The Story of a Year (and change)

Today I completed my 52nd week of three-days-a-week gym workouts. It took a little more than a year to accomplish because of some disruptions to my schedule over the last 13 months, so let’s say it’s been a year and change. I’ve also been on a primarily plant-based diet for over 14 months, so I want to mark the occasion by reflecting on how I got to this point in my health journey. Back in December of 2022, before I commenced this major change in diet and exercise, I’m sure I was highly pessimistic about ever getting to this point.

I guess my thinking really began to shift sometime in the middle of 2022, with feelings of increasing unease about the trajectory of my health. I had been gradually gaining more weight, was seriously out of shape despite a few half-hearted attempts at getting exercise, and drinking too much. None of these things were new, and more often than not I felt bad - not sick exactly, but definitely not in the best of health. When the pandemic first hit two years earlier I had not responded well. I read stories about people who were suddenly working from home for months - as I was - using the situation as an opportunity to get more exercise and pursue other healthy activities. Rather than follow their example, I became a couch potato and was mostly in a state of depression, and this had lingered into 2021 and 2022.

I was certainly aware of things that could help, especially making lifestyle changes in the area of diet and exercise. To contribute more to domestic labor I’d been trying to cook dinner at least a few times each week, and I’d often (though not always) pick a vegetarian meal to make, saying to my wife that I felt the need to “move toward” a plant-based diet. But none of this had coalesced into a firm commitment.

As the summer of 2022 wound down I decided to have a look at the most recent book by Gary Taubes, an author I’d first discovered in 2014. Back then I’d read his book Why We Get Fat (2011), a shorter version of his book Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007). Taubes’ argument, which I found convincing, was that the American diet, revolving as it did around high levels of carbohydrate and sugar consumption (and often delivered in the form of highly processed food), had resulted in widespread obesity in the U.S. and an increase in many health problems. He recommended a sharp reduction in both carbs and sugar. Since this was simple enough, I decided to try it, and I got pretty dramatic results, losing lots of weight in about six months. But I didn’t stick with it, and within another year or so most of the weight returned.

I subsequently read most of his next book The Case Against Sugar (2016), which was also convincing. I had previously found - somewhat to my surprise - that cutting sugar consumption was not very difficult. But that’s not to say I’d been doing it, even though I knew I could.

So in the summer of 2022 I borrowed a copy of his book The Case for Keto (2020) from my local library and began reading it. When the fall began I also took advantage of the fact that both of my daughters would be away at college, as this would provide an opportunity to get a lot more control over meal-planning for those months, so I started cooking vegetarian meals more exclusively.

By October, however, I began having reservations about Taubes’ arguments, particularly the high-fat consumption component of a ketogenic diet program. I didn’t doubt the testimony Taubes had collected from numerous doctors about the effectiveness of a keto diet in helping their patients with weight loss and related health issues, but my experience with high levels of fat consumption wasn’t in accord with the outcomes he documented. So I couldn’t bring myself to adopt his recommendations.

Wanting a little more context for my concerns, I sought out reviews of Taubes’ book and found some of these in video format on YouTube. One in particular, an 18-minute analysis by scientist Chris MacAskill on his “Plant Chompers” channel, was especially helpful, as he called into question much of the research Taubes used in the book and the way it was represented or, as MacAskill argued, sometimes misrepresented. During the last minutes of the video, MacAskill did a quick comparison of The Case for Keto with a book I’d never heard of called How Not to Die (2015) by Dr. Michael Greger. I was intrigued enough by MacAskill’s claims about the comparative merits of Greger’s book that I decided to check it out.

That turned out to be a major turning point for me.

At almost 600 pages, How Not to Die is a long tome, but Greger is a compelling writer and he does a good job of condensing and synthesizing the thousands of references to published research found at the end of the book into a powerful argument about the sources of the major chronic illnesses responsible for premature death in the U.S., things like heart disease, an array of cancers, diabetes, Parkinson's, and high blood pressure.

The first two-thirds of the book are devoted to detailed discussions of the major chronic illnesses in the U.S. and how these are related to diet. In the course of 15 chapters Greger presents substantial evidence to illustrate how the “Standard American Diet” (with the fitting acronym SAD), which is heavy on animal products of all kinds, processed foods, and foods high in sugar and sodium, contributes significantly to each of these illnesses, placing enormous stress on the body and resulting in inflammation, obesity, and a mounting series of health problems that frequently result in early death.

