On Thursday night at the Musikfest Cafe at ArtsQuest, a most unusual comedian will take the stage — and no, I've not been hired to pad the house. Anyway, the Gary Gulman show is all but sold out. I wanted to tell you about Gary because he's become a friend, and because his story might have resonance to some of you out there listening.
Gary is a walking contradiction. A man who engages in the most public of professions, and at times in his life wanted to hide from the world. A man who makes his living by making people laugh, and at times would curl himself into a ball, stay in his bed for days at a time, and cry himself to sleep. He is a man who was almost destroyed by a most-debilitating personal disorder; clinical depression.
We're not talking about the kind of depression we all casually reference — "I'm so depressed, the Eagles blew a lead." "I'm so depressed, Bryce Harper struck out three times. No, this is bone-curdling, heartbreaking, life changing depression.
Now, I'm not revealing anything that Gary hasn't revealed himself. His greatest fame during a long career in comedy came from his HBO special that was called The Great Depresh. That will not be the essence of his act on Thursday night, by the way, he has moved on from that.
I first became aware of Gary through his standup routines that played on the comedy channel in my car. His best known one is considered a classic. Conan O'Brien called it perhaps the funniest thing he's ever heard. It's a made-up take on what happened when a group of expert abbreviators sat down to reduce the abbreviations of the states to just two letters. They thought they had it made when they came up with AL for Alabama, until they got to the next state, Alaska. On it went. It turns out there's 28 times when states could have the same letters.
I became so taken by Gary's routines that I did some research and found out that he had been a scholarship football player at Boston University and was a huge sports fan. So, I called up Boston Magazine and got the okay to do a profile on him. Once in a while, being a writer pays off — you get to meet people you find interesting.
Gary and I connected right away. I asked him about comedy, he asked me about sports, and I told his story in a profile in Boston Magazine. It's a horrifying tale.
Between 2015 and 2017, he was in his words all but dead. He studied the shade angles and wind currents of Manhattan street corners because he figured he might soon be living on one. He checked into the psych ward of New York Presbyterian, where he underwent electroconvulsive therapy, which believe it or not, is now considered the gold standard for treatment-resistant depression.
Gradually, he got through it. He moved back to his boyhood home in Massachusetts, settling his 6'6" frame into his old single bed. His mother brought him soup, his fiancé brought him hope. The electroconvulsive therapy started to work. He came out of it slowly but surely. He found that talking about his depression on stage helped, as did, obviously, getting an HBO special.
He expressed his confidence that he can go on, but the specter of depression hangs on too. A cloud that floats somewhere above him all the time. I can't identify personally but I have other friends who have suffered from depression. Maybe some of you are going through it right now.
Gary's Great Depresh special is available on HBO, as are some of his bits on YouTube. His message is one of hope; you can get through it and come out on the other side, if not laughing then at least smiling.
