It's All About Connection
Musings on mental health
Potato Knob Trail, off The Blue Ridge Parkway
I don’t remember a lot about my graduate psychology program since I was going through The World’s Worst Divorce at the time, but I do recall something my psychopharmacology professor said during a lecture on antidepressants. Dr. Day typically had us LOLing throughout class, but that morning he took a somber turn while parsing out the difference between organic vs. situational depression, particularly when you lived in L.A.
“If you’re working two jobs and you still can’t make ends meet, and you don’t have time to spend with your family, and you have to take the bus to work because you can’t afford a car, and it’s a grind every day just to survive, and you see people living in the very same city with a a kind of life you realize you will never have…why would you not feel depressed?”
While I don’t remember all of what he said 20 years ago, I’ve never forgotten the meaning I took from it: is what we consider mental illness really a problem with the person? Or is the real culprit the lack of genuine connection — to oneself, to the community, to the land, to something bigger than all that?
I don’t recall childhood as a happy time. I felt perpetually on edge trying to make sense of my place in my family and among my peers, an experience I now know is an intrinsic part of the terrain of adoption, but no one understood that back in the late 60s.
I suffered from crippling separation anxiety and stomachaches so severe I’d have to lean against a wall while walking down school corridors. I must have looked morose a lot of the time because I remember my mother frequently telling me to “perk up.” I felt desperate for people to understand what I was feeling and guilty because my moods clearly made my family uncomfortable. And so I folded those feelings up like origami birds, stuffed them in my pockets, and started to pull away. Of course, the more I disconnected myself from others, the more depressed and anxious I became.
I cycled through various antidepressants in my 20s and 30s, finally landing on one in my 40s that didn’t have side effects. But it could never take away the sadness that came from a life pockmarked by disconnection: picking the wrong romantic partners, raising kids alone and 3000 miles away from family, and gradually realizing that I was not going to find what I needed in my chosen city.
Once I got into Alanon and reconfigured my hard drive, I became convinced that my lifelong depression and anxiety had resulted both from situations I couldn’t control and poor choices I’d made. Once I defined my values and committed to a rather stoic course of right action, I no longer felt at the mercy of my moods. I talked to my psychiatrist, who agreed that I should taper off completely — but whenever I tried, my anxiety spiked, so I’d have to go back up on my dose.
Until I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Living with family for a few months, daily walks in nature, the knowledge that I was going to be able to own a home again, and being part of the vibrant Asheville community — all of these variables were more potent than anything Big Pharma ever had to offer. As the stress melted off me, I began tapering down my antidepressant. I did it according to my psychiatrist’s advice, slowly, over a period of months. I now take 1/8 of the dose I’d been on for years and I anticipate being off completely sometime this summer. I feel literally no different taking almost no medication than I did taking a lot of it.
Actually, that’s not true. I feel more alive.
A couple months before I left L.A., I went to an Angel City soccer game with some friends. I was micro-dosing psilocybin in a failed attempt to get off my antidepressant. I hadn’t noticed more than a bit of a zing in the couple weeks I’d been micro-dosing — until I found myself having an epiphany while watching the game.
Never a fan of watching or playing team sports, I couldn’t take my eyes off the glorious glamazons on the field. Look how they communicated with each other — without words! They were powered not just by their sinewy legs, but by their faith in each other. They were part of something big, and this made them mighty.
Raising my voice above the crowd, I turned to my friend Liz and explained soccer to her. Liz was a soccer mom and I know literally nothing about the game, but still, in this moment, I knew the truth.
“IT’S ABOUT CONNECTION!” I said.
I said a lot of other things that seemed extremely profound at the time, and she nodded in that patient yet bemused way people have when you are tripping and they are not.
Me with Mary, Liz, and Martin. See how enlightened they all look after I shared my psilocybin-infused insights? Don’t you wish you’d been in on the secret?
Last weekend, a friend and I went to the top of Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of The Mississippi. I hadn’t been since I was a child. As I stood looking out at the waves of blue ridges on the horizon, I felt a sense of calm wash over me, the relief that has come late in life knowing I finally made my way back home.
It’s really all about our connections.
The Harvard Study is a great example, although only male subjects, its conclusions make total sense. Social media, cell phones, internet, have disconnected us, ironically, and now we have a mental health crisis.
Mushrooms are actually just not for concerts and Yosemite anymore.
Another great article by you.
Every painful devastation in my life got me to where I am today, which is a pretty happy place.
Looking at the photo from y'all at the soccer game, if I had to guess for $1 Million Dollars, who was having psilocybin-infused epiphanies and chasing rabbits, I would bet Martin. Through the Looking Glass, Alice.