, I was able to consistently get a full eight hours of sleep each night.

At about this same time, I met a girl online and had begun corresponding with her. She was a graduate student of psychology and for the first time since my diagnosis, I was in a relationship with someone who understood what I was going through, and did not seem afraid of what that meant.

She was from out of state, and after several months of corresponding via email and chat, and lots of late night telephone conversations, at the end of July she flew out to meet me face to face for the first time. I planned a delightful weekend up in the mountains where my family owned a pair of cabins on nearby Big Bear Mountain.

So, on Saturday, July 31^st, 2004, we hopped into my '98 Toyota Supra (purchased during one manic period following my 2002 divorce) and headed out for the 2 hour drive to our destination at 6,500 feet. Along with us came my two puppies, a Chihuahua named Dobby (after the infamous house-elf from the Harry Potter series) and a Collie mix named Belgarath.

It was a beautiful sunny, cloudless day, of the kind that Californians claim can only be truly experienced in the Sunshine State. Everything was wonderful, and it seemed impossible that this could be the start of anything but one of the best chapters in my life.

How very wrong I was.

The majority of the trip passed without incident, with plenty of conversation and lots of off-key singing to the songs on the radio. However, just as we were coming to the top of the mountain, I was driving in the passing lane, overtaking a slow minivan filled with screaming kids, when suddenly the steering wheel jumped violently in my hand for what seemed no reason at all. A moment later the wheel ripped violently out of my grasp completely. Before I even had time to register what was happening, the wheels locked up and we were spinning wildly out of control – right into the path of the oncoming traffic coming down the mountain.

A large, F-150-type pickup truck smashed into the passenger side of the car with enough force to throw us up against the rocky side of the mountain. The passenger side, taking the direct force of the impact, was completely crushed. The fiberglass body simply crumbled into a wreck of twisted metal and fractured plastic. The windshield blew in and peppered us with glass. (You can see before and after pictures to the left.)

I was lucky. Aside from some bruising resulting from being slammed up against the center console, and various gashes on my bare face and arms from flying glass, I didn't suffer any major injuries.

My passenger wasn't so fortunate. Being on the side of impact, she had experienced the full force of the crash. Although, she wasn't obviously bleeding, she couldn't breathe and even the slightest movement sent waves of pain through her. I was to find out later that she had suffered several broken ribs and one of them had punched through her lung, causing internal bleeding and a total collapse of that side of her chest.

It was twenty minutes before the emergency medical personnel arrived, and as the entire right side of the car was completely mangled, they were forced to use the Jaws of Life to safely remove her from the car. She was immediately rushed to a nearby helipad and airlifted to the nearest hospital, a few miles away at the base of the mountain.

A few minutes later, Highway Patrol appeared on the scene and began interrogating me about the accident. At first they wanted to know if I had been drinking. I said I hadn't. But in a quick search of my car they discovered the small amount of marijuana I had brought with me. In the shock of the crash, I had completely forgotten it was in the car. If I had, I likely would have tossed it, but there was no room for anything but concern for my girlfriend at the time and It had never occurred to me. In my mind, it was clear that something had gone very wrong with the car. There was no other explanation for the violent loss of control. It hadn't been a matter of overreacting to a traffic situation, or because I was impaired. I tried to explain this to the police officers, but once they had found the pot, there was no other possibility than that I had been the cause of the accident.

Within moments, before I even really knew what was going on, I was being hand-cuffed and pushed into the back of a police cruiser.

Taken to a nearby Highway Patrol station, I was hand-cuffed to bar set in the wall and left there. After being further interrogated, I was given a breathalyzer test, which found no alcohol in my blood.

Then I was taken to the local mountain emergency center where a large gash in my arm was stapled shut, and a blood sample taken to test for evidence of marijuana in my blood.

At the same time, a second search of my car turned up my medications. One of those medications, Seroquel, is classified as an anti-psychotic and used in extreme cases of schizophrenia; therefore I was labeled an individual with a potentially dangerous and unstable psychotic personality. Because of this, I could not be detained at the local Big Bear jail, which was only used for non-violent arrestees. Instead I was sent down the hill to the County facility at Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center.

