ORANGE, Calif. At first Danny Evans didnt know exactly what had hit him.

Sure, hed been laid off from his job as an advertising copywriter who wouldnt be knocked back on their heels by that? And yes, a few days later, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, took place. But, after that, didnt we all feel that overwhelming sense of sadness and anxiety?

I knew that I felt horrible and sort of numb, says Evans, 39, of the post 9/11 weeks when he fell into his own black hole of despair.

But it wasnt until a couple of months later when I found myself crying at a stoplight for no reason that I thought, Oh … somethings really wrong.

He was right. But lets pause his story right there for a moment. Because, as awful as Evans journey into depression was, it was hardly unique.

What is different about Evans story is that he decided to tell it.

Not to his therapist. Not to a small circle of family and friends.

No, Evans told his story to the world. He wrote a memoir, Rage Against The Meshugenah.

Serious and funny, Rage shares everything Evans experienced, warts and all (or, in Evans case, beer and porn) during his battle with depression.

And in doing so, Danny Evans felt better.

Dark days

The darkness hit hard. Some days, walking from the bed to the couch to watch TV was difficult. He neglected his wife, Sharon, and barely noticed their son.

To distract himself, he says, he drank one Bud Light after another. He also surfed for porn, online and on the magazine racks of liquor stores in neighborhoods near his home in Orange.

Sharon tried to help, though Evans says he rejected her and her willingness to talk about it. Eventually, when he realized he wasnt feeling better, he started with therapy. He took medication, too, which helped some.

He also looked for books. This is critical. He says that among all the books he found, books written about the many guises of depression, none seemed to talk about exactly what he was experiencing.

About nine months after the crash, Evans found a job. Nothing great, he says, but it was a paycheck. At about the same time, Sharon informed him they soon would be having another child.

I grabbed myself by my lapels and went, OK, youve got to kick yourself in the a–, Evans says. Youve got to be better.

A few months later, Evans found his way to a therapist, Susan Shalit, whose combination of compassion and tough love he credits with helping him start a rocky journey.

The recovery is definitely a process, Evans says. Its not just that you take a pill and youre on an upward trajectory. There are definitely fits and starts.

I definitely recall (thinking) returning back to that hopelessness and fear that this is as good as it gets.

Over the next few years, things gradually improved.

He got a new job as a copywriter for a health care company. He started a blog, DadGoneMad .com, where he wrote about fatherhood and home life. At its peak, the blog was attracting about 200,000 hits a month.

Life was looking up.

Then, in March 2008, Evans got laid off again.

A real writer

Where losing his job in 2001 triggered a breakdown, seven years later Evans had much stronger footing. Not that he and Sharon Evans were able to ignore the parallels.

She was very frightened, Evans says. I was frightened too, but I thought we were very close to a deal.

The deal was for the book hed long talked about writing, but never pursued until therapy and the success of his blog spurred him to finally attempt it in 2007.

Over the course of my therapy I recognized that what I really wanted to do was write books, Evans says. I wanted to be a real writer, not a corporate copywriter.

He sent proposals for a greatest blog hits book to 12 agents and got 12 rejection letters. He asked the last one to respond if there was anything he could do to make his proposal salable.

She said, Fatherhood books do not sell unless youre Bill Cosby or Paul Reiser. But, she said to me, You have this chapter in here about having gone through depression, and I think thats really interesting.

He revised the proposal. The agent took him on. And, two weeks after his second pink slip, his idea was bought up by a division of Penguin books.

Which, Evans says, was a mixed bag.

It was the most miserable chapter of my life, and Id tried to block that out, Evans says. I dont know that I would have ever thought to make a book about that.

But the more I wrote, and the more I thought about it, it was therapeutic to go back and visit those memories, Evans adds.

It was helpful to me, and that was how I was going to make it helpful to others.

Earlier on, he decided he had to tell everything, and do so with a sense of humor.

The book came out in August. Since then, readers have written to thank him for telling his story like a regular guy, with humor and empathy, and for pulling back the curtain on a disease that still is often only whispered about.

That stigma has got to be squashed, Evans says. So I dont think theres any shame (in telling his story). Ive been asked a lot: You know, someday your kids are going to read this?

My kids will know that I went through a rough time and that their mom is a hero to me, he says.

This is my life, and Im OK with them knowing that.