Benjamin Ramm talks to Johann Hari about depression and its unexpected solutions. openDemocracy. [24’34”]
The Challenges of Recovering From Heroin Addiction
January 30, 2023 by
When you ask people what difficulties a person faces when trying to overcome heroin addiction, most will focus on the early withdrawal symptoms, which comprise both physical and psychological elements.
There are potentially far greater challenges that lie ahead in a journey to recovery from heroin addiction. It is important that people know this (users, family members, practitioners, etc), although it is also important that people with a heroin problem are not put off by these challenges. Many people have overcome heroin addiction.
One of my favourite pieces of addiction research focuses on the recovery journey from heroin addiction and I have described this research in the article section of this website. In the 1980s, Patrick Biernacki interviewed over 100 people in the USA who had overcome their heroin addiction without treatment. These were some of the major challenges these people faced:
The Politics of Personal Distress
November 22, 2022 by
A couple of months ago I came across an excellent article in the Guardian newspaper by UK clinical psychologist Sanah Ahsan entitled ‘I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health’. The article is well worth reading:
‘Society’s understanding of mental health issues locates the problem inside the person – and ignores the politics of their distress’
We are living, we’re told, through a “mental health crisis”. Mental health services cannot cope with the explosion of demand over the past two years: 1.6 million people are on waiting lists, while another 8 million need help but can’t even get on these lists. Even children are showing up at A&E in despair, wanting to die.
But there is another way to see this crisis – one that doesn’t place it firmly in the realm of the medical system. Doesn’t it make sense that so many of us are suffering? Of course it does: we are living in a traumatising and uncertain world. The climate is breaking down, we’re trying to stay on top of rising living costs, still weighted with grief, contagion and isolation, while revelations about the police murdering women and strip-searching children shatter our faith in those who are supposed to protect us.
‘Lost Connections’ by Johann Hari, Part 2
June 17, 2021 by
In my last blog, I described Johann Hari’s enthralling and inspirational book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions. This has to be one of the most important books I have read in the mental health field since I first started working in this arena over 40 years ago.
Johann asks himself, given all his new knowledge garnered during his research for the book, what he would say to his teenage self just before he popped his first antidepressant drug—he took the drugs for 13 years—if he could go back in time.
‘What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing’
May 7, 2021 by
Recently, I read one of the best books I have read relevant to my work. The book, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, is written by Bruce D. Perry M.D., Ph.D. and Oprah Winfrey. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in trauma and the healing of trauma. Many people who become addicted to drugs have experienced childhood trauma.
The book was informative, inspirational and deeply-moving. Bruce has put together so well what he has learnt throughout his career (including a great deal from the young people he has worked alongside), and has described his theories of how we function as human beings, and how trauma can have such a devastating impact on us. He describes the many ways we can facilitate the healing of trauma. The use of storytelling—Bruce’s clinical experiences and Oprah’s personal experiences—is very powerful.
Psychoactive Drugs and the Drug Problem
April 26, 2021 by
Introduces psychoactive drugs and describes a simple classification of drug type based on their major mode of impact on the mind. The multitude of factors that influence the way that a drug can affect a person, and ultimately can contribute to a drug problem are influenced. (999 words)
Drugs in Society
March 8, 2021 by
On the one hand, we tell our young people not to take psychoactive drugs and to keep away from people who are selling drugs. On the other hand, doctors and others are constantly encouraging us to take psychoactive drugs produced by the pharmaceutical industry—some of which are addictive—for a variety of conditions. (1,109 words)
‘Willingness To Be Puzzled’ by Gabor Maté
February 12, 2015 by
Dr. Gabor Maté talks about how important it is to be puzzled and to ask the question “what’s really going on here?” rather than assuming that we know all the answers.
‘Recovery in an Age of Cynicism’ by Bill White
August 21, 2014 by
‘There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”
For What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield (1966)
Lyrics by Stephen Stills
Recovery in an age of cynicism requires seeking the less traveled path.
We live in a strange era. Pessimism seems to be seeping into every aspect of global culture – fed by leaders who divide rather than unite, who pander rather than educate and elevate, and who ply the politics of destruction to mask their own impotence to create.
Poisoned by such cynicism, we as a people act too often without thinking, speak too often without listening, and engage too often to confront and condemn rather than to communicate, until in our own loss of hope, we lapse into disillusioned detachment and silence – shrinking our world to a small circle we vow to protect.