I spent that first night sleeping on the concrete floor in a small room with 30 other men who had been arrested during the weekend. From there, I was stripped, searched, interviewed (in which I was questioned about my medications as well as my bipolar diagnosis), given the obligatory orange jumpsuit and assigned a bed in one wing of the facility with about a hundred other prisoners.

No effort was made to provide me with my medication, and by the next morning I was beginning to suffer from Effexor withdrawal. Effexor is one of the most dangerous medications to quit taking suddenly. Withdrawal symptoms can show up after missing just one dose. Many people require years of slow reduction before they are able to stop taking it without debilitating withdrawal symptoms.

At the high dosage I was on (standard dosing is usually between 75-150mg; I was on 600mg), these effects were severe, and included dizziness, nausea, trembling and shaking, pins and needles breaking out all over the body so it is impossible to lie comfortably, and worse of all, something which can only be called "brain shocks", which feels like an electrical explosion is taking place in the brain, frequently accompanied by loss of vision and complete disorientation.

I spent the next day and night lying in a cold sweat, unable to stop shaking or crying, my mind and body rocked with electrical shocks and a prickling sensation across my body. By Monday morning, I could barely stand on my own without waves of dizziness coursing through me. I was shackled between two other inmates, and taken by bus up to Big Bear City Court for my arraignment.

At my arraignment, I met the lawyer that my family had found for me for the first time. I sat there, behind the glass partition set up to protect normal society from us criminals, and listened as the female district attorney denied my release, stating that I was "a mentally unstable individual who self-medicates with marijuana and constitutes a danger to society if released." My lawyer told me that this was well within the DA's rights and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Without even being able to speak in my own defense, I was taken back and locked up in a cell with four other prisoners, one of which incessantly talked and mumbled to himself, of which I could only hear the words "kill everyone" being repeated over and over. I didn't get much sleep that night.

On Tuesday, when my aunt came to visit me at the jail, I had come completely unraveled. The effects of the Effexor withdrawal, the claustrophobia and complete lack of mental stimuli, as well as the complete lack of any sense of time, had made me completely hysterical. When I was ushered into a room the size of a small broom closet, so that I could speak with my aunt through a closed circuit television, I utterly broke down. I begged and pleaded and cried that she do anything to get me out. I felt like I was starting to lose my grip on reality. It was without doubt, the most terrifying moment I had ever experienced.

My aunt took out an equity loan on her house in order to post my $50,000 bail and finally, around midnight on Wednesday morning, I was finally released.

This was my introduction to America's criminal justice system.

Please stay tuned to my next post, which will detail the following year, which sees me entering into the most intense manic episode I had ever experienced, as well as the conclusion to my case, but not the end to this horrific experience. I plan to post it by the end of today or early tomorrow so check back again soon! And please leave a comment. I am writing this to share my experience and to reach out to others who may have gone through something similar.

Your friend,

Eric

Part Two

In anyone with bipolar disorder, manic or depressive episodes can occur unpredictably and with varying severity. It is often difficult to understand what causes the hormonal imbalance in the brain which results in severe elevated or depressed mood. However, certain events, usually traumatic and life-disrupting, can have a significant on whether they occur, as well as the length and intensity of the episode. These are called "triggers" by psychologists, and part of any manic depressive's repertoire of tools in coping is in recognizing and avoiding these triggers.

But in life, it is not always possible to avoid them, and once begun an episode can be difficult if not impossible to control. Compounding this issue is the fact that the individual experiencing the episode may not even be aware of it until it has passed and the damage done.

The trauma of the accident, followed by my harrowing experience in lockup, acted as a trigger for me. Just days after being released, I shot into one of the most intense and long-lasting manic episodes I had ever experienced.

Manic and depressive episodes vary significantly depending on the individual; and an important part of learning to cope is recognizing your own personal patterns. My manic episodes tended to last for no more than a few weeks, followed by a period of depression generally lasting about three times as long.

This manic episode, which began in September of 2004, following my release, gripped me through December of that year – nearly four months, or almost eight times as long as any I had experienced in the past.

Coming down the mountain that first day after being released, I stopped by a small, local coffee shop in the village of Running Springs, a small town located at about 6,500 feet. I met the owner and learned that the business was for sale.

