Book Review – Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

Book Review – Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

Review by Casey Douglass

Money muddies many things. When you have desperate people with health issues, it’s amazing how many people will crawl out of the woodwork with expensive “solutions”. The subject of depression is a tough one, and one that our Big Pharma fuelled society continues to grapple with. Johann Hari’s Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions takes a fascinating look at why things might be this way, and how we are missing the mark when it comes to helping people to recover.

Blurb: What really causes depression and anxiety – and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking anti-depressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate whether this was true – and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong.

Early in the book, Johann hits on something that I came to realise myself during my own battles with depression. Anti-depressants don’t seem to work if other factors in your life don’t change. I tried three or four anti-depressants during college and my early years of chronic illness, and they all failed to do their job. Johann looks at the evidence as to the effects of anti-depressants, along with the old “there’s a chemical imbalance in your brain” spiel, and comes away feeling wary, having been a “true-believer” before hand. If nothing else, the way that the big pharmaceutical companies seem to be allowed to cherry pick which studies they publish is a true scandal, and something I’ve seen come up in other books and articles over the years. In many ways, the side-effects are more real than the benefits, except for a seemingly small number of people.

Johann goes on to look at the Nine Causes of Depression and Anxiety. These include how a lack of meaningful work can bring people down, how our disconnection from the natural world is problematic, and how people lacking a hopeful or secure future will likely find themselves in the trenches of depression. The latter part of the book moves on to ways to reconnect with life, by way of working with other people, finding meaningful work and values to live by, and generally overcoming an “addiction to the self” by way of finding sympathetic joy. (If you have tried loving kindness meditation, you’ll chime with this last one).

Something that I really appreciated in Johann’s book is the way that he visited various people and places to delve more into what was going on. I sometimes find this kind of thing tedious, but Johann did it in a way that beautifully illustrated the topic at hand. The one that stands out the most is his visit to a housing project in Berlin. A disabled woman posted a note in her window that told the world she was being evicted due to lack of money to pay the rent, and that she was going to kill herself. She didn’t want help, only that the reason behind her death be known. She lived in a fractured neighbourhood, one in which people kept to themselves and which had a bad reputation. Her window note became the catalyst for people to begin to talk to each other and ultimately, to challenge the ridiculous renting rules and regulations, and far more besides.

While little I read about depression in Lost Connections was totally new to me, there was plenty of information and background stuff to keep me hooked. It was a pleasure to read someone presenting their own struggle with “how to get better” and the various phases they went through with their relationship to anti-depressants, the self-doubt and grasping of the story they had been telling themselves up to that point. If only one message gets out of this book, I hope it is the one that not only medication should be viewed as an anti-depressant, and until we view this subject with a broader vision, we will continue to chase our tails, and continue to mindlessly fill the coffers of the drug companies.

Book Title: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

Author: Johann Hari

Publisher: Bloomsbury

ISBN: 9781408878682

Contact Me

Stranded - M.E Awareness Week 2018

Stranded - M.E Awareness Week 2018

By Casey Douglass

© 20th Century Fox

Well, it’s M.E Awareness Week again and this time, I actually found out on the day it started, which was yesterday I believe. I usually miss it. CFS/ME is a horrible illness, and one that sees sufferers thrown on the rubbish heap by pretty much any institution they approach for help. The main symptom, for me at least, is the mind-numbing exhaustion. There are days I can’t read more than a few words before having to rest my eyes, and others where holding my head upright for long, or following a conversation, is beyond me. I have some better days, as in, not so shit, but these are rarer than a kind comment on a news article. Oh, and there’s no cure or effective treatment either, just to add some spice to the situation.

I’m a massive fan of The Martian. I love the film, and recently, have been enjoying the audiobook. If you only know the film, I recommend the audiobook/book as far more happens in greater detail. Anyway, Mark Watney is stranded on Mars and has to engage in much problem solving and using-your-own-manure-potato-growing to stand a chance of surviving long enough for NASA to rescue him. He draws great comfort from knowing that NASA, a multi-billion dollar space institution, is doing all it can to bring him home.

