on depression: the importance of agency, self-confidence, and hope

I don’t quite feel like myself. I haven’t in a while. I know why that is. Still, I can’t escape.

The edges and contours of episodes of depression are never the same. Depression can be apathetic, listless, only emerging from bed in the morning because the impact of the consequences just slightly outweigh the weight of hopelessness; depression can be filled with sorrow, tears pouring out of our faces at the first inconvenience or reminder of pain; depression can even sometimes remind us of the beauty of the world.

Chronic disease too does not look the same for everybody.

This time, I have grown listless and terrified, incapacitated by anxiety and fear unlike any time in my life since I was a young child obsessing over tornadoes. This episode has been unlike most of my previous episodes. I think I’ve written those words before, but can’t recall where I wrote them. This has been what this episode has been like. I’ve briefly written about what I’m going through, maybe in an Instagram caption or story, or maybe it was over text or in my journal. I have written in my journal most days over the last six months. Those journal entries have been lengthy, yet few have felt therapeutic. My short-term memory and physical health have also been affected, first dealing with severe gastroparesis followed by an unexpectedly challenging bout with RSV. In the past, my anxiety wracked my brain and impeded my ability to sleep, but still motivation was accessible, enabling me to at least exercise or socialize. Now, I fall asleep relatively easily, less so because I’m physically exhausted since I’m not exercising much right now, and definitely not because I feel fulfilled; I fall asleep easily because I can literally feel a lack of dopamine and serotonin in my brain, preventing me from even feeling the highs that at least still existed in previous mental fogs. The constraints and circumstances of my life have usually existed in such a manner that the lowest lows of depression were avoided, providing me with enough of a foundation that getting out of bed — while of course still difficult — felt reasonable. And now, getting out of bed feels incredibly difficult and nearly pointless.

As I write these words, fully knowing that people I love and care about will read them, I feel the familiar tingle of anxiety creeping up my spine. That feeling, that sense of vulnerability, is one I know well. I have felt it every time I’ve written about my mental health. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable enough that I decide not to publish what I’m writing. Other times, what I was writing felt necessary, a way for me to move forward with genuine acceptance. Those pieces turned out to tether me to a sense of mental stability at the surface while I bobbed below. In this episode, I’m not tethered to the surface; my tether has been replaced by an anchor.

Not only do I feel like I have forgotten the lessons I’ve learned throughout my life during difficult times, I feel like I have forgotten who I am. I feel like I don’t possess agency. I am burnt out and depressed.

In a psychology class over ten years ago, I learned of an interesting study that has ricocheted in my mind for several years. It was about what happens to motivation and fulfillment once we earned financial compensation for activities. This study has popped into my mind every time I think about writing, the greatest passion in my life outside of my love for others and nature, and what would happen to my passion for writing as I became a professional writer. I wondered if I’d fall out of love with writing if I only ever wrote pieces that led to compensation. I love writing regardless of if I get money, but I’d be lying to you if I tried to claim that I felt equally as fulfilled when I wrote a piece for money compared as to when I write non-compensated blogs or essays. The study’s conclusions, though, shouldn’t really be applied without first thinking about the conclusions a bit differently. Instead, the study itself tells us about the concept of intrinsic motivation, or the motivation that compels us to do things for the sake of doing them instead of doing them for the outcome or reward. Of course rewards motivate us, but extrinsic motivation feels more hollow than its intrinsic counterpart. It is obvious that we feel more fulfilled when we do things that we do because we want to do them. It’s also obvious that feeling like we’re doing things that we have to do can take a very serious toll on us.

This toll is due to what else this study reveals: The importance of agency to us in our lives. Agency describes our ability to feel like we are in control of our decisions and actions.

Physicists and philosophers can debate whether we truly have free will or not; in living, though, the reality is less influential than what we perceive. If we feel like we chose to do something, we feel better about it. If somebody monetizes their hobby, it probably doesn’t actually diminish their love for the hobby, but their motivation becomes convoluted when the act of doing the hobby is no longer the goal; the money is. And in a world where money is so incredibly important, the offer of money leads us to associate the hobby and its resulting money as our livelihood. In that way, our jobs are much more than our jobs; they are our tickets, our dues, for the right to live life.

As we get older, we accrue traumas and responsibilities. We encounter burnout. And we lose our sense of agency. Once we lose that, our identities become hijacked. We become shells of ourselves. We become depressed and anxious. It is hard to escape an episode of depression when it feels like you’re trapped in the middle of the ocean during a never-ending hurricane and have no idea who you are or how you’ve accomplished anything before. This is how I’ve felt lately.

In the past, I had a battery of coping mechanisms that helped me overcome. In a strange, paradoxical way, cystic fibrosis actually proved to be a boon, preventing me from reaching the depths of depression. CF, as a friend put it while we commiserated together a few hours ago, was the grim reaper, silently watching over our shoulders. This very real, very present threat anchored me in the present, and it anchored my days. I feared what could happen if I didn’t take my pills, do my treatments, or exercise. CF and respiratory flora are indiscriminate and random. They are painful and deadly. They cause suffering. They triggered fear and an awareness of death. I don’t miss those days. Yet maybe those days showed me something that I have since forgotten in the years where I have found physical stability.

I did not choose to have CF, none of us do. If given the choice, I’d surmise most of us would’ve chosen not to have this condition. But I’ve never known an alternative reality. I have been privileged enough to witness a total reversion in my current health status and future prognosis, which has been a major shock for me and probably many others. This has led me to a place of stability and complacency that has eroded my sense of self and agency, which were fundamental and crucial assets whenever I encountered a health challenge. This is a privilege, I recognize, and I do not take that lightly. But privileges can carry burdens, some seen, some invisible.

I first experienced suicidal ideation when I was a kid. Suicidal ideation, both the experience of it and also talking about it, have provided me a sense of agency when I’ve felt powerless, a sense of control over the very thing that stokes the deepest, most instinctual fear within us: The fear of death. I never wanted to die because I hated life; I ideated because I was sick of suffering and agonizing. The thought of controlling my death instead of the dying from an indiscriminate, random disease gave me relief and a much-needed sense of agency. Agency is the very foundation for fulfillment. I don’t believe we can feel fulfilled if we don’t feel like we have any control. Envisioning my own death significantly reduced the fear of death within me.

CF also gave me the license to contemplate death from a very young age, something I actually consider to be a great privilege. I attribute my writing, my drive to understand and pursue science, and most of my spiritual and personal growth to the heaviness of growing up with CF. Had I not been thinking about death from a very young age, I may not have been driven to pursue life without taking it for granted. Hard to know, but, once again, in the spirit of agency, allowing myself to find something meaningful in having CF is a way for me to exert agency.

About six weeks ago, I spoke at a workshop on mental health in cystic fibrosis for CF social workers. During this talk, I spoke on the unseen, sometimes confusing emotions that can come with having a chronic disease. Obviously I am but one person, incapable of depicting the whole gamut of how humans process their chronic diseases. People respond in strange ways, sometimes predictably, sometimes not. As I’m writing this now, I’m realizing that the point I made at the beginning of this essay, about how I’ve talked about the geometry of this episode of depression before, that was how I described this episode at the workshop I participated in not too long ago. In the past, writing about my grief, anxiety, or depression served as a therapeutic for my depression. The volumes produced in the midst of the episodes were rarely intentional; those writings were often written after weeks of protracted fixation on a particular anxiety. In therapy, it’s hard for us to advance through traumas if we don’t process them, a nebulous, convoluted process that happens as we reframe and hopefully transform our past experiences into meaningful lessons that allow us to move forward, the process of accepting something that has previously been impossible for us to accept. I don’t mean this cynically; the experience of grappling, accepting, and progressing through aspects of life that cause us great suffering is one of the most beautiful testaments to human resiliency. We as humans experience grief and yet retain the ability to love others and work through things. I’m not suggesting that we must romanticize trauma; but to move forward, we do have to process things as best as we possibly can.

Another part of mental health discourse that has grown irritating and disconcerting to me is that while there is more conversation about mental health than ever, our solutions and ideas still seem to lack imagination or the essence of true, legitimate solutions. We likely can’t cure depression, nor is that probably the right goal for us to aim at. We should seek to reduce preventable human suffering, that is the bare minimum. And mental health is a legitimate crisis. Positively, one of the root causes of depression, loneliness, was declared an epidemic by the United States Surgeon General, a step in the right direction in how we address the nuances and varying etiologies of depression.

The reason a pharmacological-centric approach to treating mental health is insufficient and misguided is because the root causes of mental health issue are not solely genetic, but “a complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors”; this is the importance in understanding scientific research and how questions get framed. A genetic etiology for one’s depression can be an example of correlation and not causation. Everybody who has a genetic predisposition for depression does not necessarily develop depression; conversely, everybody who has depression does not necessarily have a genetic predisposition for depression. In other words, external conditions play a fundamental, sometimes causative, role in depression, even in those who are notgenetically predisposed to depression. This is important, and as the mental health discourse expands, it’s something we need to center in the conversation.

