Thanks for the reminder. I just finished this book last week while staying at an ashram upstate - it was very good.
While I was there I met a woman that recommended How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. So far, it’s good.
The Body Keeps the Score was great in that it spoke of many different healing modalities from an empirical perspective. I have done IFS and found it helpful.
Anyway, thanks @EmilyQ for reminding me to read it, and to @Dr_Pangloss for reminding me that Emily reminded me.
Ok, new discussion. Pretty sure no one is going to dox me so I’ll be open AF about what is going on.
I’ve suffered major depression for the last three years. I tried SSNI’s and they didn’t work. I tried yoga, meditation, Reiki, breathwork, and they worked a little bit. I’m now on an SSRI.
I also finished reading a bunch of books, a few listed above, and the latest was When The Impossible Happens by Stanislav Grof.
Grof is an MD PhD from Czechoslovakia, did I spell that right? He started LSD-25 treatments in Prague about 1965, then came to Murrica and did the same at the Maryland Psychiatric Institute in Baltimore.
Summary, he found LSD to be very helpful for people struggling with “mental health issues,” including depression.
He also found mushrooms, ayuhuasca, weed, peyote, and other psychedelics to be beneficial.
When LSD was outlawed, he developed Holotropic Breathwork. This breathwork was a substitute for psychedelics.
It’s a trippy book for sure, and way woo woo, but written by an MD PhD.
I don’t have a lot to say about Holotropic Breathwork, but I do/did know a practitioner. One of my kids was close to a kid whose parent practiced it and did workshops. What I will say about the family is that the parents were…odd. Very, very intelligent - one of them sat in my living room one morning while waiting to pick the kid up after a sleepover and told me, in incredible depth, the geological history of our town. Very community-involved, very earnest, slightly dour.
The kid was an absolute delight, bright and funny, but I never once laughed with either of the parents, and that’s very unusual for me. I enjoy people, and these people liked me just fine. Conversations were just always…low energy. Earnest. We nodded thoughtfully a lot.
The other stand-out thing about the family for me is that they looked unhealthy. Sort of stooped and wan. Dad developed cancer at some point and the family suspended their vegetarianism, at least temporarily, and they still looked anemic.
I say all of this because my sense of the woo people around me is that there is a lack or deficiency, and they’re seeking to fill that hole. I know robust vegetarians/vegans, but 90% seem ashen and emaciated to me. Same with the healing arts, it’s like people go farther and farther afield to find a solution to ill-defined problems. People who start out feeling good don’t look for things to eliminate from their diet or do mold testing, or whatever. People who are content don’t need to be healed. I’m skeptical of the woo because I’ve never seen it work. People will SAY “oh, yes, fantastic” when they try new things, but the hole always seems to remain and the search seems to continue, as with you.
How is the SSRI working? What are you on, if I may be so bold? You have a therapist, right?
Have you ever tried a gratitude journal? I hear good things about them, though I don’t do it myself and rarely think to ask my clients to. I’m pretty much 100% cognitive-behavioral in my practice, with a strong affinity for positive psychology.
Which is ironic given the grim, cynical tone of this post.
Depression as a result of a brain chemical imbalance is definitely not where philosophy shines as a solution, minus the Nietzschian “That which does not kill me makes me stronger” aspect that surviving the depression will result in some new growth.
Where philosophy would shine is if the depression more results from incongruities between what one wants out of life and what one gets. You could go the stoic route and decide that you can’t change the world: only your reactions to it. You could go the Nietzsche route and decide that, in the “death of God” we must make our own values so that we don’t drown in nihilism. You could go the positive nihilism route and decide that the absence of meaning is ultimately liberating because it means there are zero consequences to our actions.
I won’t pretend that what I experienced is anything akin to those that have been diagnosed with depression, but when I was in a slump post surgery, something that really resonated with me was from Camus “The Myth of Sisyphus” In it, Camus talks to the fate of Sisyphus, that he is “doomed” to always roll the boulder up the hill, only for it to come crashing back down. This is his fate, and he has no control over that. HOWEVER, there is a moment, immediately after the boulder rolls down the hill, wherein Sisyphus can instead CHOOSE to walk back down and roll it back up. He is not doomed: this lot in life is his choice, and he has chosen to do so.
A good explanation of Camus absurdist take on existentialism, and it gels well with me. We can acknowledge that the world is crazy, nothing makes sense, the rules don’t apply, etc, and we can still choose to go forth in all of that. We don’t have to have it make sense.
I’m out of time and need to get headed to work, so this will seem apropos of nothing, but the conversation is cross-thread to some extent. I’m moving a post here because this is where it probably belongs.
Yes! I see that as CBT, about which here is my post from the other thread, lol.
My favorite analogy for depression treatment (meds vs other interventions) is to diabetes:
With Type I diabetes, sometimes called juvenile or childhood diabetes, you have a broken system. Insulin is not produced and will have to be obtained via medication forever.
Type II is generally diagnosed in middle aged people. You go to the doctor and he/she will typically put you on oral medication, metformin, say. From there you can go one of two ways; you can either go home and change your lifestyle - diet, exercise - with a strong likelihood that you’ll be able to come off medication and be considered “diet controlled,” which means you’re pretty much not diabetic any longer, or you can keep on as you were. If you choose the second option, you will almost surely wind up on insulin with an increasingly broken system. You might as well, at that point, have Type I diabetes.
