Sun-Psyche — and a short period comet outburst

83 thoughts on “Sun-Psyche — and a short period comet outburst”

1. jinspace — just caught your last comment here. thank you for telling your harrowing story of numbness. i am glad you are back to dreaming — and what a dream to have, indeed!

2. Beth – I had some time this morning to catch up with the PW comments, and was very moved by yours. I’ve posted the link to a book that you might find interesting, by a guy who went on a medical, cultural, pschychological odyssey to find a cure for his condition. His illness was nothing like as serious as yours – but he brings up some really interesting things to consider. Sounds to me as if you need to withdraw your energies from all those people out there, and summon up your great strength and self-healing capacities. Though I don’t mean to be superficial in saying these words – and I only have a vague idea of the hell you’ve gone through with your condition.
   http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teach-Us-Sit-Still-Sceptics/dp/0099548887

3. I wanted to share a book I finished last month which fits in nicely with this discussion:
   God’s Hotel–A doctor, a hospital, and a pilgrimage to the heart of medicine. Author is Dr. Victoria Sweet.

   Thank you all for your comments, insights, and sharing of stories and yourselves.

4. Eric –

   “Psyche is the state of mind which might lead you to believe that you’re psychologically injured and that there is no way out. (It also relates to head injuries.)”

   Head injuries and no way out, indeed. In re anti-depressants, I went on them early in 2000, six months after that fixed grand cross that I found so crushing (it fell precisely on the fixed grand cross in my natal chart). I know they saved my sanity at the time, and some thought even my life, though I don’t know about that. The doctor who wrote my Rx explained that you’re supposed to go on them for a year or two, in which time they retrain the brain to know how to make itself feel good. Then you go off them. However, he disappeared, and then so did my GP. Long story short – they lost their effectiveness, I went off to Europe and was stranded on them for six more years, in which time I alternated between zombie-like numbness and crushing depression. I also lost my ability to defend myself, and made some of the worst decisions of my life – many with lasting implications. I also could no longer remember my dreams, and I used to be a lucid dreamer. A friend, speaking from personal experience, said I was like a heroin junkie.

   Rather than up my dosage, I investigated on my own how to wean myself off them and did just that, nearly five years ago. WHAT a difference. I’ve lived through much to feel depressed about since them, and have dealt with occasional bouts, but they are manageable now, and no longer paralyzing as they were when I was on the meds, nor as they had become in the months leading up to my taking them in the first place. I’m able to guide myself through and out of them, which I just couldn’t do in the past. Personal growth, without a doubt. But maybe with a little help from the SSRI’s – maybe they did ‘retrain’ my brain the way they were meant to? Still, I could have done without the six extra years. I would have made much better use of those, to be sure. And I am only now just beginning to remember my dreams.

   Which of them do I remember? Tuesday morning I woke up having dreamed that a tall man (whom I knew in the dream) strolled up to me, looked down and remarked that I had a lesion – or a leak? – in my head. I’d had no idea. On that, he produced a very large needle and stitched up a HUGE gash in the top of my scalp with heavy duty button cord (I’ve been struggling this week with staying focused). That same afternoon, I had an appointment with the acupuncturist. And yes, he is tall. Ha.

   I also remember when I dream about my dog, who was a pure joy to anyone that knew her and the absolute love of my life. A path to healing, indeed 🙂

5. Thank you for this discussion, it is helpful to read the many perspectives on this issue. I think about this topic frequently because my life is directly impacted by the failings and success of both Western medicine and alternative medicine. Most importantly the cost of each, and the level of care you receive based on what you can afford. I have a chronic disease that may or may not be an auto-immune disease (many studies point to this, but it is not officially classified as one), but what is known is that it is “incurable” and is most likely caused by environmental toxins. This disease makes it very difficult for me to maintain a job and support myself, and so I no longer have health insurance, I can’t afford it.

   Western medicine treats this disease with medication that gives very limited temporary relief with many unpleasant side effects, or surgery. There are only 15 surgeons in the US that can effectively treat this disease without recurrence. Needless to say I don’t have the $30-$50 thousand or more to fund one of these surgeries. Having health insurance won’t help this situation as none of these surgeons are local and thus would not be covered by my health insurance anyway. I have had surgery by a doctor who was in my network when I had health insurance, and it just made my situation worse (though it did clearly identify the problems). And while alternative medicine does provide a limited amount of relief, it’s too expensive for my budget as well. Luckily I have been able to barter with a few alternative health practitioners for a reduced rate, and others give a reduced rate out of compassion and empathy for my situation. But finding the “right” practitioner and path of treatment is like surfing the waves of Neptune. For many people trying and then trying again with different healers is a viable option, for me it is just wasted limited resources. And I still only experience limited relief for a limited time and then my body adapts and I have to try something else. At least the alternative medicine does not give me unwanted side effects. I have also changed my diet and lifestyle, buying organic food and removing toxins from my environment, increasing exercise.

   It is frustrating and depressing, trying to manage the roller coaster of the disease and trying to determine what might help and then finding the right practitioner to help. And it is especially frustrating trying to work on projects and determine a way to earn a living while managing all this health stuff, and still feel like I have some worth in this life. It is a constant struggle to keep my psychological health from spiraling down into depression, which initially I had a lot of problems with, but have managed to work through. One of the most difficult aspects is that most people don’t believe me when I say I am sick, and can’t keep commitments, which is often. It is an invisible disease that is often met with the response, “but you don’t look sick”. And so I tell everyone about it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them, because it helps me not to hide it. But most are very uncomfortable hearing about this disease, and then just try and distance themselves from me, or later say in a surprised way, “you’re still having problems with that?” as if it is just going to be healed suddenly. Which I hope will be the case, but is unlikely. The most depressing element is that it could possibly be healed, if I had enough money. (And I know the issue of money is one of the issues that has contributed to this disease…)

   So profit motives come into play with the whole healthcare mess in the US. And the precautionary principle was ignored because it is most likely the excess of chemicals in our environment that has caused this disease to manifest. And it is also partially hereditary. Fundamentally all autoimmune diseases are a consequence of impaired immune function that results from a mix of genetic and environmental factors. Sometimes I feel like one of those weak children in Sparta, being weeded out of the gene pool.

   I have released many layers. I have been transformed into a new person. I understand the emotional and historical and familial elements that have aided in the manifestation of this disease, as well as my struggle to find the good in this society, that can seem so cruel. And I really try to release my frustrations and accept it. But there are just more and more layers and tangents and release, never seeming to effect any of the deeper roots. Perhaps this is my life mission, with both nessus and psyche conjunct my north node, opposite my moon. I suppose it is the Neptune / Saturn conjunction making me feel as if I am just floundering, these structures that were maintaining an element of feeling in control in my mind have melted and I am back to a new starting point. Floating in the fog of how best to proceed with no mooring to grab onto, wanting to just float and hide. But I know that doing nothing only makes it worse.

   I’m not one to feel comfortable giving my power away to an authority figure like a doctor, so in many ways I am more comfortable on the alternative side, with people whose minds are more open and the care is given with more care. Though this approach makes me feel like I have to try them all to see what is best, never knowing which is really best for me, since nothing really works for very long. And I did recently have a severe asthma attack that sent me to the emergency room (yes, a large medical bill), and so I fully appreciate Western medicine and the medications I was given. I am on all sides of this issue, and I used to lean much more to the edict that Western medicine can’t help my disease. It could, if I could afford it, or if it weren’t so expensive. I know alternative medicine can help me, but I feel a little lost in a maze trying to determine a cost effective path. And then there is the whole discipline element…

   What is the solution? And why are so many people against fixing these cost and toxins issues?

   I also would like to note, in response to an earlier comment, that I used progesterone cream and my response was a rapid spiral down into despair and depression, and it made my physical symptoms worse. (I have an excess estrogen issue.) Of course I can’t afford a psychiatrist nor the medicines they prescribe, so I haven’t gone down that road. I have a friend who was prescribed prozac for a bipolar disorder and it made her situation drastically worse. She is still struggling with the repercussions.

6. Profit motives are real. Profit motives , if not held in check by peer review, careful scrutinization by those outside the organization, absolutely influence marketing ( not just to doctors but to the public at large … and is a pet peeve of mine, because it creates pressure from patients on their docs to desire the newest candy ) and change therapeutic decision making on that outside of the evidence alone, which is how western medicine retains integrity.