Back to the idea of curing depression: We most certainly will not do so through drugs alone. Antidepressants are about 30-35% effective in resolving depression in most cases (and one study even suggests they may have no more beneficial effect than a placebo), and the evidence supporting a single mechanism of depression appears to be nonexistent; to think we will suddenly understand the breadth and depth of depression so discretely (and this would also require a much, much better understanding of the brain) that we could develop therapeutics to treat depression entirely is unfounded in reality, nor is it a reasonable goal. A more realistic goal is for us to accept that honing in on every specific mechanism involved in depression is useful so long as we recognize that we can’t expect cognitive behavioral therapy to ameliorate depression in an underemployed parent living paycheck to paycheck. If we ignore the material conditions that drive people to feel depressed, we will never advance any meaningful care to treat depression in a majority of the population. The depression that arises directly due to material conditions, especially when we are intensely stressed and overwhelmed, usually hits hard and quickly, revoking our ability to process things in a way that allows us to adjust and develop coping mechanisms.

This is what I have learned over the last six months. Agency, the sense of control we have in our lives; self-confidence in how we can handle challenges that unexpectedly impede our progress; and hope that we will overcome the obstacles we encounter, these three concepts are what come together within us to overcome depression. These three concepts are hard to maintain when our material conditions do not cultivate them within us. If we are in an environment where we are constantly stressed and overwhelmed, where we don’t feel like we can do things correctly, or where we don’t feel like we ultimately have any control over the outcome of things, we lose our agency, self-confidence, and hope.

This is why depression can become so pernicious and chronic. It is hard to repair those aspects of life within us, and even harder when our agency, self-confidence, and hope have been decimated.

This is why a pharmacological-centric approach is insufficient. A medication alone can’t resolve things if other changes aren’t made to reinforce the traits of agency, self-confidence, and hope.

This is why I have struggled so much recently. In the past, writing was rooted in both pain and hope. I haven’t felt hopeful for a long time.

I also don’t think all of this is unidirectional. I think most of this has a bidirectional or cyclic relationship. As our agency improves, so does our hope, which in turn improves our agency, and so on and so forth. The same happens in the reverse direction; as we lose hope, our self-confidence and agency erode, this cycle reinforcing itself downward. As I’ve lost my agency and my sense of hope, my self-confidence has been crushed too.

Probably the most promising thing of all of this is that I feel like I have finally put my thumb on what has been driving my depression. Throughout all of this, I have been reminded, as I’ve been reminded so many times before, that people are intrinsically compelled to love, support, and be there for one another. I have seen this time and time again, this time no exception. I feel incredibly grateful that for as much as I’ve felt loneliness, I’ve rarely felt truly alone. The people in my life have been my anchor, and I feel deeply grateful that through all of this, I’ve been shown grace, love, patience, support, and understanding.

I haven’t published a personal piece of writing in a while. In that time, I’ve written a lot about pulmonary diseases and I’m proud of that writing; I’ve journaled tens of thousands of words and I’m proud of those entries, which have most certainly served as the framework for this piece that is finally coming together; but I’ve not written anything personal in much longer than I’d like. I’ve wanted to. But nothing felt right or genuine. Tonight, I’m grateful that I finally sat down to write and pull the pieces together. This has been very important to me.

In the past, publishing a piece like this would serve as the conclusion of an episode, the climbing out of the metaphorical hole. I’m hopeful that what I’m feeling tonight is exactly that.

tré

some thoughts on: successes and failures, complex emotions, bouts of loneliness, and more

I don’t have a clear-cut objective for this blog. I wish I did but I don’t. I know I’m supposed to have a good headline (who knows if this one is, I guess it’ll depend on how many clicks this blog gets if I end up publishing it), a good “lede” which is the first sentence or two, a good kicker, I know I’m supposed to use keywords that are properly optimized to push my blog higher on the search engine algorithms, and I should use a couple but not that many external links. I know these things because I am trying to take writing more seriously than ever and for this reason producing anything, even terrible writing that I’m not proud of, is better than not producing anything.

I realize I do my best writing when I am not hyper-fixated on the objective of the piece or the syntax and diction in which I’m writing it. My best writing, according to my entirely too self-critical impostor syndrome self, is when I am writing just to write without worrying about how the writing would be regarded. This isn’t too surprising; in sports, when we are far too fixated on each individual muscle, we become far more stilted when we need to relax. Writing, albeit less physical, is still a skill and every skill requires practice, but every skill also requires the courage to fail. This is where I struggle and also prove how our minds can often be working against us. I have written dozens, maybe even more than a hundred, of pieces that would be considered “failures” if we are to define success as the only metrics I could even evaluate: Likes, shares, and views. I can’t know how much any given blog resonated with a reader. I’m sure there are blogs that I might consider not my best writing where people have read it and really loved it! The issue lies in that I will never know how people truly feel about my writing, and the more I think about it, is it really my business what people think of my writing? Should I want to know what others think about my writing? 

At first glance, yes, writers should generally want to know how their readers feel about their writing since knowing how their readers feel about their writing would give the writer an idea of which parts of their writing are their strengths and which are the weaknesses. The other question, of whether or not we deserve to know how people feel about our writing, that answer is no. People aren’t obligated to tell me what they think of my writing and frankly, I don’t want to know how everybody feels about my writing! The problem with writers knowing how their readers feel is that it then exerts pressure on the writer to write to their audience. All writers do this to some degree, or at least they should; Depending on if my audience is scientists or general audience, my writing will change. It doesn’t change that dramatically; it’s more that I use more jargon if the audience is technical and I use my analogies, metaphors, and parables when trying to distill a complex topic down basics. We all do this all the time. We have different parts of ourselves that we feel comfortable sharing with some and not others. 

Since I’m taking my writing more seriously, I am also contemplating what it means to be a writer and what I aspire to do when I write. I don’t necessarily know. When I was still scared to say how much I loved writing, I convinced myself that wanting to write was fundamentally self-important and narcissistic. Why would I believe anybody would want to pay me to write my thoughts? I look back and, while it seemed like such a rational question back then, realize how much I was self-destructing and finding something that seemed rational to block any future that could end up a failure. What’s funny now is that I don’t what the hell a writing success or failure would look like. Would writing a book be a success? What if that book got shredded by critics and sold only 50 books? What if the book was a massive critical success and best-seller? Would that then make me an Accomplished writer? I contemplated, when I was confronting my own critical alter ego, why I felt like my words weren’t worthy to be written, why I wanted to write those words in the first place, and I contemplated why I was letting the fear that somebody someday might call be a narcissist for desiring to write. I wouldn’t call another aspiring writer a narcissist simply because they wanted to write.

The thing about success and failures is that we are creating false binaries based on shaky premises when we try to assign what would be considered a success or failure and unless we can’t do anything about those things to increase our likelihood of success, assigning them as successes or failures before we even attempted it means it is by definition already a failure, since we’ve abandoned it, but I still hesitate to even call that a failure! Because it means you debated something and made a decision, which is not a failure in some sense of the word since it means we chose a path and choosing a path means we have made a decision that altered our future. That’s not for nothing.

In a perfect world, everything would make sense and be perfect, but this is not a perfect world and even in the infinite universes that exist, a perfect world is not one of them since what might be perfect for you might not be perfect for me. What helps us is realizing that the only thing that exists right now is the current moment but that current moment is connected to your past and it’s connected to your future. No moment exists outside other moments, so all successes are connected to all failures. If I wrote a book, no matter how it performs, I would call that a success since it would mean a did a long-form writing I had never done before. If I wrote a second book that wasn’t better received, I would probably, in my mind, feel that book was a failure, or at least not a total success. But I wouldn’t necessarily say that to somebody else because I often allow myself to be harder on myself than I would ever be to somebody else. I don’t love being hard on myself and I don’t love it but I no longer say that I hate things about myself because I would never say I hate something about somebody else and I’m making an effort to talk similarly to myself. I don’t want to write to the audience in terms of their beliefs, I want to present my beliefs and see how others receive those beliefs and then discuss them further. 

An issue I have long thought about is the concept of altruism, or the when somebody is entirely and completely selflessly concerned with the wellbeing of others. Is it possible to truly care for others and not for yourself? I don’t know that we can physically do that; even when we do things that inconvenience us for the betterment of somebody else, our brain produces neurotransmitters that make us feel good. I consider feeling good after doing something nice to be something that helps us. Maybe it’s not the primary motivator but we all intuitively know that being kind to others makes us feel good. Does the recipient of the act care if we felt good or not? Would it invalidate our the goodness of our act if we did do it because we were having a rough day and knew we would feel better if we help others? I don’t think it does and I don’t think it’s inherently bad that we get a little benefit from helping others. I think us feeling better is typically a net positive as we are likelier to be better to others when we feel good so more people feeling good and being good to others is a pretty damn good thing from where I stand.

