At the family physician’s office, he filled out a questionnaire. Inside the exam room, the doctor sat across from him and said, “First, know that what you’re experiencing is very common. Depression affects people of all ages, all races, and at every socio-economic level. Sometimes it’s temporary, sometimes it’s a chronic medical condition that must be managed throughout a person’s life. And it is that: a medical condition. I’m going to prescribe a medication: a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. Many patients improve on SSRIs. In your case, with the severity of your symptoms, I would also strongly encourage you to see a psychotherapist who can identify other underlying issues that could be at play and help you identify triggers in your life that you can manage. I’ve seen many patients improve on medicine alone, but many more benefit from a combination of medicine and therapy.”
The psychotherapist the doctor recommended was named Thomas Janson. He was in his sixties, with short gray hair and a kind smile. He listened as Desmond recounted his childhood and every major event up until he had walked in Dr. Janson’s door. The man took copious notes, and when Desmond had finished, Dr. Janson told him that he believed he could help him. He just needed a few days to consider what he’d said.
When Desmond returned, the man sat in a club chair, a notebook in his lap, and spoke slowly, his voice even.
“I believe you have a disorder we call post-traumatic stress disorder. Or PTSD.”
That surprised Desmond.
“I suspect you developed the condition after the bushfire that killed your family and very nearly you as well. I believe you never recovered from that event. You never came to grips with that severe trauma. In fact, you were placed in a new environment with its own dangers and hostility: your uncle’s care. Those first years were spent in near-constant fear of starvation or verbal abuse from your uncle. In your work on the rigs, you were in physical danger; your injuries attest to how real that threat was. And in the days after, when you and your uncle were,” he glanced at the notebook, “blowing off steam, that is, drinking and fighting, the danger and fear never went away.
“You also never got to mourn your uncle’s death—or frankly to unpack your feelings about him at all. You were in danger the instant he passed, even having to fight for your life, to kill a man, which is in itself an incredibly traumatic event. The fact that you processed it with little emotion at all is evidence of the vast amount of pre-existing emotional scar tissue.
“Our brains are like a muscle, Desmond: they become conditioned to the strain they must endure. We are an exceptionally adaptive species. We change to survive in the environment in which we exist. For you, that environment has been one of near-constant danger. From the moment that fire took your parents, you have been in physical or emotional danger your entire life. Even after you came to California, you feared someone from Oklahoma would find you, arrest you. You feared you’d lose the money your uncle left you.
“But I believe perhaps the greatest issue affecting you is the people you’ve lost in your life. Your family. The librarian,” he peeked at the notebook again, “Agnes. Your uncle. Everyone you’ve become emotionally invested in has been taken from you. Not just taken, but taken at a moment when you least expected it. Your mind, subconsciously, is now trying to protect you. It has seen this pattern before: you want to love, to care. But the moment you do, the object of your affection is ripped away. It won’t let you. You are at war with your own mind.”
Desmond sat for a moment, considering everything Dr. Janson had said. “Okay. Let’s assume I agree with your diagnosis. How do I fix it?”
“Well, that’s a tougher question. You didn’t get this way overnight, Desmond. Nor will your condition resolve quickly. It will take time. And some faith on your part. Hope is also a powerful thing.”
He encouraged Desmond to continue taking the medication and to establish a regular schedule of two visits per week.
The gloom Desmond felt was a sharp contrast to the euphoria around Silicon Valley. A new company seemed to go public every week, minting millionaires by the hundreds. Desmond was skeptical. Warren Buffett’s adage, “When others are fearful, be greedy; when others are greedy, be fearful,” seemed like good advice in the current environment. He invested his and Peyton’s money in bonds. With a small portion of his funds, he placed bets against companies he thought were poised for a fall. Having been inside a dot-com startup, he could evaluate their technology and read through the BS in the earnings reports and press releases. He spent his days listening to quarterly investor conference calls and researching companies.
Desmond’s bets failed at first. In the fall of 1999 and early 2000, he lost nearly half a million dollars. It seemed to him like the whole world had gone crazy. In 1999, there were 457 IPOs; most were high-tech companies. Of those, 117 saw their stock prices double on the first day of trading. And the euphoria wasn’t limited to new companies. On November 25, 1998, Books-A-Million announced an update to their website. Their stock increased over one thousand percent that week.
Some companies were using their stock to snap up every hot startup they could. Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.9 billion in stock and GeoCities for $3.57 billion in stock. A Spanish telecom company acquired Lycos for $12.5 billion (a few years later, they would unload it for less than $96 million—a loss of over 99% of their investment). In January of 2000, AOL bought TimeWarner in the second-largest merger in history. During the Super Bowl that month, sixteen dot-com companies ran ads. They cost two million dollars each.
The stock market soared. And crashed, in March of 2000, with stocks falling as hard as they had risen. Over the next two and half years, stocks shed over five trillion dollars in value. People flocked to bonds, and Desmond’s bearish wagers paid off. Their nine-million-dollar fortune was nineteen at the end of 2000, fifteen after taxes. He played it safe after that, diversifying and buying only a few high-quality stocks.