‘Overcoming the stigma of depression’ by Douglas Bloch
March 18, 2014 by
An excellent article on stigma and on how people with depression can feel shame. Stigma and shame are roadblocks to depression.
“The last great stigma of the twentieth century is the stigma of mental illness.” Tipper Gore
One of the roadblocks to recovery for those who suffer from depression is our culture’s tendency to stigmatize depression and other mental health disorders.
After my first hospitalization, I remember the dilemma I faced in trying to explain my three-day absence to my employer. If I told the truth – that I was being treated for anxiety and depression – I stood a good chance of losing my job. Instead, I reported that I had been treated for insomnia at a sleep clinic.
Bruce Alexander’s Globalization of Addiction Website
January 29, 2014 by
This website is well worth checking out. I really like Bruce Alexander’s ideas. They need reflecting upon.
‘Global society is drowning in addiction to drug use and a thousand other habits. This is because people around the world, rich and poor alike, are being torn from the close ties to family, culture, and traditional spirituality that constituted the normal fabric of life in pre-modern times. This kind of global society subjects people to unrelenting pressures towards individualism and competition, dislocating them from social life.
People adapt to this dislocation by concocting the best substitutes that they can for a sustaining social, cultural and spiritual wholeness, and addiction provides this substitute for more and more of us.
‘Want to reduce mental illness? Address trauma. Want to save the world? Address trauma.’ by Laura K Kerr
January 27, 2014 by
It’s time we spent more time reflecting upon the role of trauma in mental health problems and addiction. Here’s a thought-provoking blog from Laura K Kerr.
‘Different explanations have been given for the increased number of people suffering from mental illness. Some have claimed the increase is the result of ever-expanding diagnostic criteria and syndromes that risk medicalizing normal emotional reactions.
Others argue the increase is the result of the pharmaceutical industry financially courting the medical establishment as well as using advertisements to attract potential users of their medications.
While both these arguments seem correct, they nevertheless fail to address that an increasing number of people regularly experience despair and anguish and are struggling to make a meaningful life, if not keep themselves psychologically, socially, and financially afloat.
‘The crisis of modernity’ by Phil Hanlon
January 14, 2014 by
Recently, I introduced you to Professor Philip Hanlon. Mark Gilman had told me about Phil and his work and I am excited by what he and his colleagues are doing. Over the coming weeks, I’m going to show a series of film clips which describe Phil’s Afternow project.
On the relevant webpage, Phil says:
‘Modernity has brought many benefits (including technological improvements, material comfort, longer life expectancy and improved health), but the downside includes the emergence of new problems which stem from the way we live our lives and structure our society.
The culture of addiction: Part 2
August 1, 2013 by
The second part of this series focuses on the impact of legal status on drug culture. Click here for part one.
Society makes judgements about different types of psychoactive drug. As Bill White points out in his book Pathways from the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery, the social status and value attached to a particular drug by society influence several things:
- The risks associated with use of the drug
- The organisation of ‘tribes’ within the culture of addiction
- The characteristics of each tribe and the impairments that members experience from both the drug and the culture itself.
Clearly, there are likely to be differences in a variety of factors for drugs that are legal (e.g. alcohol) and those that are prohibited by law (e.g. heroin).
‘Life is an amazing gift’ by Wee Willie Winkie
June 29, 2013 by
‘Life is such an amazing gift. I wake up every single morning with a huge smile on my face. I open my door as I put the kettle on and take a deep breath of air. This feeling never gets old and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
I’m not waking up with the immediate thoughts of heroin, or having to go to work to do a job I didn’t choose because I liked it – it was all about flexible hours and good money. My thoughts are my own and not influenced by drugs.
Life is so simple for me now, it doesn’t matter what happens. I look back on my past – the homelessness, the overdosing, my attempted suicide and think, “If I can survive that, I can survive anything.” So I never get depressed or down about things. It’s fantastic.
‘Solving addiction lies in empowerment, not shame’ by Beth Burgess
June 23, 2013 by
Found this article by Beth Burgess in the New Statesman in October 2012. Beth is certainly getting her writing in a number of important places. Well done, Beth.
‘Brighton’s Recovery Walk is an important sign that stigma about addiction isn’t acceptable.
What springs to mind when you envisage thousands of excited alcoholics and drug addicts gathered on the streets of Brighton? The casting queue for The Jeremy Kyle Show? Early opening at the dole office? A new Wetherspoons opening up on the seafront?