I know this blog is disjointed. Part of why I wanted to write it is because I’m feeling a weird blend of emotions right now and I’m sure there are others who are feeling something similar yet probably totally different. Some of these complex emotions are emotions that I’ve felt for most of my life but lately, I’ve allowed myself to connect with my emotions, to understand them, to sit with them without pushing them away. This new strategy in understanding my emotions probably stems from my recent ADHD diagnosis. My ADHD diagnosis has given me a framework to explain how my brain operates. This has been very liberating for me; I used to think I was broken whenever I struggled with focus or procrastination or organization. I believed it was my fault that I had these issues instead of recognizing these are issues that are related to how my brain is wired and now that I realize it isn’t my “fault” I look at these issues not as personal flaws but as small challenges. These small challenges exist because my brain is neurodivergent but also, my neurodivergence has helped me in so many ways in life. I have felt trapped in my mind for so long and this led me to loathe myself, to criticize myself at every turn. To have an understanding of how my brain is wired is to have a world-shattering event; my entire perspective of myself and my mind shifted almost instantly. I have allowed myself to sit with my emotions and my patterns of thinking more than ever and I have been kind to myself. My short-term memory used to cause me problems every single day; ever since I have had been thinking of my mind differently and being far more kind to myself, my working memory seems to be far more efficient. I feel like my brain has transformed. Aside from the last 24 hours, I have felt happier over the last six weeks than I can ever remember. 

Which the last 24 hours is what pushed me to write this blog. After moving to my second new city and job over the last year and a half, I have spent more time alone than I ever have. Up until it happened in May of last years, I was terrified at the thought of living alone. It turns out this has been empowering and exciting. I have been able to have a place that is entirely alone and live however I’d like for this time ever. This didn’t seem important to me until it happened. There are challenges and it’s not perfect but it has been transformative for me. Moving to new places is also freeing. Experiencing new places does something special for our brains. This doesn’t shock me; our brains are deeply complex but we do have a decent understanding of how they work. For example, we know that the neuronal networks in our brain are linked by the ones that are triggered by similar events. Put differently, certain smells might trigger memories for us. This is because the cells in our brains, called neurons, triggered during an experience where something important happened while that specific smell entered our nostrils, thus binding that memory to that scent. This connection doesn’t always exist; “extinction” describes when our brain stops making those associations. While we all might not be able to describe this concept in technical jargon, we all intrinsically understand it. Dogs even understand this; this is why they continue doing that cute thing that ends up with them getting a treat. This is why we are told to not respond to a barking puppy; if we respond, they’ll associate their bark with your response, thus perpetuating the behavior. 

But new places, they liberate us of those connections. Even driving home a different route can trigger different neurons than our usual drive home. Newness does something to our brains that feels good: It does something different than what we’re used to. This might not always be a good thing, but it’s certainly something that challenges us to see the world from a different perspective and when we are going through funks or we’re confused about a life, there are definitely worse things we can do than see the world from a different perspective.

Since moving to DC, I have loved my weekends where I have no plans. Those weekends feel so totally open where I can do whatever I want, also explore a new place for me, and explore a city steeped in as much lore as Washington, DC. Last night, I realized I had no plans this weekend and only a couple of people I could even reach out to do something and it hit me hard. The excitement of exploring somewhere new wasn’t quite as exciting or fresh as it has been and, while I love living here, I was missing the people I love who live elsewhere. I know they’re close, no matter where they are, but still, last night wasn’t fun. I worried that I had used up a couple of months’ goodwill and was falling into a depressive phase. This was the worst I had felt since my ADHD diagnosis. But even while I was feeling this way, I was able to recognize these emotions — loneliness, sadness — while also realizing that these emotions come with experiences that provide us with so many positive emotions as well. The last two years have opened life up to me. A couple of months before COVID, I began a medication that changed my future. I had expected to be dead by 30 or 40 my entire life then suddenly I was handed a medication that might have doubled my life expectancy and within months, for all intents and purposes for me, CF became a thing of the past. This shattered my perspective and gave me the stability to pursue the life I had dreamt of; traveling, exploring the world, meeting people, taking on challenges, changing careers, pursuing writing, and more. It became important to me to take those jumps and see what lies on the other side of comfort.

So much of my current happiness with life has come from pushing myself to discomfort and seeing what other parts of the world exist. That happiness has come with a lot of lonely nights and days filled with only interacting digitally with people or driving around cities I had only recently moved to. These complex emotions are webs, connecting the positive emotions with the negative and the neutral. There are moments where sadness is not wholly sadness, as it allows us a respite from the pretenses of happiness. Sometimes we deserve to be sad and confused about life.

We are allowed to recognize that life does not exist in a vacuum, that failures don’t exist by themselves, and neither do moments of sadness.

tl

How 'Hamilton's Pharmacopeia' Challenges Decades of Misinformation and Lies about Psychoactive Substances

Every episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia opens with Hamilton narrating the intent of the show based on his lifelong fascination with psychoactive compounds. I enjoy the show for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is a sort of fascination with Hamilton himself's fascination with psychoactive substances.

I, too, am very fascinated by these naturally-occurring (in most cases but synthetic in some) compounds. I'm also a chemist, technically, and while the synthetic and organic chemistry is wonderful to me as well, I'm a bit more intellectually curious about the way all of these apparently disparate subjects intertwine and dovetail with one another.

The gist of the show, streaming on Hulu, is Hamilton Morris, a curious chemist, travels to places around the world where psychoactive substances are an integrated part of the culture of these locales. The show explores the connections between spirituality, religion, government, politics, nature, psychedelics, science, ethics, and morality as Hamilton travels to these places to understand the history and origins of the compounds, what these compounds have come to mean to people who consume them, the mechanisms of synthesis and action and also the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the compounds. Hamilton Morris not only has the natural skill of Bill Nye or Mr. Wizard in explaining the reactions, he also has the integrity to treat these subjects in a gentle, genuinely curious and not exploitive manner. That is not at all separated from why this show works.

It's unfortunate to me that as we grow older we lose a sense of curiosity, and maybe even more unfortunately, this adverse relationship with curiosity seems to be exacerbated by the education system and its strategies in the US. This is probably best expounded upon in a different blog or essay, but what it comes down to is that we effectively force kids to transform their inherent curiosity into a way to measure, grade, and punish them. Some may argue that grades are necessary to establish checkpoints by which we can gauge a child's development, but I don't fully understand why we need to "gauge" a child's development anyhow. This does not invalidate the need for education; it does possibly invalidate the point of exams and maybe grades. Kids learn differently from one another so neurodivergent kids are already held to standards that were not designed for them; school is also not very accessible or equitable for disabled children, attendance policies are ableist, and we do need to have an honest discussion about how our curricula is a major problem too. Development is arbitrary, especially it comes to the knowledge we teach children in school. Of course there are alternatives such as private schools and Montessori, but as always is the case in the US, the vast majority of alternative options are egregiously expensive and only accessible to a certain swath of the population. This is a digression but the gist of this point is that humans are innately curious; curiosity and intelligence are probably why we excelled so well compared to our hominid ancestors. It seems likely that we lose that curious part of ourselves because we push kids away from inherent curiosity — an intrinsic motivator — to pursuing good grades — an extrinsic motivator — which results in us growing up and forever associating learning with something that was a major stressor, and maybe even traumatic, for us. I think Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia is not only great for the actual content of the show, but it also works as an exercise in curiosity both by the host and the viewer. It's also important to mention that as we grow older, we are also saddled with the Difficulties of Adulthood, such as depression, anxiety, financial struggles, the struggles that come with dating and getting married, and the struggles of child-rearing. Most of us might really not have the time or energy to be curious. Figuring how to restore our curiosity while also understanding that people don’t choose not to be curious is a difficult challenge.

I think recovering that curious part of ourselves is not only realistic, but necessary for our development as adult human beings. Curiosity breeds positive emotions and growth; through curiosity, we open our minds, we become less critical, less self-righteous, less reactionary and judgmental, less assured in our assumptions while also being more self-assured in our open-mindedness and all-around approach to life and the world. Curiosity also helps us make the world a better place; it is through curiosity we can combat our personal weaknesses and societal blindspots. Curiosity helps us to recognize that our weaknesses may not be weaknesses but opportunities for us to see growth in certain places better. After all, honing something we are already good at will result in diminishing returns.

Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is effectively about the curiosity and ingenuity of human beings and nature, all at the same time. One of the longest criticisms of any type of prohibition is that humans will always skirt the rules to satiate our curiosity. For some things, legal regulations may be effective at curbing a problem, but so often, legal regulations are human-invented, ignorantly-devised reactions to something that is not fully understood by those in power enacting the laws. The same is fundamentally true of psychoactive substances. In a future essay, I plan on delving deeper into the history of psychedelics and how the criminalization of them has probably harmed us for generations.

