ANOTHER ROUND OF FEELING DEPRESSED OR NUMB
In 2021, while the pandemic had not yet loosened its grip on us, an article appeared in The New York Times. It spoke of a condition that many people had recently begun to experience. This widespread state, called languishing, was described as something that was neither quite burnout nor quite depression, but rather a vague sense of feeling joyless and purposeless. Today, the Cambridge Dictionary defines the word as “to exist in an unpleasant or unwanted situation, often for a long time,” while the Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes it as “to be or live in a state of depression or decreasing vitality.” In essence, the term captures that bland, flattened way we sometimes feel toward life itself.
This sense of flatness is vividly portrayed in Thomas Vinterberg’s film Druk / Another Round (2020). The film begins with an image that represents the very opposite of languishing: vitality. In the opening scene, we see high school students running around carefree during a drinking game they have organized. Soon after, however, we watch Martin, Nikolaj, Peter, and Tommy who are the teachers at the same school, move through their classes with striking disengagement. Martin, a history teacher in particular, receives negative feedback from both students and parents because of his lackluster performance. In a dinner scene with his wife and two children, we immediately sense his loss of appetite for life. Turning to his wife Anika, who frequently works night shifts and with whom his communication seems strained, Martin asks, “Have I become a boring person?” He receives no reassuring answer.
During a dinner where Martin and his friends gather to celebrate Nikolaj’s birthday, a topic arises that changes everything. Nikolaj mentions a theory claiming that the human body maintains a blood alcohol level that is naturally about 0.05% too low, and that reaching this level supposedly makes people more relaxed, confident, and cheerful. When Martin begins experimenting with this idea, a different side of him emerges as creative, communicative, and eager to engage with both pleasure and connection. His renewed vitality becomes noticeable both at home and in his interactions with students. Soon, the experiment expands to include the other members of the group as they begin testing the effects of alcohol together, and what began as a curious theory gradually spirals into a chain of unexpected events. In the film’s final scene, Mads Mikkelsen, Martin himself, wins our hearts as he dances to the song What a Life. In place of the bland, spiritless Martin we saw at the beginning, we now encounter a man who simultaneously carries the sorrow of losing a friend and shares in the graduation joy of his students. What, then, has happened to Martin, who never once attended therapy, that by the end of one hour and fifty-seven minutes, we find ourselves watching a different man altogether?
For someone who is always cheerful, it may not be easy to recognize what they are trying to repair and reclaim or what the cost of such cheerfulness might be in their inner world. Contrary to the messages of new media, which constantly urge us never to feel bad and to become the best version of ourselves, feeling somewhat depressed can actually be a valuable tool for understanding what truly matters to us and which paths we no longer wish to pursue. This pause opens a small distance between action and thought, bringing us closer to making sense of what we are living through. It creates space for the questions we might ask ourselves. Although feeling depressed often evokes the sense of being at the bottom or at the end, it also quietly contains the seeds of beginnings. When we are sufficiently honest with ourselves, and because this is not easy, that is precisely why we therapists are here, we may begin to see our own part in certain recurring patterns: how we are still in that particular relationship, how we once again reacted in the same way to that manager, how we somehow always end up carrying the family’s burden, or how, unfailingly, people who fail to appreciate us seem to find their way into our lives. And perhaps, in recognizing these patterns, something new can begin.