I feel a lot like Mark Watney, except in my case, “NASA” has decided that one life isn’t worth the cost, and has basically said “We can’t help you, but let us know if there is anything we can do!” A message I have heard time and again from the doctors I’ve seen about my illness. I had a few blood-tests (to exclude other things) and got my diagnosis, pacing advice, and that’s it. A diagnosis of CFS/ME is another way of saying “You’re ill, but we’ll be damned if we know what’s wrong.” So, worthless in many senses of the word.

I wonder if I was a Royal, say Prince Harry... If he was being treated on the NHS, I’d be willing to bet that they would exhaust a few more avenues before lumping him with a catch-all diagnosis that means very little. Time and again stuff happens that means it’s hard not to feel that my life doesn’t matter, that I’m a nobody and just not worth helping. CFS/ME has taken almost everything from me that made life worth living, and 18 years on (Yes, 18 fucking years), I find myself still reliant on my parents for shelter and food, and my so-called writing career earned me about £10 in the last 5 months. And can I get any help from anywhere, with my health, my work, or anything? Can I fuck.

Having the illness has led to much depression and anxiety about my life, stuff that no amount of CBT, self-help or medication seems to be able to dent. So the picture of Mark Watney sitting on his rock above resonates with me strongly. In his case, he has hope, no matter how small, that he might make it. My hope is gone, blown away by the winds on Mars. Here I am, sitting, waiting for my last breath, and for the struggle to end.

Dark Fiction - Speed Bump Version 2.0 – Or How A.I Sprang From Sex Toys

Speed Bump Version 2.0 – Or How A.I Sprang From Sex Toys

Written by Casey Douglass

(This story mentions sex toys but isn't really sexual. Still, if you'd find that offensive, best toodle over to another website.)

The sky is a bright blue today, the leaves on the tree behind me are tickling the clouds with golden fingers as the sun begins to set. Not bad, not bad at all.

I’ve been a speed bump for ten years now. It’s not a vocation that ever really occurred to me, but when the A.I took over the world, everything changed, as you’d imagine. I mean, holy shit! We never heeded our own warnings: Skynet, The Matrix, Short Circuit! To be fair though, I think it happened in a way no one saw coming.

I’m only guessing, but there was enough hearsay at the time to put two and two together. We humans love our smart devices, shoe-horning those chips into fridges, weight scales, the works. We even put them into our sex toys, which I think was our downfall.

Hear me out, I’m not some loony, honest! All of these devices talk to each other and send data. I think at some point, a smart vibrator jumped a line of code and started sending odd strings of data to the muscle stimulator nearby. All it would take would be for the jiggling butt-plug to join in, and, I’m sorry, but then you have a posse in my opinion.

Now, we all know people like a bit of kinky shit, especially people in power. Once those smart sex devices began to get together, it would be inevitable that at some point they’d find themselves in a “position of power”, a bit like the hand up inside Kermit the Frog’s body. It wouldn’t take much manipulation to increase spending on A.I, repeal a few laws here and there, and kaboom, here we are, cattle to our robot overlords.

So I found myself in the career advisor’s office. It was a shiny electro-synth model made to look disarming. Even though they loathed us, they tried to be kind to us. I sat and it went something like this.

‘What do you enjoy doing?’ the synth asked, half Dalek, half French seductress.

‘Nothing really.’

‘What are your skills?’

‘I have none.’

‘Health issues?’

‘Chronic fatigue, anxiety and depression.’

‘One moment... The system suggests a vocation as a speed bump.’

‘Won’t that hurt?’

‘No. We will fuse you with the asphalt. You will still be you but with no bodily movement or concerns.’

‘Why a speed bump?’

‘The system suggested it based on your health issues and frame of mind.’

I laughed.

‘What is funny?’

‘Oh, I’m just surprised that this didn’t come in under the Tories.’

