WillSpirit!

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ Love, Clarity, Balance, Peace, & Bliss ∞

A science, mental health and spirituality blog written by a physician.

Disclaimer
- Dear Visitors:
  Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.
- ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.

The Scene Behind the Curtain

Every once in awhile I look back on my most recent posts and see them as too highfalutin. Without doubt I work hard to grow, stabilize, and understand. So it seems appropriate to emphasize my insights and successes in these essays. But just like the admonition about not watching sausage manufacture if you enjoy breakfast links, readers of WillSpirit might be dismayed if they saw me in action.

Let’s not forget that just a half-dozen years ago a psychiatrist had me on five medications for my so-called mood disorder. Plus, I relied on a powerful opiate to subdue my chronic spinal pain. Back then I had few friends and lived a constrained life. Worry confronted me daily against a backdrop of ongoing despair. My self-esteem had bottomed out after neck problems ended my surgical career, and none of my efforts seemed to lift it toward the light.

Given that history, it’s a bit disingenuous for me to present myself as a paragon of wisdom. In the interest of full disclosure, this post will describe some of my less elevated behaviors during this recent illness.

When the pain first started, I suggested to my wife that a trip to the Emergency Department might be in order. During the years of confusion I just described, there were several occasions when palpitations, shakiness, or other symptoms compelled me to enter the ED for evaluation. In every case, the doctors treated me like the unstable mental patient they read about in my medical record, and they always sent me out with a clean bill of health. So my wife hesitated to take me in for this latest problem, even though it had been years since I’d sounded the alarms.

In the face of her refusal, I felt wounded and betrayed. I pouted and took a sleeping pill to get some relief from the belly pain and hurt feelings. It’s apparent to me now that waiting a little longer made sense, but I had no such clarity at the time.

The next low moment came as I obsessed about the possibility of pancreatic cancer. It sat prominently on the list of potential diagnoses, but in my mind it seemed a near certainty. The prospect of mortality hit me hard and led to one of the early posts in this series. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t anything wrong with considering the implications of terminal illness, but I held onto to the sense of doom much too long. Even as evidence increasingly pointed away from malignancy, I remained maudlin and fixated. This is hardly the sort of flexibility I announced at the end of another recent essay.

Then came my tantrum when the staff ejected me from my private room, which I’ve already described. As I wind up my stay in this hospital, the nurses still laughingly refer to the fit I threw. Evidently there is clinical need for single rooms right now, but they tell me no one would dare move me into a shared ward again given how I reacted the first time. This isn’t what one expects of the spiritually enlightened.

And there have been many occasions when the stress, pain, and fear have simply overwhelmed me and I’ve wept in anguish. My wife has watched me crumble under the pressure several times since this started. Although it makes sense to feel grief, and I have no problem with tears, some of my sobbing came from feelings of self-pity: Why do I have to face yet another hardship? Why me? Feeling sorry for the self is not a sign of transcendence.

Well, that’s enough in the way of examples, though I could go on. But the point has been made: although my words sound enlightened, my behavior often falls short of my ideals. This probably is no surprise to anyone, but it’s important to me to be honest in this work. And let me be clear that I recognize that none of these slip-ups are cause for ongoing shame or self-abuse. I’m OK with being human.

To drive home that final point: I just returned from a walk outside the hospital with my wife. We hoofed it to a small church a half-mile away. Feeling tired and ready to sit down, I looked forward to resting for a moment in the sanctuary. We got permission from the pastor and stepped inside. Unexpectedly, tears almost immediately flooded my eyes and I began to sob in great exhausted heaves. Yes, I felt relieved to be alive and not facing a malignancy. Yes, I felt fortunate to have access to good medical care and to be married to a loving nurse who can manage my home IV feedings. Yes, I felt fearful about the possibilities of permanent intestinal obstruction and further internal bleeding. But more than anything, I wept with an enormous sense of weariness.

It appears that despite my often-elevated language, I remain a fragile, frightened, and forlorn patient badly in need of rest.

So I still make mistakes and I occasionally break down, but as long term readers can probably tell, I’m getting better. My behavior and attitude have both improved over the years. The more uplifting pieces written here accurately reflect how I generally look at life and its difficulties. But I remain human and therefore fallible. At times I live up to my standards, and at times I don’t. The surest sign of my growth is that I am learning to accept my weaknesses even as I develop my strengths.