With this information in the back of my mind, I returned to work and faced the difficult task of explaining my absence for most of the week. And, unable to think of a better excuse than the truth, I laid bare the whole horrible experience, even admitting my struggle for the past few years with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

The reaction I received was decidedly negative. People I had known for years suddenly treated me with guarded distrust and suspicion. I felt exposed and alienated.

Gripped in a manic episode, I perhaps overreacted to this feeling of alienation, and I decided on that first day that I would buy the small coffee shop I had visited on my way home, and start my life anew in the mountains. Further, I decided I would no longer hide my struggle with bipolar, but rather would use the shop as a safe haven for those who dealt with struggles similar to mine.

Within weeks, I had quit my corporate job, put my house in Thousand Oaks up for sale and placed an offer on the coffee shop in Running Springs. When my offer was accepted, I finalized my move by purchasing a new house not far from the shop, and began transferring everything I owned to the small community of Running Springs.

In line with my new decision not to hide the fact that I was bipolar, I renamed the shop, "Manic Man's Coffee & Books" – a name that represented both who I was, as well as the type of items I would be selling.

Everything moved very quickly, and by November of 2004, I was settled into my new life and beginning to undertake the running of my new business. That December, always the busiest month for any seasonal business on the mountain, sales were good, and initially it seemed I had made the right decision.

However, in mid-January of 2005, the mania I had been feeling for the past three months dramatically reversed itself and turned into an episode of debilitating depression. The limitless energy and optimism that had gripped me for months disappeared like so much smoke, leaving me constantly exhausted, unable to concentrate, and struggling with even the simple tasks of running my new business. It became a chore just to get out of bed and go through the normal daily activities of showering, eating and going to work. I was forced to hire additional employees to cover those days when the depression was most severe, and I prayed every day that it would soon pass.

It did not pass. As spring came, business dropped off dramatically, and I discovered the downside of owning a business in a seasonal area like Running Springs. I began to lose money every month. Not just a few hundred dollars either, but by summer I was thousands of dollars in the red. I was forced to liquidate a majority of the investments I had been building for years just to keep the doors open.

On top of this, my trial continued without making much progress. Just half a year earlier, I had been convinced that I would be exonerated. I had relived the moments of the accident many, many times in my mind and I was convinced that a mechanical reason would be found as the cause of the accident.

On visiting the mangled remains of my car not long after the accident, I had examined the car myself and found what clearly appeared to be a rip in the inside edge of the front tire, leading to a blowout that caused the dramatic loss of control at the time of the crash. I had even taken pictures of the tire, showing a large area of wear and a rip in the front tire. I waited impatiently for the insurance company to finish their investigation of the accident, certain that they would reach the same conclusion.

But when the insurance company finally filed their report it made no mention of the blown tire. In fact, the investigation they conducted did not even get the simplest facts of the accident correctly – reporting the driver's side as the area of impact, when I knew for a fact it was the passenger side that had been struck.

The district attorney's office had no interest in making any further investigation, so if I wanted a thorough investigation done, I would have to request one myself. Through my attorney, I hired an accident investigation firm to do another, more thorough investigation of the car and cause of the accident. In order to pay for the investigation, I liquidated my last of my investments, my 401k retirement account which I had been building since my early twenties.

A few months later the investigation was done and a copy sent to me. The investigation firm had indeed found that one of the front tires had blown. Furthermore, they had found that the blowout had been caused by an unnatural wearing of the tread along the inside edge of the tire. It seemed that the previous owner of the car had installed a "lowering kit", but the job had not been done professionally, resulting in a permanent misalignment of the front axle. This caused an increase in the wear of the inside area of the tire where it was not easily noticed unless one actually crawled underneath the car to examine it. Toyota, from whom I had purchased the car only a year or so previously, had not disclosed the existence of this issue to me, and I had not been aware of the danger.

All of this took months to complete, and for almost a year, I had been making appearances in court each month. After nearly a year of court appearances, in July of 2005, I came to court and was surprised to find that the judge who had been presiding over my case all this time was absent. In his place was a "pro tem" judge, a temporary judge who was not actually a judge, but rather a local attorney who was sitting in for the absent judge.

