John Falks story of recovery from depression is known all over the country. Not because of his extensive work peeling away the layers of his mind through therapy but because of Zoloft. That story eventually led him to want to live life again so thats why he faked his way into Sarajevo as a war correspondent and then wrote it all in his book Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace. The book chronicles two halves of Falk, the person that had been clinically depressed since he was 12 years old and the one who threw himself into one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Buy Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace
Daniel Robert Epstein: Your book has such a different structure to it. When did you know you would be doing it like that?
John Falk: It was about a year into writing it because up until then I was doing it chronologically. My favorite books dance around in time or are short story collections that kind of hang together. About a year into it my editor just told me to keep writing but it just occurred to me to dance it back and forth. Then when I started to go with it, it just felt right.
DRE: As I was reading it I felt that you wanted to die at one point and thats why you wanted to go over to Sarajevo.
JF: I wanted to leave that question open. It's two sides. One guy is building up this depressive personality and the other guy is sort of fighting against this personality hes developed over time.
DRE: The book is about you but you describe it like they are different people.
JF: When you are depressed you experience the world in a totally different way than when you are not. In that way its like they, meaning me, experienced two totally different personalities. There is a big difference in the two storylines.
DRE: When you were depressed did you want to see people that were worse off than you?
JF: When I was really depressed I didnt have anything to complain about and I hated myself for that. I couldnt even get out of bed but there are people all over the world with worse problems who get up and take on life. Youre so fucking self absorbed when youre depressed so when I worked in Nicaragua that beat me down even more because they were at least living life.
DRE: Are you on anything today?
JF: Yeah Im on Zoloft. I went off it once in Bosnia and then twice afterwards. Twice inadvertently and once on purpose. Each time it was just like I was that 12 year old kid. Its weird because no one wants to take a pill in the morning. It just cant be good for you in the long run. But after three weeks off Im back in this depressed world and I just ground to a halt. Life just sucks immediately.
DRE: How is your life otherwise?
JF: Good! Im up and down like anyone but there is a source to it now. But when youre depressed it sucks no matter what. Now Im just living a somewhat normal life.
DRE: Why somewhat?
JF: Im a writer so I will go off to Afghanistan and there is a little instability there.
DRE: I read you had a stable family growing up.
JF: Yeah, that was the thing, a lot of the depression books that people write, talk about their family and where the depression starts. I always had people who loved me but it wasnt perfect. We had a general commitment to one another so I had never had that bad family stuff to deal with. Now were still close, in fact my parents are visiting me right now.
DRE: What do they think of the book?
JF: They groove on it. They thought it was a good read so that was a big relief.
DRE: How did you get that Virginia radio station to give you press credentials to go to Sarajevo?
JF: I tricked them into it. They never even knew they were accrediting me. To get into a warzone you need accreditation so I tried to go around and get people to do that but no one would. Finally I tricked NBC Radio because while I was in Sarajevo I told them I needed to use their fax machine. So I became their correspondent but they didnt know that. So I walked around there as the NBC radio guy filing reports. They just didnt know that I was their guy but they were taking my reports.
DRE: What made you think to go over to Sarajevo?
JF: Most of the time I didnt believe in depression. I just thought it was a character flaw. I was having panic attacks to the point where I couldnt go outside. I would read books about war correspondents and I thought they had these exciting lives which was the opposite of what I was doing. So when the medicine worked all of a sudden I could move. I thought I had to make up for lost time and see life at its most intense. Youre supposed to go to therapy but I felt I didnt have anything to analyze because I hadnt lived! I figured I could fill the emptiness inside me with learning something over there.
DRE: What did you feel like you learned?
JF: When I was depressed I got very used to living alone. When I mean alone, I mean that I had a lot of friends around but I would generally didnt want to make any connections with anyone. To me connections with life and people were a burden. I thought the same would happen in Sarajevo. I figured that I would get in these crazy situations and fill my life with experience. But I started making connections with all these Bosnians and thats what started to fill me. In the end I found that I didnt want to turn my back on a normal life. That was something I wasnt expecting.
DRE: Whose idea was it to write the book?
JF: What happened was that I was practicing law then i went into the internet boom and became poor and destitute when the bubble burst. I was getting married so I needed money. I was going to go back into law and a friend of mine wanted to go on vacation to Bosnia. So my friend took me over there and they thought we were spires and this Russian security guy wanted to hand over this spy to us. It got really bizarre. Then the real CIA came in. So I wrote an article for Esquire about the trip and it got turned into a movie [Shot Through the Heart]. Then I wrote another article about my first trip which kind of became the basis for the book. Then I got the book contract.
DRE: Now Owen Wilson optioned the book for a movie?
JF: Yeah hes got the rights so hes got 18 months to make something happen.
DRE: Would you want to write the screenplay?
JF: I want to but obviously its his choice.
DRE: What are you working on now?
