Adam Duritz, Derealization, & Doing What You Ought
I’ve been a Counting Crows fan since high school. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that someone my age (37) got into them when hormones are high and feelings are out of control. But clichés are often clichés for a reason and there’s usually truth to them. It’s a great time to get into a band that writes intense, dramatic, emotional songs. But any listener with an attuned ear would know that Counting Crows have an appeal to people far beyond this demographic. Personally, I’ve come to start appreciating their range, the varying types of styles they play, their unique arrangements, and how tight they are on stage.
The thing that has carried my interest, though, is Adam Duritz. I don’t know him personally, and have only spoken to him briefly, but when a songwriter is making not just good, original music, but also writing honest and truthful lyrics, that’s a recipe for building a relationship with an audience. People need a strong front man to connect to and Adam is very good at that role. On stage, he’s engaging and sincere; off stage, he’s personable, funny, self-deprecating, and a great conversationalist in interviews.
He also has a rare, and frankly terrifying, dissociative disorder that produces an effect called derealization.
“Derealization is an alteration in the perception of the external world, causing those with the condition to perceive it as unreal, distant, distorted, or falsified.” - Wikipedia
And not only does he have this, it’s apparently always “on.” It’s a 24/7 experience for him. This means that when he’s writing, performing, recording, having a discussion, having dinner, and having sex, it’s happening.
“This was not depression. This was not workaholism. I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job — in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it’s not real, as if things aren’t taking place. It’s hard to explain, but you feel untethered.
And because nothing seems real, it’s hard to connect with the world or the people in it because they’re not there. You’re not there. That’s why I rarely saw my family back then: It’s hard to care when everything feels as if it’s taking place in your imagination.” — Adam in Men’s Health, “The Lonely Disease,” April 17th, 2008.
On a certain level, I feel bad for writing this because it has already been brought up with him a lot in interviews. It’s also sensitive topic, one that I’d have to guess he’s not always in the mood to discuss, but accepts that he’ll be asked about it. The fact that he’s so open about it is commendable. It takes great strength, courage, and balls to not only face the world with this disorder, but especially to do so while being a public figure.
He’s explained it thoroughly over the years, but I do have one question that he’s never answered: How? How did he write so many songs, on so many great albums, while living with a disorder that creates a profound sense of detachment from reality?
This question has always fascinated me and in trying to figure it out I considered a number of options. I landed on three possible ways he’s able to write well while having this disorder and I’ll explore each below.
Coping & Accepting
The treatment for derealization is pretty simple — not easy, but simple. A sufferer must accept the dissociated feeling, live in it, and go about their day with a sense of detachment and dread. This is very similar to treatment for disorders like schizophrenia, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and others. Medication and therapy help, but fundamentally, this is what needs to happen: acceptance and living your life. I believe the thinking is that eventually the sufferer will assimilate to the dissociation, calm themselves, and the derealization will fade, often with them barely noticing.
Adam has explained it further, saying that he sometimes checks in and reminds himself of what it means to be human:
“I value my friends a great deal, and I know it intellectually. But it’s often just not there in my head and I fall out of touch… but it’s better now. I was raised really well and I know what good people do and I’ll do it. I know how to be a good person even when I forget how to be an actual person, I still remember that. I know the rules. I know the right thing to do, so I’ll do it, even if I don’t always know why I’m supposed to do it or feel why.” — Washington Post, “The Disconnected Ringleader”, September 2nd, 2009
What he’s referring to here is how he gets by day-to-day, and one would assume that the way he writes songs would be similar: sitting down in a chair, remembering what it means to be human, and then starting to write.
That could be part of it, but it’s not the full story, because “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby,” “A Long December,” and several others were written in single sittings when inspiration hit. There was no remembering being human, no philosophizing on life, and no mental prep. It just hit him and he wrote.
“I don’t usually write over long periods of time. I just sit and when it comes, it comes, and I just stay and keep at it until it’s done… ‘Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby’ was about nine and a half hours near the end of work one day… I started messing around with the music, then I started writing it.”
“Sometimes you’re just giving someone a sense of place, just a sense of where they are. It made me feel something and when I finish the song it will probably make other people feel something… All I have to trust is that it makes me feel something and I just have to follow it from the first note to the last.” — Interview with MetroLyrics, 2012
This implies that derealization is just not a big concern for him when writing songs. In fact, it seems like the opposite of derealization occurs and he is able to connect with and describe the world quite well.
So clearly there is something going on besides simple coping.
2. Treatment
Another assumption would be that he’s able to write these songs because he’s had good professional treatment, and he has. He’s been in therapy for a long time and was medicated before becoming famous. However he was not correctly diagnosed or correctly treated until after their fifth album.