And I was in for a bigger surprise. After nearly a year with almost no activity on my case, I was suddenly told that the DA was making a plea offer. Further, I was informed, that this would be the one and only offer made available to me. If I did not take it, there would be no other offer made, and the DA would seek the maximum penalty of three years in county prison. The new investigative report I had just worked so hard to pay for was not even mentioned.

The pro tem judge gave me only twelve minutes to read the multipage legal document outlining the offered plea and to consult with my attorney. It was barely enough time to read the entire document and much of it, in legalese, I did not understand.

My attorney informed me that to take the case to trial would likely cost me in excess of $25,000, and as the DA seemed to be taking a personal interest in the case, even with the evidence of the accident report, it was not guaranteed that we would prevail.

I felt trapped. Faced with a business losing thousands of dollars a month, dwindling savings, and a debilitating depression which barely left me with enough energy to make it through the day, and only twelve minutes to make a decision that would affect the rest of my life, I felt trapped. I couldn't afford to take the case to trial, and the idea of enduring further months of legal battle filled me with horror. I felt that I had no option but to agree.

Standing before the pro tem judge, I was asked formally if I understood the offered plea agreement. I answered honestly that I did not, that I had had barely enough time to read it, let alone understand it fully. I was told rather angrily by the temporary judge that unless I answered yes, I did understand, it would be treated the same as an outright rejection of the plea and the DA would then use all the power of her office to see that I received the maximum penalty. I was terrified of spending three years in jail. I had barely survived the few days I had been locked up immediately after my arrest. Faced with both the DA and the judge against me, I retracted my previous statement and said that I did understand, although this was not the truth.

I told myself at the time that at least I could now put this behind me, and begin to rebuild my life again. But about that I was wrong. The difficulties I had faced during that first year were nothing compared to what I was to go through in the next three.

My depression only got worse. I was running out of money, and I could no longer afford to have employees handle the shop on my worse days. Despite the depression, I began to work most of the hours myself, putting in over 80 hours a week. Further, when I attempted to renew my car insurance I found my license had been suspended.

As I couldn't drive any longer, and my car payments were taxing my finances to the limit already, I let my car be repossessed by the bank and I began walking the two miles to the shop and back every day. Unable to drive to pick up supplies for the business, I had to cover the additional expense of paying someone to make those errands for me.

Then disaster struck. That fall we received so much rain that part of the 330 highway, the primary route up the mountain and the source of most of my business, completely washed away. The road was closed for nine months as they rebuilt the hillside, and my business suffered in consequence. I began losing even more money than I had before, and the winter ski season, usually the high point of the year, was a complete flop.

On top of this, the details of my plea agreement required that I make it to the twin peaks courthouse twice a month to meet with my probation officer; necessitating finding transportation as well as the expense required to pay an employee to cover my absence.

Further, as part of the plea, I was also required to complete 60 days of work release. This necessitated additional transport, and paying for yet another employee to care for the shop while I was gone.

Work release was an additional burden. Not only did I need to find transportation down the mountain, but I often did not know how I would return, frequently waiting hours after I had finished for the day until I could find someone who was willing to give me a ride back home.

On top of this, my depression only got worse, leaving me most of the time in a mind-numbing daze, making even the simplest task or conversation a monumental struggle. With the loss of my corporate job, I also lost my insurance, and soon found I couldn't pay for medications or my monthly doctor's visits.

That next year business got even worse. Gas prices rose above four dollars a gallon, and combined with an almost complete lack of snowfall, we had the worst winter business anyone in the mountain community had experienced in years.

In desperation, I refinanced my house, pulling as much cash out as I was able, and used that money to cover my losses at the shop as well as my own living expenses. And still the depression persisted.

The fall of 2007 found me hanging on by a thread. I had liquidated every asset I possessed and still was unable to keep up with expenses. Eventually I had no choice and had to close the shop. Then, that September, wild-fires broke out across the mountain. I, along with most of the mountain community, was evacuated from our homes for nearly a month while the fires were contained.

I spent those weeks living miserably out of the back of my car, wondering, along with everyone else, whether I would have any house left when I returned.