   That said, profit motive effects all those in business. Even if the business is health. Western or otherwise. The higher the profit, the greater the pressure though. It is up to us, the health care provider to serve his patient ( or client ) well and to understand whatever system we participate in that there are many forces influencing our behavior and theirs regarding the choices to be made.

7. I am wondering — where is the PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE in this discussion?

   Where is the discussion of PROFIT MOTIVES?

8. “A specific example – many people with ADHD are very creative. Only if the inability to process in an orderly manner impairs work, relationships, or school to the point of significant loss should ADHD be treated. Will treatment impair creativity? Perhaps. I’ve seen that happen. Will impairment of creativity be worse that better executive functioning for that patient? If so, do not treat. At least not with meds.”

   That’s exactly how we saw things; three of our family have ADD (no H). Instead of meds, we opted for changes in diet and supplementation with fish oils (for the DHA) and caffeine (the only “drug” they would take) and so far these and the healthier diets have helped them focus better without losing their amazing creativity. Yes, the two people without ADD often feel like we are carrying a load because of our supportive brain-work for the ADD ones but for the most part it is working for all parties.

   Yet in defense of Western medicine, I have seen the ravages that genetic brain-chemistry isues can cause; therapy couldn’t touch it (and therapy was tried for many patients for many years) because it is a physiology problem so meds were a life saver. That’s not to say physiology cannot be affected by psychology; it can and is many times but not always. So as someone here said; one size doesn’t fit all and the conversation here is a good start in seeing that and validating each person’s experience.

9. Back again. The book’s full title is “Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness”, by Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke (follower of RD Laing’s).

10. Wow! my initiation was ‘Mary Barnes’, blew me away at the time. Like to say loads more but gotta run… xx

11. Yeah, Huffy, my secret life as a mental saludabulist began when I read the Politics of Experience by RD Laing, and within 2 hours of closing the book, met a woman whose mother had just been declared legally insane and started on shock treatments. Annie was devastated. Over coffee (I was 16 at the time, so it mighta been tea), I gave her the book review, and she shared what it was like to be raised by a woman who could see stars during the day. We decided right then and there that the Nobel committee needed to create another prize, the Laing Award, for the year’s most compassionate and daring psychonauts.

    Alas, my letters to Stockholm were always returned “WTF”?

    ***
    **
    *

12. And that ‘insane world’ starts in the family, as Laing well knew.

13. This morning, on waking up and coming back to this amazing thread I remembered Jung’s work with the mentally ill and his ability to sometimes cure them by getting to the root of their trauma (s). I also thought of R.D Laing’s work; “Insanity — a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” R. D Laing

14. Yes, mental illness is the term used by the sponsor of the ‘how to work with a mental crisis’ drill. While it isn’t “my” word, I have no particular objection to it. My mental illnesses are valuable allies in the struggle for awareness, and I welcome the infrequent but coruscating nature of their emergence.

    Maybe I’ll make a bumper sticker: I <3 Sorge. (There's no comparable word in English – sorge is the noxious combination of existential dread and anguish – nom nom).

    *8D

15. “This leads to a question: what do you identify with in others? Their creativity? Their ability to nourish you? Or their sense of wounding?”

    “There comes a point in spiritual development where it’s suddenly obvious that secrecy not only doesn’t work — it doesn’t exist, except as a little mind game.”

    Bingo.

16. Even looking at planetary transits, which are fairly objective and also subject to individual interpretation, how the astrologer interprets will have a strong influence on how the client experiences the event.

17. “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

    — Aldous Huxley, sent in by Kelly C.

18. What if a breakdown is a self-created opportunity for a breakthrough? Shifting from one level of consciousness to another, where and how can this process be supported?

19. Good point, Eric.

    For example, a good practioner of western medicine treats “mental disease” only if there is SIGNIFICANT dysfunction.

    A specific example – many people with ADHD are very creative. Only if the inability to process in an orderly manner impairs work, relationships, or school to the point of significant loss should ADHD be treated. Will treatment impair creativity? Perhaps. I’ve seen that happen. Will impairment of creativity be worse that better executive functioning for that patient? If so, do not treat. At least not with meds.

20. I would point out that “mental illness” is itself a construction, not a fact of nature. This thing, in its many forms, is viewed differently by different cultures. Some see it as possession by spirits, some view the “mentally ill” person as acting out something that the whole community must address, there is the “spiritual emergency” approach and many, many others. How you define a problem says a lot, indeed, everything, about how you will try to solve it.

21. Aaaaaand *right* on time:

    “Would you know what to do in a psychiatric emergency ?
    If you don’t have a clue, you’re not alone.

    “HELP ME !”: Navigating a Mental Health Crisis”

    This is a training/simulation ~ an emergency drill for mental crisis. I was thrilled to find this in my inbox today, I have a clue, but can always use many more – so I *will* be attending.

    New Milestones Foundation raises funds to support the needs of those in our community with mental illness. We accomplish this by working in partnership with Austin Travis County Integral Care to expand awareness and provide services to those in our community with mental illness, intellectual and developmental disabilities and chemical dependency.

22. Okay … so maybe the pit was TEENY TINY.
    : )
    I appreciate the safety net.
    Thanks!

23. Hcohen — I am talking about a reflexive quality to one’s own presentation; to use your word — balance. This discussion does not become a pit of ridicule, by the way — I will put a stop to it fast, and participants here know that. I don’t think it’s become one.

24. I love this conversation here. It’s so valuable and I thank all of you who are participating and Eric for hosting this. I was especially surprised and pleased that medical doctors joined in as well. We need all our voices.

    My own evolving two-cents: health, sickness, well being, dis-ease, balance, out of balance – addressing these issues is an art. It’s complicated. There is not just one answer. Oh how we wish there was. And sometimes a solution is simple. Sometimes it is a journey we must go on, like it or not.

    In the beginning, I like to look at lifestyle, environment, food, exercise, joy, spirit… what is going on flowing or not? And then, if that can be balanced, what else? (First, check the batteries before you install a whole new electrical system sort of thinking.)

    I once got depressed for no reason I could think of. The idiot we went to for help kept trying to put me on drugs FIRST. I refused and finally told him I would fire him if he kept that up. Drugs should not, in my opinion, always be the first or even second option. Turned out I had a little problem called seasonal light disorder. I solved it myself with a little research. One S.A.D. light later and I was fine fine fine.

    Someone I love was always lazy, always chose to take a pill, an instant “fix.” Eventually, she ruined her health and mind and there is no good pill for that. Now she needs pills to even function and I find that a terrible loss and tragedy. She is her own melt-down. She has also cost the government about a million dollars in medical and hospital care over the last eleven years since she became an “adult” making all of her own (imho poor) choices. I don’t know anything about her journey or what her spiritual mission is in this, but it has left me in sorrow and anguish, feeling so powerless. I can only bow my head and pray and know that my own spiritual path and choices are different than hers, and try to have faith that there is still a wiser order to things than I myself know.

    I am just one voice here. But I am intuitive. 16 months ago, my very very kind body showed me that I had a lump in my breast in time to take action. But, from the get-go, I -and everyone who knows me- knew, that although cancer can come from many different reasons, mine came from my grief and anxiety over the person I just spoke of, of holding it in. How do you love someone and not feel it when they seem so self-destructive? So my message and task is very hard. I HAVE to love -as that is still honest- and release the pain in that love. I cannot hold it in.

    For my treatment, I also needed to take charge. I went western and eastern. I formed a very big team around me. I had to fire a few practitioners and hire the ones that could participate as a team. I got as much info as I could. I cut the cancer out. I had to hold my poor body in my arms while it went through radiation and mourn my life force as it drained out in that poisoning . And I have been recovering my health and strength. It is a a very BIG gift: LIFE!

    I have chosen against invasive systemic drugs and gone with Chinese medicine and also checked my results. So far so good. Cancer is scary stuff. I’m 16 months out and still shaking, but I am clear of it and grateful and I love my health.

    The route I have taken so far might not work for another. Their route might not work for me. Everything could change tomorrow. One has to wake up , stay awake, stay alert, tune in, stay tuned in. But SO IMPORTANT in my own treatment is dealing with that connection of cancer to my loved one.

    But I look at my diet, my exercise, my joy, my relationships, my participation, etc. We are connected or meant to be, I believe.

    Keep, please, these conversations going and open and evolving. Thank you all again so very much for sharing yours.

