Depression and Guitar Playing

[Ernesto]

You can't just say "these things work for me, and therefor this must be how it works for everyone" while dismissing every other experience brought to you.

You actually cut the quote at a pretty relevant part.

both with dealing with my own issues and attempting to help other friends and family members with theirs

I'm not just referencing myself but other people that I've helped, and I learned how to help them by doing enough research that psychiatrists have asked me where I got my doctorate.

Cutting some processed foods out of your diet is not going to cure someone of severe hallucinations. Going for a walk is not going to negate people's obsessive rituals. Sleeping a bit more won't address the root cause of anyone's issues unless the root cause is that they don't sleep enough.

It's a holistic thing, and when the body is given the correct nutrients, sleep, and environment, it's much more likely to heal itself. Most modern diseases are symptoms of civilization. Our species evolved as hunter gatherers and we are just not adapted to living sedentary lives in cities, exposed to chemicals, emi, and millions of other desperate, confused people. I've personally seen the advice I've given cure severe hallucinations, ocd, sleep disorders, ulcerative colitis, panic attacks, paranoia, anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, baldness, cancer, and even type 2 diabetes.

Here's a good article that explains how to boost neurogenesis with aerobic exercise, which, when done in Nature, is basically simulating an important part of our past hunter/gatherer lives.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...plasticity-and-neurogenesis-rewire-your-brain

Robert Sapolsky's research is super interesting and definitely worth looking into on a deeper level if you have interest in these things.

Here's one article that I found interesting:
https://sites.google.com/site/cogit...antidepressants-and-the-shrinking-hippocampus

I just want to make it very clear that I'm not dismissing anyone's experience. If the pills are helping, great. I just wanted to make it very clear that the pills are a crutch that 99% of patients shouldn't need for more than a few months at a time, worst case scenario. I'm not saying that everyone will heal completely by adopting some daily practices that simulate natural life. I know there are some very sick people out there that need drugs to survive but even they would benefit greatly from following the advice that I posted above.

 

[Ernesto]

oops. posted twice on accident. Is there not a delete post option here?

 

[Drew]

That’s really thoughtful advice , thank you

By the way, this thread has made me make a much more conscious effort to do this myself lately, and honestly I think it's been good my my happiness and peace of mind during a very stressful couple months. It just keeps me a little more grounded. So, thanks for starting this thread, and prompting me to think about this a bit.

 

[TedEH]

You actually cut the quote at a pretty relevant part.

None of what you added after that negates what I said. If anything, it reinforces it. The experiences of yourself and your family don't represent everyone.

when the body is given the correct nutrients, sleep, and environment, it's much more likely to heal itself.

Sure, but again, that's not helpful if those are not the root cause of your issues. Nobody is going to argue that you'll be in a better state overall if you take care of yourself, but that continues to be why I'm pretty hesitant to call every minor issue a "mental illness". If it's solved by a couple hours of extra sleep, it wasn't really a serious mental illness in the first place, was it? For someone with more serious issues, it's not good advice to just say "sleep more and eat better, you'll be fiiiiiiiine".

psychiatrists have asked me where I got my doctorate

If you say so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Drew]

Sure, but again, that's not helpful if those are not the root cause of your issues. Nobody is going to argue that you'll be in a better state overall if you take care of yourself, but that continues to be why I'm pretty hesitant to call every minor issue a "mental illness". If it's solved by a couple hours of extra sleep, it wasn't really a serious mental illness in the first place, was it? For someone with more serious issues, it's not good advice to just say "sleep more and eat better, you'll be fiiiiiiiine".

I mean, it's a fairly popular meme, but no one tells cancer patients they just need to not have cancer, or someone bleeding severely from blunt trauma to go for a run, have a kale smoothie, and take a nap. Telling someone with clinical depression to do the same is sort of ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a cyclist, I do most of my own cooking from scratch, and I eat a pretty good diet, and I definitely feel better when I'm sleeping and working out than when I'm not (say, right now, when I'm recovering from shoulder surgery, where again not one specialist told me to eat better and take more naps). But, I'm also not suffering from mental illness. Let's not trivialize what are some very real, material, crushing disorders for many people by pretending it's somehow just in their heads.

 

[TedEH]

^ I think a lot of it comes down to lacking a proper way to distinguish between the kind of everyday lows that can be improved with lifestyle changes, and the kind of disorder that one doesn't really have control over. I understand why people might experience one side and expect everyone's experience to be the same. I don't think we have either a way to identify, or communicate, those differences very clearly.

