David's Inferno

by David Blistein

  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.

  The most famous book on healing depression with supplements is by Dr. Patricia Slagle. It’s called The Way Up From Down and has the subtitle: Rid Yourself of Low Moods and Depression with This Easy-to-Follow Drug-Free Program of B Vitamins and Amino Acids.

  This book combines a brilliant explanation of how depression works with why and how certain supplements can treat it as well as pharmaceuticals. It also has (at least in our edition) 306 pages, a 34-page bibliography, and six appendices. Which makes it many things, but not “easy-to-follow.” She does have a fairly straightforward “basic program” on page 56 that can help a lot of people, but she spends the other 272 pages giving you information to help you understand and treat your specific condition. While I’m convinced that her programs can work, I would no more start slugging down amino acids and B vitamins based simply on reading her book than I would pop Cymbalta and Lamictal without a doctor’s prescription and oversight. That is, if I had managed to see Dr. Slagle (or some other experienced expert in nutritional treatments for depression) and knew how to reach her in an emergency, I would have been more likely to consider that approach.

  Again, we’re talking about major depression. If you’re just going through a sad period—maybe a little seasonal depression—there’s no reason not to experiment with supplements. But, without contradicting that self-empowerment pep talk I gave a few pages ago, if you’re in crisis mode, you might consider trying to find someone with a little experience whom you trust to hang in there with you.

  I saw various bodyworkers during my sickness. I still do when I’m really wired, my muscles are really sore, and/or I’m feeling rich.

  There is something immensely powerful and soothing about any kind of “laying on of hands.” It does way more than relax your muscles. It’s like respite care for a restless soul.

  I always looked forward to these appointments. Knowing I could count on experiencing at least some calm at a specific day and time helped keep me going from week to week. I vividly remember the hopeful anticipation; the sense of release that came from lying on a table while one of my friends—as I considered all these practitioners—surrounded me with their own particular brand of kindness; the lightness I’d feel afterwards for a few minutes, maybe hours.

  No matter how hard my bodyworkers tried, however—one went so far as to come to our house and do a two-hour session at 6 A.M.—those treatments didn’t “hold” either.

  August 2, 2006 [email]

  A couple of days ago I went for a Craniosacral treatment from a woman who’s as nuts as I am. Actually more so. She’s been even further down many of the roads I’ve been traveling (and taken many of the same meds!), plus she sees energy lines so, well, I guess, I just sort of trust her, eh?

  Well, I walked out of the session and was myself … for like a few hours. Went to a business meeting and was smart and funny! (Hard to believe, eh?). Had dinner with some friends and was outgoing … and funny. Came home and was, like, interested in being alive. Next morning, the terror started to creep back, but not completely. And I’ve been back and forth since then … into the darkness and out … overall a relief. Sometimes it just seems I’m out of practice, you know?

  Acupuncture is the most well-known “energetic” treatment. It’s done a lot to break down the barriers between traditional and complementary medicine. Millions of people use it without thinking it’s all that weird. The FDA approves acupuncture needles as a medical device. And insurance companies are beginning to offer coverage.

  Of all the various “whole-body” paradigms, I think acupuncture is the most elegant and intuitively comprehensible. Maybe it’s because most acupuncturists have a cool chart on the wall that shows a prototypical Leonardo human with elaborate networks of meridian lines going from point to point, crisscrossing and circulating energy throughout his various glands and organs. Anyone who’s ever tingled all over has a sense of why sticking a needle into BL17 on your mid-back might help your headache go away.

  Acupuncture—along with chewing on nuts, leaves, roots, and berries—is also the most time-tested medicine. Its roots stretch back to before recorded time. They must be doing something right.

  It’s actually never been my alternative treatment of choice. On the one hand, I’m a little too sensitive to needles (even though they really don’t hurt) and, on the other hand, the effect is a little too subtle for a fast-moving worldly guy like me to appreciate. But, I have friends who’ve used it to manage all kinds of conditions, including chronic ones that have resisted other treatments.

  The sessions did help some, however, and gave some insight into my condition and how to deal with it:

  A: In Chinese medicine there’s the concept of mucous obstructing the heart. It’s like a veil that seems to be acting as a buffer. Sometimes that veil can become thicker and thicker like a curtain and in extreme cases it can become quite brick-like. So we’re trying to soften that veil … get that circulation
moving so your heart can communicate better, from the inside out and the outside in.