25. Critique is important, Eric. Always important! But so is balance. Thus, to me, so is support for Western Medicine, because Western Medicine works (imperfectly and not always) well.

    But this is not a forum for that. So when I post, I will keep that in mind. I will look at an issue and lend an insiders view as to what “we” physicians may be thinking.

    But I will only do so if I feel safe in doing so, because if I suggest something positive about my craft, my art, my science, as well as offer a criticism as you suggest, I really do not want to be thrown into a pit of ridicule.

    Internet discussions can get nasty. We fail to see the eyes of our companion. We fail to see the smile, the frown, the tear or the scowl. We must ” listen” better.

    Thanks for your consideration.

26. There’s an old story about a sufi who watched a man sleeping under a tree. While asleep, a serpent crawled down his open mouth and began biting him from inside. The sufi rode over and woke the man up with blows and shouts, chasing him across the field. The poor fellow cried out, saying: why do you afflict me? have I ever done anything to you?

    The sufi kept chasing the man across the field until he fell down exhausted, vomited the snake and the sufi killed it.

    When the man turned back to the saint, he said: why didn’t you tell me the reason you were chasing me? The sufi replied, “If I had told you, you’d’ve died of fright. So, even though my heart was breaking as I chased you across the field, it was the only way to save your life.”

    The anguish that we feel during a breakdown/breakthrough is often comparable to being chased (by our Self) across that field. You either trust the sufi or you don’t.

    The vomiting metaphor is before the shift – don’t get stuck there; afterwards there’s clarity and a comprehensive puissance recuperated and spreading throughout one’s mind and body. It is palpable, and you’re not just ‘ok.’ It is the soul’s work accomplished through the process of melancholy and its informants.

27. It’s good to have some doctors in the discussion. However, speaking as moderator/editor, I think that the most appropriate role for doctors is to critique their profession from an insider’s point of view. That’s what’s going to give us the best window into a world that few people understand.

28. hcohen, tgarton, I have really appreciated reading your comments here – hearing your side of the story.

29. On some level, this life is all about struggle – either living in struggle of some type or another, or overcoming it, or in some cases avoiding it.

    It is true that in every age, some have seen this struggle, and tried to help others through it. Many tools have been used, and through the ages, some have worked, some have not worked so well.

    It also seems that every improvement comes with it’s own failure. Those failures are the opportunity for the next generation to struggle against, and overcome.

    Relevant to this current discussion, the idea of confining people with serious mental illness in hospitals “sanitoriums” was an improvement over stoning them, locking them in the attack, or chaining them in the public square.

    But without effective treatments – only “lifestyle” changes such as rest, good food, and pastoral settings – these sanitoriums eventually became overcrowded cesspools, to warehouse those society did not want among them.

    In the 1950’s, the largely accidental discovery in the western world of medications that could effectively relieve the symptoms that led to confinement was received as a miracle.

    And they were miracles, and largely still are.

    But, the medications and legal changes that emptied the mental hospitals led to the homelessness and imprisonment that many mentally ill struggle with today.

    As many have seen, including medication advocates like me, medications are not perfect. Early medications came with huge risks. Each generation of new medication has been seen as safer and possibly more effective. Sometimes that has been true, sometimes not.

    Sometimes new medications are merely new vehicles for marketing and profit. And yet, even these may have some benefit for some individual, over and above previously existing options. Things like this teach me at least to be very humble in making assumptions about what is good for others.

    So, in the end, as the saying goes, one man’s poison is another man’s cure.

    I know that at least today doctors are being trained to work with patients to come to a mutual decision about what would be best for that individual patient. This is as much a tenet of EBM (evidence based medicine) as is finding the best current evidence.

    Sometimes an individual patient will have some objection to what the doctor believes is the best possible choice if looked at in a vacuum. EBM guru Gordon Guyatt teaches that patient choice is one of the legs the tripod of EBM stands upon.

    Not all doctors/healers learn this lesson. And, even this tenet can be carried too far.

    No universal answers lurking here, except maybe this – whatever solution we come up with, people will still struggle. Whatever we devise will be seen as laughably inept and inadequate in a future age.

    I will still use the tools i have now help people through the suffering they bring to me, even as I work to educate those I hope will make them outmoded and useless in the future.

30. Mystes,

    In my experience, I have had to go through layers and layers, using a diversity of techniques, over a long time, to address seemingly unrelated issues. There have been points of arrival but they were not like the sensation of a ship coming in, or puking out parasites.

    Every journey is different, though the one thing that they all seem to have in common is the useful idea of working with layers — whether it’s a client and their chart, or physical ailments.

31. hcohen, in a perfect world yes — though most people have neither the intellectual mojo nor the time to choose a practitioner, much less a system or theory.

    My own efforts to be an educated consumer in the medical field have been met with some derision (the usual “I’m the doctor”), which I can handle because I can speak the language of science (“you say I have an infection? What’s my white count today and against the last set of tests?”) and I can stand up to pushy people. I also know I’m responsible for what happens to me.

    This is true for relatively few, who just want to be made better. To this day most people have no idea there is any alternative to “the doctor.”

32. Eric, in my experience, one arrives to the “root” ~with or without a verbal garment~ is at the moment in which suffering, anguish and confusion abate. You might want to call them ‘rhizomes’ rather than roots, because of the way we are structured here, all tangled up together.

    When one glimpses a trauma that has been tamped down into the physical body for safe-keeping, it is usually no more fun than vomiting parasites to release it. But if I am living in a way that honors the potential (and potentiation) of this lifetime, up it comes, sooner or later.

33. Thank you GeminiCheryl,

    Your kind words were ever so needed by this man. I felt I made a huge mistake posting here on Planet Waves. When we paint the world with strokes of black and white we miss the wonderful and vibrant shades of gray. I thought it important to offer a view that was not mainstream in this forum. I saw the replies and with few exception I felt I was so , so rejected here. I understand that western medicine has failed many of you. All medicine fails. Honest. All medicine fails from time to time. Perspective is everything.

    My entire point was to choose a system and a practioner that best fits you. And that system may change over a lifetime. In times of relative health, a system that encourages homeostasis may be perfect. But in times of severe disease, perhaps a different approach is needed. Be open to all that is out there. Gray is beautiful.

    It was worth posting even though I felt discomfort afterwards, becuse of you, Gemini Cheryl. You made my morning better.

34. Huffy, I thought we were talking about mental health, and physical remediation is of mental health.

    Cancer (and autoimmune disease in general) is complicated, and my overall position on that is: Prevention first, which means prevention at a policy level, and not merely personal. When I can point to 50 carcinogens within 10 feet of my desk, there’s a problem.

    I have friends who have gone the chemo route and goddess bless ’em and I am thrilled they survived it – both the chemo and the cancer. But I will not go that route, principally because of the medical waste I would be dumping into the planetary body. I hold my responsibility at that level.

35. Our GP is now a homeopath but she makes sure she’s up to date still as a medic.

    I’m a snake in chinese astrology and plant medicine is kinder to my body if at all possible, and more wide ranging. There is the power that Drs wield. If a Dr puts his hand on your forehead and says out of his experience, you will come through this, there is an authority there that helps make it happen.

    There are those who can see for you, but it is your own knowing it is important to contact and go with no matter what. My life at stake finally.

    I know I feel quite different when I eat raw vegetables and when I eat milk or bread.

36. Once we start considering the emotional and/or psychological theories and experiences of healing — that opens up a new topic, and we would need to hear from people who work with others doing that. Not all therapists agree with the concept of “the root” and some of it doubt that it exists, as in THE root or the concept of a root. There’s probably all kinds of spotty evidence about how that works or doesn’t work, and no actual proof that anything is THE root.

    The question here, for most people, is the direction of travel: ease of travel outward in the world (prompted by anxiety and depression, treated by meds) or an introspective journey prompted by anxiety and depression. They are not mutually exclusive, though they do tend to obviate one another.

37. Care, I Googled again and see that both estrogens and progesterone drop after childbirth. Which supplement that is needed may well vary from woman to woman, just as when I suffered through peri-menopause, heeding the advise that all I needed was progesterone, that the prog. levels drop far more than estrogen, etc., as per Dr. Lee.

    Well, after 1 year on progesterone cream, and not a single alleviation of any symptoms, I finally found relief with estriol – what works for most doesn’t necessarily work for all. And I would still lean towards estrogen (estriol, not necessarily estradiol) being needed postpartum, as it bolsters mood. Progesterone is calming to the point of sedating, depending on dose.

