by Christina Sarich; The Mind Unleashed
If you happen to be among the millions wrestling with depression, chances are someone has insisted that popping pharmaceuticals is the only solution, since your brain evidently isn't functioning properly. The argument goes that your gray matter simply fails to manufacture adequate amounts of serotonin, GABA, dopamine, oxytocin, endogenous DMT, and assorted tryptamines — chemicals required for a sense of peace, security, and contentment. "Swallow this pill, or perhaps a couple of these," they assure you, "and we can patch up your defective brain."
A great number of us have pursued this medicated route for our own despair, or stood by helplessly as loved ones attempted it, only to witness these medications collapse spectacularly. One might contend that unearthing the reason for their failure hardly demands the genius of a rocket scientist. The FDA greenlights novel antidepressants and painkillers with alarming regularity, and frequently without even a shred of rigorous scientific backing.
The pills we receive are laced with compounds that wreak havoc on our gut, erode our fragile nervous system, throw adrenal function into disarray, and trigger a cascade of additional harm — yet when agony becomes unbearable, a person will resort to almost any measure to silence it.
Granted, these substances may dull some of the ache temporarily once a substantial dose has been taken for a stretch, but inevitably depression resurfaces with a vengeance. And since we've been conditioned to accept that our neural circuitry is fundamentally flawed and that these prescriptions are the cure, we feel doubly defective when their effectiveness evaporates.
Should you have ever consumed the highest available dose of an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or observed a cherished individual sink to even darker depths while on them, you're intimately familiar with this brutal loop. You grasp the depths of hopelessness that settle in when the singular remedy you've been programmed to trust suddenly abandons you. Here's the unvarnished truth, however. That pattern isn't an aberration — it's commonplace. Even prominent researchers are finally conceding that the "chemical imbalance" theory of the brain is hogwash. This has essentially been demonstrated through clinical evaluations of these medications.
Clinicians employ a tool known as the Hamilton Scale to position patients somewhere along a spectrum stretching from utter bliss to suicidal ideation. For some perspective — securing proper rest alone can lift your Hamilton rating by 6 points. Consuming nutritious, organically grown, plant-sourced fare can nudge it up another 6 points. Grooving to music that moves you, or sharing moments with companions, can elevate the score several more points — drawing you nearer to elation and farther from melancholy.
Predictably, the FDA has sanctioned medications that deliver a barely perceptible bump on the Hamilton Scale (HAM-D) in terms of overall disposition. In certain instances, the shift amounts to under .01, and the FDA still permits the manufacturer to peddle the product without fear of legal consequences. The agency's own benchmarks are maddeningly vague regarding what threshold qualifies as meaningful enough to grant approval. Compounding the absurdity, a pharmaceutical can be subjected to endless trials until a single "positive" outcome emerges — meaning it nudges the HAM-D scale — while dozens or even hundreds of null results can be conveniently swept aside.
None of this deters Pfizer from airing a TV commercial for Zoloft declaring that "depression is a serious medical condition that may be due to a chemical imbalance," and that "Zoloft works to correct this imbalance."
Setting that aside, the neurochemicals swirling inside our skulls are merely reacting to the deeper, more substantial forces driving our misery. We aren't suffering from "generalized anxiety disorder" or "major depressive disorder." What we're confronting is a tidal wave of mistreatment, financial destitution, imposed materialistic ideals, and a sweeping dismissal of meaningful bonds and empathetic engagement.
Of the nine contributors capable of triggering depression, merely two are physiological.
Consider the findings of Professor Tim Kasser in Illinois, whose work illuminates two pivotal sources of depressive illness. The more your existence is steered by materialistic priorities, the likelier you are to experience depression and anxiety, and the emptier and more unfulfilling your existence becomes.