In some ways, I was lucky, as the fires had not reached the street I lived. When I returned home, I found a foreclosure notice waiting for me on my front door. For several months, I had been unable to make my house payments, and so although it was not a surprise, it was still a shock and difficult to accept.

I soon found that I could not even hope to sell my house, for house prices had dropped dramatically by the end of 2007 and I now owed far more on my house than I could possibly expect to receive by selling it. In 2005 when I had refinanced, my house was appraised at $317,000, but by the end of 2007, its value had dropped to $215,000, almost seventy thousand dollars less than the loan I had taken out on it a little over a year before.

I struggled desperately to sell the shop, the only thing of value that I yet owned, but when I finally found a buyer, I had to accept a fraction of what I had originally paid for it, and much of that was taken to pay off business debts that had accrued over the last few years. In the end, there was little left even for me to live on, and it was too little, too late to save my home.

About this time, a family member had gifted me with a car: a 1983 Toyota Tercel with 165,000 miles. But what at first seemed like a gift, soon turned frustrating, as I could not get the car to pass the smog test, and without it could not get the car registered. Paying for the repairs that were required for it to pass the smog test was more than I could afford. So the car sat, unused, in my driveway, as I continued walking or begging rides when I needed them. For the most part, I stayed home, suffering in my depression and waiting for the final notice from the bank, demanding that I vacate the premises.

Finally, I had to move out of my house and spent the next several months living with various friends. I was able to find some part time work for a local businessman who lived nearby but had a business down in Riverside County. While I was still on the mountain, since he lived locally, I was able to find transportation with him on those days that I worked.

Eventually however, I could stay on the mountain no longer, and had to appeal to my family for some place to live until I could get back on my feet. My grandmother, here in Whittier, had a small room attached to the garage that my grandfather had built for use as an office while he was still alive, and currently was being used for storage.

Feeling like a complete failure, I took what few belongings I'd been able to salvage from my house and moved to Whittier. But this move caused other problems, as it made finding transportation to the only part time work available to me even more difficult. After attempting to find a more local job, but having no success with a felony on my record, and still dealing with severe depression that was now moving into its fifth year, I was faced with an awful choice: risk driving for the first time since my license had been suspended or give up all hope of making enough to struggle out of the pit I was in.

I went back to the DMV in an attempt to see if there was anything I could do to get the car registered despite the need to pass a smog test; but I found that in the year since I had taken ownership of the car, the registration cost, because of late fees, had increased to over $500 – more than the car was even worth! On top of this, I learned the DMV was requiring me to take drinking and driving classes before my driving privileges would be returned to me. I explained that I had not been drinking and had no alcohol in my system at the time of the arrest, but the DMV was immovable. Any DUI conviction, regardless of circumstances, required such classes. The class itself would cost me around $500, something I could not cover with my limited financial means.

In October of 2008, I was driving to an interview which I hoped would result in some part-time work which I desperately needed, when I was pulled over on Colima Road by a local Whittier policeman.

Since that time, I haven't dared to drive at all, and in consequence I've lost both the part-time work I'd had in Riverside, as well as any other potential work. And the additional stress of dealing with another court case, this time for driving on a suspended license, and facing both jail time and the indignity of probation once again, my depression has hit me hard again.

Through the generosity of my family, I have re-entered the care of a psychiatrist, and through their office have been able to find medication assistance, but so far it has done little to alleviate my five year battle with depression.

In attempting to put my life back on track, I've actually created even more difficulties for myself. Finally, in the last few months, at the urging of my doctor, I have applied for disability – a humiliation that I have tried to avoid at all costs. I have no desire to become a burden of the state, and have paid my own way since I was nineteen. But faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and unable to pull out of what is beginning to seem like a never-ending depression, I have finally accepted this as a temporary alternative.

In the last five years, I have seen my life spin radically out of control. From the enviable position of Vice President for one of the leading banks in the country, I've been reduced to living in a small room, a felony on my record, and now facing an additional charge which promises to throw me right back into the system that I had worked so terribly hard, and endured so much, to escape.

At this time in my life, it is difficult to think positively of the future. I have been in a debilitating depression for so long that it is hard to remember what it was like feel any joy in my life, or to see any optimistic place that I might be headed.