38. “What I mean by that is that he has a bias that mental illness is a “self limiting” problem caused by lifestyle and attitude, and that it can in all cases be cured by a type of “bootstrap” cure. Because he believes this, that is all he sees.”

    The same could be said of obesity; the current social thinking is that it is “always” the result of the patient overeating or not exercising enough. Yet studies of identical twins raised apart have shown over and over that fatness is genetic; so much so that it is right up there on the same level as height is genetic. Prison studies also show that. It is always easier to blame the patient/physician than it is to admit to an issue we have no “cure” for but perhaps acceptance of the huge complexity both the human genome and the human experience.

39. I worked in the mental health business for some years and what hcohen and tgarten say makes sense. There are some depressions that don’t require medication to heal but others are based on a genetic brain-chemistry difference that no amount of therapy can change. In some people, their brain chemistry is defective and standard therapy practices cannot help. Medications save those people’s lives. Just saying.

40. “I have read that post-natal depression can be a result of the sudden and massive drop of estrogen levels,”

    Not estrogen; progesterone. Progesterone is very high during pregnancy (it promotes the uterine lining that maintains pregnancy and is the creator of the “feel good” euphoria of pregnancy) and drops precipitously right after birth (because the lining is no longer needed). It also rises at ovulation and remains high until the corpus luteum (where the ovum grew) fails (about 2 weeks) and then drops if no pregnancy occurs to create more; that results in the shedding of the lining that the progesterone helped build. The drop is way less for menses than it is after pregnancy (because during menses it reaches a lower level than it does in prgnancy) so depression is less likely.

41. “This is an ‘on-demand’ society and the inability to postpone pleasure for long term gain which is a childhood development issue, has made us unable to cope with any kind of discomfort for more than 5 minutes.”

    That’s “delayed gratification;” something I have been harping on a long time. I noticed the change back in the early 1980’s; coincidentally (I am being facetious with that term) the last time Saturn went into Scorpio (the change may have been earlier; I am saying I noticed it when Saturn went into Scoprio). It has only gotten worse in the years since I noticed it. I hope the pradigm shift that is the Uranus-Pluto square includes some kind of awakening and work to correct that.

42. Eric –

    As you know, I have many thoughts on this, and this is indeed a very long conversation, which will not be complete any time in the near future.

    As Alexander suggests, there are many complex and on some level unknowable aspects to all of this. And, I believe the false dichotomy of “natural”/allopathic (among others) can lead us away from truth.

    Because life is not black and white, it is many shades of gray.

    You speak of the dangers of overspecialization, but I am a specialist, and I see all the time the result of megolomaniac generalists who believe they know everything and refuse to meet the patient on their level. Dr. Mercola is an example of this, IMO.

    What I mean by that is that he has a bias that mental illness is a “self limiting” problem caused by lifestyle and attitude, and that it can in all cases be cured by a type of “bootstrap” cure. Because he believes this, that is all he sees.

    So, he cherry picks “factoids” to fit his belief, and imposes his own version of “truth” on those around him. Some here have criticized this attitude in other mainstream physicians, it is no less wrong when it is carried out by someone who says things you want to be true. I have many patients who have escaped primary care providers just like this. If the patient did not get better, these providers blamed the patient, not their methods.

    I am not immune from this. As I said, my observations tell me that I have a good deal of success, with very little or no bad effect in the patients I see, and over long periods of time. But of course that hasn’t been true 100% of the time.

    I’ve also had the experience of more than one patient that I like and feel I have a good relationship with not doing well with my treatment. Then this patient will take it upon themselves to go to another psychiatrist – often one I consider a quack or a crook, and odious when I see them at meetings. Then this quack/crook/bore will put them on a regimen I consider completely ridiculous and a violation of all the principles I use to guide med selection.

    The result? Of course, the patient immediately gets better and has a wonderful experience with this doctor. WTF?????

    If you are looking at the historical perspective on medication, the case of Osheroff vs Chestnut Lodge is very important. This case is used to illustrate two principles. First, the right of informed consent. Second, the right of psychiatric patients to effective treatment.

    The basic facts are that Osheroff was a urologist who became depressed. He was admitted to Chestnut Lodge, a premier psychiatric hospital with many famous and well respected psychiatrists on staff. He received intensive therapy for many months with out result. He asked repeatedly about medications, but his psychiatrists consistently denied access to them, saying he needed to get to the “root” of his problems rather than use the medications to cover them up.

    Finally, he was transferred to another facility, where he was placed on medication and recovered quickly and uneventfully.

    And, so he sued Chestnut Lodge for malpractice, and won.

    After this case, it was considered malpractice to not offer medications to people who requested them. It was also considered malpractice to imply that all cases of mental illness would benefit from therapy alone with out offering patients the option of medication.

    So, in this discussion, consider the state of mental health before the 1950’s, when the first medications became available. Maybe some of you are not aware of the history of treatment for mental illness, as I am. Study certain works by people such as Dorothea Dix who worked for social reform in the snake pits that were mental hospitals of the time, and still exist in some parts of the world.

    Once you have looked at that history, then come back and tell me that medications are a bad thing.

    Undeniably mental health care today is imperfect, but it’s a DAMN sight better than it was 100 years ago.

    Thanks for sticking with me through this long post.

43. “When you get ill you expect that improvement is possible. Maybe it is. But maybe the point is to take illness as an indication of what is wrong on a much more profound level than we currently reduce it to.”

    On one hand, I agree with you Alexander. For instance, my stage 3b Hodgkins not only surprised me, but everyone I know. For the lifestyle I led, I should have been one of the last people in our family to get cancer. Others certainly were less careful about and caring to their bodies. And yes, I was and am aware that, sometimes, our souls choose illness to highlight for others what needs changing. To awaken in others a deeper appreciation for, and caring for, Life, for our Planet.

    However. it is not necessary, and I’ll be damned if I was going to be, a Martyr for the Planet. Getting ill is enough of a Message. Dying is a waste.

    I gave western medicine a more than a fair shot to try and help me, and I gave a Naturopathic doctor a chance to try and help me, and though it appears that I may dismiss all doctors. I do not.

    There are handfuls, here and there, who have more holistic practices, or maybe I should say open-minded, instead of holistic. Minds closed to other avenues, either from ignorance or just a lack of education on even something as basic as nutrition and hormone balance, and sticking too strictly to their Code keeps people unnecessarily ill.

    That idiot doctor who told me all I needed was 2 hrs/day to myself, prefaced my plea for hormonal help with how much fun endocrinology is (in med school), but had *no* intentions of even testing my hormonal balance.

    Do the ill have to suffer fools?

    Naturopaths are just as guilty of sticking far too closely to their Code of First, Do No Harm – which, on the surface, seems admirable, at least more admirable than western docs who aren’t as concerned about the damage their drugs and unnecessary surgeries cause. However, how they then translate that into practice, then can do a lot of harm.

    I’ve been on the receiving end, as has my daughter, who now has migraine-associated vertigo, lost her job and is on meds, thanks to her Naturopath’s overly-cautious approach.

    Yes, there are good doctors, few and far between. And often outside one’s insurance, budget, and locality. This leaves a lot of people forced to fend for themselves, do their own research and find supplements which will help them.

    I do not believe that this polarity between allopathic and alternative will always exist. I think most of us are fed up with being jerked around by medicine’s parochialism. Nothing a massive exodus from their usually double-booked schedules wouldn’t help fix, just as with everything else we choose to support or not support, with our dollars.

    And I understand that yes, these are relationships. We, the patients, go to doctors, *trusting* in their expertise. *Hoping* they know what the hell they are doing. We *are* supposed to be able to rely on others to help us.

    So, we hand over our power, and take their advise, along with their medicine. Only to discover they all know so much less than what we *need* them to know, in order that we may be *healed*. Not bandaged up, hobbling about emotionally and/or physically. Alive. but not much more than that.

    And therein lies part of the problem. Some patients are happy with that level of care. They have a drawer full of meds and grumble and gripe from age 45 to whenever they kick the bucket, but consider it *normal*. Oh, just normal aging. That’s all they *expect*. from Life, from medicine.

    Then there are those of us who don’t buy into all that self-defeatist, they know best approach. It’s just not good enough. Because we actually expect to heal. To be Whole again. And, unless one is wealthy, we know we are not going to get that level of care within established medical practices.