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The Advantage of Disadvantage

Life promises us nothing but the experience of living until we die. We cannot expect our dreams to be fulfilled. We cannot avoid hardship and loss. These principles apply to all.

But even though no one can squeeze guarantees out of fate, there is great unevenness in our fortunes. Some people simply seem luckier than others. They enjoy families that provide more resources of love and support. As a consequence, or maybe because of inborn personality factors, they grow into confident, resourceful, and resilient adults. They suffer little self-doubt and have no sense of self-loathing. Their lives unfold relatively smoothly, and as they enter the later stages of adulthood they can look back with pride at how they built success. They may have achieved career acclaim, raised happy children, and/or simply radiated good cheer as they walked upright through the world.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way for everyone, and we all know of human situations that fall short of such comfort and success. First, there are the large populations across the globe that suffer under extreme poverty, chronic warfare, and oppression. We see the images of shantytowns and war-torn cities in which stunned and dusty children wander wide-eyed and alone. We observe their innocent, wounded faces and wonder: what can these orphans possibly hope for in the future? And yet, they seem far away and unconnected to our affluent societies. We try to reassure ourselves that these kids don’t suffer like we would in the same situation, because they don’t know what they’re missing. It’s a vain and selfish hope, of course, but sometimes it’s our only defense against feeling overwhelmed by the unfairness in the world.

We naturally think in terms of this culture’s material advantages, but unless poverty and turmoil are so severe that food, clothing, and shelter are compromised, we cannot assume that wealthier populations are happier. I haven’t been to Mexico since the recent outbreaks of violence, but in earlier years the joy among the country’s populace was impressive. Despite much lower living standards than enjoyed in the North, the Mexicans seemed far more contented and jolly than Americans. Why? I suspect because they lived in more stable communities, where friends and family didn’t regularly move away. They knew their neighbors their entire lives, and lived embedded in rich relational webs.

In contrast, many of us in the USA and other Western countries were raised in isolated nuclear families. Relocations were so common that we often didn’t feel close to many neighbors and developed few longterm friendships. If we were unlucky enough to have alcoholic, depressed, and/or violent parents, we had nowhere to turn. We may have suffered severe traumas or bereavements in relative isolation.

We may then have grown up to face the same demons that tormented those who raised us. We may have had to battle addictions, chronic sorrow, and/or festering rage ourselves.

Those of us who endured abusive, bereaved, or neglected upbringings entered adulthood with few useful tools for dealing with life. Many of us require decades to sort out the injuries, the humiliations, the recriminations, and the grief. Sadly, many who come from such homes simply deteriorate and die early, tragically, or alone.

But if we survive, then what? Before long we find ourselves in middle age with lives that look less than idyllic. We often have fewer friends, less stable families, and more fatigue. Childhood trauma translates into adult difficulty, and many of us end up with lives littered by broken relationships and abandoned dreams.

And then what? Ultimately, if we hope to find peace, we learn how to cope. We mature. We forgive the damaged parents who hurt us. We forgive the entire cosmos for failing to meet our childhood needs. We find meaning in all the hardship, setbacks, and breakdowns. We become wiser and more spiritual. We begin to find beauty in every nook and cranny of creation.

But still, we can easily see that our lives could have been better. It is all too obvious that we have not thrived like the more fortunate. We may feel isolated; many of us suffer health problems that resulted from the massive stress and poorly chosen coping strategies of earlier years. We feel damaged and aged in a culture that worships youth, wealth, success, and beauty.

Is there any upside to this realization? Perhaps only this: we are also the ones who are forced to enlarge our hearts the most. Our pain, isolation, grief, and remorse all compel us to learn unconditional acceptance and radical forgiveness. Despite all the mistakes and brokenness, we lovingly embrace ourselves, our families, our communities, and whatever divine forces might be witnessing this mysterious passion play.

There are other paths to growth, but loss, injury, and failure can be potent stimuli to spiritual practice and mystical awakening. Humble but exalted realization becomes the consolation prize for the brokenhearted who persist. At first such gentle wisdom barely tips the scales as we judge our lives, but as cosmic love and insight grow, we begin to feel less and less unfortunate. Until, finally, the day comes when we look back on our fractured histories and see their value, their majesty, and what in retrospect seems like Grace.

