David's Inferno (20 page)

This mutual medical peace accord continues to progress in fits and starts. While there's still some shoulder shrugging, eye rolling, equivocating, and outright cynicism on both ends of the healthcare spectrum, those of us on the receiving end no longer feel that we're caught in middle … except by the insurance companies who feel
they're
caught in the middle and spend a lot of time number crunching trying to figure out how to make sure we stay in there with them. (A Chinese-finger puzzle of socio-political complexity that strains even my commitment to neutrality.)

I like the phrase “continuum of care.” No boundaries, no either/or.
Your
complementary medicine is
my
traditional medicine. And vice versa. Professionals can call it whatever they want. All we patients care about is moving toward greater health any way we can.

One of the tenets of complementary medicine is that it treats the whole person, not just the symptoms. This is quite a claim, considering we're talking 11 systems, 22 internal organs, 206 bones, 600 muscles, 60,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries; 100,000 hairs (on a good day); and 100 trillion cells of which a billion are replaced every hour;
plus
individual combinations of genetics, lifestyles, environment, and astrological influences;
plus
individual mental, emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual capacities and/or experiences. As I've said before, under the circumstances, it's amazing that any two individuals can ever be cured with similar medications or “modalities.”

Mental illness is not just a disease of the mind. It puts down roots throughout your body, emotions, and spirit—implicating every organ and system. Sometimes your thoughts weigh on you; other times your heart is heavy, your throat is wired, and/or you sense that life has no meaning. At its worst, all of the above.

The fact that depression can be a contributing factor to heart disease is now scientific knowledge as well as common wisdom. And a dermatologist once told me, only in part tongue-in-cheek, that she can see mental illness written all over the faces of her patients.

The mind-body connection is real. And it goes every which way. Constantly.

The idea that every part of you is implicated in your mental illness is humbling, but empowering. Because while it explains why there's no panacea, in the process it restores
your own
intuition to its rightful place as the ultimate arbiter of your own care.

Say you have weak adrenals, thanks or no thanks to something that happened to mom during her pregnancy. Over the course of your life, your adrenals have become increasingly stressed by environment, diet, life circumstances, and/or other factors until by now they're thoroughly compromised. If those weak adrenals are one of the proximate causes of your anxiety, you may be helped by anything from bodywork to taking licorice root. If, however, some childhood trauma is constantly pumping out traumatic childhood memory vibes into your whole system, no amount of bodywork or licorice root is going to provide a long-term cure.

On the other hand, if your adrenals are totally shot, maybe you need to heal them
while
you're doing the therapy you need to do to release those childhood traumas. And, if you're binge drinking you may have to go to Alcoholics Anonymous to get a handle on
that
first or else you'll keep missing your therapy appointments. And, maybe you can't deal with
any
of this until you find a medication that lowers your cortisol levels or raises your dopamine levels.

In other words, the issue isn't necessarily figuring out what's going to work, it's making your best determination of the most effective way to begin untangling this tangled web.

Some people with mental illness might be helped by a prescription drug; others, a drug and a therapist; others, an herb and acupuncture; others, blood-pressure medication and a two week vacation; others, a regular meditation practice; and others, the
spiritual/karmic purging of their choice. Or any of many combinations of the above.

The important thing is that there's a wide range of places where you can introduce some healing. There's no absolute right way. Rest assured that in some way—no matter how inscrutably personal or even karmic—you are doing exactly the right thing for you. There's no need to suffer the truly debilitating anxiety that can come from thinking you might be doing the wrong thing.

There are times, of course, if you pose a threat to yourself or to others, that others may intervene. Hamlet, for example, felt the only cure for his misery was karmic intervention—which involved killing his two-timing Uncle Claudius and committing suicide. I'm not sure either licorice root, Valium, or family therapy could have helped, but who knows?

To add convolution to complexity, different treatments work at different speeds. So, while as little as .25 mg of Klonopin could calm you down pretty quickly, it might take 300 mg of valerian root a couple of hours for a similar affect. Of course, if your anxiety is genetic, you might have to wait for the latest breakthrough in gene therapy in order to get to its roots. And that past life when you had a stake driven through your heart? Jeez. It's amazing you even make it through the day.

I know there were probably times I would have felt better faster if I'd done what some person, book, or website told me; and other times when I took advice that increased the suffering. But, ultimately, I'd rather follow my own intuition and own innate intelligence—informed by any knowledge I can garner, advice I can get, and any experience I've had—than live chained to the idea that someone else always knows what's best for me. To return to the wisdom of Paracelsus: “If you're not your own man, you're someone else's.” That was his motto. And he was a doctor.