There is a long history of people indirectly controlling others through the use of stigmas; whether these are artificial stereotypes used to rationalize racial inequities or wrong, harmful stereotypes about drugs perpetuated by the Reagan administration, and ineffective and also wrong and harmful programs like DARE, these stigmas are effective mostly because we tend to judge things that we don't fully understand. In the case of capital-D Drugs, this effect is pronounced. Negative stigmas abound for everything from natural substances like cannabis to synthetic clinically-effective ketamine. But so often, these negative stigmas are promulgated because of legal regulations. Substances like ∆9-THC (the psychoactive compound in cannabis that produces the high in users) and psilocybin (the psychoactive compound in "magic" mushrooms, or "shrooms") are naturally-occurring compounds that have a long history of use in humans. By most accounts, these substances are safe, even safer than other legal mind-altering substances like alcohol and the combination of tobacco and nicotine, and yet they are regulated as feverishly as heroin, a Schedule I drug.

America has many issues with its criminal justice system. This is not a stretch to say; in 2017, 91% of Americans supported criminal justice reform according to a report from the ACLU. Because the criminal justice system is so ingratiated into American life, using laws to govern from behind the scenes is a powerful way to reframe the conversation and bend society in the direction the lawmakers would like it to go. This concept of passing laws once in power while not really being held accountable by constituents is further integrated by the close relationship between news organizations and American politics. Other factors are also part of this recipe; think tanks and lobbying organizations fund politicians while also funding research that supports their proposed regulations, media organizations publish news about the research, this becomes an "issue" that average Americans demand "something to be done about this!!!!!!" which then grants politicians the license to push laws that regulate this newfound crisis.

We have seen this done relentlessly to drugs. Consider the term "drug." You likely associate "drug" with illicit compounds like fentanyl or cannabis, while it may seem strange to call caffeine or a "drug." Caffeine itself is even a psychoactive drug, yet hundreds of millions of Americans drink caffeine every single day. To be clear, none of what I am saying is intended to dismiss the need to clinically and deeply understand how these substances affect our bodies; in fact, controlling these substances often has the reverse effect.

When governments control substances and actively promote harmful notions of what these drugs do, especially anti-drug campaigns, it prevents the people who would treat the subject with the care it needs from doing the real, needed research. Then, since institutions cannot study the chemistry and synthesis of the compounds nor study the effects on consenting human subjects for clinical and recreational uses through clinical trials, the only people mostly synthesizing the drugs are clandestine networks, where they often cut corners by cutting the substances with other materials to increase their margins. (Capitalism runs so deep that even illicit drug networks are bound by their ever-increasing desire to maximize margins.) Then, since we've so heavily stigmatized and criminalized the compounds, those who use them are unaware of the most appropriate uses and ways of using them, thus leading to addiction, abuse, misuse, overdose, and death. And since these issues all overlap, there are other considerations as well: Often, the people who gravitate toward illicit drug use are in the midst of serious financial trouble, they have chronic pain, they don't insurance or they can't afford the prescribed medications (as is the case with the opioid epidemic), their doctors don't believe them so they refuse to prescribe, or any other number of reasons that cause people to fall into difficult circumstances, frequently not by their own fault. And then, there are folks who are trying to get back on their feet, but then may not be able to find a job or shelter or help because they are withdrawing or unable to get a job out of fear of failing a drug test which may measure substances in their system more than months after last use.

I can understand why people want substances like heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine controlled! I don't believe the majority of everyday people want this stuff to be regulated with the express intent of cruelty or anything else; I think the majority of people are genuinely concerned about what they believe is a real issue. I don't feel the same about the lawmakers who enact these policies, however. I have a pretty intense distrust of people in power because so rarely can they articulate a legitimate reason for their beliefs or stances, either regurgitating some nothing statement like an NFL coach who doesn't want to assign any blame, or worse, regurgitating propaganda laundered by lobbyists or others who have vested interests in the passing of the specific policy. So, what ends up happening, as I explained above with how lobbyists, politicians, and news organizations are so interconnected, is that politicians promote some idea, then news organizations run with it since it’s “newsworthy,” then everyday people see that perspective and believe this is a serious issue. Not only do they believe it is now a serious issue, but they've been told there is already a solution in place, which is the solution promoted by the politician. Usually, in the case of drugs, the solution has been a carceral and criminalized solution. This solution routinely results in over-policing (in mostly Black and brown neighborhoods), racist drug penalties, stigmas around drugs that could be potentially useful in a clinical or medical sense, and also stigmas around those who use drugs.

You know how every year there are these rumors about cops finding candy laced with illicit drugs or razors around Halloween? The evidence suggests that this is either incredibly rare with a couple dozen cases since 1959 or possibly entirely non-existent since many of the cases are either retracted or eventually attributed to something that wasn't tainted Halloween candy. And yet you have heard of this issue, probably every single year! Our opinions are shaped by the society in which we live, where this version of society has a deep and pronounced relationship with news organizations, the criminal justice system, and horserace, always vying-for-power American politics.

The gist of what all of this scatter-brained diatribe is trying to convey is that there are many parts of the world that we can end up having strongly-held opinions where the knowledge we have about that given subject is entirely false or at the very least, light-years away from the truth. A realm within the American discourse where that misunderstanding is more prominent than accurate, nuanced understanding is related to drugs. It might seem logical that criminalizing drugs might deter somebody from using drugs, but whether or not it seems logical does not matter in the face of the evidence. Criminalization essentially proliferates the crime it is trying to prevent when the criminalization is not supported or replaced by a full-scale approach that actively and accurately investigates and understands the root cause of the now-illegal crime. It seems that in all the news reports about overdoses that there are no experts about drug use and etiquette interviewed to counteract the voices of those with a vested interest in the policing of the crimes. Nor are there ever really interviews with those who use the drugs to communicate their perspective on them. Everybody is biased; a narcotics officer discussing drug use has just as much bias as somebody who uses drugs. The notion of objectivity ubiquitously benefits the person or institution with more inherent power; in the case of drugs this is truer than ever. Perceived objectivity obscures the discussion by positioning one person or perspective as being arbiters of the truth and "just saying the facts!" while the other side is perceived to be villains rationalizing their lack of reason or integrity. There's a false American belief that something being legal corresponds with good or acceptable and something being illegal corresponds with bad, unethical, or immoral. At one point, slavery was legal and there were plenty of abolitionists revolting and screaming about how fucked up it was, legal or not.

We have a long way to go in so many ways before we can have a good, honest discussion about the many potential benefits of controlled substances and psychoactive drugs. Societies have been using these substances for hundreds of years, and while I'm a strong believer that humans, in our endless and insatiable pursuit of progress through curiosity, will continue developing better and more effective medications and drugs for plenty of uses, the criminalization and lack of genuine understanding around natural substances is a grave injustice that has disproportionately hurt indigenous cultures and people who could see genuine benefit from them.

Hamilton's Pharmacopeia doesn't solve this problem by itself, but Hamilton and the people graciously featured in the show provide a remarkably effective, honest, and beautiful portrayal of the world of psychoactive compounds. To conclude, a few pieces of ongoing research about the potential of some of the most of the stigmatized psychoactive drugs.

• "Psilocybin Therapy May Work as Well as Common Antidepressant" — Scientific America

• "How Psychedelic Drugs [LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, DMT, ketamine, ayahuasca brew] Are Helping Veterans and Others with PTSD, Depression" — Healthline

• "Study: Mixing CBD With Ketamine Might Be Great For Depression" — Forbes

See y’all next time.
tl

blog, 10/24/21

I don’t think my parents ever really enforced a bedtime when I was a kid but I do remember my favorite Sundays were ones when the Steelers would play during Sunday Night Football. I remember how excited I would be all weekend for the game because I got to stay up late — but also because there was something about Sunday evenings that made me really sad and having something about the evening to be excited about made my weekends better.

I don’t hate Sundays evening anymore, but I definitely don’t love them either. I try to avoid using the term “hate” to describe anything nowadays as I’ve found when I cultivate such strong disdain for something that it leads me to try to articulate the disdain with the term “hate” it brings a certain negative aura in my mind that I don’t like to keep there for long. There’s something about when we tell ourselves that we hate something that it clouds our minds, boxing ourselves into a corner where we no longer see that thing as it is. Often we don’t really hate anything in the true sense of the word; instead I think we often associate that something with something else that has wrought harm on us that has resulted in us associating whatever thing we believe we hate with the pain that we experienced. 

For every rule, an exception. There are things that one can say they hate with a righteous mindset; I hate racism, bigotry, prejudice of all forms. But the root here is that hating racism is not enough to not be racist, and hating racism is not enough to be antiracist. This is true of anything that we may claim is a righteous hatred. But most of the times, the parts of our worlds we claim to hate are merely strong disdains. Even then, we can unlearn these disdains, or at least unlearn our associations between our disdains and the pains they’ve resulted in.