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Growing Pains

Does trauma edify? Does bereavement educate? Do we learn from hardship?

Anyone reading my recent posts would get the clear message that I believe so. In truth, I doubt many would argue the point. Sure, in the face of recent loss the potential for growth may be hard to accept, but when people look back years later, many dreadful experiences can be seen as transformative. And the idea that life teaches us lessons has obviously been around a long time. “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Right?

Then why do we balk at our ordeals? Why is hardship so, well, hard?

You would think a universe constructed to help us grow would make the maturation process easier. Of course, we have no proof that the cosmos serves any particular purpose. The fact that we learn from life doesn’t mean the purpose of life is learning.

But human existence is made easier by organizing beliefs. All the spiritual paths I know of provide a reason for tribulation. Karma. Original sin. Desire. God’s will. Even the religion of material atheism provides an answer: utter randomness. It seems very hard for people to simply live without trying to understand what causes their hardship.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to gain insight, but let’s face it: we cannot solidly identify the motive force behind life. The new atheists are convinced there is no such motivator, but they build that conviction on faith, just like the rest of us.

I’m playing with these ideas to try to separate belief from effect. We learn from life no matter what we think about it. Atheists mature the same as spiritualists. Growth is the one principle that cannot be denied.

Think about that: growth is the one sure thing. And what characterizes life in the first place? Growth. What is the touchstone of modern economics? Growth. What do we gain from our hardships? Growth.

So what do we harvest from our toil on this plane? A more or less steady bounty of movement toward maturity. Some develop more than others, of course, but the process occurs in every life, starting with conception.

So why do we resist the hardship that helps form us? Because it hurts, and our native inclination is to avoid pain.

And why isn’t life easier? Well, what education is easy? Do you learn to be a physician without struggle? Do virtuoso musicians acquire their skill without effort? Does a poet blossom without heartache? If growth is a principle of life, pain is a principle of growth.

But so is joy. The final irony is that by rejecting our instinctive avoidance of pain, and embracing all the lessons of life, the heart finds bliss. This spiritual truth has been announced by saints throughout history. In the present day, even ordinary people are awakening to it, often as a result of meditation.

Is hardship, once accepted as a path to realization, still hard? Of course. But if we abandon our fear, open our hearts, and accept the vicissitudes of life, are we still suffering? Perhaps a little, but not as much as when we resist.

So here’s my larger point: We can find peace no matter what we believe. We can start with the undeniable truth that struggle brings growth, and then accept hardship as ultimately beneficial. The alternative is to fight fate, suffer terribly, then grow anyway.

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To forgive, divine

Eye surgery paid well, interested me, challenged me, and rewarded me. But it did not ‘fit’ me. My selection of oculoplastics came as close to perfection as was possible within the choices available. It suited me much more than any other subspecialty of ophthalmology, or a general eye surgery practice. The field offered more room for creativity, more incorporation of esthetics, and (frankly) more room for error. If you operate inside an eyeball, precision counts above all else. A fraction of a millimeter can make the difference, in some cases, between success and functional blindness. The preoperative examination and postoperative care require equal attention to detail. With surgery around the eye, rather than inside it, you do not need to be so compulsive. There is more need for judgment and innovation, and less need for machine-like accuracy. That matched my skill set better.

The problem for me did not come down to dexterity. It had more to do with diligent attention to detail. That is just not my strong suit. At one point, after I left my surgical practice and was looking for answers, doctors considered a diagnosis of ADD (attention deficit disorder). Even without that label, however, I knew there were problems with forgetfulness and inattention. They say that ADD might be more appropriately named ‘selective attention deficit disorder’. I explained to one psychologist that I never had trouble focusing during surgery, but that pre-operative preparation and post-operative follow-up involved a lot of details that caused me problems. She told me that my experience fit the classic ADD model. When the adrenaline surges through my system, I am capable of intense concentration. But when the pressure lessens, my mind wanders.