At the same time, Greger also documents how plant-based diets and regular exercise have been found to prevent, mitigate, and reverse each of these health problems, enabling people to stop taking (often harmful) medications, restore their health, and lead longer and better lives.

In the final third of the book, Greger introduces what he calls his “Daily Dozen,” focused on the types of foods that have been shown to have the most beneficial health impacts. These include beans, berries and other fruits, cruciferous and other vegetables, flaxseeds, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, whole grains, and beverages like tea and water. Combined with regular exercise, a diet centered around these foods can lead to much-improved health.

One of the most compelling aspects of Greger’s approach was the way he situated weight issues in the much broader context of an argument about health in general. The major focus of the book was on health, not weight, and particularly the role of diet in either increasing or decreasing the risks of major illnesses. A weight problem was just another consequence of a bad diet, and not necessarily the most serious one, but as Greger noted at several points in the book once a person begins to suffer from obesity it can in turn become a contributing risk factor for other major health problems. This centering of health as the proper focus of dietary practice shaped my own thinking quite a bit.

So by the end of 2022 I finished How Not to Die and was convinced that this was a program worth trying. Admittedly, I wasn’t quite all in because I was not yet willing to give up fish, my favorite food, but with the start of 2023 I said goodbye to almost all other animal products, retaining only fish, yogurt, and small amounts of cheese.

The next order of business was to start a program of regular exercise. I had to think hard about how to do this because fitting exercise into my schedule had proven difficult for many years. I had recently bought a new stationary exercise bike to replace an old one that had fallen apart, but this didn’t seem like enough. As it happened, my daughter Amanda - who had been running on cross-country and track teams for the last eight years - had just graduated from college and moved back home. When I mentioned my interest in possibly joining a gym, she informed me that she already had a local gym membership that she’d paused while in school, but she was also interested in resuming regular workouts. Her membership allowed her to bring a guest at no extra charge for every visit, so she invited me to join her.

Thus it was that on a cold and dark predawn morning in the middle of February 2023 we went to Amanda’s gym and I had my very first gym workout. Of course I had no idea what I was doing and just tried several different things without any clear notion of what I could handle. The result was a lot of aches and pains the following day. Thankfully, Amanda came to the rescue by handing me a document containing a sensible workout plan she’d designed for me containing three different workouts that I could do in sequence with each visit. This set me on a proper path for good exercise and ongoing development.

For about a month Amanda and I did the early morning visits three times a week, but she finally concluded she wanted to try a different gym. A friend had recommended the Planet Fitness chain to me, and there was one about five minutes from my home, so I went to check it out and it seemed like a good option. Plus, the price was right as a basic membership cost only $10 a month. Amanda and I signed up for separate memberships because our schedules would no longer enable us to go together.

Initially, going to the gym without Amanda was scary. I feared I might not be able to maintain the discipline of regular attendance if I was going by myself, or that I would cut corners on my workouts, and what would I do on days that I woke up and didn’t feel like going for one reason or another? I dreaded the thought of failing, and it seemed like the odds were against me. I was 58 years old and had never maintained a regular exercise regimen in my life. The likelihood that I’d be able to sustain this one seemed slim at best. So I fretted about it.

Ultimately, however, I forced myself to keep going. There were many days over the next several months that I would wake up and feel unmotivated. During the spring semester of 2023, however, I was teaching an early morning class three days a week, so in order to maintain my gym schedule I had no choice but to arrive at the gym at 5:00 am when it opened. Doing that would give me just enough time to get the workout done, get back home, take a shower, get dressed and make it to work for class. Essentially there was no time to think about not going.

After a few months, I started to notice the benefits of regular attendance and that became an additional motivation to stick with the schedule. By summer my initial worries began to taper off, so then I started getting concerned about complacency. I bought a copy of Strength Training Past 50 and took extensive notes so I could redesign my workouts to be more comprehensive. Amanda’s workout plan had me doing a little cardio plus four strength training exercises per session, so I began adding additional strength training exercises while tracking my progress in a log so I could gradually increase my sets, my reps, and the weight load for each exercise.

Currently my plan consists of two different upper-body workouts with eight exercises each and a lower-body workout with nine exercises, and in each workout I also do about 40 minutes of cardio on an exercise bike logging 11 or 12 miles per session. For most exercises I do three sets of 20 reps and I’ve been gradually increasing the weight load for each of these. While there are still some days I wake up with less enthusiasm about getting to the gym, I always go because I always feel better when I finish. The key challenge these days is scheduling because the workouts now take two hours to complete.

