A Comedian Turned Depression Into an HBO Special by Playing Basketball Every Day
When Gary Gulman's depression hit, he lost three to six months of productivity every six to nine months. In the end he got there through hospitalization, medication, daily exercise, and turning his medical chart into material — and made the HBO special The Great Depresh.
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The argument · timestamps estimated from transcript position
Depression made long-term planning impossible
Gulman says that if someone had approached him in 1998 about doing a one-man show, he would have answered: that takes a year, and sometime in the next six to nine months I will collapse, disappear, stop working, and then spend time crawling back through medication and exercise. So he was "unreliable," and he could not trust himself to make long-term plans. This is not laziness; it is a periodic zeroing-out of capacity: an episode every six to nine months, costing three to six months of productivity. He says repeatedly that if he could stop that cycle, he could have actually been good at the thing he had put all his time into.
— Gary GulmanDepression is like pseudodementia — it steals words and memory
His psychiatrist told him that many people call this state faux dementia: depressed people struggle to form memories, to hold onto memories, and to retrieve words. So "it's very hard to think when you're depressed." Worse, during an episode the brain tells you: you will never get out; and once you are out, it tells you: you will never go back in. That is why he treats preventing relapse as part of the whole problem, not as the cleanup work after recovery.
— Gary GulmanStaying well is a daily checklist, not a mindset
Dubner presses him on what "vigilant" actually means, and Gulman gives a list: exercise every day, eat right, sleep enough, take on projects to keep busy, accept invitations and get out and talk to people, and take his medication every day. Dubner pushes back: weren't you doing those things before? Gulman admits he was not that disciplined about the exercise part, and that he was also lucky this time — he had insurance, savings, and the ability to stop working for a few months and go into the hospital to clear his head. He points out himself that in some earlier stretches he could not afford treatment, and could not afford his medication.
— Gary GulmanBeing recognized in the psych ward became the starting point of the bit
He was recognized in the psychiatric ward, and the person asked, "Are you Gary Gulman or am I crazy?" He describes it as the lowest point of his life: 6 p.m., in pajamas, with the non-slip grips on the bottom of his socks. But he says that unrepentant little self of his still thought: look, I got recognized, and that gave me a hit of dopamine. Later The Office was playing in the ward, and he told the guy he had auditioned for the role of Jim, and the guy asked, "Did you get it?" — and he answered, "Haven't heard back yet." In that moment he realized: if I can get back to doing stand-up, this is the stuff I'm going to talk about.
— Gary GulmanHis previous special not selling was the trigger for this episode
He says plainly that It's About Time, from 2014 or 2015, was the best work he could do at the time — it had the abbreviated-U.S.-state-names bit that later blew up, and a bit where he and his wife role-play — but the production company put up the money and nobody wanted it. He says selling a special was far easier back then, and that this crushed him; it was one of several factors — around the same time he also lost his father. Stacked together, these things left him unable to leave the house or get out of bed for many days. Later his agent Brian Stern proposed a hybrid "special plus documentary," and the director Mike Bonfiglio brought in Judd Apatow.
— Gary GulmanFeeling in over your head is a sign of a good project
He has worked out a method for handling collapsed confidence: while doing the current project, recall another project where he nearly gave up and ultimately forced his way through. From that comes a counterintuitive judgment — with any project, if at some point you feel in over your head, that is a pretty good sign, because it means you are pushing your comfort zone outward. He gives Grandiloquent as an example: thirty-six off-Broadway performances, and by the third week of rehearsal he told his wife, "I've bitten off more than I can chew," that opening night would be a disaster, that he could not remember the lines he had written. In the end he got through it with the Pomodoro method, handwriting, and mnemonics.
— Gary GulmanHe stays well partly so he won't let people down
Asked whether he worries that these extremely specific self-exposures will come back to bite him, his reason is not about himself: many people have told him The Great Depresh let them watch it with their families, and their families finally understood what it felt like — and "being unable to describe what is happening inside you" is the most frustrating part of depression. So he feels there is something else hanging on his staying well: he does not want people to think, "Then what hope is there for me? Gary is my..." He also admits that using your pain to make other people feel a little better is itself a bit strange.
— Gary GulmanBasketball is an antidepressant, but first accept you'll never dunk again
Dubner shoots hoops with him on an outdoor court in Harlem, on a day when New York was in the forties Fahrenheit. Gulman says basketball is good for the heart, is an anti-anxiety drug, and was an important part of his recovery — he used to take the antidepressant components of basketball for granted. Two things hold people back: not being good at it right away, or not being as good as you were when you were younger. He had to accept that he will never dunk again and will regularly get destroyed by young guys, and that is itself a lesson: rein in your ego. He also says that giving up basketball back then was partly because he did not believe in himself and did not appreciate the fun of it — he was only thinking about getting a scholarship.
— Gary GulmanIn their own words · checked verbatim
if somebody had come to me in 1998 and said, we want you to make a one-person show, I would say, well, that’s gonna take about a year, and at some point within the next six to nine months, I will fall apart, and I will be out of communication.
Gary Gulman10:29
My psychiatrist said that a lot of people have called it faux dementia, where depressives are having a hard time making memories and keeping memories and also accessing words.
Gary Gulman11:31
It’s the lowest you can get, really, in my lifespan, which is to be in pajamas at 6 PM and with socks with treads on the bottom. And yet part of my relentless ego is like, oh, look at me getting recognized.
Gary Gulman16:18
any project, it’s a pretty good sign if at some point you feel over your head. Because it means you’re—you’re stretching your comfort zone
Gary Gulman24:20
I don’t like how I feel about myself when I’m around these people.
Gary Gulman31:28
I thought I would be happy because I was a comedian and I was successful, but it wasn’t like that. And I thought, oh, it—I just haven’t gotten successful enough. And then you hear Bruce Springsteen and Michael Phelps, for instance, and you realize, oh, it has nothing to do with achievement. This is chemical.
Gary Gulman34:15
I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never dunk again and that I would be shown up by much younger people frequently. So—but that’s also a great lesson, which is to curb your ego.
Gary Gulman41:05
Figures
| Gulman's episode cycle and lost productivity | An episode every six to nine months, costing three to six months of productivity | 10:29 |
| Consecutive time in mental health | The past seven years | 10:29 |
| Duration of his worst stretch | Spring 2015 to fall 2017, two and a half years | 11:31 |
| Grandiloquent off-Broadway performances | Thirty-six | 24:20 |
| The Great Depresh shoot and air dates | Shot in June, aired in October | 37:13 |
| Gulman's height | Six foot six | 2:31 |
| Working at PricewaterhouseCoopers | Fired after two and a half years | 3:49 |
| Temperature threshold for playing ball | He goes out to play whenever the temperature in New York City is above 40 Fahrenheit | 38:14 |
Glossary
- faux dementia
- A colloquial name for the depressed state in which forming memories, holding onto memories, and retrieving words are all difficult.
- Pomodoro method
- A time-management method of working in timed blocks with timed breaks in between.
- effective altruism
- The idea of deciding where to donate and what career to pursue based on quantifiable maximum good.
How to listen
People who make content, lead creative teams, or have long carried their own mental health struggles; founders who want to understand that recovery is not a finish line but a daily checklist.
If you have no feel for comedy-world names and old NBA references, you can skip the stretch around 21:12 where he talks about his idols.