So working as a Western, tradition doctor (which requires keeping track of myriad facts and countless essential tasks) often stressed me out. I struggled constantly to make sure I did not overlook some crucial clinical finding, forget to order a vital medication, omit filling out the form for a key lab test, or fail to direct the patient to return for the proper follow-up. Relating this now embarrasses me. It is only in hindsight that the problem looks so clear. While in the field, I did not allow myself the luxury of admitting my weakness. I just powered onward, and did the best I could. Sedulous care was most exhausting and difficult while in training, because I was inexperienced, and few of my professors bothered to check up on us (surprising, isn’t it, that trainees were not watched more closely?). Once out in practice, I could do a lot by rote, and the staff I worked with quickly picked up on my need for others to help manage the details and paperwork. I did a fantastic job with diagnosis, planning, and surgery. But remembering all the countless peripheral components that go into taking care of patients never came easily. And relying on your helpers to catch your mistakes is destined to fail sooner or later.

I had talent as an oculoplastic surgeon. Patients were referred to me from wide areas, repeatedly by the same doctors. Some even told me my reputation was stellar. The errors I made were no more common, I don’t believe, than those of most other eye doctors I knew. But if you overlook a crucial detail, it looks really bad. If you perform an unnecessary operation, or decide not to operate when surgery would have been better for the patient, people may disagree. Nevertheless, they won’t look at you the same way as if (for instance) you operate on the wrong eyelid. (There: I revealed it—my most public and shameful mistake.)

So in a sense, losing my ability to perform surgery may have been a good thing in the long run. It certainly reduced my burden of stress. It saved more patients from being harmed by my ADD. Even though there were only a few times that my tendency to lose focus caused significant harm to those in my care, every one of those mistake haunts me to this day. Yes, it is easy to come up with justifications. For instance, I remind myself that all physicians make errors. My view has always been that the type of blunder reflects the individual doctor’s personality. Some people make mistakes because they refuse to recognize their limits, and take on cases for which they lack adequate talent or preparation. Conversely, some surgeons are too timid, and hesitate rather than accepting necessary challenges. Some rush, and make mistakes by going too fast. Some are terribly slow, and needlessly prolong cases, increasing the chances of infection or other complications. Not a few just have poor clinical judgment. And so on. My mistakes came from a genetic inability to keep track of details. Frankly, I don’t think my missteps were any more frequent or severe than those of most surgeons in my field, but errors of forgetfulness are glaring and impossible to explain away. And even though I have run all these tapes about how ‘everyone makes mistakes’ countless times in order to feel better about my errors, in the end there is no valid excuse for injuring patients.

In my day, and probably still, no one ran aptitude tests to help medical students choose the right specialty. I knew of doctors who made it all the way into a field like ophthalmology, where you simply have to have good depth perception, only to find out they had none. We were never assessed for manual dexterity. If you were a good student you could do whatever you wanted.

I liked the eye. The first time I looked at a human eyeball through a ‘slit lamp’ (the clinical microscope used by eye doctors; you know the type: you put your chin in a little cup while a bright light flashes in your eye), it literally took my breath away. I thought the eye was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen, like a faceted jewel or the most intricate flower. I once wrote a description of that first view; and I have made it available on the ‘MemoirShards‘ page of this site. That piece came out of the fact that looking at that first living human eye through a microscope stands as a landmark day in my life. The way the eye’s beauty thrilled me led me to be an eye surgeon. But it may not have been the best way to select a specialty.

My instinct told me to become a psychiatrist. When the time for choosing a direction arrived, I had yet to develop the mental health history I now have. There was depression in my background, but I had never been hospitalized, and never given medications. But both my mother and my sister had been through the ‘mill’, and the subject fascinated me. The brain held more intellectual interest for me than any other organ. (The retina, by the way, develops as an outgrowth of the brain. Studying its circuitry in graduate school laid the groundwork for my later connections within ophthalmology. It is not an exaggeration to say that the retina is actually a subunit of the brain.) I also had a natural facility working with psychiatric patients. They did not scare or repulse me, as they did some other students. I found them interesting, and their plights deeply touched me. I connected well with those on the psychiatric unit, and seemed to be able to bring them comfort.

But ‘eye surgery’ had more cachet. It paid better, seemed more technically sophisticated, and attracted more driven and competitive students. Always one to look for a chance to enter a contest and win, I couldn’t resist. Plus, the research in ocular cancer that I did as a medical student went quite well, and the eye surgeon/professor who guided me had an international reputation. He mentored me, complimented me, and persuaded me to enter ophthalmology. I ignored my ‘heart’, and my natural talents, and did the more impressive, ‘ambitious’, and expected thing.