JF: I just finished a piece for Vanity Fair and now Im working on the movie treatment.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Hello to All That: A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace
Daniel Robert Epstein: Your book has such a different structure to it. When did you know you would be doing it like that?
John Falk: It was about a year into writing it because up until then I was doing it chronologically. My favorite books dance around in time or are short story collections that kind of hang together. About a year into it my editor just told me to keep writing but it just occurred to me to dance it back and forth. Then when I started to go with it, it just felt right.
DRE: As I was reading it I felt that you wanted to die at one point and thats why you wanted to go over to Sarajevo.
JF: I wanted to leave that question open. It's two sides. One guy is building up this depressive personality and the other guy is sort of fighting against this personality hes developed over time.
DRE: The book is about you but you describe it like they are different people.
JF: When you are depressed you experience the world in a totally different way than when you are not. In that way its like they, meaning me, experienced two totally different personalities. There is a big difference in the two storylines.
DRE: When you were depressed did you want to see people that were worse off than you?
JF: When I was really depressed I didnt have anything to complain about and I hated myself for that. I couldnt even get out of bed but there are people all over the world with worse problems who get up and take on life. Youre so fucking self absorbed when youre depressed so when I worked in Nicaragua that beat me down even more because they were at least living life.
DRE: Are you on anything today?
JF: Yeah Im on Zoloft. I went off it once in Bosnia and then twice afterwards. Twice inadvertently and once on purpose. Each time it was just like I was that 12 year old kid. Its weird because no one wants to take a pill in the morning. It just cant be good for you in the long run. But after three weeks off Im back in this depressed world and I just ground to a halt. Life just sucks immediately.
DRE: How is your life otherwise?
JF: Good! Im up and down like anyone but there is a source to it now. But when youre depressed it sucks no matter what. Now Im just living a somewhat normal life.
DRE: Why somewhat?
JF: Im a writer so I will go off to Afghanistan and there is a little instability there.
DRE: I read you had a stable family growing up.
JF: Yeah, that was the thing, a lot of the depression books that people write, talk about their family and where the depression starts. I always had people who loved me but it wasnt perfect. We had a general commitment to one another so I had never had that bad family stuff to deal with. Now were still close, in fact my parents are visiting me right now.
DRE: What do they think of the book?
JF: They groove on it. They thought it was a good read so that was a big relief.
DRE: How did you get that Virginia radio station to give you press credentials to go to Sarajevo?
JF: I tricked them into it. They never even knew they were accrediting me. To get into a warzone you need accreditation so I tried to go around and get people to do that but no one would. Finally I tricked NBC Radio because while I was in Sarajevo I told them I needed to use their fax machine. So I became their correspondent but they didnt know that. So I walked around there as the NBC radio guy filing reports. They just didnt know that I was their guy but they were taking my reports.
DRE: What made you think to go over to Sarajevo?
JF: Most of the time I didnt believe in depression. I just thought it was a character flaw. I was having panic attacks to the point where I couldnt go outside. I would read books about war correspondents and I thought they had these exciting lives which was the opposite of what I was doing. So when the medicine worked all of a sudden I could move. I thought I had to make up for lost time and see life at its most intense. Youre supposed to go to therapy but I felt I didnt have anything to analyze because I hadnt lived! I figured I could fill the emptiness inside me with learning something over there.
DRE: What did you feel like you learned?
JF: When I was depressed I got very used to living alone. When I mean alone, I mean that I had a lot of friends around but I would generally didnt want to make any connections with anyone. To me connections with life and people were a burden. I thought the same would happen in Sarajevo. I figured that I would get in these crazy situations and fill my life with experience. But I started making connections with all these Bosnians and thats what started to fill me. In the end I found that I didnt want to turn my back on a normal life. That was something I wasnt expecting.
DRE: Whose idea was it to write the book?
JF: What happened was that I was practicing law then i went into the internet boom and became poor and destitute when the bubble burst. I was getting married so I needed money. I was going to go back into law and a friend of mine wanted to go on vacation to Bosnia. So my friend took me over there and they thought we were spires and this Russian security guy wanted to hand over this spy to us. It got really bizarre. Then the real CIA came in. So I wrote an article for Esquire about the trip and it got turned into a movie [Shot Through the Heart]. Then I wrote another article about my first trip which kind of became the basis for the book. Then I got the book contract.
DRE: Now Owen Wilson optioned the book for a movie?
JF: Yeah hes got the rights so hes got 18 months to make something happen.
DRE: Would you want to write the screenplay?
JF: I want to but obviously its his choice.
DRE: What are you working on now?
JF: I just finished a piece for Vanity Fair and now Im working on the movie treatment.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
avalon:
zoloft rules!
hellomrworld:
This is a really cool book ... I got it out of the library and recommend it highly .. anyway to have the interviews in full format and not have half the screen with adv. for other interviews