  D: That corresponds with what I’m feeling somehow.

  A: Your arm … you’re also manifesting this big clog of stagnant blood.

  D: You can see that?

  A: When I picture you exercising hard, I wonder how much you’re able to release because your ch’i is so congested. You’re unable to throw it out, so it’s like these lightning bolts inside, and where does it go? It recirculates back up.

  D: A lot of what I do … writing, biking, puts a lot of energy into that part of the arms. That’s why I throw my racquet in squash. Let go of it … Crying is a release but, for me, it can also be a pathway into darkness. Like a road that goes in two directions …

  A: It’s important to see the depression as being almost a wound, so we need to be gentle with it. If you need to have “stitches” you want those stitches, or the fabric of the scar tissue, to eventually get incorporated, supple.

  Depression can be a very rich experience that holds you in the moment; that slows the moments down; but at the same time it can become so painful because it is like a tearing that exposes a very vulnerable part of yourself. And that’s why when you have congested ch’i surfacing around that wound, it makes that energetic tissue much more vulnerable. By circulating the ch’i, it recreates that energetic tissue. That’s also what the antidepressant can do.

  That last sentence, which implies that a prescription antidepressant can cure the cause as well as the symptoms, is an admirable and remarkable statement for an alternative practitioner to make.

  Several months later, as she put the needles in, her words were like a free-verse Chinese Mother Goose rhyme, complete with commentary:

  These points are to boost your immune system.

  These are for the blood to settle it down.

  These are for the heart to give it some cover

  So it will stop bleeding memories.

  As people get older, those who are yin

  Can get brittle …

  We need to soften, smooth the yin

  So those connections can be made.

  Others who are more yang are

  Like a swollen bog that needs to be drained.

  The anxiety can be both protective

  And make you more vulnerable.

  If you were a Victorian gentleman

  You’d just relax in your rose garden.

  Great image. Although I have no idea how that Victorian guy was able to relax.

  Researchers have proven that there’s absolutely no proof that homeopathy works. Still, in America, millions of people take homeopathic remedies. In some European countries, as many as 50% of physicians—yes, M.D.s—prescribe them.

  Even if all those people are victims of a network of shameless quacks (which, of course, psychiatrists have also been accused of being), you gotta figure that if homeopathy can’t be proven scientifically, the remedies must be the most fabulous placebos ever invented or homeopathic practitioners are actually big-time shamans with seriously good juju, for whom the power of suggestion is child’s play.

  Either of which would be good enough for me.

  The basic operating principle of homeopathy is that “like cures like.” In overly simplistic terms, if you have poison ivy, a homeopathic dose of poison ivy might help alleviate the symptoms. I think of it as kind of an “energetic” immunization. Although I’m not sure most homeopaths would be comfortable with that description.

  When I talk about homeopathic remedies here, however, I am primarily talking about what they call “constitutionals,” as opposed to the more symptom-specific remedies in little bottles and tubes that people buy to deal with aching muscles, insect bites, teething babies, and this year’s version of the plague, a.k.a. the flu.

  The right constitutional isn’t designed to cure any one thing. Rather, it gets so deep into the fundamental energetic causes of everything that ails you, that it can bring about a pretty radical transformation in your physical, mental, and/or emotional well-being.

  I think of it like this: Some have an affinity for a particular animal or insect or plant. Some feel good when they hold a specific gem or are in a room painted a certain color. All these different substances vibrate at different levels, so maybe if you are in contact with the right one it can help you get vibrationally aligned back with yourself.

  When a constitutional works … okay, fine, when someone thinks a constitutional has worked … it feels like a true panacea. That magic bullet.

  This isn’t as strange as it seems. In spite of all the relatively modern focus on observable and/or measurable phenomena—such as germs, cellular aberrations, and heredity—there’s a certain undefinable something that seems to determine how, why, and when each of us gets sick in our own individual ways … an undefinable something that underlies not only how rambunctious the germs inside us are able to get but even our positive or negative thoughts, our ability to love and be loved, or what we eat.

  Homeopaths look for that certain something.

