The Moth Presents Andrew Solomon: Notes on an Exorcism

ladies and gentlemen Andrew Solomon so I'm not depressed now but I was depressed for a long time I'm even less depressed now I was depressed for a long time and I wrote about being depressed and I lived for a long time with blinding depression and had long stretches when everything seemed hopeless and pointless when returning calls from friends seemed like more than I could do when getting up and going out into the world seemed painful when I was completely crippled with anxiety and when I finally got better and started writing about the process of recovery I became very interested in all of the different kinds of treatment that there were for depression and having started as a kind of medical conservative thinking that there were only a couple of things that worked medication and certain talking therapies and that that was really it I very gradually began to change my mind because I realized that if you have brain cancer and you decide that standing on your head and gargling for half an hour every day makes you feel better it may make you feel better but the likelihood is that you still have brain cancer and you're still going to die from it but if you have depression and you say that's standing on your head and gargling for half an hour what makes you feel better then you are actually cured because depression is an illness of how you feel and if you feel really great after you do that then you're not depressed anymore so I began to think all kinds of things could work and I researched everything ranging from experimental brain surgeries to hypnotic regimens of various kinds I had people writing to me because I've been publishing this subject was one woman who wrote to me and she said that she had tried actually electroshock treatments and a variety of other approaches to depression medication and therapy and she had finally found the thing that worked for her and she wanted me to tell the world about it and that was making little things from yarn some of which he sent me and none of which I'm wearing right now but in any event I had that that rich engagement and I also became interested as I was doing this work in the idea that depression existed not only in the civilised West as people tended to perceive it to exist but actually across cultures and had existed across time and so when one of my dearest friends my friend David Hecht who was living for a little while in Senegal said to me do you know about the tribal rituals that are used for the treatment of depression here I said no I don't know about them but I would like to know about them and he said well if you come for a visit we could try to do some research on this topic and so I set off percenter gal and I met David and I was introduced to David's then girlfriend now ex-wife Ln and it turned out that Ellen had a cousin whose mother was a friend of someone who went to school with the daughter of a person who actually practiced the unde op and that I could therefore go and interview this woman who had practiced the unde op and so we went off to a small town about two hours outside of the car and I was introduced to this extraordinary old large woman wrapped in miles and miles of African fabric printed with figures of eyes and she was Madame goo off and we did an interview for about an hour and she told me all about the undock and at the ended it feeling rather daring I said and listen I said I hope I don't know whether this is something you would even consider I said would it be possible for me to attend an adop and she said well I've certainly never had a foreigner the local word was to Bob I'd never had a foreigner attend one of these before she said but actually she said I mean you've come through these friends and these connections she said yes the next time I perform and end up you may be present and I said that's fantastic I said when are you next going to be doing enand up and she said oh it'll be sometime in the next six months and I said six months is quite a long time for me to stay here in this town waiting for you to do one I said is there anyone who might maybe we could expedite one for somebody move it forward I'll pitch in she said no it really doesn't work that way she said I'm sorry but that that's that's how it is and I said well I guess I won't be able to see and adopt then but even so this conversation has been so interesting and so helpful to me and and I I'm a little sad leaving here about not actually getting to see one but but I thank you and she's where I'm I'm glad that you could come I'm glad it was helpful and she said but there is one other thing she said I I hope you don't mind my saying this and I said well no what what is it and she said you don't look that great yourself she said are you you are suffering from depression and I said well yes I said I was very cute it's kind of a little better now but yeah I still do actually suffer from depression she said well I've certainly never done this for a to Bob before but I could actually do an end up for you and I said oh I said what an what an interesting idea I said well um yes sure yeah absolutely yes let's let's let's do that I said then I'll have it and up and she said oh well that's great she said and she gave us some some sort of fairly basic instructions and then we left and my translator the aforementioned then-girlfriend now ex-wife of my friend turned to me and she said are you completely crazy do you have any idea what you're getting herself into and I said well you know I'm an all these things very interesting she said you're crazy she said you're totally crazy but I'll help you if you want so we had left and the first thing we had was a shopping list there had been it she had you could get them to buy the stuff but you had to pay a surcharge I said no we'd buy the salsa we had to go out we had to buy seven yards of African fabric we had to get a calabash which was a large bowl fashioned from a gourd we had to get three kilos of millet we had to get sugar we had to get Cola beans and then we had to get to live [ __ ] roles to roosters and a ram and so Ellen and I went to the market with David and with these other people and we got most of the things and I said well but what what about the the RAM and Alan said we can't buy the RAM today what are we going to do with it overnight so I saw this sense of that so the next day the next day we got into a taxi to go back out two hours to where we were going and I said what about the RAM and Alan said I will see a ram along the way we were going along and going along and there was a Senegalese Shepherd by the side of the road with his flock and we stopped the cab and we got out and we bought the RAM for $7 and then we had a little bit of a struggle getting at the live Ram into the trunk of the taxicab so but the cab driver seemed not at all worried even by the fact that the RAM kept relieving himself in the trunk of the taxicab and so then we got to that Rufus can we got there so here I am I'm ready for my close-up and the thing about the end up is that it varies enormously depending on a whole variety of signals and symbols that come from above so we had to go through this whole shamanistic process and I still didn't know really very much of what was going to happen so first I had to