An internal drive might look like deciding to master the piano simply because you adore its sound and wish to one day emulate even a fraction of Beethoven as a personal aspiration. A materialistic motive, by contrast, might involve guilt over the hefty sum your parents forked out for lessons despite your indifference to the craft, or because without piano gigs at some run-down lounge you couldn't cover rent on your crumbling flat.
Our civilization runs on materialistic ambition. We're ceaselessly groomed to accept that purchases, consumption, flexing, or projecting a curated exterior will deliver happiness — yet this propaganda machine, operated by advertising conglomerates eager to keep us locked in as consuming thralls, is what embeds materialistic craving.
What other non-physiological triggers fuel depression? Absence of meaningful employment, the scars of childhood maltreatment, and grinding poverty. A vivid illustration surfaces in the work of Dr. Vincent Felitti in San Diego, who was tasked with investigating obesity. His subjects were profoundly obese — tipping the scales beyond 400 pounds.
Felitti opted to simply cut off their food intake while bolstering their wellbeing with essential vitamins and nutrients. Participants received medical oversight throughout this strikingly straightforward regimen. And the weight did melt away. Individuals who'd begun at 400 pounds eventually plummeted to a mere 130 pounds. But then a development equally shocking unfolded.
The subjects who'd shed all that mass began piling it back on with equal speed — within mere weeks. Dr. Felitti was utterly bewildered. Until he posed a series of probing questions to one of his patients, whom he called Susan to shield her identity. He started by inquiring when she first began gaining weight as a youngster. Susan confessed she couldn't pinpoint exactly, but estimated it was around age eleven. Dr. Felitti pressed further, asking whether anything significant had occurred around that period. Susan responded,
"Yeah, that's when my grandfather started to rape me." Felitti uncovered that 55 percent of the cohort had endured sexual abuse and had gained weight in its immediate wake. What crystallized for him was that this seemingly inexplicable behavior — extreme weight accumulation — actually served a crucial protective purpose. As Susan articulated to him, "Overweight is overlooked, and that's what I need to be."
It emerged that numerous women in the obese group had unconsciously engineered their own weight gain: to deflect the gaze of men, whom they associated with danger. Felitti had a sudden revelation: "What we had perceived as the problem ― major obesity ― was in fact, very frequently, the solution to problems that the rest of us knew nothing about."
This raises an urgent question — given soaring joblessness, pervasive childhood trauma that carries a sevenfold elevated risk for depression, and a 4,000 percent surge in substance abuse, what is our collective mental landscape revealing about the existence we've constructed? We aren't neurologically defective. Our brains are operating precisely as intended — flagging that something is dreadfully amiss in the world around us.
Plenty of us carrying depression can trace back to countless episodes of childhood cruelty, neglect, and desertion. We were probably reared by self-absorbed parents who, in turn, had been wounded themselves. Even when our parents approximated sainthood, the wider culture inflicted its own brand of damage — bullying the vulnerable, exposing us to fractured households and widespread economic hardship, or simply hammering into our psyche that because we don't match the glossy archetypes flaunted in front of us, we must be defective or inferior.
Our brains are striving to keep us alive. They descend into depression and anxiety precisely because they're dragging those buried injuries to the surface so mending can occur. Should we keep smothering them with medication, those injuries will only come crashing back harder, until we ultimately grasp the Higher Purpose of suffering. Just as tainted fare can poison the body, so too can chronic stress poison the soul. Childhood adversities combined with the soul-crushing cultural mandates still enforced today have birthed an epidemic of depression.
As Rumi observed, "The light enters where the wound is." The medical label of a "broken brain" is so far removed from reality that depression demands an entirely new conceptual framework.
Remarkable how our brains refuse to be duped. Coaxing them to churn out extra serotonin via an SSRI doesn't miraculously dissolve trauma that remains unaddressed. Turns out our brains are not merely unbroken — they're extraordinary. They refuse to back down, even as Big Pharma's pills get shoved down our throats, until we finally tend to our deepest scars.
Rather than interrogating what's "wrong" with us, we ought to begin mending what's been done to us.