Even considering this, Sunday evenings are still hard for me. They’ve always been; they were days I associated with the sunsetting of fun times, homework and the beginning of another week of school, days that weren’t off days but were rather half-off days which somehow made them worse than weekdays. Maybe my experience was unique or abnormal, but it seems to me that this feeling of sadness on Sundays is a common American feeling. Maybe it has something to do with the acute awareness of something enjoyable dwindling away. 

I have a feeling part of this has to do with American work and school culture; we call the working and schooldays “weekdays” and we call the days where people are traditionally “off” “weekends” as if our weeks are not conceptualizations of time based upon a cosmic calendar but rather classified by when we are working or not. We use terms delineating our lives into two bracketed spheres that are not framed from the lens of our whole lives but more specifically our work lives. When somebody asks us whether or not we are working on any given day, they ask us if we are “off” as opposed to the opposite where we could instead assume people are not defined by the time where they are working to earn an income that allows them to live their lives how they want to. Why is “off” when we are not working? Why do we not frame things in a way that we are humans first, employees second?

I’m not naïve enough to believe that we would all suddenly be happy without traditional work, but I do relatively strongly believe America’s unhealthy relationship with work has a lot to do with the colloquial “Sunday scaries” and even worse, I suspect this toxic relationships with Sundays is cultivated from a young age. The evidence also suggests making more money doesn’t directly correlate with happiness; it has a lot more to do with people having the material conditions to be live comfortably, something that most Americans do not have. I adore humanity and people; I so strongly believe that most humans want to be happy and they want to socialize with their fellow humans. I don’t believe racism or bigotry of any kind is genetic; it is taught, learned, perpetuated, knowingly and unknowingly. Yet, it is most disappointing that we are so inventive, so intelligent, so curious and our society hardly reflects it. Early hominids weren’t strong, fast, or big; they were creative and intelligent. The average person is imaginative and creative; the systems we have created are not.

The world that exists in its current iteration is not the work on any single person but it does not reflect a world that was created by the best, brightest, most compassionate, or creative. The world — and by world I mean society — that exists does not have to exist in this way. A world could — can and hopefully will someday — exist where nobody wants for hunger, clean water, shelter or in fear of losing their livelihood due to climate calamities or political upheaval. This world could exist everywhere, not bound by human-created and arbitrary geographical borders. It could exist, and while there would require an immense restructuring and reimagining of the world as it stands, it could exist if we eliminated that is which uniquely and tragically human: Perceived differences across our species. 

I’ve not traveled as much as I’d like, but one does not have to travel to every corner of the world to educate one’s self. Traveling and seeing more of the world is a pretty damn effective way of learning just how rich and textured the world is, but we are living in the most interconnected, accessible era of human history. With a few free online tools a la Wikipedia and YouTube, we are able to learn about essentially every subject we could ever want to learn about. Through books purchased or freely available through libraries, we can read full-scale histories on any subject imaginable; we can see the perspectives of just about anybody (though, there are limitations here of course); we can immerse ourselves into places that would require expensive travel. The reality is, not every currently has the means to take time off and afford sabbaticals to travel to the ends of the earth. But anybody has the ability to vicariously explore every realm they want. Books, and a modern invention deserving of its own praises, Wikipedia, have allowed us to be practitioners of whatever we want. We underestimate our own capabilities when we convince ourselves we have to pursue four-year degrees in subjects just to summarily understand them. 

Consider libraries for a brief moment. Libraries are not businesses intended to generate revenue, let alone endless economic growth, a precondition and almost certain point of failure for businesses in the 21st century capitalist economy. Libraries exist as public services; they are places where people can exist with no expectation of purchasing a coffee, beer, or food; locals can gather there and host events; using computers and internet and printing, a requirement to engage with society in 2021 (and thus a necessary good for all of us), are freely availability; books, audiobooks, magazines are free to rent. Libraries at their cores are an example of our imagination flourishing. Sadly these ideas are few, but they don’t have to be.

This is not to say humans are imaginative. Individually, and in some spaces collectively, we are! The pieces are there: We have people everywhere that are writing about how the world could be reimagined to avoid climate or economic catastrophe. These ideas would probably receive a lot more attention if they didn’t undermine the current socio-geo-eco-political system that exists. It’s the systems, mostly due to intentional political maintenance of the status quo, that are not as imaginative or successful as they could be. Maybe it’s not all human negligence; to a degree, our system is intended to appear broken.

I’ve spent most Sundays of my life reflecting on what I think it would be that would bring me joy. I find myself lost in thoughts of exploring the world and all the beautiful landscapes and places that exist on every inch of this wonderful, breathtaking planet.

Every part of our planet is a remarkable marvel. The conditions that came together to give rise to the early days of this planet — in fact to every moment that has ever existed across the whole of the entire universe — are inextricably connected to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a moment in time where the universe arose. The atoms that have existed have always existed since the beginning of time and they will exist for trillions and trillions of years into the future until the bonds finally dissolve and they dissipate into nothingness. Our planet has been shaped by meteoroids, animals, gravitational relationships to the sun and the moon. There was a time where there was no water, no life on this planet, no atmosphere. Through a series of unlikely events, an atmosphere developed, then water, then single-celled organisms, then life exploded and was decimated and continued to explode. 

A better world is possible, I really truly believe that. I hope others do too.

tl

nobody knows anything for certain; identities, labels, science, astrology, and realizations

This past week, I was introducing myself to a colleague. As this was related to work, I was mostly discussing my scientific background when I spurted a sentence that seemed to describe a reality of my life both foreign and imbued into every fiber of my being: I’ve been a scientist for more than seven years. It seems strange to say that; I don’t even feel like I was an adult seven years ago, let alone somebody that joined the ranks of “people who do science,” which happens to include a lot of millions of people. “Scientist” was a term I thought I had rightfully earned by getting a chemistry degree and then getting a job as a researcher, but as I reflected on my experience, it occurred to me my first real scientific experience came as an undergraduate researcher at UK. To some degree, my fascination with science goes back nearly two decades to when I first started to inundate my doctors with questions about lung function tests, medications, bacteria, and whatever else I wanted to know about.

This “scientist” label has been easy for me to say for several years now and a million times easier to say than “writer.” I dunno why; I suppose with writing it was a hobby or passion that became something I was stronger at than I realized and it was even after somebody had paid me to write words before I ever really identified as a writer, and even after that, it took a couple of years before I said it easily, and I still have a hard time saying it without hedging it and invalidating myself. What is it about complimentary labels that we have so easy of a time assigning them to others but a much harder time assigning them to ourselves? Why are we so compelled to assign ourselves negative labels instead of positive ones? Why do we need labels for ourselves anyway? What is it about the concept of identity that leads us to need to define anything at all?

I watched Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself earlier this year and I wish I could say it changed my life. I’ve said that about a lot of art in the past. I’ve grandstanded; claimed that because of this [insert piece of art or major life event], I will never take a never moment for granted. And every time that’s been false. It was never a lie or an intentional Statement but rather me trying to imbue this new perspective of the world onto my future, a form of Manifestation, I suppose. The truth is: The film (and many other pieces of art or moments in life) have certainly influenced me in these moments and inspired me to pursue Life but the unfortunate reality is that these moments of euphoria, joy, inspiration are moments where we open ourselves up to possibly the most beautiful human emotion: Awe. The word “awesome” has been thrown around so much that it has really lost its authentic meaning. When we open our minds and hearts up to curiosity, we allow ourselves to view the world in the remarkable, wonderful reality of it all. When we allow ourselves to experience life, to be gentle on ourselves, to be filled with compassion and awe and devoid of anger and hate, the world opens itself up to us.

Derek does something beautiful in his film? performance? I don’t really know what to call it, but no matter what it is, you should watch it. What he does beautifully is he takes this concept of identity as a Concept — something that whether you think about the concept of “identity” itself a lot or not, is something that has deeply affected yours and everybody else you know’s life — and he eventually reveals to you how you’ve limited yourself by obsessing with identity which, to be clear, again, we are all always wrestling with identity, whether we explicitly acknowledge it or not. And if received as the artist intends, In and Of Itself strives to present to you a blue-or-red-pill moment. If you absorb what DelGaudio intends, what can come of watching In and Of Itself is an inflection point in your life where you stop limiting yourself for whatever reason.

It seems strange and cheesy to say that a film or any single piece of art could reveal something to yourself that you’ve not since acknowledged, especially when every person who views this film will view the same film and potentially leave with a different lesson. But DelGaudio’s performance doesn’t end with a overt statement “You struggle with this, and this is how you’re limiting yourself, and this is how it will be overcome.” Instead it leaves you wondering, figuring out where in his performance you related to him or somebody else, and how, really, when you get down to it, none of this shit matters to the extent that we treat it to, and for the shit that does matter, you’re allowed to feel whatever the fuck you need to feel. Liberation doesn’t always mean breaking chains; sometimes liberation is being told that you’re allowed to feel what you’re feeling. 