44. This whole Allopathic/Alternative drama is a red herring of huge proportions. It reminds me of the polarity we get in the abortion debate. These different branches grow from common roots. The use of the nomenclature of ‘complementarity’ is a verbal juggling act that merely disguises the systemic issues.

    The socio-economic and cultural, plus political, factors are often factored out of the analysis; as are the historic, in terms of the gradual development of technology. At one time a basic survival-of-the-fittest modality dictated the technology of leaving weakened children on the hillsides of Sparta to inherit the natural outworking of their physical constitution. Now, as society became gradually more *civilised*, an emphasis developed around the sanctity and importance of life that was a human social construct, an emphasis which (ethically justified) managed to successfully instate a mission directive within the whole of medicine across the board – the priority becoming intervention within the human organism, in order to alter processes and effect ‘cure’. We may imagine that this given has always been and forever will be, a given. But is that correct? And is there an alternative to Sparta’s cruelty that nevertheless acknowledges the outworking of *natural* processes (I acknowledge the needful debate around ‘natural’ here).

    We can certainly see clearly the explosion of knowledge and its paralleling technology as evidencing a human confidence that ALL natural processes can ultimately be understood in a methodically coherent model that is ever expanding.. but this assumption should also be explosed and examined. Can we really continue to be driven by such covert belief systems?

    Once we tease out the deeply buried assumptions that drive our current hegemonies and counter-cultural movements we will be in a position to make different choices, based upon the development of perspective.

    There are many commonalities and shared assumptions of both *seemingly* polarised medicinal approaches to health and wellbeing. It is as if certain core drivers, that we all share, are running the whole show. The reason that a polarity appears credible, and to involve any kind of meaningful choice, is that situated human beings sit at the centre of a cosmopolitan and cross-cultural nexus of social, political, economic, traditional, geographical, ethnic and genetic web of complexity. From this position of situatedness (and with the view clearly established in our assumptions that cause/effect is something we can exhaustively understand and manipulate) we come to expect that our physical complaints and illnesses are all *unnatural* and subject to transmutation.

    Homeostasis is a great concept to inform our conceptuality of human sub-systems. It can guide our varied interventions in terms of understanding the crucial importance of balance… Of course, our planet is anything but balanced at the present time. Fukushima provides a classic example of that and that we are entirely responsible as a race for many of our problems – precisely because of the arrogance displayed in the view that all human problems can be solved by developing newer technologies to solve the problems we have often created.

    Human beings and their lifestyles, writ large, have become the meta-parasite upon our globe (NOW think cancer, both exploding within us and we as a cancer within the body of the Earth). There is no individuated view of health, focused upon the individual unit, that can in fact be healthy and bequeath to us sustainable health.

    I take mystes view seriously here that once we discover that we are possibly suffering vicariously for our collective iniquities and selfishness, we can begin to travel the road of making peace with that which transcends us, that which ravages us and maybe that which does ultimately destroy our individual embodied life. All us westerners by our actions, have contrived in our civilised tribes, to screw the planet, folks!

    When you get ill you expect that improvement is possible. Maybe it is. But maybe the point is to take illness as an indication of what is wrong on a much more profound level than we currently reduce it to..

45. “I *absolutely* know that in ‘mental health’ (which we all know is inseparable from physical, eh?) the disease is the wisdom, once you stop fearing it. Most psychotropic or active drugs simply mask the road that one *has* to travel in order to discover this for oneself”. This is brilliant, Mystes, I so agree. However, not everyone has the strength (karma maybe?) to travel that road, and things are never black and white, totally good or totally bad. I already wrote here about my friend who was diagnosed with leucemia last February. Thankfully he has come through, and the experience has changed him in wonderful ways. He was zapped with chemo and blood transfusions for months – he lost all his hair, his weight , his libido. His wife (who’s like a sister to me), watched all this happen – and was desperate to get him out, to get him to go down a alternative route. But he was incredibly afraid, attached to that treatment – and his wife accepted that this was what her husband needed to do. Thr damage was limited by eating only macrobiotic food. Last summer, with the disease in remission, my friend was able to have the strength and courage to try an alternative route, and let go of the drugs and chemo. But that particular treatment, for that man, last February, was right for him, and my friend (his wife), had the wisdom and love to stand back and respect his wishes. Our minds and bodies are inextricably linked, and if he believed that that was what would work for him at that moment, that was effectively what happened (which is not always the case, I realize). I know that the pharmaceutical industry stinks, that it’s not about health, it’s about big business. I know that drugs are killers. Howver, as I said, things are not black and white, totally good or totally bad. And as I mentioned earlier, all those years ago, i wasn’t strong enough yet to go down the road less travelled, I needed something to get me out of bed and back to work – the working through the dark night came later.

46. Geminicheryl, this may be a little brusque, but my sense is that the psychiatric industry is not unlike the obstetrical industry. OBs’ll look at the birth plan, smile and nod, then do whatever the hell they want to the mother and baby. All the while tut-tutting that they *really* wish unmedicated/induced births were possible.

    Of course they’re not. Not in that setting, under that aegis. As Ina May Gaskin says, “bodies behave differently around mothers who know how to give birth.” And minds, in the presence of other minds who have played chess with the devil and won, know how to give birth to serenity.

    Just my 2 cents. I’ve spent too many nights holding people who are coming off of Paxil or Prozac and thinking that maybe death would be a little easier.

    And what ever shall we do about all of those SSRIs in our water supply?

47. Dr. Cohen,
    Thank you for saying what I have been wanting to say for some time. I am recovering from making a change from my prescribed medication to a holistic approach. I discussed this decision with my psychiatrist and my therapist who expressed concern for the success of the transistion but were absolutley willing to help me try. I have resumed my use of prescribed drugs and after 6 weeks I am not yet stable. There is a real polarity between traditional and alternative advocates. I find that polarity unhelpful. It is difficult enough to deal with a mental illness without adding to the shame that I have to take drugs to maintain my life. I learned that alternative treatments are also drugs, and have side effects – even food is a chemical interaction – and every body is different. I’ve been involved with “alternatives” for 40 years and I am puzzled why there is still no real science behind the use of herbs and supplements. I honor your commitment to your patients and your open mind. I would be dead if not for the love and support of my psychological and medical team, as well as my continued interest in working with meditation, yoga, astrology, light and energy therapies. There is a place in holistic medicine for those of us who also benefit from the advances made in traditional drug therapies. I hope you will continue to post. I’m listening.

48. Why are we to assume that any success with antidepressants can be generalized to others? What else was involved in that success? I would be surprised if it was just the drugs, in the long run. That’s because life IS holistic.

    It’s long past time for Western medicine to admit its shortcomings, though they leak through in the disclaimer at the end of every pharma commercial — most are associated with death or exacerbated disease. It’s time to admit the extent to which Western medicine is largely a business rather than an art. I am aware that there are skilled surgeons and prescribers. Yet this is only a small piece of overall healing and wellness — if you can afford it, and if it works.

    Western medicine has become the “technology cure.” It’s not integrative; most doctors are specialists and there is a crisis of the specialists often failing to talk to one another. This is a long conversation. I don’t think that those who prosper from it, or who are fully in the system, are its most trustworthy advocates or most objective judges.

    Doctors must remember: Do No Harm. I would also like to see 10 and 20 year (and longer) studies, in particular, on antidepressants.

    We have to open a space to hear from the many people who get hurt — and those who find their success elsewhere.

49. Dear Dr. Cohen,

    I am surprised by your chagrin. Reading over the comments, I don’t see any particularly vehement AMA discourse. But I do repeat: What we call ‘depression’ or melancholy –and its soulmate, fury– are reasonable, informed and healthy responses to the overwhelming evidence that humanity has been intoxicated by agencies that have not the faintest interest in our liberatory capacities, and in fact feed on our desperation.

    I have sat with my arms around several dozen people over the years and gone into profound tonglen (self-for-other) with them, seen into the roots of their pain and helped them learn to utilize the strong and fastidious medicine of their own insightful suffering. To be with that suffering, in a way that totally accepts it, is to cut the Gordian knot.

    I *absolutely* know that in ‘mental health’ (which we all know is inseparable from physical, eh?) the disease is the wisdom, once you stop fearing it. Most psychotropic or active drugs simply mask the road that one *has* to travel in order to discover this for oneself.

    Physician, know thyself.

    M
    ***
    **
    *

50. hcohen –

    That was beautiful.

