Darkness on the Edge of Sanity  – Bruce Springsteen’s Lessons on Mental Health

When pop culture and healthcare combine, it’s divine. At least when it comes to my blog inspiration.  There’s little I like more than when an idea sparks from a movie, music or other similar distraction; thus I was somewhat blown away by a recent viewing of the Bruce Springsteen biographical movie, Deliver Me From Nowhere.

Bruce Springsteen fanaticism is not exactly original, but I admit to being a huge Boss fan.  Being from New Jersey, as I am, it’s kind of mandatory.  I’ve seen Springsteen live in concert at least 10 times.  I have listened to every album.  When asked what 3 albums I’d take to a desert island if stranded, I’d 100% put The Rising on the list.  I can definitely say that one of my life’s finest moments was when I walked up to Springsteen’s long-sold-out Broadway show without a ticket on a NY business trip some years ago, inquiring whether I could get in; I was promptly sold (at face value) one of the Boss’ own two tickets, which he was not using that night. This is, I swear, a true story. Clearly my karma and Bruce’s are intertwined.  So, when a movie about him came out recently, I had to go.

I’ll admit that my Springsteen fangirling is more-or-less limited to his music catalog.  I don’t have TMZ-level knowledge of his life, and I haven’t tried to know everything there is to know about him.  I figured the movie would give me the whole story, or at least the parts not covered on the People magazine covers I peruse in airport stores or in his Broadway show.  The Boss’ Broadway show is awesome by the way – you can watch it on Netflix.

So, imagine my surprise when this movie was not about Springsteen’s rise from New Jersey nowhere man to his current state as the person who would definitely win the Presidential election if he ran on the back-pocket bandana ticket or any other ticket for that matter.  Rather, the movie is about a small 2-3 year segment of his life during which his career was skyrocketing while, at the same time, he experienced near suicidal depression and pulled out of it, at least in part due to an amazing and dedicated cadre of friends.

Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny
Something that they just can’t face
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it
They carry it with them every step that they take

From Darkness on the Edge of Town, by Bruce Springsteen

When I started my healthcare career journey back in the late 1980’s, Bruce was really on the rise.  I was an early employee at what was then a small mental health/substance use care startup and what became a huge company focused exclusively on that very large set of problems.  Bruce was writing his Tunnel of Love album when I started in the mental health field.  At that time, talking publicly about one’s mental health issues was simply not done.  The stigma was palpable, even though the economic costs of mental health care were beginning to overtake all other costs in employers’ and other payers’ healthcare bills. If you had serious mental health issues and you admitted to them out loud, you were kind of a pariah.  If you had “simpler” depression and anxiety challenges, you told only your closest confidant- maybe.  Openly describing one’s own mental health journey in public was a prescription for real career and personal risk.

Now look at me, baby
Struggling to do everything right
And then it all falls apart
Oh, when out go the lights
I’m just a lonely pilgrim
I walk this world in wealth
I wanna know if it’s you I don’t trust
‘Cause I damn sure don’t trust myself

From Tunnel of Love by Bruce Springsteen

The world has changed a decent amount on this front, thank goodness, especially after COVID.  As the state of youth and adult mental healthiness has reached a new low and substance use has soared, it has become somewhat more acceptable to talk about these things outside of a hushed room of friends.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better.  Certainly, there are now more companies and funding heading in this direction, though not all are good and there is still a fundamental gap between access and good care.  But I digress.

It long ago became more acceptable for celebrities to speak about how they shook off the curse of drug and alcohol abuse, perhaps because it was harder to hide it under the glaring lights of the stage, screen and 24-hour news cycle.  Plus, everyone loves a comeback story.  Just last weekend I saw comedian John Mulaney perform and, hilarious as he is, he has made his own trip from addiction to sobriety a full-blown punch line in several of his shows.  But substance abuse is different for some reason, it seems, and its discussion has become somewhat more commonplace. Elton John allowed the topic to be aired more openly in his recent biographical movie, which was a good thing for sure.  So many celebrities have died from substance over-use that the story line is hard to miss, but in some ways that obscures the realities of everyday people’s struggles, which are still conducted in private all too often.

I get up in the evenin’
And I ain’t got nothin’ to say
I come home in the mornin’
I go to bed feelin’ the same way
I ain’t nothin’ but tired
Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself
Hey there, baby, I could use just a little help

From Dancing in the Dark, by Bruce Springsteen

Open discussion about deep depression, and especially suicidality among younger people, is still couched in stigma.  It’s better, but receptivity on this subject is still pretty touch-and-go.  As a result, I was really taken with Springsteen’s openness about the subject; he has long been transparent about his own depression and his father’s serious mental illness, but the movie made it very tangible.  He may be one of the most famous Americans around, so having him unabashedly expose the darkest moments from his early life was eye-openingly refreshing.  It’s not the feelgood movie of the year, perhaps, thought it does have some rocking music, but that’s not the point of the movie.  The movie focuses squarely on the one subject of mental health and how it can undo even the seemingly most successful person.  And because Springsteen’s life is very relatable to many Americans, it hit me more clearly than some of the other relevant movies have and much more powerfully than I expected.

