Wenn das noch geht, kann es nicht so schlimm sein

"Am I now tired of life?" asks Benjamin Maack as he stands in front of the psychiatric hospital with his large black rolling suitcase. Four years earlier, he had already checked in after a nervous breakdown – the diagnosis: depression. Now he is back and recounts the last nights he spent not in the marital bed, but on the sofa, sleepless, anxious, in panic. He describes daily life in the clinic, watching "Alarm für Cobra 11" with fellow patients or puzzling dolphins in the moonlight in the large common room. How, instead of his wife and children, the caregivers congratulate him on his 40th birthday, and how he learns to embroider in the creative workshop. He talks about medications, their side effects, suicidal thoughts, and that evening when even strong sedatives no longer help, and he is transferred to "the closed ward behind the closed ward" – constantly wavering between hope and deep despair. "If this is still possible, it can't be that bad" is a disarmingly honest testimony of life with depression. Benjamin Maack wrests tragicomic moments from the merciless illness and narrates it in touching yet clear images. His story is not only a psychiatric and medical report but also a family drama and the tale of a personal fate. A relentless, literarily powerful book.