    And, obviously, given my comments below this has also been a difficult thread for me to follow. I am also a physician. Not only that, but I am a psychiatrist. Beyond even that, I train young psychiatrists.

    So, yes, I have felt insulted.

    You are right, hcohen, antidepressants are a tool. They are tools used in the context of a relationship. Even when the visit is officially billed “medication management”, there is a relationship, and that relationship can be used to heal, or not.

    They are tools I believe in deeply, as I have spent DECADES using them, and watching them work miracles. There have been plenty of failures in there as well, but overall a great preponderance of success. As hcohen says there are many different types of depression. Some can recover without medication at all, others with medication now, and perhaps again.

    But there are some cases of depression will not get better with lifestyle changes, or even deep and long lasting talk therapy.

    This is not a new phenomenon. This type of depression was discussed in ancient texts. So, it is not caused by modern habits alone.

    I will say this regarding Mercola’s site. I am sure he is well intentioned. I am sure he is accurate as far as the small pinhole lens he is using allows him to see.

    But, I see the people who have failed treatment by family medicine specialists such as Dr. Mercola. I have seen hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of people in my office who have tried all that, and not gotten better. This is dangerous because the people who come to see me are at a time when they already feel defective, even in some cases feel they are a blight on the world, damaging their loved ones by their mere presence. Failure at the lifestyle changes Mercola suggests drops them even deeper into the black hole.

    Moreover, by implying that all antidepressants are basically poison, he further isolates some people from help that could not only save them, but bring them back to joy – usually without any side effects at all in my experience. And, yes, very often the people I see stay on what is basically maintenance treatment for life, because they have a chronic disease that has relapsed many times when medications are stopped.

    So, all of you giving testiomonials here, I think it is wonderful that you have found a way out of the darkness. But, it does not mean that your experience will generalize to that of others.

51. In response to hcohen’s comments, I was diagnosed with MS 3 and 1/2 years ago. I have spent much of my life seeing both alternative practioners and western medical doctors to deal with the odd symptoms that I now know is MS. Prior to being diagnosed I had pretty much given up on Western Medicine. However, I have since been shocked to find that Western Doctors–at least in the field of MS–are very open to multiple approaches (what they call complementary medicine) whereas many of the alternative practitioners I see have been puritanical in dismissing western medicine or dismissing the category of autoimmune diseases at all. I was surprised and have had to re-visit old prejudices. I still read annoying articles in the NYTimes of studies by western medicine wanting to dismiss Ginkgo Bilbao or Chicken soup…but I do feel that Western Medicine is at least beginning to examine prejudices. We should all engage in similar soul searching. Eric Frances is brilliant in encouraging all of us to do this all of the time.

52. addendum – and, infrequently, usually rarely, some side effects can be severe

53. “Most, if not all, drugs don’t heal the core problem, they’re all band-aids, prescribed because physicians either do not know how to get to the root of the issue, and/or do not take enough time to/care too/know they need to treat the patient holistically, which means getting not just a drug and surgery history, but also lifestyle, diet, and life issues history. They simply do not have the time to be good and thorough doctors.”

    This has been a difficult thread to read because I am a physician. Personally, I am insulted. By all standards, I am a very good and very thorough physician and, according to others, I am a compassionate and empathetic man. Perhaps they are wrong. But I am insightful. And I am fallible. Because I am human. I use the tools that I use best; the tools of my training. And with these tools I have saved lives ( I have intubated newborns who are unable to breathe ). I have made diagnoses that prevented further decline ( identifying a man with congenital cardiomyopathy years before he finally needed a new heart to resume his amazing life ). And , yes, I have treated depression. I have treated it with medication, with counseling, and sometimes by holding a hand. Mild depression does NOT need medication. It needs empathy. Severe depression is different and usually responds well to medication with mild side effects and most side effects simply resolve when medications are stopped. Some need medication forever because the biology is indeed that distressed and their lives become worth living again. Some people do not need life long medication and this is wonderful as well. I will not hijack this conversation from Eric by debating points or by discussing the merits of Joe Mercola. I am a guest here. And I will act accordingly. Furthermore, I truly appreciate this forum because it allows me to reach an audience perhaps not accepting of western medicine.

    I have succeeded and I have failed. Imagine losing a three year old to asthma because despite your best efforts, despite the expert implication of your tool set, the child dies. Imagine cradling not only the child in your arms, but the parents as well. I have profoundly failed.

    It is easy to get into a shouting match here. My first instinct is to defend Western medicine, unwrap each point, debate the evidence, but to what purpose?

    Instead, here is the thought I shall share with you. Do not generalize without knowing that you are generalizing. We humans loves to group, love to find patterns in the clouds, love to rationalize. Often it saves time, allows us to move forward in our lives more easily, allows us to justify what we already believe. But sometimes it hinders our learning process.

    I am a physician who has become open to astrology because I’ve chosen to allow my pre- conceived notions and generalizations by the door side. I think Eric’s presentations are remarkably insightful. I am a neophyte who wants to learn.

    Western medicine is remarkable as well. But all healer-patient relationships are RELATIONSHIPS. And if you are in an abusive relationship, please leave that relationship behind. Do not generalize that all alternative healers are caring and all traditional physicians are not. Our systems are different. Our tools are different. I am biased. I believe in what I do. But more important, I believe that because I love the people that I treat ( and no, I can’t love everyone, but I can identify with most and find that core of empathy ) I can establish a nurturing relationship that is conducive to healing. And that includes effecting biology, psychology, social influences, past experience, hopes and dreams. It can not be done in one brief session. But I have built a practice filled with friends and loved ones, where once I treated only strangers.

    I wish everyone in this post a core of important and loving people.

    Maybe one of them will be your physician.

54. “I’m always left wondering whether it really is our biology that affects our psyche, or whether it is actually the other way around. Perhaps my childhood experiences caused my estrogen levels to drop after birth. It would, after all, be a physiological mirroring of the experience I had of a lack of ‘mother’ after my own entrance into the world.

    Does biology beget experience, or experience beget biology”

    Sarah, like the nurture/biology conundrum.

    I think it’s both. However, I’ve seen my psyche be affected massively when my biology was off, so I tend to look to the practical first, then if balancing the biology does not fix the problem, look to any psychological/spiritual imbalances. One could approach both realms at the same time, if one had the energy/focus, which I’m not sure we have when we’re imbalanced/ill.

    Though, in some cases, like the postnatal hormone imbalances, this *seems to be* pure biology wreaking havoc. I managed not to have postpartum depression, however I was young when I had my children, 21 and 22, and maybe that worked in my favor. It was also ’80 and ’81, before the environmental issues we now have impacting female reproductive health/hormone levels, like my daughter (aged 32) has been facing for years.

    We need to look to the whole picture, but if working with biology first helps us to avoid toxic and/or dangerous drug options, which cause new problems, why would we not start there?

55. Dawn – Yes, I’ve read that too.

    I’m always left wondering whether it really is our biology that affects our psyche, or whether it is actually the other way around. Perhaps my childhood experiences caused my estrogen levels to drop after birth. It would, after all, be a physiological mirroring of the experience I had of a lack of ‘mother’ after my own entrance into the world.

    Does biology beget experience, or experience beget biology?

56. Sarah, “In 2007, I spiralled into post-natal depression.”

    I have read that post-natal depression can be a result of the sudden and massive drop of estrogen levels, which can be easily supplemented after child birth, until our levels return to normal. We have major buckets of estriol (E3) in us when pregnant, then whoosh, all gone. We are our hormones/biochemistry.

57. Sarah, “and I don’t see that as restricted to sexuality, but rather to creativity as a whole. It was quashed. And if that is suppressed, then my logic tells me that it is life-force itself that is being suppressed. That’s one hell of a side-effect.”

    Yes, seems many meds mess with our life force – chemo bottomed out all my hormones. No passion, no response, VERY frustrated for quite a long time – makes it very difficult to feel glad you’re alive and hopeful about what they’ve left you with, esp. when the specialists aren’t concerned about the side effects. Then one of the potassium-sparing diuretics depleted androgens. Yup, just what I needed at this point in life.

    Sometimes, indeed, we are forced down the roads they suggest, so to get us out of a very dark or desperate place, but as soon as we have our wits about us, we must take back the reins to our power, or risk long-term damage.

58. “that much of what is depressed in the first place, for many, is ‘sexual energy’ (such as it is) and that is often the result of deeper relief, anger, etc., that needs to be resolved.”