What can I say? When young, we make poor choices. By the time I figured out my mistake, so much work and time had been devoted to becoming an ophthalmologist that it seemed like it would be stupid to switch. So I motored on, and chose the field within ocular medicine that suited me the best. I did well, got a lot of recognition, and actually enjoyed the work. But it never ‘fit’.

Worse, I knew going in that my family has a strong history of severe arthritis. The emotional stress of working so hard to avoid forgetting things, and the physical stress of operating as much as I did, led to a liability for my neck that it could not sustain. My spine failed me, and I had to abandon the career. That led to my psychiatric collapse, from which I have been recovering for a decade. I am now better, but permanently marked as a ‘mental patient’. And my body has been irreversibly scarred by the medications.

Sometimes I think this is my retribution for the mistakes I made as a doctor. If so, then I have paid my dues. The distress I experienced from the shabby way several mental health clinicians treated me, and the horror I felt watching my body get wrecked by psychotropic drugs, have been so great that I don’t think I need to undergo any more ignominy or torment to balance the scales. This feels liberating.

So I have a clean slate. The old me has been burned. The silly arrogance, stupid misdirections, careless errors, and exaggerated drive to win have all been incinerated. I am free. Crossing that wobbly bridge from a high powered surgical career to long-lasting (though thankfully not permanent) disability took a long time, and nearly drowned me in regret, humiliation, and grief. But I am still here. Crucially, I have forgiven myself. I am still marching forward into the mists of fate, and have not jumped over the edge to avoid them.

This essay, this baring of my defects as a surgeon, would not have been possible ten years ago. Now that I have been so long out of the field, and can look back with objectivity, I see things far more clearly than I did at the time. And I no longer have a surgeon’s reputation to uphold. I can be honest. I did much good as a oculoplastic specialist: most of my post-cancer reconstructions, for instance, came out exceptionally well. But the whole time I spent in practice, I lived in fear of that critical mistake. Now it is all in the past. As devastated as I was on that day I described in my last post, the day I knew that a decision during surgery had been dictated by pain rather than clinical judgment, the day I knew the only ethical choice was to stop operating, as frightened as I then was, I now realize that everything I went through had to happen for me to be released from bondage. Losing my career was inevitable for many reasons. For my sanity, for the benefit of those patients who might have suffered harm, for my neck, and for my enlightenment.

I hated the bottomless despair of a difficult ten years. It felt like hell to spend my nights awake in anxious terror, feeling the disgrace of my weaknesses and failures becoming public knowledge, knowing I had lost every shred of status and all sense of financial security, and eventually watching critical parts of my body get destroyed. But now I understand. I get the point of suffering. I know that life is not all about having things go well, about ‘winning’, about getting what you want. We are here to learn. Some of us are destined to suffer more than the average amount of anguish. In the end, if we survive, we have more empathy for others, and for ourselves, than we could have found any other way. My emotional privations and my public defeats brought me to what I consider a ‘wisdom’ that always eluded me before. They cleansed me and brought me peace.

This relief sculpture by Eric Gill reminds me of the best of Christianity. The purification by suffering, admission of sinfulness, and acceptance of divine forgiveness, are what I have needed to get to this point. Even so, I do not know if I consider myself Christian, although for a time after my ‘visions’, I most certainly did. Christ came to me in a concrete form, and rescued me from my torments. If I had been able to maintain my faith, I might have been spared the descent into hell that followed. Looking back, I suspect my soul needed a period of intense suffering to allow myself to accept absolution. I needed to pay for my mistakes as a physician, and atone for wasting my God-given talent by choosing a career based on ambition rather than a mission of helping others. Perhaps I needed to feel the sting of punishment before I could accept the tenderness of forgiveness. However it came about, on my best days I am serene, accepting, and grateful for the trials I’ve survived. What greater blessings can we ask from life?

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Blame the canary

Once again, a discussion with Larry Drain of Hopeworks Community provides fuel for a blog post. The conversation centered on a BBC article about a World Health Organization report that predicts a global epidemic of depression. Part of the conversation hashed over the tired ‘medications or not?’ debate. However, what became more and more clear to me as I organized my thoughts, was that if depression is increasing in incidence, the important question may not be ‘what to do?’, but rather, ‘why is this happening?’