My 2006 calendar is cluttered with appointments with alternative therapists. Including a homeopath, an acupuncturist, a Rolfer, a
Craniosacral practitioner, and a Shiatsu therapist. I also spent a lot of time standing indecisively in front of the supplement section at our health food store. You could say this demonstrates an unwavering commitment to restoring my mental health, a heroic Dantean journey through various alternative purgatories, or simply indiscriminate flailing.

Regardless, I can't remember a single “treatment” that
didn't
help at least a little. To me, the issue was how long it held. A few hours were a relief. A day was even better. A few days … unlikely. In fact, at one point I realized that there was a good chance that if I had gone to the acupuncturist every day, I might have muddled along fairly well. Or, if I could have daily blood tests so I could fine-tune my supplements with a really experienced naturopath, I'd have been able to stay closer to fine. It's as if alternative therapies also have “half-lives” that are, unfortunately, even more unpredictable than medications:

Within alternative medicine, there are four types of overlapping complementary therapies. These categories are not cast in stone. In fact, I made them up. But they're useful for discussion purposes.

My first attempt to “heal” myself through diet was in the summer of 1971. I had heard somewhere that it was a good idea to do a one-day “rice fast” every few weeks. On the self-designated day, I skipped breakfast, and when I went out for my lunch break, I walked with profound esoteric seriousness to the local Chinese restaurant where I bought a container of rice and walked back to the village green to eat it.

I vividly remember the feeling of those tasteless globs of white rice, which I managed to chew and swallow with ascetic determination.

We didn't really know about diet back then. (I didn't even know about brown rice back then!) Diet was something you did if you wanted to lose weight or, maybe, pump yourself up for sports … but not as a form of healing.

Bread & Circus, the forerunner of Whole Foods in New England, had just opened. Celestial Seasonings had just introduced their first herb teas (
Red Zinger
and
Sleepytime
). And the only supplement anyone knew about was One-a-Day. Oh, there were vague notions of calories and sugar and fatty foods. But adusting or supplementing our diets certainly wasn't our first line of defense against illness.

That changed pretty quickly. Between 1976 and 1986, I didn't even go to a traditional western doctor. Rather, I lived in a subculture where people paid a lot of attention to how different foods affected them. I was still willing to “pay the price” for “too much” sugar, caffeine, and carbs, but I became increasingly aware of what that price was.

I know that, in terms of mood, more complex carbs and proteins (for me, particularly red meat) are stabilizing. Whereas, no surprise, caffeine, alcohol, and sugar can be destabilizing. Nicotine, oddly, can be both. My knowledge is not theoretical. I have gone
days without eating any sugar, weeks without caffeine, months without red meat, and years without alcohol. And I've had fewer than ten cigarettes in the last 25 years.

During my breakdown I did modulate all of the above with varying degrees of success. I have friends who insist that if I had immediately taken up a certain diet—macrobiotic, ayurvedic, raw food, or others—I would have healed far faster. Proponents of such diets will also usually suggest you add certain supplements to your diet because, when you're sick, it's difficult to get everything you need from a regimented diet alone.

About 50% of Americans take some form of supplement. Primarily vitamins and minerals but also amino acids, tinctures, essences, herbs, and those strange extracts from the glands of cows and pigs that gave their lives so we could feel better.

I'd venture to guess that depressives are right up there with heart and cancer patients in terms of exploring every possible way to supplement their diet and whatever other therapies they're receiving.

Our choices are informed by books, blogs, websites, suggestions from herbalists, naturopaths, acupuncturists, friends, and detailed (albeit caveat-laden) explanations from people at the supplement section of the natural-foods store. Some folks use a crystal on the end of a pendulum or kinesiology to leverage their innate intuitive powers. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

Most of these therapies are based on the premise that your body, given the right tools, can do a better job at figuring out how to heal itself than a doctor can through direct intervention with powerful medications. This makes a certain amount of sense since your body, until this current episode, has presumably done a pretty good job.

Feeding your body with supplements to cure depression, however, is like feeding your soil with nutrients to grow better tomatoes. It can be a slow process and needs to be fine-tuned on a regular basis, making the process even more individual than taking meds. If possible, you want to work with a practitioner who has extensive experience putting custom combinations together and
will monitor you as closely as a good psychiatrist would monitor someone taking an antidepressant.