    Bang on — for want of a better phrase.

59. And thanks Mystes! (“Hey Dawn, you are a *very* funny girl. That anger of yours is tonic. Work it, baby.”) My anger is the reason I’m still alive!

60. It’s a hell of a side effect when you consider that moving sexual energy is one part of working through depression; that much of what is depressed in the first place, for many, is “sexual energy” (such as it is) and that is often the result of deeper relief, anger, etc., that needs to be resolved.

    Whatever your theory of sexual energy, it’s certainly depressing to lose one’s sex drive.

61. I, too, feel reluctant to come down fully on the “no drugs at all” side. They helped me out of an abyss in 2007, at a time when I probably didn’t have the resources in place around me to feel comfortable being held another way.

    Having said that, a significant side-effect for me (and I know I am far from the only one) was a loss of libido — and I don’t see that as restricted to sexuality, but rather to creativity as a whole. It was quashed. And if that is suppressed, then my logic tells me that it is life-force itself that is being suppressed. That’s one hell of a side-effect.

62. Yes, drugs can help to relieve specific problems, at least temporarily, however, in my experience, they all have side effects and/or cause other problems, requiring the use of yet more drugs to deal with the new issues.

    Most, if not all, drugs don’t heal the core problem, they’re all band-aids, prescribed because physicians either do not know how to get to the root of the issue, and/or do not take enough time to/care too/know they need to treat the patient holistically, which means getting not just a drug and surgery history, but also lifestyle, diet, and life issues history. They simply do not have the time to be good and thorough doctors. Nurses and NPs are what we see most here, and once every so many visits, you get 5 minutes’ face time with the physician – whoopdidoo.

    I’ve weaned myself off beta blockers and diuretics, taken since chemo. You should have seen the surprised faces that I was A) capable of/thought to do that and B) was successful.

63. “In some small cases, drugs will help, in the short term, to get you over the hump, as it were”. Maeve, this was the case with me. It was the only thing that got me out of bed, cos I wouldn’t have had a bed any more if I hadn’t been able to keep working. It was a question of survival. You don’t get any kind of financial welfare assistance in the country I live in. I was helped by a very kind doctor, who I’ll be grateful to for the rest of my life. I managed to come off the ghastly things as soon as I felt able to – but I’ll never forget the sickness I felt, both when I started them and then when I stopped taking them.

64. Sometimes I wish I could edit my comments.

    About my drugs do work comment… it’s SO much more complicated than what I wrote. Prescribed by someone who knows and cares, with the right drugs for the right condition, etc. And not forever. People’s biochemistry changes from day to day, week to week, year to year. It’s stupid to think that what worked 10 years ago will still work. It might, but then again, it might not. Best things to do is to create a solid foundation – good food, good health, good sleep… all that gives you a stable place from which to heal.

    I could go on for -days- about all this, but damn if I don’t have a crap load of work work to do. I’ve already spent a ton of time calling aroudn to doctors to get them to look into the recall and see if we have been exposed to recalled drugs.

65. Drugs _do_ work. When they are prescribed by a competent and caring professional/doctor. Problem is, they rarely exist. In some small cases, drugs will help, in the short term, to get you over the hump, as it were. There are lots of other ways, but sometimes you need a nudge. However, most doctors nudge and kick you off the cliff and say “good luck!” on the way down.

    Ahem.

    Speaking of drugs, y’all may have heard of the meningitis outbreak in New England (and surrounding)? Due to contaminated drugs.
    http://www.cdc.gov/hai/outbreaks/meningitis.html
    While the page focuses on the specific injection that is known to be contaminated, the entire compounding facility has shut down, and EVERYTHING they have produced since January has been recalled. Including epi pens, saline, a large number of pain killers, antibiotics, and cancer drugs. Seventy-one pages of recalled product.

66. You couldn’t have hit it on the head more if you tried. Wow.

    Was at the therapist yesterday and discovered that I don’t trust myself to make decisions for myself (anyone else, sure, but me? not a chance). I don’t have faith in myself.

    To boot, I’ve been in some serious pain which has had the effect of undoing a lot of structure I’ve created in my brain to keep the crazy at bay. The pretty much exact kind of crazy that my dad has (to a lesser extent (I hope)). I have set up so many tracks and baffles and switchbacks to harness all of it. Apparently when I’m in pain, though, they all go poof and I get caught in the middle of all my baggage I forgot I even had. And for the first time, ever, in my life, my dad is in a good enough place to talk with me about it all, commiserate, and remind me that I’m the one who’s helped him through all of his issues, all his life.

    *sigh*

    When I’m by myself, if I couch things in certain terms, I know when I’m right, I know what’s True, I know which way to go. But if I come against someone who says “Well, I don’t know…”, my sureity crumbles and I waffle like breakfast.

    I knew I had problems making decisions. Because a Decision means the risk of being Wrong, and if you’re Wrong, you are a viable and valid Target. So, if you never make a Decision, you can’t be Wrong, and whatever happens to you is therefore not your fault. I figured this out a few weeks back. Very eye opening. But I didn’t realize how insidious it was. Saturday, talking to my therapist about it, she suggested I start with little decisions. So I did. As I was walking to go get breakfast, I knew which way I wanted to walk (I have the choice of different paths, all which lead to the same place, and are all visible from each other), so I said in my head “I choose to go _this_ way” and almost immediately, the chatter started “Are you sure? What about that way? Why this way? What if there’s somethign wrong with this way? What if you _miss_ something by not going that way? Why don’t we go that other way, just in case?” I kept going the way I knew I wanted to. But it was hard. The word “decide” is a little easier, but “choose” is full of baggage.

    Thanks for a lot to think on.

67. Took AD foreign ally for a clinical depression. Should have gotten off in 6 mo to a year but continued to take them due to fear of that clinical depression returning. In hindsight I see they blocked me off from spirit and my Source and prevented me, anethesized me, from doing inner needed work. They were useful in short term but destructive long term. Eventually of course they just stopped working (stopped allOwing me to disassociate) and I had to descend into my self to regain contact with my Self. Drugs don’t work my friends. I’m heginning to believe there are better alternatives even in extreme cases.

68. chronically depressed mothers… and/or fathers.

69. Sarah – this is a wonderful description of ‘depression’, its origins, how to treat it, etc. You’ve managed to put it all in a nutshell. Lately, I’ve really been facing how much I still carry from my childhood- for those who grow up with chronically depressed mothers, it’s like the fish in the pond who doesn’t know it’s surrounded by water. It can take a long time to wake up and realize that it’s not the only way to live ones life. And I’m talking about a depressed undertow/tone to life, not necessarily out and out depression (and god knows I’ve been there and done that too). But as you say, think it’s really necessary to look one’s demons in the face and bring them into the light.

70. Sarah, thank you! What a graceful confession! I think it was Flaubert who taught me that ‘blackened fury’ (melan – cholia) was an important part of the journey and when it comes (3 or 4 times a year), I welcome it as an honored guest.

    Writing of the idiocies of the Terror taking place in Paris, Flaubert wrote to Georges Sand: “The bottomless stupidity of humanity fills me with a black melancholy.” There was something so downright about his assessment that it struck me as both funny and indelibly accurate.

    What we call ‘depression’ or melancholy –and its soulmate, fury– are reasonable, informed and healthy responses to the overwhelming evidence that humanity has been intoxicated by agencies that have not the faintest interest in our liberatory capacities, and in fact feed on our desperation.

    The occasional burnoff/burnthrough of those emotions help sweep out many darker and more permanent afflictions. I’ve made a place in my life for this process, and know full well the difference between daimon and demon.

    As you say, it’s deep in the heart…

    ***
    **
    (

71. A gentleman in Poughkeepsie was on antidepressants – in order to change his meds he had to stop taking any – he just jumped off the Mid Hudson Walkway.

72. In 2007, I spiralled into post-natal depression. I wasn’t a stranger to depression: my father had battled it his entire life, even going for electro-convulsive shock treatment in his thirties; and I am certain I had undiagnosed depression for much of my mid-teens.

    My post-natal depression was treated with antidepressants, and I’m only sorry that I hadn’t considered my then-nascent therapy as a viable alternative. I took myself off the ADs after a year, continuing with the therapy – now with the growing understanding that my depression had evolved from childhood through my life, had been triggered in my teens (understandably) and then triggered again when I became a parent myself with the birth of my son: it was too much to hold the contrast between my own parenting and the parent I wanted to be.