 

[odibrom]

Some more rambling...

There is nothing in this world that begins big, every thing grows from a small size to a larger one if given the opportunity and so do illnesses, either bio or psyche. The big question is the timing, or, the time taken between the installment of the illness and its recognition by the host. There is no correct time besides the one that voids the illness installment. Some are pretty fast, others are almost unnoticeable. Looking back to the first symptoms and trying to trace them even further back may deliver answers to many of the questions all illnesses pose on us: are we fighting the good fight?

We are psychosomatic beings, which means that the bio has a direct interference with the mind and vice versa. In my opinion, it is not correct to segregate these two manifestations of our selves. If one is ill, so is the other. Some times the real illness is in the other and not in the one that experiences symptoms. When in illness we should care for both manifestation of the self, at the same time. Mens sana in corpore sano...

 

[Ernesto]

None of what you added after that negates what I said. If anything, it reinforces it. The experiences of yourself and your family don't represent everyone

It's pretty clear that your reading comprehension skills are falling victim to your bias here. We all do it sometimes but it's far from constructive.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I mean, it's a fairly popular meme, but no one tells cancer patients they just need to not have cancer, or someone bleeding severely from blunt trauma to go for a run, have a kale smoothie, and take a nap. Telling someone with clinical depression to do the same is sort of ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a cyclist, I do most of my own cooking from scratch, and I eat a pretty good diet, and I definitely feel better when I'm sleeping and working out than when I'm not (say, right now, when I'm recovering from shoulder surgery, where again not one specialist told me to eat better and take more naps). But, I'm also not suffering from mental illness. Let's not trivialize what are some very real, material, crushing disorders for many people by pretending it's somehow just in their heads.

Hope your surgery was a success and it heals properly as well as quickly.

 

[Ernesto]

Let's not trivialize what are some very real, material, crushing disorders for many people by pretending it's somehow just in their heads.

The fact that cognitive behavioral therapy is so successful and the phenomenon we call the placebo effect makes it pretty clear that most of our suffering, to a large degree, at least starts out in our heads.

Knowing that our thoughts and mindset can have such a strong effect on our physical reality can definitely empower people to literally use their minds to heal the "unhealable". Thinking, "I'm flawed, it's not my fault, and I'll never heal." is extremely detrimental to our health.

 

[Drew]

Hope your surgery was a success and it heals properly as well as quickly.

Thanks man, much appreciated. I may have fallen on the damned thing a couple weeks back, but my surgeon is pretty confident the repair held, so I'm hoping for the best. Aggressive rhythm playing is still pretty much out of the question, lead playing has been doable for a while now since you really need to keep your picking arm relaxed, anywya.

The fact that cognitive behavioral therapy is so successful and the phenomenon we call the placebo effect makes it pretty clear that most of our suffering, to a large degree, at least starts out in our heads.

Knowing that our thoughts and mindset can have such a strong effect on our physical reality can definitely empower people to literally use their minds to heal the "unhealable". Thinking, "I'm flawed, it's not my fault, and I'll never heal." is extremely detrimental to our health.

Be that as it may, that's no replacement for modern medicine.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Thanks man, much appreciated. I may have fallen on the damned thing a couple weeks back, but my surgeon is pretty confident the repair held, so I'm hoping for the best. Aggressive rhythm playing is still pretty much out of the question, lead playing has been doable for a while now since you really need to keep your picking arm relaxed, anyway.

Oh, for fucks sake. Nothing like getting surgery to repair something, and then testing it by falling on the damn thing just to test how well it held.

Glad everything is okay post fall -- if you're like me, loss of an arm, or rather the use of one can make you pretty unstable. I think that would make my equilibrium pretty screwed up, so I can see how that could happen. As for rhythm playing, I think you need to change your technique, but that's only an uneducated guess. Couldn't hurt to reassess your rhythm picking technique and see if there is anything you are doing that is bad for your arm/shoulder.

Anyways, try to keep your arm out of harm's way.

