Posted by dj on February 25, 2000, at 12:25:12
In reply to Re: NYTimes interesting depression coverage..., posted by CarolAnn on February 23, 2000, at 9:27:23
> ... It's unfortunate that a lot of people are just looking for the "magic" pill, when therapy or a combination might be more helpful.
> dj, thanx for yet another, great post!CarolAnnThank you, CA, for both reading and commenting. I'm weaning myself off psycho-babble because so many folks here seem focused on the 'magic pill' approach and I'm frankly very tired of reading about pharmaceutical panaceas, which in my view and based on my experience are a crutch that many never seem to let go of, because they are not willing to tackle the core issues and stay focused and obssessing on the symptoms and NOT the cause.
Though my energy and concentration is still not consistently where I would like it to be (though it is generally), since I've used multiple conventional and non-conventional but scientifically sound approachs to dealing with my issues (as documented throughout Psycho-babble)I feel much, much better. And replacing the ADs with sound nutrition, a limited mix of supplements (Siberian ginseng, ginkgo biloba, lecithin, multi-vitmins) from trusted sources (Jamieson) as well as applying the principles J&B (see my posting to Janice, above) and others have drawn from the best of eastern and western medicine and therapies have played a large role in that rebalancing (as I most certainly felt out of balance when depressed and even more so, in different ways while on ADs).
I'll leave you with some book references which I've found enlightening, from my shelves, for any who are interested in widening their perspective and perhaps putting a little poetry.literature and learning rather than pharmacy into their lives:
Dean Ornsteins - Love & Survival;
Timothy Miller - How to Want What You Have
Alan Watts - Psychotherapy East & West
Thomas Merton - No Man is an Island
David H. Rosen - Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul through Creativity)
Sidney Rosen - My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton E. Erickson
James W. Pennebaker - Opening Up: The Healing Power of Confiding in Others
Robert Ornstein - Healty Pleasures
Natalie Goldberg - Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America & her Writing Down the Bones, & Wild Mind
Diane Ackerman - A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis
Jean Vanier - Becoming Human
Jo Coudert - Advice From A Failure
Anthony Storr - Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice
Larry Dossey - Healing Words
Cherry Hartman - Be Good-to-Yourself Therapy
Jon Kabat-Zinn - Full Catastrophe Living
Maxwell Taylor Kennedy - Make Gentle the Life of this World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy
Berke Breathed - 'Toons for our Times - Bloom County, & Penguin Dreams & Stranger Things
Thorwald Dethlefsen - The Healing Power of Illness
Phil Jackson - Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior
John Steinback - All and in particular, To A God Unknown
Tim Ward - The Great Dragon's Fleas
Lawerence Shainberg - Ambivalent Zen
Mike George - Learn to Relax
Robert Bolton - People Skills
John Welwood - Journey of the Heart
Mary Crow Dog - Lakota Women
Dee Brown - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Peter Matthiesen - At Play in the Fields of the Lord, & The Snow Leopard
Charles Handy - The Hungry Spirit
Alan Briskin - The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace
Primo Levi - The Drowned and the Saved
Michael Ignatitieff - The Needs of Strangers
Marc Ian Barash - The Healing Path
Thich Nhat Hanh - Living Buddha, Living Christ
Frances Vaughan - A Gift of Peace
Richard D. Carson - Taming Your Gremlin: A Guide to Enjoying Yourself
Christopher Leach - Letter to a Younger Son
The Dalai Lama - A Flash of Lightening in the Dark of Night
JanWillem Van De Wettering - The Empty Mirror
Merle Shain - Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others
Leston Havens - A Safe Place
Robert Fritz - The Path of Least Resistance
Patti Smith - Early Work
Leonard Cohen - Flowers for Hitler (and his music too)
Richard D. Mahoney - Sons and Brothers : The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy
Antoince De Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Carl A. Hammerschlag - Healing Ceremonies, and The Theft of the Spirit : A Journey to Spiritual Healing
Alfred Lord Tennyson - UlyssesThe following quote is from Hammeschag's The Theft of the Spirit which I highly recommed as I do ALL of the fore-going:
"It doesn't matter how long your spirit lies dormant and unsused. One day you hear a song, look at an object, or see a vision, and you feel its prescence. It can't be bought, traded, or annihilated, because its power comes from your story. No one can steal your spirit; you have to give it away. you can take it back. Find yours."That's the only point of life and our struggles isn't it,connecting with YOUR spirit whether you believe in God, Buddha, Ganhdi, Kennedy, money, drugs or not? Oh and of course I can't forget Neil Postman who is currently in Vancouver speaking to the topic of spirit vs. technology(which pills are but an example of). Here's a bit of background on him and his works:
"Author of seventeen published books including The End of Education, Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Conscientious Objections, The Disappearance of Childhood, and Teaching as a Subversive Activity (with Charles Weingartner). His articles, of which over 200 have been published, have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Time Magazine, The Saturday Review, The Harvard Education Review, The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, Stern, and Le Monde. He is on the Editorial Board of The Nation magazine. An internationally recognized scholar and critic, he has lectured all over the world, and in 1985, gave the keynote address at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In 1986 he was given the George Orwell Award for clarity in Language by the National Council of Teachers of English. For ten years, he was the editor of Et Cetera, the Journal of General Semantics. He is the holder of the Christian Lindback Award for excellence in teaching. In 1988, he was given the Distinguished Teacher Award--one of many awards received in his 38 years of teaching at New York University. This year, Knopf published his most recent work, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century. Research interests include media and learning."
And to end I will leave you with an abridged version of Ulysses:
"...I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
...Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. "For full text: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/ulysses.html
poster:dj
thread:23125
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000220/msgs/23788.html