    Today, as a practising therapist, with my own clients, and with about ten years of personal therapy, I can see so much more clearly that a dysfunctional, thwarted, interrupted childhood lies at the roots of most of the depression that I encounter in others.

    Most important, however: depression is also the way through. It doesn’t have to be seen as something to be avoided; it can be accepted, and entered into with someone who is there to hold you throughout.

    Late last year, personal issues that I continued to ignore and deny started to take the form of another episode of depression. I fought it for a while. And then, one day, I stopped, sat down, and allowed myself to fall. And I did. I literally felt myself falling into some strange netherworld where archetypes roamed freely and where I chose to surrender to them as much as I could. I worked with my therapist through it. We both worked through it; I have a feeling it was tough for us both. That is as it should be. A therapist is not an objective witness: they accompany you to hell and back. The only difference is that they straddle and have access to both worlds; they dive with you, they call to you from the surface, they accompany you back up — because no doubt they, too, have been there at some point, confronted by their own darkness, with someone guiding them through it.

    As shit as depression is, it points to something: a part of you that wants to be acknowledged, owned, and loved. (Good) therapy, as an integrative tool, is second to none in my opinion.

73. Hey Dawn, you are a *very* funny girl. That anger of yours is tonic. Work it, baby.

    And Linda, are you at the FPMT near Ste. Colombe or up by Sommieres? Those are the only two I know – I was supposed to be at the Institut Vajra(rogue)ini (^8 in 2007.

    So glad you are getting stitched up again, but I assume you are not in retreat since you’re doing things to crack your forehead. Man, if I was there I’d have seventeen kinds of boundaries set up and would be at the *bottom* of the vajranath. And sinkin’.

    Deepen down, traveler.

    ***
    **
    *

74. Thanks for speaking to this, Eric. I continue to be surprised by how many of my friends/family are on antidepressants (and one family doc *wants* to prescribe, but I keep throwing myself bodily between that and the im/patient in question). But without being able to modulate/improve the diet of person in question, I can only fend-off pseudohealers. It’s maddening.

    This sheds some light. Hah.
    ~~~~~~~~
    Other effects of this Saturn in Scorp transit are that I am taking all of the backburnered bills and fines and defaults and finally *dealing* with them.
    ~~~~~~
    That Neptune / Merc square is churning out the chaos indeed. There’s little to do but watch (esp. since my left knee stopped working this morning). Here we go.
    ~~~~
    ~~
    ~

75. Eh, drugs.

    A previous PCP was desperate to find a way to reset my body clock, when I stopped sleeping when the adrenal fatigue began. She was going to give me anti-depressants. But I wasn’t depressed and wasn’t going to take them. Instead, I took high doses of melatonin for several nights in a row, to help reset the clock, which helped enough to get me at least a few hours sleep a night (and had I known of the supplements I know of now, I would have taken them then as well.)

    When I told my PCP what was working, she acknowledged awareness of melatonin, but had not thought to suggest it. No, they suggest drugs, which as we all know, only cause MORE problems.

    Same when I was going through radiation and had to be fitted with a skintight plastic-meshed face mask that got snapped down tight (leaving one’s face with cross-hatching that lasted days) each time (22 treatments), which usually sent women screaming from the room or bursting into tears, as it instantly instills massive anxiety and vulnerability. But I won’t be victimized. Stuff like that eventually pisses me off.

    So, what do they prescribe? Ativan. Highly addictive. I took one pill, it did nothing, but was not about to up the dose and get addicted to this crap. Instead, I taught myself to focus on the rad machine resetting itself through the treatments – it would zap then move about 12x. I breathed slowly, and counted, which kept me calm. After a few times, it became less stressful to experience. But, really, some sadist devised that system.

    And hubby’s last NP was always asking him if he needed/wanted pain killers (back problems), which are addictive, but wouldn’t give him a few Ambien, and forget about even knowing about passion flower, l-theanine or GABA.

    I don’t know where their brains are at, or what ridiculous standard of care is pulling their strings. Yet another brain-adled PCP told me last year when I was deep in adrenal fatigue, that all I needed was 2 hours alone each day. Since I can’t haul off and smack these people to wake them up, I ignore them and will no longer go to them for their *expertise*.

    Now that I’ve started on iodine to support the thyroid and my hormonal balance, I’m reading that so many health problems, from autism, Parkinson’s to bipolar (which one of my brothers has) can be linked to iodine deficiencies. If only we’d look to Nature first and our own biochemistries…

76. Eric and Huffy: Thanks for the practical advice and caring words. It was just the nudge needed. I spoke to the medical coordinator here at the monastery and they are going to take me to see the local doctor. Closer and cheaper!

    Voila! =]

77. By Alexandra Zarro — from my Facebook page — This is an ‘on-demand’ society and the inability to postpone pleasur.e for long term gain which is a childhood development issue, has made us unable to cope with any kind of discomfort for more than 5 minutes. Transformations take time and effort whether it is changing our energy system from oil to other sources, or understanding that depression is symptomatic of a life that is not working. Alchohol and prescription drugs of any kind simply stuff and postpone. the misery and is part of our culture because it serves the agenda of keeping us deadend and numb. Pain is the catalyst for change and all corporate hypnotic technique is based on immediate relief and avoidance of real issues whether individual or en masse because that is how they make money. It works because we have not matured enough to say ‘no’ and work on our problems.

78. That Joe Mercola is some guy…
    A big hug to you, Linda. Take good care of yourself.

79. Linda, just go to the doctor. Don’t worry that you cannot afford it. You’re in France, not the United States. They can take 10 minutes and suture you — unless you want the scar.

80. “…Said in a more complex way, Psyche is the state of mind which might lead you to believe that you’re psychologically injured and that there is no way out. (It also relates to head injuries.)…”

    Head injuries….. 3 days ago I had a skin cancer removed from the centre of my forehead. Somehow over the weekend, all the stitches ripped open. Cannot afford to go back to the dermatologist for a re-sew and made peace with having a “Harry Potter” scar instead of a tight little line. But for some reason, have been crying all day. Feeling very vulnerable laced with deep unworthiness. Your description fits so well. As I am currently living in a monastery in the south of France, I am in the perfect environment to gently practice through this with deep respect for what lies behind all this fear.

    May all who need healing, love and protection receive what they need at the time that they need it most.

81. This is a documented effect of antidepressants.

    They are known to turn episodic depression into chronic depression, and mild depression into major depression and suicidal tendencies.

    Here is one of the articles by Joe Mercola on the topic of tne mental illness epidemic.

    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/13/the-epidemic-of-mental-illness–why.aspx

    …and on the topic of suicide.

    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/15/why-are-more-than-one-in-ten-americans-at-risk-for-suicide.aspx

    The manufacturers go on, despite the risks to children:

    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/06/12/glaxo-testing-paxil-on-7yearolds-despite-suicide-risks.aspx

    There are other risks, including physiological.

    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/04/antidepressant-with-aspirin-may-increase-bleeding-risk.aspx

82. I looked up #16 and found it is on my cousins mars…she is bipolar.
    My mothers Psyche is on my moon. My son on my chiron. My boyfriend my sun.
    My brother who committed suicide 8 months ago of a family of nine, his ascendant.
    The sister he was talking with the whole month before he did it, keeping it secret from
    everyone and not believing he would do it, smack dab on her first house north node.
    My very first astrology reading in 1971 she said to me, you have moon conjunct uranus
    and mars in the 11th, you will attract crazy people…and so…it is…it keeps my
    Astrology readings very psychologically deep…and mine…and where is Psyche in my
    chart…ON MY VENUS in the third. Alls’ we need to do is look her up and the whole story
    unravels…thank ERIC for opening me up to this SECRET REALITY…scorpio saturn of which I have too…

83. Just awonderin’; if anyone/anywhere has done evidence based research on what I call the homeopathic effect of taking drugs designed for a disease; but the person really does not have that disease; but then will get it full blown because of taking that drug. And considering all the side effects of many drugs; I wonder how the homeopathic effect is involved with these side effects. I also wonder if a person with a diagnosed psychological disorder who takes a prescribed drug is somehow ‘locked’ into that disorder because of the so-called hoeopathic effect of these psychotropic drugs. Justa wonderin’. Seems to be a taboo subject; but maybe someone somewhere is doing research on the subject.