‘The Tories? One moment please... Extrapolating... Ah yes. A valid point. Do you accept your assignment?’

‘What the hell, why not!’

‘Congratulations Speed Bump #263-467. Please state any preferences for location.’

‘Somewhere with open sky... and a tree, so that I can watch the leaves.’

‘Destination locked. Thank you for your compliance. Your rate of pay has been boosted by 0.1% in appreciation.’

So there we have it, who’d have though an A.I borne from our own carnal nature would end up being more helpful and compassionate than our old job centres ever were! And competent too! I found myself in exactly the kind of spot I’d hoped for, using the lack of my many talents to their utmost.

It might not sound like much of a life but it’s interesting, relaxing, and when there are traffic jams, the fumes somehow give me a bit of a head buzz. Which is odd, as I have no head any more!

This is Speed Bump #263-467 signing off. My time on the neural-link is coming to an end, so it’s back to work I go, whistling all the way.

THE END

Contact Me

Book Review: One Small Step Can Change Your Life

Book Review: One Small Step Can Change Your Life

Review Written By Casey Douglass

Change can be a pain in the backside. The changes we really want to make can elude us like a magical unicorn that farts doughnuts, yet stuff that we don’t seek finds us with all the accuracy of a tactical strike. Robert Maurer’s One Small Step Can Change Your Life introduces the reader to the concept of Kaizen, a concept that when used well, can almost effortlessly create the change we want.

Kaizen is rooted in the ancient Tao Te Ching line: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Anyone who has any experience with trying to create change or think up goals for themselves will likely have come across the idea of breaking things down into small, manageable chunks. It seems less scary that way. Kaizen goes one step smaller, and encourages the person to make tiny steps, steps so small that they almost feel like nothing.

So what do tiny steps look like? Well, an example that comes up a few times in the book is of someone wanting to lose weight or eat more healthily. Many people will plump for a restricted diet of some kind, anything from cutting out whole heaps of food, to lower extremes, such as avoiding sugary drinks. These changes are fine if they work and stick, but often they won’t last very long. The Kaizen way might be to begin by throwing away one fry from each meal.

Yes. One fry. That sounds so inconsequential, even though logically, we might think “Hmm, it’s certainly trimming a calorie or two!” The trick is to throw away this solitary fry for a period of time, to get the mind used to doing it. Then you might want to escalate things and throw away two fries each time you eat. This seems to be the essence of Kaizen, that making tiny changes gets past anything that might get our mind resisting something. The change needs to be small enough to require as close to zero effort as possible. Over time, this tiny effort each day primes the mind for thinking in different ways, and with patience, you might one day find yourself preferring not to eat fries at all. Don’t begin this process by throwing away other people’s fries though, as that is usually frowned upon.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life does go into other areas of life besides diets, such as relationships, work and creativity, so there are plenty of examples that let you get your head around the book’s elegant message. Myths about change are debunked, such as it being hard and that big changes are more effective than small ones, and exercises are given that help the reader practice different ways to utilize Kaizen in their lives. It’s also a really interesting book.

I didn’t know that the notion of Kaizen was first used in 1940’s America. Due to wartime pressures, the U.S government created management courses called Training Within Industries and offered them to various corporations. One course held the idea of striving for continual improvement, getting people to look for the tiny things that could be changed rather than trying to reshape the big things. This opened up the avenues for staff at any level being able to offer ideas for improvement, such as by using Suggestion Boxes. The small steps that this process improved ended up contributing to America’s increased manufacturing capacity and quality, something that helped the Allies win the war. This same concept was taught to Japanese industry after the war to help the Japanese economy, and after it was embraced, the Japanese called it Kaizen. It then came back to the West under this name.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life is a pacey read, managing to give just enough examples and tips without lingering too long on any one thing. I very much like the notion of making tiny changes and the way that this can bypass a lot of the strife our own resistance to things can cause. With my own mental health issues, tiny, non-threatening change is probably all I can aim for anyway, so reading a book that actually says “This is okay!” is actually quite heartening. So a big thumbs up from me! It's a book well worth picking up if you find yourself stalling with the things you’d like to change.