I used to make fun of and scoff at astrology. It wasn’t in a truly malicious way; it was usually just in a way that seemed to think it was funny that people used the alignment of the planets to describe or justify their talents or insecurities. I didn’t resent people who used astrology as part of their lives. More so, I looked at it from a scientific way. I looked at the empirical evidence and found no supporting evidence that planetary alignment could influence a person. I’ve lightened my perspective on astrology in recent months. I don’t necessarily believe in it, but I also don’t see the harm in those who do. I also don’t feel the concept is nearly as ridiculous as I used to think. There are forces at play that cross incomprehensible distances; even the weak gravitational force that keeps our planet rotating the sun and the moon rotating earth cross distances that humans can hardly perceive. Why actually is it so strange to think there are forces or energy that we are yet to understand that may have some infinitesimal influence on human behavior and nature? It’s not really strange and the evidence is still essentially nonexistent, but my prior perspective of considering empirical evidence is more what changed. I see astrology as a framework, not that unlike Myers-Brigg scales, religions, philosophies, or whatever else we use to classify ourselves in a way that we like. I see astrology as a way for people to understand what matters to them, and I also see it as a path for people to feel more comfortable in embracing their strengths, acknowledging their weaknesses or struggles, and in becoming a more self-actualized version of themselves. If somebody has long struggled with their own confidence in their talents and they read a horoscope that describes that feeling, this person can often offload the stress of Being Confident as finally feeling validated by something grandiose, like the poetry of planetary alignment and the cosmos.

I’m not sure the way I described that makes as much sense as I’d like to do so let me briefly expound on this. We often struggle with parts of our identity — again, whether or not we directly acknowledge it or confront these struggles, this applies to all of us. Sometimes those parts of our identity can be parts we’re ashamed of, or they can actually be the parts of ourselves that we really like but we feel guilty for liking. If we know those parts of our identity inside our mind but we hesitate to speak them into existence (though they already exist somewhere) and then we read a horoscope that puts those feelings into words, and this horoscope is also supposedly catered to us, there is some liberation — and even beauty — in having had the alignment of the planets inspire this articulation of our Lived Experience. If a horoscope frees somebody of something they’ve struggled with, who gives a shit. Let people live. My limitation with any framework is when the framework is then held up as a structural barrier for the same person who the framework helped liberate them of a previous structural barrier. If a horoscope explains a feeling you had felt internally but hadn’t uttered, great, I hope you embrace it! But if a horoscope ever tells you because of this reading you are unable to do something or that the planets aligned and ordained you as being Bad something, I then tell you to ask what the hell the planets know about you anyhow.

In fewer words: Philosophical/moral/religious frameworks are good when we can use them to maximize strengths and improve weaknesses, but they are bad when they tell us something cannot be done. Do not allow for a framework to stymie your imagination. 

There’s a thread between my identity and career as a scientist, my writing, these stories I’m telling you, In and Of Itself, frameworks for how to live life, and the way my perspective on astrology has changed. With each passing year and major milestone or step in my life, a lesson is being more deeply embedded in my brain. This lesson is about how little we understand the world and how we are still living in an era where we don’t understand much. This lesson can be used to invalidate science, a perspective I very much disagree with. Science is an empirical art, and it is an inherently skeptical endeavor. Scientists are revolutionary and they must be radical in their views of the world, in their understanding of how the world is currently understood. Scientists must be skilled in understanding that there are parts of the world that we do understand quite well, and they must be able to articulate this confidently, but not so confidently that they lose the skeptical, curious part of themself that drove them to become a scientist in the first place.

I’m still young and I’m still young in my scientific career. I’m not as young as I once was — I just found my first few gray hairs only a month ago — but a realization has recently dawned upon me. I’m 27. For more than ten years once I learned of the life expectancy of CF when I was 8 or 9 years old, I doubted I’d live to this age. I doubted I’d ever see the world or explore life or challenge convention or do anything of substance. I assumed I’d die young. I never thought I’d reach the age of the people I looked up from a young age. This realization is dawning upon me at a time in my life where I am looking around at people that are the age of the people I once looked up to, the very same people that I admired because “they had it figured out.” And this realization is compounded by another romantic lesson that has invigorated my life: Nobody has ever had it figured out, and even better, there’s no such thing as figuring it out. These realizations come from my last couple of years of changing careers twice, moving to a second new city, and all the life that comes with turbulence; these realizations come on the heels of a pandemic, from meeting people, from losing people, from losing myself, from reaching rock bottom and experiencing the worst depression of my life, from talking to scientists pioneering research on the fringes of science, from reading about the world, from unlearning deeply ingrained biases, to understanding myself better than ever and finally developing a legitimate sense of compassion towards myself.

But this blog post is not about me. It’s not about anything, really. It’s just me unfurling my chaotic brain onto paper. It’s me waxing poetic in a way that hopefully, ideally resonates with at least one person, and even if it doesn’t, there’s value in me putting this part of me into the universe because it’s a very authentic part of myself. And my life has changed dramatically in realizing there are parts of myself I’m allowed to like. This part of myself, where I feel the need to wax poetic and draw threads between disparate concepts or parts of life, I like this part of myself. 

tl

Stoicism, ‘Seaspiracy,’ a tough reminder, and pushing through

I’ve been trying to make a more concerted effort to care less. The act of caring about stuff has been a blind spot of mine for a while. I care and I care a lot. I used to wonder if I was a bad person since I cared about so much stuff. My anxious mind convinced me that I cared about stuff — or maybe I was pretending to care but how would I know the difference? — just to make me feel better about myself. I looked into this; am I virtue signaling when I care about how to resolve the homelessness crisis? I sincerely wondered if I was just pretending to care to make myself feel better about myself and the world. I thought, There are plenty of people that are so self-consumed that they convince themselves they aren’t narcissists when they are, maybe that’s what I’m doing when I care about this stuff.

I don’t want to not care about this stuff. But I also realize I’m not much use whenever I’m caring so hard that I’m actively stunned with pessimism therefore not making anything better but acting rather as a block in the road. Caring, or the act of, is a passive act; we are observing and absorbing the world around us, but we aren’t necessarily impacting the world by caring. It’s not to say that caring isn’t a good thing. Caring is the impetus needed to do something. So I don’t want to stop caring as much; rather, I’d prefer to simply care as much without being as bothered. 

I’ve been reading up on stoicism. It’s the ancient philosophy or way of living often conflated with the demeanor of Keanu Reeves. I’ve come to learn that stoics — real stoics like Aurelius or Epictetus or Piggliuci — aren’t incapable of joy, love, excitement, or exasperation. They are capable of the full spectrum of emotions, but they aren’t much more focused on reacting to our reactions. We can’t necessarily control how we react to something, but we can train ourselves to react to the reactions. If we, in the heat of frustration, react and say a hurtful comment to somebody that we care about, and would not have otherwise said without the frustration, we can be sure to apologize, make amends, and using that as a lesson to ensure we’re less likely to react in frustration. What’s empowering about stoicism is that life is a stream, we are always changing and improving and worsening, and the goal of every day should be to focus on what’s within our control. A criticism of stoicism is that it encourages people to be so accepting of our circumstances that we don’t strive to overcome horribly unlikely odds or to fight against something as nebulous and entrenched as racism or sexism. I understand these criticisms because I had them early on in my readings. 

Yet stoicism doesn’t only not actually teach that, the philosophy provides you with the mindset and approach to make progress towards those nebulous, dynamic goals. Stoicism teaches you to focus on what’s in front of you and working from there upwards; if you’re actively trying to combat racism, you first seek out to teach those close to you how to be antiracism, then you work on getting antiracist officials elected, and then you seek to create a movement that carries that actual change elsewhere. That isn’t to say it isn’t easy, but it is to say that is strengthens our ability to live in the now.

As I am somebody that sees Herculean obstacles and somehow thinks both Ah, people have overcome worse odds and Yeah, see, uh, this is incredibly unlikely to overcome so I’m gonna go on a walk with Duncan, it’s pretty important I focus on learning how to be a bit gentler, less reactive, frightened, and bothered, and also just generally calmer and more relaxed. I do feel that stoicism has generally improved my mind in combating depression and anxiety but intrusive and discursive thoughts tend to make me regress in my strategies in dealing with what feels like overwhelming stress. Stoicism has helped me focus on working on this struggle. It’s also pretty cool that stoicism teaches something similar to cognitive behavioral therapy; stoicism isn’t just about positive thinking but also learning how to accept what we cannot change based on the past (such as our upbringing). It’s also, like cognitive behavioral therapy, about how to navigate stress, anxiety, depression in an unforgiving, unfair world. There’s something beautiful about learning to overcome both my own biggest struggles and also how to go about overcoming the world’s biggest challenges through the same philosophy.