  A lot of people walk into their offices complaining of a chronic headache, back problem, a cough that won’t stop, or manic depression so bad they didn’t have any idea who was actually going to show up for the appointment. But from the homeopath’s perspective, each of those symptoms is just one of a myriad of ways that you are “presenting” what really ails you.

  He or she wants to know what time you wake up in the morning; if you have a history of knee problems; where it hurts; where it itches; if, how, and when your private parts have been working; your thought patterns at different times of the day; everything you can remember about your dreams; and way more than you’d like to tell anybody about your phlegm, sweat, snot, and bathroom habits. In fact, during the first appointment—which can last a couple of hours—you may wonder whether the guy is more voyeur than physician.

  Based on one or more of these in-depth examinations, a homeopath gives you a few tiny sugar-based pills (or an extract) that contain some essence of an animal, vegetable, or mineral substance that’s been diluted so much that scientists often can’t find a single molecular trace of it left. This makes traditional M.D.s throw up their hands in disbelief.

  While I’d had some success with homeopathic remedies for various ailments in the past, I never found an effective remedy this time around. Still, I spent a lot of time feeling that there must be something out there—something to hold, to sit with, to do, that would provide relief. I confess to hugging the occasional tree, usually quaking aspen … you know, the like cures like thing.

  Back when I was walking in the Santa Monica hills with my cousin, she suggested I stop by a large homeopathic pharmacy in Santa Monica and see if they had any ideas for me.

  There, I had a very serious conversation with a very serious Germanic woman, appropriately named Greta. She listened empathically to my symptoms and asked if I’d tried any flower essences. I knew about flower essences. A German doctor named Edward Bach developed these mild plant-based tinctures back in the 1930s in order to treat emotional and mental imbalances (of which I had plenty to choose from). The most famous one is called Rescue Remedy. Lots of people take Rescue Remedy to chill out. Including my mom, who took it along with her blood pressure and thyroid medications. She even went to an acupuncturist. See what happens when you combine an open mind with a touch of hypochondria? And, she lived to be 90!

  I told Greta that I’d indeed tried Rescue Remedy, as well as a more specialized Bach Flower remedy called Aspen (as in Quaking Aspen.) She explained that, contrary to my assumption, these remedies don’t really work on the homeopathic like-cures-like principle. So, even though Aspen is indeed recommended for “vague unknown fears … that something awful is going to happen even though it is unclear what exactly,” she suggested I would benefit more from Oak because it gives you strong roots. Plus, she recommended White Chestnut for some reason I don’t remember—although I hope it wasn’t because she thought I was too prickly �
� or, worse, about to become extinct.

  The next morning I wrote:

  I bought the White Chestnut and Oak and did what she said. By the time I got to the airport to pick up my partner an hour later, I was hungry for the first time in days. Last night I still woke up at 3:30, but I didn’t mind lying there because my thought patterns weren’t frantic. Finally took a little Valium because I needed to sleep. Woke up at 5:30, measurably better than usual. And the flutter in my solar plexus (it moves from my throat chakra to my solar plexus) was much milder.

  That particular feeling of well-being lasted only a day or two. So I decided to follow up on Greta’s other suggestion … something called gemmotherapy. Even though I’m a walking encyclopedia of counter-cultural cures, I had never heard of this one. She had explained that it’s sort of a cross between homeopathy and flower essences. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any in stock. Fortunately, I was in LA for that Natural Foods Expo. I figured that if you couldn’t find this gemmotherapy stuff there you couldn’t find it anywhere. I couldn’t find it there.

  The best I could do was a long conversation with a beautiful Lebanese homeopath who knew all about gemmotherapy but refused to suggest a remedy unless she and her father (an even more experienced homeopath) were able to perform the official two-hour homeopathic examination of my entire physical, mental, and emotional existence. Unfortunately, I was leaving for Las Vegas the next day. After I begged a little more, she admitted that she had a sense that my remedy might be “neon,” which is a very noble, albeit unstable element. Like cures like! Unfortunately, neon’s not the easiest thing to get your hands on—especially the homeopathic kind. A few days after I met her, however, I stepped out on the balcony of my hotel room in Gallup, New Mexico, and found myself a foot away from the hotel’s 1950s-style neon sign. Happy to grasp at yet another straw, I sat next to it for almost an hour. Nice color. Nice energy. Nice try, Dave.