 

[odibrom]

No one is talking replacements, nor talking down on any kind of knowledge... just suggesting alternative points of view. There are lots of traditions involved on all cultures and a tradition is a betrayal of reason. YES, there are traditions in modern medicine, specially with medication for the mind. It all started out in mid of the previous century when the pharmaceutics gained some big ground in improving the "modern way of life" with lots of new vaccines and the stuff (all important btw, not talking down here, just pointing out some things). With that improvements also came those unnecessary pills for every single ache one could eventually have. "Hey doc, I can't sleep", "Sure, take these pills" or "Hey doc, I feel my memory fade", "sure thing, take these pills". At the beginning of the '80s I had my grandparents feeding themselves with pills for this and that that I though was completely insane. That tradition on prescribing pill for this and that still prevails. This approach is done by focusing only on what the patience complains about, so to say, treating the symptoms in most cases. Again, if the illness is on the other half of our psychosomatic existence, those pills will do nothing but camouflage the problem, and then it will grow. Unfortunately, this is not related to "the kind of medicine per se" but to the "practitioner of said medicine", as with everything. Generally, I'm suspicious on doctors who prescribe pills for common flu... which are the majority... unfortunately... (hence tradition exists).

 

[Drew]

Oh, for fucks sake. Nothing like getting surgery to repair something, and then testing it by falling on the damn thing just to test how well it held.

Glad everything is okay post fall -- if you're like me, loss of an arm, or rather the use of one can make you pretty unstable. I think that would make my equilibrium pretty screwed up, so I can see how that could happen. As for rhythm playing, I think you need to change your technique, but that's only an uneducated guess. Couldn't hurt to reassess your rhythm picking technique and see if there is anything you are doing that is bad for your arm/shoulder.

Anyways, try to keep your arm out of harm's way.

There was, ahem, a certain amount of alcohol involved. Not one of my finer moments, but... A close friend had a childhood buddy commit suicide a few days before, my buddy thought he should have been able to do more to stop him somehow, and decided he was just going to drink his sorrows away on Super Bowl Sunday, and after trying to talk him down for a while, eventually I just decided if you can't beat them, join them, and we ended up doing rather a lot of whiskey shots in the guy's name. I didnt even remember falling when I woke up, at first, and couldn't figure out why the fuck my chest was so sore.

Really, I think the issue is I'm a blues guy at heart and I hit the strings pretty hard. Single note stuff is fine, but once you start to get a little more arm movement behind the pick, you begin to bring your bicep in, and the surgery was to repair a slap tear at the point where my bicep connects to my labrum, so anything bicep related is off limits.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

There was, ahem, a certain amount of alcohol involved. Not one of my finer moments, but... A close friend had a childhood buddy commit suicide a few days before, my buddy thought he should have been able to do more to stop him somehow, and decided he was just going to drink his sorrows away on Super Bowl Sunday, and after trying to talk him down for a while, eventually I just decided if you can't beat them, join them, and we ended up doing rather a lot of whiskey shots in the guy's name. I didnt even remember falling when I woke up, at first, and couldn't figure out why the fuck my chest was so sore.

Really, I think the issue is I'm a blues guy at heart and I hit the strings pretty hard. Single note stuff is fine, but once you start to get a little more arm movement behind the pick, you begin to bring your bicep in, and the surgery was to repair a slap tear at the point where my bicep connects to my labrum, so anything bicep related is off limits.

Well that sucks. I do most of my picking movements from the wrist.

 

[Drew]

Well that sucks. I do most of my picking movements from the wrist.

Same - for me it's more of a slight forearm rotation, I guess, but it comes to the same place. Anyway, we're veering a little off topic her.e

 

[Ernesto]

Be that as it may, that's no replacement for modern medicine.

People I've seen heal, not mask, their mental issue with modern medicine = 0
People I've personally known that were slightly in the dumps, got on meds, and attempted or committed suicide= 6
People I've seen heal using natural methods= 20+

If I tear a hole in myself or break a bone, modern medicine is awesome. That's about all it's good for though.

 

[odibrom]

(...)
If I tear a hole in myself or break a bone, modern medicine is awesome. That's about all it's good for though.

I wouldn't go that far... but yes, the big argument on modern medicine is surgery on all it's levels, neuro, bone, mio, transplants... Some chemistry is also top notch, like those that inhibit the body to reject organ transplants. I believe that psychic medicine has a lot to grow yet, in order to become on par with surgery.

The thing I think the modern medicine fails drastically (again, this is more practitioner dependent than knowledge type, nevertheless, tradition related) is recognizing that each patience is unique and as so should be treated. Most of the times they just try to box the patience whenever possible within the charts they have... it's sad, really.

 

[Ernesto]

Joe Rogan has turned into more and more of a tool over the last few years but he sometimes has some interesting guests. The most recent podcast is one of those occasions, and pretty pertinent to this thread.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Joe Rogan has turned into more and more of a tool over the last few years but he sometimes has some interesting guests. The most recent podcast is one of those occasions, and pretty pertinent to this thread.

Eh... Joe has always been a tool. What are you talking about?