I’ve recently been thinking about how there are so many facets in the world committed to reacting to things as opposed to working to prevent other things. Like we react to there being homeless people by criminalizing sleeping in public parks instead of making policy changes that seek to eliminate homelessness entirely. We react to issues that are the results of other issues instead of seeking to correct the root. 

We do this with our loved ones too. We don’t focus on doing the right things out of pettiness or ego bullshit, instead waiting until the relationship has been irreparably harmed or when somebody dies. It isn’t until then that we give ourselves or the other person a little compassion and really seek to understand their plight. The consequence to swallowing our pride — having a bit of a bruised ego and not much else — can appear to be more intimidating than dealing with a deep regret. 

Facebook — the company and social media site that I don’t particularly like — intentionally uses algorithms and strategies based in what’s called operant conditioning. You know operant conditioning if you’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs. You know of it because you’ve been operantly conditioned; have you ever been in a store and heard somebody’s alarm go off? The same one you despise in the mornings? You know that feeling of dread you felt in your stomach? That’s operant conditioning; through repetitive stimuli exposure, our brain beings to unconsciously react to a stimulus and associates feelings experienced near the repeated stimulus. If you’re used to drinking your coffee on the porch every morning with the birds singing, you’ll start to associate one with the other.

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Well today, a Facebook memory popped up. The picture was me, my sister Alyssa, my Nanna, and my Nonno. Losing those three people have been three of the most transformative, emotional experiences of my life. To see a photo of myself with those three people felt profound. This photo probably didn’t seem meaningful at all for me the first time I had seen it, but having not seen it since the deaths of my Nanna and sister, it slammed into me. Part of my exercise in not caring as much is that I try to prevent myself from romanticizing every little thing. I used to think romanticizing was good but maybe it’s causing undue stress. I have to try something because trying to wax poetic about every single little thing in my life has driven me to feel increasingly overwhelmed by every little thing since now I can’t just experience something since I’m worried about how I’m going to try to write some beautiful, life-changing prose about every little thing. Experiences have become fodder for my writing. I love writing and I love experiences, but I hate that.

I watched Seaspiracy last night. I think I was disappointed with it. I think there was a decent message and call to action in there, but upon first watch, I feel this documentary fell culprit to a single person’s story and how every detail was particularly relevant to a single person. I see the importance of telling a story that is relevant to the viewer’s life; if we can convince those watching this film to realize that the ruthless, perpetuated devastation to our oceans will one day intimately impact them, then maybe we can drive change from the bottom-up while simultaneously metaphorically cutting the head of the snake off by exposing upper-level corruption. But it felt too… cinematic. The downside of trying to make the viewer feel they are capable of making impactful change on something as seemingly insurmountable like cleaning the oceans is that we also allow the viewer to simply say Eh, seems like too much work. There needs to be a balance to this type of storytelling.

I’m going to ruminate a bit more on the documentary and then I’ll write something more in-depth up. I need to think about it, but for now, I do encourage to you give it a watch. 

A better world is possible, I do believe that. Some days are tougher than others. Today was a tough day where I hated my brain quite a bit. I had to remind myself that I’m in the present and that some days are tougher than others and on those days, I just have to push through my finding whatever I can cling onto to remind me of the beauty of the world.

Today, it was Duncan wagging with excitement I got home.

tl

weekends are cool

Man, I fucking love weekends. I love drinking my coffee more slowly or not having to rush into work where I feel like my brain doesn’t stop focusing on something for the entire day until my head hits the pillow that night. I love knowing that I have a day to do what I want to do, even sometimes those days are filled with doing shit that carried over from the week. 

I still end up being worried about what I’m going to do that fits under the umbrella of nebulous productivity. It’s one of my biggest struggles. I find myself always, always needing to spend my time being productive; maybe that’s working on any number of things I can be do for my job, or writing a blog or newsletter, or going to the gym, or reading, or listening to podcasts. Whatever it is, I’ve developed this urgency to always be active and “becoming better.” I’m a learner at heart. I view everything in life, whether it’s something that fits under my previous educational experience or not, as learnable and therefore something we should allow ourselves the confidence to learn if we’d like to. It frustrates me that our obsessive work culture leads us to view our lives as resumés that we’re constantly preoccupied with improving. Why can’t a book I read on the history of surfing written by somebody who actually lived during the era being written about be something that is a part of my resumé? I’m being partially facetious; I’m not suggesting I should add “Read Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finegan” to my resumé. But I do believe that if it’s something that I would tell somebody about over a beer that it’s something relevant to my life.

I read Barbarian Days back in 2017 during what seemed like a turbulent time in my life but in retrospect was a relatively menial time. I was going through a breakup, worried about my sister, and also unsure of what the next step of my life looked like. It was a turbulent time, sort of, but far less turbulent than the following four years. It feels incorrect to say that I feel like I have a surfer’s heart; I grew up in the midwest after all. But I remember growing up and being captivated by the live streams of southern California at Hollister and desperately wanting to learn how to surf. It’s a funny, random memory but there’s something deeper, more interesting there. Whenever reading Barbarian Days, no matter where I was, it felt like the weekend.

We spend so much time being preoccupied with our established identities in the eyes of others compared to how we perceive ourselves that we limit the way live our lives. There’s too much focus on how others will judge us or if we’re good enough or if we’ll fail when we try to do the things that make us excited or bring us joy. We focus on curating our resumés instead of curating what we actually want to be and do with our lives. 

I think that’s why I feel a certain nostalgia and peace when I think about the weekends. Weekends, the world just feels more open, it feels like it’s when I get the opportunity to pursue the future and the life that I want to live. I can go on a hike with Duncan or spend some time learning a new hobby or just relaxing and reading outside with a cup of coffee without time breathing down my neck. The weekend is the peace that I associate with a life that is lived exactly how I want to live. It’s this sense of possibility, of freedom, of pursuing life without feeling compelled to justify it by doing a risk-benefit analysis of how this will help me in future endeavors.

Even writing this blog in a stream-of-conscious way feels … bad. Not bad in the sense that I’m a bad person, but more that I’m a bad writer writing this for an audience who perhaps doesn’t give much of a shit. I’m not sure if any of this content resonates that much with people and maybe my assessments are misplaced and not that relatable. 

Ah, it’s the weekend, who cares.

tl

you are allowed to love yourself

Trigger/Content Warning: Brief discussion of depression and intrusive thoughts.

For my weekly column for Cystic Fibrosis News Today going live tomorrow, I wrote about body dysmorphia and how much I’ve struggled — as a man and person with CF — with body image issues and dysmorphia for a very long time. I needed to write a bit more about this without the handling of an editor so I could write a bit more stream-of-consciously on the subject. 

In my column I discuss how I committed to loving myself through a process of recognizing that my body is the only body I have and because I love life so much, I have to learn how to love the vessel that I traverse life in — aka my body. This process of learning to love my body has been less painful for me than it has probably been for others. The thing about struggles is that there is often no good in comparing them; we should spend more time recognizing that the broader concept of struggle, no matter the type directly impacting us, is an experience that unites more than it divides. Whether your struggle is cancer, cystic fibrosis, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphia, financial struggles, relationship troubles, familial relationships, or whatever else: Our struggle is more similar than it is different. The reality is that our struggle has hurt us and made us feel less than and it has impacted how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. While there may be gradients to struggles, we do ourselves no favors by undermining what others are going through. Instead, we should strive to be empathetic and to understand what others are going through so we can potentially share our wisdom or even just stay quiet and be a shoulder to cry on or a sounding board. We are better off when we are there for one another.

My personal journey to recognizing these valuable lessons has been marked by many detours. I’ve gone from hating myself to wanting to hate others for not having experienced what I’ve experienced to hating myself from a different angle where I hated my callousness for wanting to hate others to apathy and cynicism. All the while, I had this itch, this persistent reminder in the back of my head to pursue optimism and compassion. In the worst moments of my life and my resentment, I had this spark of desire to be optimistic. The spark, almost always nearly but not fully extinguished by cynicism and the self-destructive belief that I needed to feel shame to become wiser, smoldered through it all, hanging out in the back of mind, patiently waiting to become a roaring guiding light. 

I had a hard time grasping how it could be possible for me to juggle so many apparently contradictory ideas in my mind; depressed to the point of suicidal ideation, optimistic for a future, and both apathetic, excited, and terrified of life after death. I read articles about shame and death, books about the universe, fortune cookies; I watched videos, movies, shows that explored death and dying. Nearly every moment I spent driving or walking or working out or with friends I would either be wondering what the fuck this was all for, and for those few and far between blissful moments where I escaped my own mind, I would immediately fall back into wondering about what the point of it all of it is as soon as those moments came to an end. 