I see depression (and anxiety) the same way. There are people who have broken systems. Their depressions are cyclical, and are not dependent on environmental factors. Things can be going very well and a “Type I” will still sink into suicidal depression. They will always need medication, and that medication will probably have to be jiggered periodically to maintain functionality.
What I’m calling “Type II” depression could be considered “lifestyle” also. If someone becomes depressed, starts medication, and then goes home and addresses situational and/or unresolved childhood issues along with developing coping mechanisms, there’s every likelihood that they can come off the medication.
CBT, ideally, questions underlying assumptions. It’s the Monday morning review of Sunday’s big game. “How was your week?” starts the video rolling, and from there you go to good spots and bad spots, stopping the tape, rewinding, watching again in slow motion, discuss what went wrong, and then basically drawing red circles and arrows to indicate the plan for next time. It’s not different, really, from the nutritionist the diabetic sees. Over time the thoughts/beliefs/attributions you’ve held are either confirmed or found to be invalid. The confirmed thoughts/beliefs/attributions open the door to change. YES, your husband is abusive or your child is out of control. What should be done about this? And healthy change is instituted.
If thoughts/beliefs/attributions are found to be invalid, the door is opened for healthier ones to take their place, e.g. shame is unfounded, self-acceptance takes its place.
NOTE: there are no such things as Type I/Type II depression, so don’t use those terms! It’s just my own frame.
It has been interesting lately. There’s a guy I’ve gone to meetings with for a long time, probably 15 years or so. We never got along, especially after a fundamental disagreement at a particular meeting we were both home group members of. He wanted to do a bunch of outreach stuff, and I was more along the lines of keep the doors opened and coffee warm. It turned out that we were both right, but how much fun is that!?! So there was a foul bit of grudge between us for about the last 10 years as we both went separate ways and about our business.
More recently though I’ve been running into him again. He had recently been treated for cancer and officially has a clean bill of health, as of Monday, cancer free. Also on Monday, I went to the cardiologist and he cleared me for what ever physical activity I may enjoy, and assured my wife that I could even join a powerlifting club and deadlift till my head explodes- the stents will be fine.
So over the course of the past month or so, me and my grudge buddy had been talking about all of these medical things, what we’ve been going through, life stuff, and last night were both happy, discussing this stuff and sort of celebrating over a cup of coffee, hanging out after the meeting.
So Thanks for the timely reminder. Neither one of us saw any of this stuff coming from 10 years away, but here we are!
I’m at work now and waiting for my first client, and wanted to say that I enjoyed this post entire, and that it aligns well with my view of things, though I use different language.
“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” Franz Kafka
Uh, the SSRI is okay, not great. Better than the SNRI (Wellbutrin and Effexor). I think it has to do with whether you’re dopamine or serotonin resistant.
It’s a stop gap. I’m on Paxil, 10 mg a day, wickedly low. I suspect my neuro will bump it to 20. Typical dosage is 40mg, but I want to get off. I want to uncover rather than cover, hence my breathwork, meditation, yoga, CBT and IFS.
Open kimono. I try to wake up and pray everyday, be grateful for what I have. I also journal like a motherfucker - dreams, thoughts, feelings - I am an English teacher.
You’re a tough bitch - and I say that with the utmost respect. One of my favorite posters.
I’d invite you to consider other modalities. IFS is brilliant. If you could do psychedelics, well…
CBT doesn’t work. Just my take. Didn’t work for me, doesn’t work for most people. The Freudian and Jungian model is outmoded.
But, you are smart AF, and I wish you were my counselor.
Grim, but an accurate depiction of therapy today.
I’d love to talk to you more about holotropic approaches to therapy.
As usual, much food for thought. Never disappointed in your posts.
Many therapists, including Grof , Schnelbach, and a few others with MD’s and Psychiatrists, see depression as the Dark Night Of the Soul that Joseph Campbell speaks of. One of my books, I forget the author, an MD Psychiatrist, suggested it was a sign of an awakening - finding the treasure.
I most recently read Grof, and he calls it a Spiritual Emergency - emergent being an awakening.
Your second paragraph is so well written that I can’t actually form a response other than to say that god is not dead, he is within each and every one of us. Nobody is getting into heaven, because we already live there - if we are at peace with ourselves. And I guess that is where the choice is - Nihilism or spiritualism.
Yeah, I fucking hate Sisyphus, but that is the choice we all make. So, push that fucking rock up the hill and enjoy it. I think you get this @T3hPwnisher .
This is contemporary literature as well - no more Romantic stories where shit ends up all nice and tidy and the guy gets the girl. I watched THE MULE on my flight back from California, it follows. Heros don’t always win.
That is uncovering the issues. The meds cover it, the work uncovers it. And CBT is not very effective. Most docs, and therapists, just keep medicating.
To me, this is a numinous experience where you realize that we are all connected - I raise you up, it raises me up. Give away what you have to those that don’t have it - I am sure you know what I mean.
I don’t know anything about clinical depression. Regarding mental illness, I’ve only had experience with someone with schizophrenia. But I’m always game for lsd.
So there was a foul bit of grudge between us for about the last 10 years as we both went separate ways and about our business.