change my jeans my t-shirt and put on a loincloth and then I sat down and then I had my chest and my arms rubbed with millet and then which is a grain and then someone said oh we really should have music for this and I said oh right and I thought you know drumming I thought some atmospheric thing and she came out with her very prized possession which was a battery-operated tape player for which he had one tape which was Chariots of Fire so we started listening to Chariots of Fire and in the meanwhile I was given sort of various shame monistic objects I had to hold with my hands and drop them I had to hold them with my feet and drop them like that they would sort of say oh this augers well this ogres badly there were five assistants to Madame dof who had all gathered around and we should've spent the morning like this and it was all really just fine and then they said it was maybe we'd started about 8:00 maybe about 11:00 11:30 they said well now it's actually time for the central part of the ritual and I said oh okay and this sound of drumming beget the drumming I'd been hoping for the drumming began and so there was all of this drumming and it was very exciting and we went to the central square of the village where there was a small makeshift wedding bed that I had to get into with the RAM and I had been told it would be very very bad luck if the ram escaped and that I had to hold on to him and that the reason we had to be in this wedding bed was that all my depression and all my problems were caused by the fact that I had spirits in Senegal you have spirits sort of all over you the way here you sort of have microbes and we're good for you some are bad for you summer neutral anyway my bad spirits were extremely jealous of my real-life sexual partners some of whom are here tonight and and that we had to mollify the anger of the of the spirit so I have to get into this wedding bed with the RAM and I had to hold the RAM very tightly because he he was not having a good life this Ram and he of course immediately relieved himself on my leg and the entire village had taken the day off from their work in the fields and we're dancing around us in concentric circles and as they danced throwing blankets and sheets of cloth over us and so we were gradually being buried and it was unbelievably hot and it was completely stifling and there was the sound of these stamping feet as everyone danced around us and then these drums which were getting louder and louder and more ecstatic and more ecstatic and I was just about at the point in which I thought I was going to faint or pass out not to tread on anyone elses story here but and at that key moment suddenly all of the cloths were pulled off I was yanked to my feet the loin cloth that was all I was wearing was pulled for me the poor old Rams throat was slit as were the throats of the two cockerels and I was covered in the blood of the freshly slaughtered Ram and the [ __ ] rolls and so there I was naked totally covered in blood and they said ok at the end of this part of it and I said well ok and they said but you they said we're actually we but there's the next piece comes now and I said ok and we went over back to the area where we've done the mourning preparations and one of them said but look it's it's kind of lunchtime why don't we just take a break for a minute would you like a coke I don't drink coke that much but at that moment it seemed like a really really really good idea and I said yes and so I sat there naked and completely covered in animal blood with flies kind of gathering as they will when you're naked and covered in animal blood and I I drank this coke and then when I have finished the coke they said ok now we have the city final parts of the ritual they said so first you have to put your hands by your sides and and hold your stand very straight and very erect and I said ok and then they tied me up with the intestines of the RAM and in the meanwhile it was hanging from a nearby tree and they were there were some one city of doing some butchering of it and they took various little bits of it out and then I had to kind of shuffle over all tied up in intestines which most of you probably haven't done but it's hard I had to shuffle over and I had to take these little pieces of the RAM and I had to dig holes and I had to put the pieces of the RAM in the holes and I had to say something but I had to say was actually to me incredibly strangely touching in the middle of this weird experience I had to say spirits leave me alone to complete the business of my life and know that I will never forget you and I thought what a kind thing to say to the evil spirits you're exercising that I'll never forget you and I haven't so anyway there were various other little bits and pieces that followed I was given a piece of paper in which all of the millet from the morning had been gathered I was told that the next morning I should sleep with it under my pillow and in the morning get up and give it to a beggar who had good hearing and no deformities and when I gave it to him that would be the end of my troubles and then I put my the women sewed it all filled their mouth with water and began spitting water all over me which it turns out is the city of you know it's the surrounding our effect and rinsing the blood away from me and it gradually came off and when I was cleaned they gave me back my jeans and everyone danced and they barbecued the ram and we had this dinner and I felt so up I felt so up it had it it had been quite an astonishing experience even though I didn't believe in the Animus principles behind it all of these people had been gathered together cheering for me and it was very exhilarating and I had a very odd experience five years later when I was working on my current book and I was in Rwanda doing something else altogether and I got into a conversation with someone there and I described the experience I had in Senegal and he said oh you know we have something that's a little like that he said that's West Africa this is East Africa it's quite different but there are some similarities may in some rituals here he said we know we had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave and I said what what was the problem and he said okay he said they came and their practice did not involve being outside in the Sun like what you're describing which is after all where you begin to feel better there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again when you're depressed and you're low and you need to have your blood flowing he said there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy he said there was no acknowledgement at the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out of you again he said instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them he said we had to get them to leave the country thank you

Channel: The Moth

Views: 106,262

Rating: 4.9057817 out of 5

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, andrew, solomon, notes, on, an, exorcism, depression, depressed, senegal, senegalese, ram, ritual, funny, hilarious, The Noonday Demon, storytelling, story, stories, storyteller, guts, blood, africa, african, goat

Id: -UBgBpFGODI

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2011

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