Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace - Hardcover

Falk, John

4.06

159 ratings by Goodreads

9780805072181: Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805072187 ISBN 13: 9780805072181

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2005

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An off-the-wall, heartbreaking, and often hilarious memoir of a correspondent reporting from the front lines while also battling his lifelong nemesis-chronic depression

His own chemistry was his worst enemy, and it took John Falk to some very strange places-from Garden City, Long Island, to sniper-infested Sarajevo during the Bosnian bloodbath. But through it all, in the face of chronic depression, he kept reaching out for the life he'd always wanted. Hello to All That is his story-crazed, comic, poignant, suspenseful, hopeful.

Falk was an average Long Island kid, until depression left him ashamed and trapped behind an impenetrable chemical wall. Barely surviving on "chin-up" tips from his big, loyal, boisterous family, Falk tried to fight his disease-or hide it. But by twenty-four, he was alone, living on books by war correspondents, their adventures his only escape. Then he found a blue pill called Zoloft and set out on a mission to make his own name as a correspondent during one of the most dangerous conflicts in recent memory. Falk's journey has never been predictable, and neither is his moving, outrageous, and sometimes frightening memoir.

Here is the riveting tale of a man's lifelong battle-the struggle to defeat his greatest enemy and to connect, cure himself, and finally live.

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About the Author:

Among psychologists today, John Falk is known as patient X and the story of his recovery from chronic depression is used to inspire hope in other patients. He is also a law school graduate and freelance journalist who survived the rough and tumble of reporting from the front in Sarajevo. An article he wrote for Details magazine, entitled "Shot Through the Heart," became an HBO movie and won a Peabody Award for Best Cable Movie of the Year. He lives in Hillsdale, New York.

From Hello to All That:
There had been a point in my life when my greatest goal had been simply to make it to the next morning. I was severely depressed, completely empty, no connection to anything. It was like being trapped in a glass jar. By 1991, I was living in my parents' attic. I had cut myself off from everyone I knew, slept all day, and spent my nights watching late-night Oprah reruns.

I cannot say how it was that I came to find myself rummaging through a crawl space that night looking for that old shotgun, only that the idea had become irresistible. Perhaps I was tempted just to see if holding it would somehow change things. When I found it, it didn't disappoint. It felt solid, powerful, like a magic wand. Holding it, I didn't feel like a trapped rat anymore. Here was a way out. But I still had enough fight that night to put it away. Its day was in the future, though. I had entered the endgame.

That night I lay on the roof for hours, crying, not for me, but for my family, especially my mother, who always made me promise her that I would, no matter what, hang on. "Trust me," she would say. "It will work out." But now I realized that I was going to have to break that promise. At dawn, I finally crawled back inside my bedroom. Sometime later I realized I couldn't quit before I gave her a chance. I went downstairs and, trembling, I asked my mother the simplest and most difficult of favors: Please help me.

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