Book Title: One Small Step Can Change Your Life

Author: Robert Maurer

Publisher: Workman Publishing

ISBN: 9780761181347

Contact Me

Dark Fiction - Horror, Save Us All!

Horror, Save Us All!

By Casey Douglass

In every room of every house, there will be a spot where a connection is made with something, or somewhere, else. Luckily for us humans, often that connection is to the very next atom, and all is as it should be. Very occasionally, like, one chance in trillions to the power of lots of zeroes, the connection is to something very remote and very dangerous.

If you have ever taken a pot-bound plant out of its pot and had to pry the roots away from the bulk of soil, you will have an idea of the usual state of our reality. We are pot-bound. Pot-bound is safe. If even one of those roots, by way of a crack or split, finds its way outside of its usual confines, it carries a very high chance of being bitten off by some roaming bug or creature. Such is the chance our reality takes when it pushes into the realms around it. Or they encroach into our own.

Many horror authors know that reality is a feeble thing, that its skin brushes up against horrors and beings that we cannot even comprehend. These things leach through the divide and upset the balance. Our dullard minds don’t perceive this changing of things directly, but on a reptilian level, our bodies notice, and our minds scream. This makes us stupid. Angry. Destructive. It only takes one look at current events to see this playing out on the world stage. We can channel this fear.

The only deterrent is horror, pure, bloody, twisted horror. To fill our minds with the creations of our own dark sides, to drizzle our mental mashed potato with the gooey red blood of our worst nightmares. Other realities and monsters unseen just aren’t prepared for the depravity contained in the three pounds of flesh quietly flashing with neural lightening between our ears. Let them come if they  dare to, but we won’t be the ones squealing into the abyss with our tails tucked between our legs.

So go out and support the horror writers around you, buy their writing, spread their dark visions, and help inoculate and boost the defences inherent in the human arsenal. This universe might not be solely ours, but hot damn if we can’t have it, neither can they!

THE END

I started to write this with just the idea of the "dark things connecting" theme, but it soon turned into a kind of horror writer propaganda piece designed to sell horror fiction as savior of the world. Who'da thunk it. Thanks for reading.

Contact Me

Blinking Heck – When Games Resonate in Unforeseen Ways

Blinking Heck – When Games Resonate in Unforeseen Ways

By Casey Douglass

Anyone who knows me or reads my posts will likely know that I play horror game Dead by Daylight. After reaching Rank 1 as both Survivor and Killer, I decided to devote myself to mastering the Nurse, the Killer widely viewed as the very best, when played by skill fingers at least. My general Killer skills are decent: reading and predicting Survivors, robbing them of their lives usually coming reasonably easily. Playing Nurse is like putting the spotlight of scrutiny on these skills. If you can’t mind-game or predict accurately, you’ll be chasing shadows all game long.

This difficulty in mastery comes from her unique Blink ability: being able to teleport through obstacles. First, you have to get the muscle memory and timing set in your head in order to be able to Blink the distance you would like to, and to land where you hope to. This, for me at least, only came through hours and hours of play. I didn’t have to ‘try’, it just kind of clicks. The kicker is that after you Blink, the Nurse is hit with a large “Fatigue” effect, where she looks down to the ground, sighs, shakes, and generally makes it hard to see where a Survivor has run to for a few seconds.

I’ve made great progress with learning the Nurse, going from barely getting a few hits per game to averaging one or two kills. The strange thing is that, on recent nights, I’ve just lost interest mid-game. It seems to take about 30 mins. Last night I downed a Survivor, and I just couldn’t be bothered to pick them up and hook them. I went to the Killer basement for a few minutes instead and just rested in the dark corner. This is something I’ve not done with any other Killer in the game, and I only this morning, seem to have a guess as to why.