There is no denying the health benefits that have resulted from this year. So far I’ve lost about 50 pounds, with another 10 to go before I reach my initial weight goal, and today I’m in much better physical shape than I’ve been in over 35 years. I no longer suffer from hangovers, or aches and pains, and I have more energy and less fatigue. My mind is clearer and better focused, and I feel more confident about approaching almost any task I wish to undertake. At the end of this year I’ll schedule a comprehensive physical evaluation from my doctor so I can see how I currently stand in terms of blood pressure, cholesterol levels and other indicators of potential health risk, and I have good reason to be optimistic.

So now I’m on to the second year. I’ve tried hard to adopt what we call a “lifestyle change,” and for that to be real and meaningful it has to be permanent. For the last year I’ve been acutely aware of the differences between what I do now and what I did during my first 58 years, and I think it will remain the case that most of my choices about diet and exercise going forward will have to be deliberate and conscious.

Was this “easy” to do? Not at the beginning, and sometimes maintaining it requires a kind of conscious discipline that I’m trying to transform into a more taken-for-granted habit so I can stop thinking about it, but I don’t know yet if that will happen. Was it worth doing? Absolutely. Should you do something similar? That’s a question only you can answer, but the starting point would likely be a self-assessment. How do you feel today? Do you have health issues for which a change in lifestyle could make a big difference? Would you like to know more so you can be informed about your options? I can assure you there is plenty of helpful information available.

The dominant culture, shaped largely by the most wealthy and powerful institutions, makes it far too easy to follow unhealthy pathways and even promotes these because it serves corporate bottom lines, including those of the wretched for-profit “health care” “industry.” Those are exactly the pathways I need to reject if I’m to live the way I wish to in the final years of my life. I have nothing but gratitude for the opportunity to gain some insight into these issues, and now that I’ve experienced how good things can be, I’m never going back.

Book Review: How Not to Diet by Michael Greger, M.D.

How Not to Diet by Michael Greger

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Last year the work of Dr. Michael Greger came to my attention as I was gradually moving toward a more plant-based diet and considering how I might solidify that commitment. Reading his first book "How Not to Die" (2015) proved to be a revelation. Supported by extensive research-based evidence, Greger walked the reader through 15 chapters covering the major chronic diseases and explaining the connection of each of these to diet. In chapter after chapter he reached the same conclusions: what he calls the Standard American Diet (SAD), heavy on animal products, sugar, fat, salt, and refined and processed production methods, contributed significantly to fostering these diseases in our bodies, while plant-based diets demonstrated effectiveness in preventing, mitigating, or even reversing them. The book concluded with several chapters detailing the benefits of what Greger called his "daily dozen," high-nutrient and beneficial foods, and he commended these to readers as the essential building blocks of any serious plan to move toward better health. I was convinced by the case Greger made and in January I moved decisively away from animal products and processed foods, shifting to a diet based on vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. The benefits were evident almost immediately. But there was more to learn.

In "How Not to Diet" (2019), Greger turns to one of the major consequences of the Standard American Diet, namely, its contribution to an explosion in obesity rates in the United States, most recently estimated at 41.9% of the population for the years 2017-2020. A major problem in its own right, obesity has been identified as a major risk factor in most of the serious chronic and deadly diseases that kill Americans at high rates. Not surprisingly, an entire weight-loss "industry" has accompanied this development, but how effective has it been? And are there better options?

Greger starts by taking us on a survey of the problem of obesity, clearly identifying the role that the oligopolistic food industry has played in promoting its profitable but extremely unhealthy products to Americans without regard for the health consequences. He then examines the various conventional approaches to weight loss, most of which have proven ineffective over the long term, including the more radical approaches like surgery. In the next section of the book, titled "Ingredients for the Ideal Weight-Loss Diet," Greger takes us through the key properties of foods that contribute to weight loss. These include such things as whether a given food is anti-inflammatory in nature, the extent of its fiber and water content, whether it contributes to a low or high glycemic load, the degree of its calorie density, how and why certain foods are experienced as satiating when we eat them, and other important factors. In the final and longest section of the book, titled "Weight-Loss Boosters," Greger provides an extensive evidence-based survey of techniques that have been demonstrated as effective in promoting weight loss over the long term. Here he covers everything from the role of exercise in weight loss (spoiler: it doesn't contribute much, but its other health benefits are highly significant so you should most definitely exercise as much as possible!) to topics I never previously encountered, such as adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase and how certain foods can activate this desirable enzyme. Not surprisingly, his findings support the conclusions reached in his previous book. A plant-based diet, supported by the application of some additional "tweaks" for those interested in weight loss, can lead to the permanent achievement of weight goals while also fostering good health.

While I would certainly recommend both of Greger's books, a reader who is more interested in effective weight loss strategies will be very well served by "How Not to Diet." At 570 pages, it's a long read, but it is well worth the time and effort for anyone who is serious about the issue.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Originally published 60 years ago, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August remains a compelling and masterfully written account of the first month of combat during World War I. Combining diplomatic, political, and military history into a well-paced narrative, Tuchman provides readers with a panoramic portrait of the war in its mobilization and early campaign phase, when it was still a "war of movement" and the principal combatants were seeking a fast, decisive victory sufficient to bring hostilities to a rapid end. Military leaders and planners who had been studying issues of strategy and socio-economic in the years leading up to the war had good reason to know the chances of a short war were slim. The more likely scenario in a world where large-scale mobilizations could be mounted within industrialized economies was a protracted, bloody conflict that would be enormously costly and socially disruptive. While those who were hopeful for a short war liked to point to the example of the six-month Franco-Prussian War, the more relevant example from the past was the American Civil War.

Tuchman takes readers along through the sequence of events as each nation involved in the first month of the war moves to a declaration, with their top government officials experiencing genuine hesitancy and reservations as the implications of their decisions close in. The early mobilizations and movement of soldiers followed carefully arranged plans decided long in advance of the war. Tuchman introduces us to the key generals, heads of state, cabinet officials, diplomatic figures, and other notable individuals as they swing into action during the first weeks of war. She gives extended treatment to the Battle of the Frontiers on the Western front and the Battle of Tannenberg on the Eastern front, with far less attention to the Battles of Cer and Galicia on the Austro-Hungarian front. The book concludes with the events immediately preceding the First Battle of the Marne (September 5-12), which stopped the German advances in the west and doomed all hopes of a short war. Both the Franch Plan XVII and the German Schlieffen–Moltke Plan were among the casualties of August 1914.

Along the way Tuchman provides fascinating accounts of the political and military thinking of the major players as they struggle (both internally and with each other) over decisions that might aid or harm the war effort. She is frank in her assessments of leaders like French Chief of Staff General Joseph Joffre (mostly favorable) and British Commander-in-Chief John French (mostly unfavorable), and her evaluations enhance the readability of the book even if you don't agree with her on any particular point.

While there has been a great deal of first-rate research and scholarship published about the First World War since The Guns of August, Tuchman's book is still a valuable work of history that will spark a reader's interest in learning more about one of the most significant events of the 20th century and beyond. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Johann Hari's first two books. Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections, focused respectively on drug addiction/prohibition and on the widespread phenomenon of depression/anxiety and problems evident in how we diagnose and treat it. In his third book, Stolen Focus, the issue he explores is our increasing difficulty in achieving the sustained focus and deep thinking we need to address both individual and social problems. As Hari notes, the most frequently cited source of the nonstop, detrimental distraction many of us experience daily is the pervasive networked technology that consumes so much of our time. But Hari's book probes the issue far beyond technology and argues the sources of distraction can be found in other crucial aspects of our presents forms of social organization.

Hari begins the book with an account of a personal attempt to disconnect from networked technology and distraction, describing a three-month sojourn he took to Provincetown, Massachusetts. During this personal retreat he experimented in living without a networked computer or phone while deliberately attempting to engage in activities that promoted focused attention and undisturbed thinking and reflection, such as reading novels and taking long walks. He recognizes the benefits that doing this brings, as his head clears and he finds his focus improving, but he also readily concedes that such an experiment is not something that can be done by many people on a large scale and in any case it wouldn't begin to address the modern social structures, institutions, and beliefs that have created and maintain the problem. The rest of the book attempts to identify these sources and potential ways to tackle them.

Following a pattern established in his previous books, Hari devotes substantial sections of Stolen Focus to interviews with experts in various subject areas and the findings of scientific research related to the issues he covers. These topics include the specific processes of distraction (called "switching," in which our attention shifts to a different object, and the substantial time and effort required to refocus back on one's original task); the various ways networked technologies are deliberately designed to maintain our attention through an onslaught of images and messages, and the continuous surveillance these technologies also impose to refine corporations' profitable goal of keeping us glued to screens; the sharp decline of sustained and recreational reading, particularly of fiction, and the negative impacts following from this; the beneficial effects of "mind-wandering" and the misinformed ways in which this activity is denigrated in our culture; and the impacts of stress, poor diets, pollution, the sharp curtailment of children's freedom to play on their own for lengthy periods of time; and the explosion of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and the ill-advised use of drugs to address it. Hari is scrupulous in identifying areas where there are disagreements within the scientific community about these issues, but the overall case he makes is compelling.

And what is Hari's argument? In the course of his three books, despite their ostensibly different subject matter, Hari has been carefully documenting and describing different aspects of a single phenomenon: the devastating human toll taken by late capitalism in its neoliberal phase. The social maladies of drug addiction, depression, anxiety, and a crippling inability to focus our attention in a world saturated by profit-driven "surveillance capitalism" (as he calls it here) are all symptomatic of the adverse impact of an institutional order utterly out of sync with well-established human propensities that evolved over thousands of years. How we grow, how we learn, our relationships with nature and with each other, the importance of our intrinsic interests to our health and well-being, the way we prefer to allocate time, our desire for social connection rather than alienation - all of these things are under siege in a capitalist order that is driven by an impossible, unsustainable drive for endless economic growth and the intensified subordination of real human needs to the needs of profit.

In each of his books, Hari has increasingly devoted more analysis and space to the need for organized social movements to challenge the prerogatives of this system. As he notes in chapter seven, the typical advice we get when we seek to combat distraction is to seek individual solutions, which Hari characterizes as "cruel optimism" both because such solutions often demand material resources not available to working class people and because it is cruel to insist that social problems can only be met with individual solutions when this is false. In his concluding chapter, "Attention Rebellion," Hari makes one of his strongest argument yet that only large-scale social movements can address the challenges we face today. The process of organizing is itself part of the healing process that can help people win back the attention and focus we all need to meet the issue of climate change and restore a world better attuned to our real needs as human beings.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari (2015)

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Johann Hari's first book offers a critical examination of the harmful results of a century of drug prohibition laws and advocates for an end to prohibition as an essential step in moving toward better approaches to the problem of drug addiction. Based on extensive research and interviews with numerous drug experts and many individuals who have suffered from the regime of drug prohibition - including drug dealers, addicts, law enforcement officers, and many others - Hari makes a strong and compelling case for abolishing prohibition and redefining drug addiction as a health problem that most often results from other problems in the lives of individuals who become addicts.

Hari begins his account with an examination of the career of Harry J. Anslinger (1892-1975), a mostly forgotten figure who played a key role in forging the nationwide architecture of the drug war through his position as Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from its founding in 1930 until his mandatory retirement at age 70 in 1962. The title of Hari's book, "Chasing the Scream," is derived from a traumatic episode Anslinger experienced as a child when he heard the wife of a neighbor in rural Pennsylvania screaming in agony because she was in the throes of narcotic withdrawal. Her husband dispatched young Harry to procure her drugs from the local pharmacist, and by Anslinger's account he remained haunted by those screams for many years.

As a crusader against drugs, Anslinger exhibited several highly problematic tendencies, including a pronounced racist inclination to associate drugs with non-white minorities, a contemptuous disregard for the findings of scientific and medical research into the effects of specific drugs, and an insistence on promoting widespread moral panic over often-fabricated claims about the effects of drugs like marijuana without a shred of evidence to back him up. Manipulating and exploiting public fear over drugs did wonders for the budget of Anslinger's agency, but it also created massive and widespread harm. How?

In the early years of the Bureau Anslinger had every reason to know the likely consequences of drug prohibition because the country had just experienced over a decade of failure in its attempt to wipe out alcohol consumption with the ill-advised 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Not only did alcohol prohibition fail in its goal of eliminating alcohol consumption, but its enactment also resulted in the rise of large-scale organized crime involved in bootlegging and the profits to be had from supplying alcohol. These criminal syndicates were created and sustained precisely because alcohol was prohibited, and the profits bootlegging gangsters could make from their operations were also sufficient to corrupt public officials in city after city. It took the repeal of prohibition - and the elimination of those profits - to curtail this crime wave. As Hari notes, drug prohibition quickly generated its own criminal organizations to reinstate supply and distribution. He details the career of Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928), an established career criminal who quickly seized upon the potential for large profits in the illegal drug trade in its early years. Rothstein was gunned down at age 46 over a disputed gambling debt, but in his wake arose criminal drug organizations on a global scale.