What I eventually began to recognize was that through every single moment — the worst, the best, the in-between — there was only one thing in common across them all: myself. I had only myself there for me in whenever I felt the most pure joys and the most malignant miseries. Rarely was I ever the cause of those joys or miseries, but the point was that I experienced them. It seems strange to make a differentiation of our bodies and our minds, but I think they are often at odds, or probably worse, we perceive them to be at odds. Our mind denigrates our body and our body has no choice but to accept it and as we denigrate our bodies through words, we begin to denigrate our bodies by over-conditioning through exercise, over-eating, eating unhealthily, coping unhealthily, or whatever else. This vicious cycle leaves us going between our bodies and our minds while occupying them both, never to sit back and recognize that this resentment will commit us to a fatal path — either in mortality or prolonged misery. It is unsustainable, and it’s really un-fucking-fair to ourselves. We must overcome. 

I have never once accomplished anything in my life entirely on my own. Neither have you. This is not an indictment of your or my skills or discipline or capabilities; rather, it is a testament to how we need one another and how there’s no sustainable path we can take entirely on our own. This is not a bad thing! It’s better to recognize how we need others and how others need us instead of pretend that we have achieved on our own without anybody else’s assistance. For me, I have had people there for me every single day I have been alive. That support has never gone unnoticed or unappreciated. I have had people support my endeavors and, possibly most importantly, I have had people that I love more than life itself be there to say they believed in me. I have had opportunities and I have had teachers tell me they believe in me and give me the boost and support I’ve needed to believe in myself. This support from others has given me meaning in life and it has helped me from falling victim to my own worst impulses and fears. What do I stand to gain by pretending an alternative reality? What do any of us stand to gain by looking out only for ourselves?

Most people would not argue that we should not treat others well. And then, there’s that ole dictum: Treat others how you want to be treated. It was in thinking about this that my mind finally processed a broken line of code in my thinking: I tried to navigate life treating others as well as possible while grounding myself into a metaphorical dust through self-loathing language. It occurred to me that this disdain of myself was leading me to look in the mirror and feel physical revulsion at the reflection in the mirror. I stopped perceiving myself as an occupier of the world and instead the antagonist of the universe; undeserving of any good and more than deserving of all bad. I remember one night rationalizing to myself the darkest vision imaginable: This world would be better without me, and the morally correct thing to do is to bring about that world. I’ve written about this “logical” sort of suicidal ideation and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever admitted about myself or my depression. It sounds both childish and nihilistic but the hard truth is that it’s real, it’s valid, and I’m willing to bet somebody else out there, maybe even a reader of this very blog post, has experienced this darkness. I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody to reach that stage.

But I — my body and my mind — came out of it. I didn’t leave that phase of my life unscathed and I certainly haven’t “beaten” body dysmorphia, self- and body-image issues, depression, or anxiety but I have absolutely come out of that phase which a gentler, more graceful, and compassionate view of myself. Maybe the most important lesson I’m learning is a sense of radical compassion and kindness towards myself. There is almost never going to be a time where hating ourselves is the ticket to a better life. We are better off learning how to love ourselves despite our biggest issues and learning how to leverage that love for to become better and continue growing. It takes radical compassion and kindness for us to believe in a better world. We will never become the people we want to be if we are revolted by the sight or thought of ourselves. We will only become our best selves by looking at ourselves, being honest about how we can be better, and then striving to achieve this future better version. 

It took way too many years for me to realize that I could love myself. I had plenty of others tell me that I could but I needed to believe it myself. I hope you’re able to believe it sooner than I did. And if you ever need some help, I assure you you have people including this very writer there for you to remind you that it’s okay to be graceful with the one thing that’s been there with you through it all.

tré

it's been a few weeks since i really thought about my sister

Trigger/Content Warning: In this post, I discuss death, suicidal ideation, survivor’s guilt, and more heavy, complicated emotions. If you or a loved one is struggling with depression or suicidal ideation, please know how loved you are and reach out to a professional skilled in dealing with these difficult circumstances. It saved my life. If you need to speak with somebody immediately, call The National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.

The world is better with you in it.

My sister’s life is a thing of the past. She was born, she learned things about living for the first time, she grew up, she made people laugh and mad and sad and feel good, she got sick, she got sick some more, she impacted lives, and then, tragically, she died way too fucking young.

And less than three years later, I find myself generally happier than I ever was before she died. I don’t know how that’s possible. I am grateful and I am sad.

I avoid talking about her anymore. There are people in my life that have only known me since after her death. I find it best to avoid talking about her so as to not make them uncomfortable and because the responsibility is too large; How can I possibly distill her life into bits and pieces if they never knew her. I can talk about her casually without getting too sad, but I can tell the expressions of others show a feeling of discomfort whenever I speak about her.

That discomfort likely comes from a good place; it’s a tragic topic so I think people just don’t know how to respond to me discussing her so they don’t know what to say or do. I would never judge anybody for not knowing how to navigate these conversations.

American society glorifies and denormalizes death. Death is but an end of our lives and avoiding discussion of it only makes the topic that much more taboo. I have found that talking about my sister, as well as being honest about my emotions — which are entirely valid and it has taken me a long, long time to provide myself that grace and compassion — is the main way I have found to allow myself to experience joy.

For the first year after her death, I took the self-loathing route. I wished to be dead instead of her. I figured my life had been so much easier than hers so I deserved to be the one who no longer existed. I figured that if I had died, maybe my good health would transfer to her. The most fun part about depression is that the thoughts seem rational but never are, and yet the feelings are valid. We do not do ourselves any favors when we tell ourselves that our feelings are not valid. All feelings are valid; all reactions to those feelings are not. We have to be sure not to hurt others in our wake since we ourselves are hurt. I coated my wounds with lies I told myself; through partying, drinking, and socializing; through working myself to the bone; through losing sight of what I loved about life including others and the world around me; and I definitely acted against my dearly held principles which meant inevitably hurting others. Through it all, every single day, I hated myself from the moment I woke up until the moment I could fall asleep after hating myself the entire time I tried to fall asleep. There were few moments of peace and the ones that spent the most time with me may not have even known how much I was struggling internally. It was hell.

This was the only way I knew how to grieve. Whenever I felt joy, I existed on a precipice. Right as I began to experience joy and some love for myself, I tumbled off the end of the cliff right back into the desperate self-loathing. If I could’ve spoken to God in those moments, immediately after asking for my sister back, I would’ve asked to be re-educated so I could stop hating myself for another moment so that I could find some joy once again. I know for a fact that I couldn’t have handled it much longer. It took some very dark nights and moments for me to recognize that CF was no longer the biggest threat to my existence; it was my own mind.

I have not beaten depression but I have some comfort and solace. I have learned not to exist in definites — there is nuance to everything — but one thing I draw a strong, strong line on it how I talk to myself, and how others talk to themselves in front of me. I refuse to berate myself, and whenever I slip up, I immediately apologize to myself and recognize that I have the ability to love myself even when I fuck up. Others can perceive me how they so choose — there’s a limit to how much of that is my business, anyway. I have significantly reduced the language of self-loathing; I don’t call myself a piece of shit for eating a bit too much anymore. It doesn’t mean I don’t have moments where I’m still unfairly critical, but it means I try to counteract those thoughts with positive, self-affirming thoughts. And when others talk negatively about themselves in my presence, I try my best to remind them that that language is not necessary and oftentimes horribly unfair to themselves. We deserve to be as compassionate to ourselves as we often are to others.

Since my sister’s death, I have found that guilt and shame and even depression and anxiety to an extent are often rooted in how we perceive how we should feel rather than how we actually feel. We convince ourselves, either due to past trauma, society, or whatever else, that we shouldn’t eat whatever we want because we may get fat (as if fat is inherently bad [our health standards are hardly real and almost exclusively based on what society deems "attractive”]); we convince ourselves that we shouldn’t feel happy because we still miss a loved one. Almost without question, feeling sad because we think we shouldn’t feel happy would go against the wishes of our departed loved one. My sister would be pissed if I stopped feeling joy because I didn’t think I deserved it! She’d kick my ass!

Today, I am very happy and my anxiety is a fraction of what it used to be. A part of moving on is that our loved one becomes a bit more of a faded memory. Our memories of them begin to carry a sepia hue in the picture and a bit of crackling in the audio. We learn how to handle the thoughts and memories of them in a way that doesn’t upend our day or what we’re working on in the moment. We learn how to talk about them 2-dimensionally instead of the wholly 3-dimensional person who had memories, a life, dreams, insecurities, and so much more. We learn how to try to encapsulate their spirit with few words and no tears. We learn how to compartmentalize their existence.

I fucking hate that it has to be this way. The days I hate it most are the days where I am inconvenienced with the inconsolable feeling of grief. I turn on Bon Iver or The Funeral by Band of Horses and sob as I recall memories and just how much my life has changed over the last seven years. I allow myself the most human expression I can possibly imagine: The expression of pure sorrow as I remind myself that I will never create another memory with my sister ever again, and the unfairness that my parents have to think about her and then worry about me all the same.

I know she’d be proud of me and I’m doing better than I have ever been. I am happy and healthy.

But it’s been a few weeks since I really thought about my sister and I miss her so goddamn much.

tré