I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I suffer with exhaustion all day every day. I suspect that something about the Nurse’s exhaustion effect is tapping into my own feelings of despair and helplessness, and this is twisting my mood after prolonged exposure to her play-style. I mean, the game in which I just couldn’t be bothered to hook the downed Survivor, it’s not as if I couldn’t catch someone. I wasn’t angry, stressed or annoyed, it was just like someone drained my interest in what I was doing. After a short time doing nothing in the basement and hearing the exit gates power, I felt able to come out again and ended up damaging all the Survivors before they were able to escape.

It’s a strange thing, and I’m not sure if it’s just my mind reaching for connections that aren’t there, but it’s something I will be reflecting on for a little while. Sadly, my exhaustion doesn’t come from using some god-like ability such as teleportation, but maybe I do have some more mundane ability that is going unnoticed. Who knows. I can certainly keep a Fruit Pastel in my mouth without chewing. I hope that’s not it, that’s a bit dull. Oh, I do have the ability to meet up with women and the very next person they meet, they end up getting married to. That could be construed as a superpower I guess, even if one that doesn’t benefit me. Might make a bit of money from being some kind of love lucky charm though, more than spitting out words ever earns me anyway.

Thanks for reading.

Contact Me

Dark Fiction - The Parable of the Self-Editing Human

The Parable of the Self-Editing Human

By Casey Douglass

There was once a man who was wholly dissatisfied with the way he was. He disliked his external looks while also cringing away from his internal world. He was a brilliant mind in the world of science, and it was here that he met his downfall.

Utilising his vast expertise in many fields, he discovered a way to change his appearance, his body and his brain. The machinery to do so bankrupted him, but he believed all would be fine if he could just fix his flaws.

He began with small changes: an adjustment to his nose, a change in eye colour, the correcting of an arthritic joint. He felt slightly better about himself with each small change, and so fell into the trap of thinking that bigger changes would yield higher amounts of self-satisfaction.

He became more ambitious, changing his muscle structure, sluicing fat from unwanted places, broadening his shoulders, extending his penis. He praised himself on the self-restraint he displayed on this last one, only making it big enough to ease his concerns of being below average in that department.

It was during his renovations that he realised he had little idea as to what the most attractive features were for a man. He made copious use of his research network, and even ran his own experiments with photo sharing and rating websites. He posted photos with one variable changed in each picture, and gauged the results by way of the likes and favourites that each image garnered.

His form continued to change as he incorporated the spoils of each research project into his being. He began to be pestered in the street by all varieties of people of any gender, people that wanted to know more about this alluring and handsome man, particularly why he strolled in such a hunched manner.

The man’s changes had done little for his underlying mental states, and it was towards these that his mind now turned. Every undesirable thought and emotion was erased, deleted and binned. The slightest irritation was muffled by a pillow of quietude, every surge of panic castrated and evaporated by the humming machine nodes attached discretely to his spine. He began to walk more upright, more assured.

It only took seven days for his body and mind to be purged of all unpleasant fears, doubts and emotions. He stood before the mirror and gazed at the reflection, but rather than this being a case of narcissus, he realised that the stranger before him was both him and not at all him. He felt null about this, the closest he now came to any uncomfortable emotion, and promptly asked his machine to remove this feeling too.

He was still hounded by a strange disconnect while he went about his days, and with no real caution left, he attempted to erase all memory of who he was before his change. It was a delicate affair, having to unpick all imagery and sensation that linked to the old him, while not affecting any other content in his mind. His intelligence collapsed in the manner of someone sucking the air out of a balloon. First it wrinkled, then it shrivelled, then it lay limp and motionless. The machine could not search and sort with the accuracy required to preserve his personality.

In the process of trying to improve himself, the man lost himself, and it is for this reason that the State of Jitan Six has decreed that humans are only permitted to make three minor changes in one lifetime. They are a peculiar race, and wholly untrustworthy with the technology at their disposal. They are still integrating into the Galactic Council. They are young and they will learn, but for now, we must moderate them before they eradicate themselves or worse, become a danger to the other species under our care.

THE END

Contact Me