The movie (spoiler alert! – I’m going there) goes deep on Bruce’s descent into a very dark place right at the moment his fame was taking off.  He had just finished touring after the 1980 release of his album, The River, and he was beginning to work on the album that really sent his career into permanent orbit, Born in the USA, which was released in 1984.   It was at this moment that his mental health crisis hit hard as he found himself unable to escape the personal motion pictures and soundtracks of personal strife stuck on repeat in his own head, bringing back in glaring technicolor the darker, uglier moments of his early life.  As the light of his fame brightened, Springsteen’s depression darkened to the point of terrifying.  He tried to exorcise the demons with a much more somber album release, Nebraska.  But it wasn’t enough; though he tried to work out his misery through songwriting, he got lost in a spiral of perfectionism and insecurity.  He withdrew from people he cared about, isolated himself and headed into a pretty deep abyss.  It wasn’t until he opened up to a few close friends, and thank God he had them, that they realized they needed to organize and get him some help before it was too late.

It’s hard to swallow, come time to pay
That taste on your tongue don’t easily slip away
Let kingdom come, I’m gonna find my way
Yeah, through this lonesome day

From Lonesome Day, by Bruce Springsteen

Deliver Me From Nowhere serves as a clear statement on how money and fame do not buy happiness (there’s a great scene about this that led to the song Mansion on the Hill) and how childhood abuse (either direct or adjacent) can lead to people blaming themselves for their parents’ failings and otherwise really screw them up for the long haul.  It is also about how childhood demons can, when unaddressed, lead to a life of self-loathing, self-doubt and loneliness, even when surrounded by 10 zillion screaming fans telling you that you are, literally, the Boss they want to follow.

It is pretty stark to watch Springsteen (or at least the guy who plays his young self very well in the movie) know he is talented but still be unable to imagine why he would be worthy of love.  It is very poignant that while he was never alone–he was always surrounded by fans and followers even before the advent of social media–he was deeply lonely and lost inside his own ever-darker thoughts. The portrayal of Springsteen’s serious depression and related anxiety are very real, very raw and so like the exact way so many people feel, amplified greatly because they don’t have a fan club following them around reminding them they are worthy, for what it’s worth.  The movie’s message was clear: if this can happen to the Boss, it can happen to anyone; don’t deny it, don’t ignore it, don’t lose yourself or your friends to it.  Own it, deal with it. face into the ugly, find the tools to cope when it comes back, because it will.

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back

From Atlantic City, by Bruce Springsteen

I deeply appreciated how viscerally familiar this film would be to so many people and how helpful it could be.  It was deeply relatable to me as I think back on a particular time in my life.  My own family has been hit quite hard by the ravages of mental health and so has nearly every family I know at one time or another.  It is real, it is normal and it is also very scary.  It should not go un-discussed and, given how common the issues are, it should not be embarrassing.  Talking about one’s own menopause and periods, once done only hush-hush and under the breath in closed rooms of women alone, is rapidly coming out into the open.  I overheard a youngish man openly discussing these topics at a restaurant table of young couples the other day in such a healthy and normal way and was quite taken by it.  Let’s make it truly the same for depression and anxiety.  For those of you who have never seen major depression up close, mark my words, at some point you will, either directly or indirectly.  Be prepared and take the hand offered or extend the hand needed.  It could change a life.

In the end, Springsteen’s closest friends rally around to help him get through it all.  They protect him from those who care only to profit from his talent and ensure he has the space to heal.  It really highlighted how important it is to both invest in your trusted friends and for trusted friends to watch out for each other and not get so wrapped up in their own day to day lives that they forget to notice the signs of depression and it’s close friend, self-destruction taking hold in a member of their pit crew.  While Springsteen has many songs about this, the song it brought to mind for me was this more recent one by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, called Find Your People.  The lines that speak to me are these:

You gotta find your people
The ones that make you feel alright
The kind you want to stay up with all night
You got to find your people
The ones that make you feel whole
That won’t leave your side when you lose control
The ones that don’t let you lose your soul

You gotta find your people
The ones that get the joke
Who understand what you’re saying before a word is spoke

You gotta find your people
That put the needle in the groove
When you’re together, you got nothing to prove
When you’re together, you got nothing to lose

In a world of strangers, you don’t know who to trust
All you see is danger, tryna find what you lost
You can’t go in alone, everybody needs help
You gotta find your people, then you’ll find yourself

From Find Your People, by Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors