My First Apocalypse

Struggling with a persistent and indefinable mental malaise, Emmanuel Carrère eventually found relief when his psychiatrist prescribed an antipsychotic medication advertised as a treatment for “erroneous beliefs.” The phrase amused him. It sounded less like a pharmaceutical claim than a diagnosis of the human condition. If his life had been governed by erroneous beliefs, perhaps the drug was aimed less at his brain than at his philosophy.

As a hormone-soaked adolescent, I suffered from my own spectacular assortment of erroneous beliefs.

One of the most consequential arrived courtesy of Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling The Population Bomb. The book convinced me that civilization stood on the brink of collapse. Humanity would soon drown beneath its own numbers. Famine, drought, and social chaos were not distant possibilities but tomorrow’s weather forecast.

Under those circumstances, dating struck me as a curious misuse of time.

Why cultivate romance when the planet was preparing for its own obituary?

Why ask a girl to the movies when we would soon be rationing freeze-dried food aboard lunar colonies, assuming we survived long enough to board the shuttle?

My imagination raced well beyond Ehrlich’s predictions. In my private apocalypse there would be no health clubs, no squat racks, no barbells, and, worst of all, no gravity worthy of serious resistance training. Without a gym and a steady supply of protein, my hard-earned physique would evaporate. I pictured myself shrinking into the shape of a tomato balanced precariously atop four toothpicks. The image horrified me with an intensity wildly disproportionate to the fate of civilization itself.

Most teenagers worry about acne.

I worried about post-apocalyptic muscle atrophy.

Love became a luxury for people foolish enough to believe there would still be a future. Courtship seemed almost irresponsible. Civilization was ending, and I had more pressing concerns than holding hands at the mall.

Looking back, I marvel not at how mistaken I was but at how eagerly the adolescent mind embraces catastrophe. Young people are naturally drawn to grand narratives. Some expect salvation. Others anticipate doom. Both stories offer the same seductive promise: that ordinary life is about to be interrupted by something world-altering.

In my case, the world never ended.

The apocalypse quietly expired.

My erroneous beliefs, however, proved far more resilient than Paul Ehrlich’s predictions.