Rhythm, Lucero, Drugs

In Anatomy of an Epidemic, the author develops the perspective on prescription psychotropic drugs of seeing them primarily--and perhaps only--as simply causing perturbations in brain functioning. At the farthest remove, that can be said of just about anything I suppose, but more specifically, it presents a different starting place than the institutionally-taught perspective that these drugs are primarily "anti-": -psychotic, -anxiety, -depression, etc. There is a basic difference between seeing all effects as perturbations and seeing one effect as a "side effect" and another as a "main effect". As all believers in superstition of whatever stripe, it is not hard for believers in prescribed drugs to find ways to write off and/or justify harmful "side effects" while relying on "main effects" or intended effects. Since these packaged chemicals are considered to be psychotropic, their neurological and psychological effects (main and side effects) are often considered to be more important than primarily "somatic" effects like weight gain or liver dysfunction, etc. And again, in comparison, you can consider how something as simple as ingesting a very salty meal or mustard late at night can effect, can psychotropify, your dreams. The perspective that specific chemicals are more accurately considered for their intended use rather than as chemicals with a whole slew of influences is somewhat limiting and less realistic or straightforward than others. It falls into a normal human bias that over-rates intention while under-rating history.

I'm tired of all these love songs, they won't make you mine. But the songs eat up some of the pain.

The starting point of seeing anything we put into our bodies as primarily perturbations ends up rather rashly or irreverently categorizing Prozac with LCD with table salt. Depending on your overall health, consistent overusage of sodium chloride or sugar might be more dangerous to your longterm health than consistent acid usage. And from a religious viewpoint, depending on how stuck your soul is, anything that supports distance between you and divinity is a stumbling block to the clarity, beauty, and development of your soul. Now, just as I'm ok with considering SSRIs to be just chemicals, I'm ok with seeing souls as an interesting example of human imagination whether they "exist" or not. In some ways, the only koan is the rejection of suchness.

As a psychologist, sometimes to a perverse or fanatical extent, I end up asking myself questions such as, "What could be the point of depression?" And in search of answers that cut straight to the existential bedrock (if that "exists"), I spend time reading Prozac Nation while sitting in the hospital waiting to heal from surgery which, only "hopefully", removes seriously malignant cancer. And other things like that; if you're thinking of better examples of such instances, then good, we're on the right track. Folks like me sometimes need the hard way, hard rain, dark nights, the long way home, the narrow path, wide paths, or as Krishnamurti said, "The Pathless Land." Rumi spoke of circling something like a moth to the flame while Sigmund Freud spoke of "normal unhappiness" and a "death instinct".

Lately, I've been considering how silence seems to connect eternity-as-feeling with the instantly-passing present instant. To the same extent that misery loves company, it loves repetition, too. Kids love dizziness. Perturbations.

If I bring the angle closer than seeing everything as perturbations in consciousness and wider than how much monoamine oxidase inhibitors affect a few synapses in one brain, I find myself in the interactions between a loosely-constructed social reality and consistently different viewpoints on just that. Depression, as a somewhat consistent "place", is not at the center of that constructed reality. But neither is dizziness. By moving in a certain way, through similar steps repeatedly, a sense of rhythm can develop as we learn the dance steps. Some of these rhythms happen at the speed of a single neuron firing, maybe even faster. In our repetitions, a sense arises, passes, returns, and can consolidate.

Something beyond yet not exclusive of a sense of individual self, uhh, grows. Existential roots, or a backdrop, rises. It might eventually feel like sorting through your attic full of boxes full of stuff your parents put aside for you in order to find the one toy or picture or belonging that perfectly carries the feeling you want to share with your kid at some important right-now. Misery loves rhythm, so does joy.

I always like the studies of shamanism that point out that "finding one's power" often comes late in life. We have a lot of sorting to do before then. As some Chinese have said, "The young rush in order not to miss anything; their elders take their time, in order to not miss a thing." It is silly for me to feel like eternity is just that kind of girl, but some things are worth sharing.

Thanks for sharing, Amy. Wade, I lean on you sometimes.