Over the past year or so, I've been seeing more advertisements for antidepressant medications such as Auvelity (a Wellbutrin/DXM mix) and Spravato (a ketamine-derived nasal spray). I find that particularly interesting.
What most people don't know about me is that, a little over 20 years ago, I experienced long-term depression. (This was likely more me being a whiny little kid, but I digress.. the experience was real enough.) The SSRIs I tried never worked, so I used my reasoning skills and interest in neurochemistry to.. self medicate. Most of the other group of people I associated with were just dabbling recreationally but I always had a reason behind it. Anecdotally, I can vouch for some of these psychoactive and dissociative substances having short-to-medium term effects on mood and increased post-administration cognitive clarity.
So it's interesting to see the medicine catch up. Two decades seems to be the average lag time.
Nonetheless, this sort of thing is not a permanent solution and I wouldn't suggest my route to others. It was dangerous, and I was desperate. There's a much better way.
It's a way that most would scoff at; a path that seems like foolishness to those unable or unwilling to consider it.
The only one that can take away your psychological pain and trauma is the mercy and grace of Christ Jesus. "Sure, whatever," you might say. Yet I am living proof of this.
You might chock it up to the psychological power of belief, but I can say definitively that this is far from the case in my experience. The conviction of my belief is not the progenitor of the peace - in fact, a lot of times it causes strife. Yet through it all, my mind is calmed beyond explanation or understanding.
You might be wondering how this can be; you might remember me from years ago as the perpetually angry, over-the-top, somewhat crazy guy.
The only thing I can say to that is: Come and See.
This is a repost from FB.
Facebook likes to ask me what I am thinking about. This is the type of stuff I think about, and probably the reason I'm not popular at parties.
Tohuwabohu - a German word, borrowed from Hebrew. Some translate it as meaning "nothingness", "void", "desolation" - words like that. However, there's other Hebrew terms for those words. Biblically, the term is likely more equivalent to "chaos". It shows up at the beginning of Genesis.
Contemporarily, chaos is defined in several ways: "a state of utter confusion", "a confused mass or mixture", "the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a complex natural system."
I'm an agent of tohuwabohu in the latter sense. So are you. You think your life is ordered and comfortable. Underneath, in the fundamental world of matter that God spoke into existence, chaos reigns. Ordered chaos, but it looks like near chaos to us because it's difficult to even fathom.
Everything just so, balanced on the head of a proverbial pin to allow us to perform infinitely more complex actions. Just the simple act of grasping an object takes amazing feats of biocellular mechanics and physics, and the properties of your own body and of the object are built up from fundamental forces that we've only scratched the surface of.
If you can think on God's creation and not have your face just about melt, you're not thinking deeply enough about God's creation. It is absolutely amazing.
Be an agent of chaos. Recognize your monster. Then master them, using the Master above all.
Lately I've been noticing the ever-present trend of reasoning through concepts without giving much consideration to how one may be influenced by their own biases and presuppositions, coupled with a shallow investigation into the circumstances around whatever's being thought about. This is by no means new and it's extremely pervasive - it's just been highlighted in my mind as of late.
Take the following hypothetical:
- You perform a task.
- The person you're performing the task for mentions that you missed something in that task.
- You mention that you followed all the requirements of the task, as far as you're aware.
- The person dismisses your statement and completes the task their own way.
- You opine that you can't fathom what the other person's considering as being missed.
- The person retorts that, of course you cannot fathom you'd make a mistake, that's the definition of a narcissist.
- You look like the confused guy meme, because you never said you couldn't fathom making a mistake, rather that you couldn't fathom what the other person was seeing as a mistake.
This sort of failure to pay attention and think things through is a concerning lack of discernment and a potential danger area for lack of perception.
Here we have a perfectly reasonable interaction that devolves into chaos because one person is obviously looking through the lens of sin, thinking the worst of the other, instead of being charitable and considering that their reading may be incorrect. This could be from a variety of different factors, ranging from just having a bad day, to trauma, to actively murdering one another in the heart.
This sort of failure to consider context and examine the situation holistically, tends to present itself in the person's biblical interpretation and exegesis of scripture. The person can oft be found to make the same mistakes in interpreting scripture as they do in conversation.
I think the root cause most often boils down to pride. This is why proper humility is a key aspect of the Christian walk. If we think less of ourselves (e.g. deny ourselves), take up our cross, and follow Christ - then as we are progressively sanctified, we begin looking less through that lens of prideful sin and looking more through the humble lens of scripture.