To me, the answers are obvious. First, there is probably an element of better awareness of depression on the part of clinicians and the general population. The article acknowledges this, but also suggests that the incidence of depression is actually increasing, not just increasingly recognized. So if people are getting more depressed, what is making them that way? It seems inescapable that the conditions people suffer cause the depression we see. We live in a world where resources are obscenely concentrated in the hands of very few, while the masses struggle to meet daily needs. Or don’t meet them. Our environment, the natural world that is our mother and our heart, is being eaten away by industrial exploitation and waste. Families no longer stay together. And modern communities consist of strangers that move in and out every few years, rather than villagers who have known each other for lifetimes and generations. Joblessness is rampant. Healthcare is often unavailable or of low quality. People seldom get the respect they desire. These are depressing conditions.

When I trained at our local Suicide Hot Line, the point got driven home that people become suicidal most often because of loss. Bereavement, lay offs, divorce, major illness, financial catastrophe. Those who pose the greatest threat of suicide cite these sorts of calamities as what make them want to die. They don’t say “gee, for no reason I just feel like life sucks and I want to kill myself.”

Not everyone who faces terrible setbacks, or a horribly draining environment, gets depressed and/or suicidal. Many weather such losses and depredation satisfactorily. It helps if they have a strong social network. Religious faith makes a difference. Having been raised in a more-or-less healthy family, with adequate affection and validation, must be a benefit in helping one survive. In addition, people vary in their biogenetic vulnerability toward depression. As I wrote in my little debate with Larry:

The concept behind antidepressants is that they treat disordered brain chemistry. But the makeup of a person’s brain does not cause depression. Rather, it increases the susceptibility. A pane of glass will break sooner than a sheet of plywood if hit by a brick, but it is still the impact that causes the breakage, not the composition of the glass. Yes, you can reinforce a window with wire mesh (just as you can ‘stabilize’ a person’s moods with drugs), but it might be better to reduce the conditions that lead to riots and people throwing bricks in the street.

The gist of the WHO report seems to be that we have this looming public health crises, this terrible disease epidemic, and we need to devote more funds toward treating it. The article quotes a Dr. Saxen: “We have figures to show that poorer countries have actually more depression compared to richer countries and even poor people in rich countries have a high incidence of depression compared to the richer people in the same countries,” and then goes on to point out that even though depressed mood disorders show up more in poor countries, those impoverished nations devote little funding toward mental health. If I had been writing the article, I might have looked for an expert who had something to say about why there is more despondency where there is more poverty. Even though the answer seems obvious, it still should be addressed.

People get depressed for a reason. If people have no choice but to live their lives in shanty-town squalor, with sewage in the streets and disease at every turn, they will tend to be unhappy, a.k.a., ‘depressed’. To overlook the causes of that unhappiness, and suggest that the problem is one of lack of treatment, does us all a disservice. Or maybe it’s actually a favor. That way we don’t need to accept any responsibility for the misery of others. They are just ‘mentally ill’, poor things. Maybe we can help them out with some pills.

It is the classic situation of ‘blame the victim’. Label as ‘ill’ those who, for whatever reason, are unable to hold up emotionally under the crushing wheel of hopeless situations.

I am not saying we don’t need mental health treatment. Far from it. Depression is a real condition. It can be lethal, and even when it is not, it drains the texture and joy out of life. I know this all-too-well firsthand. But I highly doubt I would have had so much depression in my life if (among other things) I had not lost my mother at age six, been abused by my stepmother, and grown up with an alcoholic father. Losing my career as a surgeon did not help, either. People get depressed for a reason.

People get depressed for a reason. We who are sensitive to depression are the proverbial ‘canaries in a coal mine’. We are the ones who will be the first to collapse in a toxic society. But others will follow. As oppression, exploitation, and environmental degradation increase, should we just build more factories to churn out more pills? Is the best response to simply resign ourselves to this much misery without indicting anyone for causing it? Perhaps it would be better to first acknowledge that what we are facing is not a mysterious ‘epidemic’ of a biological illness, but rather an all-too-predictable human response to a poisonous world.

(I modified the wording of this post on 5 September 2009, 15:00 PDT.)

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WillSpirit!

The Scene Behind the Curtain

The Advantage of Disadvantage

Growing Pains

To forgive, divine

Blame the canary

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