This means he made the following albums while not only struggling with his disorder, but also incorrectly treated and overly medicated:
August & Everything After
Recovering The Satellites
This Desert Life
Hard Candy
Saturday Nights & Sunday Morning
Just to put things in perspective, he posted this on the band’s Facebook page. This is how he was feeling for much of this time:
“Docs Friday instructions: cut Lithium dose in half — Fuck me — not so good now. Gotta keep pushing/get off this shit. Going faster than I should but it still takes too long. All my friends say how clear & present I am. ‘Clear & present’. Horror. Not mutually exclusive… Just to clarify: I will not be leading any kind of ‘sober life’ after this. These are not drug addiction problems. I was fucking crazy. I needed meds. I took meds. Now I’m less crazy. I need less meds. I’m stopping meds. That’s it. These meds just happen to have some freaking vicious withdrawal symptoms when you stop so u can’t do it all at once.”
This is clearly written by a man struggling with some very serious things. And that man was able to write “Round Here,” “Children In Bloom,” “Anna Begins,” “High Life,” “Hard Candy,” “Insignificant,” and everything else on those albums while on things like lithium.
And as we saw above, it was barely an issue for him when doing so? How?
I have one final guess as to what’s happening here.
3. He’s Doing What He Ought
There is an understanding of freedom that we all have. It’s the ability to make choices as we see fit without outside constraint or interference. That’s nice, fine, and true. However, there is another definition that has been ascribed to a wide variety of sources (Abraham Lincoln, John Paul II, Lord Acton, etc.). Essentially, what they have said is that we are truly free when we choose to do not just what we want, but more specifically when we choose to do what we ought, and I will add and what we ought to be.
When one is doing what they ought to be doing, meaning the thing they are gifted at and, dare I suggest the thing that they are meant to do, they feel less bound by troubling, everyday, earthly things — job stress, financial issues, relationship problems, and seemingly derealization. This is an abstract idea, I’m aware. It depends on people actually being meant to do things and them knowing what that thing is.
I can sense some people rolling their eyes, but I would offer a challenge here: stop reading and do something that you have an ardent love for, something that, regardless of how you feel, you suspect you’re gifted at — music, painting, carpentry, home décor, whatever. Do this for 15 to 30 minutes and see if you don’t feel that type of freedom. I would suspect that your worldly problems will remain, but they’ll drift into the background, barely affect you, and you will be free of them, at least momentarily. You will be doing what you ought to do and acting as something close to your fullest self.
Even if you don’t like Counting Crows (you musical heathen), it is inarguable that Adam is gifted at writing songs and making music. And when he is engaged in doing it, he seems to be experiencing this kind of freedom. He has even said as much in interviews.
“Whatever I’m going through in life is erased when I’m on stage. I often don’t want to go play because the thought of going on stage and wrenching my guts out for people is horrific. But when I hit the stage, I’m just gone; we’re just doing it. The world disappears and it’s just these songs.” — Washington Post, “The Disconnected Ringleader”, September 2nd, 2009
[Being on stage] I felt like I was in the right place. I could express anything I wanted up there… [Performing] was a good part of the day, it was the best part of the day. It was the one part of the day that I knew where I was supposed to be.” — The Joe Rogan Experience, May 21, 2021
Emphasis on the final sentence in that quote: he knew where we was supposed to be. That sense of knowing what he is supposed to be doing indicates that he has a purpose and there is a point to him using his gift. The reason he feels free from the world while he’s using it is because the gift comes from something outside of him. It was, in a sense, given to him as a thing he can do. And when a gift is given to you from an outside source (dare I say, God) you ought to use it. Adam Duritz does.
This is how Counting Crows songs get written, recorded, and performed despite Adam having a disorder that disconnects him from his life and makes it feel false. This is how he made albums that have impacted millions of people and was able to communicate with them even when he couldn’t do it with his family & friends.
“Life is supposed to be about accomplishing things, making things, doing things, so take the day where you do something. And ya know what? Try and do it again tomorrow because it is better. It doesn’t fix it, it doesn’t replace [life’s] difficulty, but at least what you know is that ‘I can have difficulty and I’m not a waste of space on earth. I’m not falling apart, I’m not nothing, I actually made a song. In my difficulty of whatever yesterday was, I actually made something beautiful. That’s a powerful thing.” — The Joe Rogan Experience, May 21, 2021
It is indeed powerful. And Adam has stumbled one of the purposes of life: you make something, put it out into the world, and let it live. It makes connections with and impacts other people. You have given it life. In a sense, you’re mimicking the act (and miracle of) creation.
Yes, his treatment helped and yes, he knows how to manage his disorder. I do not mean to negate how significant those things likely are in his life. But as we’ve established, they didn’t contribute much to the songwriting. Instead, the music was written because he was him pursuing what was given to him, using it to the best of his abilities, doing what he ought to do, and being who he ought to be. And thus, he set himself free.
Beautiful essay. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be him but thank the lord that we have him in our world to give us so many years of wonderful music and happiness.