Hari carefully explains how the "logic" of a drug trade in the hands of criminal organizations tends to produce a multiplicity of harmful effects to both individuals and society at large. Those who traffic in illegal substances tend to focus on the most potent (and therefore harmful) of products, as the risks, costs, and profits involved discourage trafficking in more mild versions of drugs. At the same time, however, the distribution process of drugs like cocaine and heroin typically entails diluting or "cutting" them with cheaper substances like baking soda, starch, talcum powder, powdered milk, laundry detergent, laxatives, and other things that can be extremely harmful when ingested or injected, especially over long periods of time. To maintain their control of drug traffic, criminal gangs also engage in the frequent and large-scale use of violence, intimidation, and corruption. Hari uses the example of Los Zetas, one the major drug cartels in Mexico, to illustrate this process.

Among the most sobering sections of the book are those in which Hari interviews highly dedicated law-enforcement officials who spent years as zealous soldiers prosecuting the drug war, only to conclude that it is a futile, hopeless endeavor that produces only misery, suffering, and death. No major arrest and prosecution of a drug organization has any impact other than to set off a new wave of killings as would-be successors battle over who will take over the territory freed up by the arrests. A growing number of law enforcement personnel have concluded the only way to reduce or eliminate drug-related crime is to end the drug war by decriminalizing/legalizing drugs and subjecting them to the same regulations and taxation as now exist for tobacco and alcohol.

Hari agrees that drug addiction is an individual and social problem, but to reduce addiction it is first necessary to treat it as a health problem rather than treating drug addicts as immoral social pariahs. Hari illustrates how drug policies can change toward more effective solutions to the problem of addiction using some different examples. He chronicles the efforts of drug addicts in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood in Vancouver to organize and demand dignity from the local government. Their persistence eventually convinced a conservative mayor to move away from ineffective drug war policies to a more humane policy of support and treatment, and the latter proved highly successful in reducing crime, drug deaths, and addiction levels. He then examines the cases of Portugal and Switzerland, both of which abandoned the drug war in favor of treating addition as a health problem, with similar beneficial results.

Are these, as Hari suggests, really the "last days" of the war on drugs? In the United States, all but 13 states have now legalized marijuana for either recreational or medical use, although the federal laws against cannabis remain in place and there has been little movement toward the decriminalization of other illegal drugs. Hari has provided a grim account of what the drug war has cost in terms of ruined lives and communities, including a great many innocent bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Harry Anslinger's policy of demonizing drugs as evil, and by extension everyone who consumes them, has produced a global framework of crime, corruption, violence, repression, and misery that has taken an enormous toll on human lives while doing nothing to reduce drug traffic or addiction. If we're going to dismantle this rotten edifice, we're going to need a different perspective. Hari's book offers us many paths out of the drug war’s quagmire. Let's take them.


View all my reviews

Book Review: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At the conclusion of this powerful and insightful book, writer Johann Hari states "depression is to a significant degree a collective problem caused by something that's gone wrong in our culture," and in the previous 259 pages he makes a compelling case for why this is so. The argument will be of interest to any of the very large and growing number of people who are dealing with depression and anxiety, either in the our lives or in the case of friends and loved ones. Hari spends the first part of the book critically examining current medical and cultural thought on the sources of depression and its treatment, most of which focuses on allegedly "chemical" imbalances in the brain and other biological issues that are typically reduced to the status of an individual problem. In each of these introductory chapters he consults a wide range of experts from around the globe and cites numerous scientific studies that call these perspectives into serious question, and he notes along the way the pernicious influence of a pharmaceutical industry that has profited enormously from the now-conventional view. Aided by his experts, Hari formulates the broad theme that many of the sources of depression and anxiety stem from social problems - alienated labor and meaningless work, junk values promoted in capitalist societies that emphasize a focus on the self and on consumerism as the path to happiness, repressed childhood trauma, alienation from nature, modern systems of social hierarchy that degrade people and relegate them to a status in which dignity and respect are scarce, and a loss of much-needed community ties. As Hari puts it, the cumulative impact of these "lost connections" has had a devastating impact on the health and well-being of individuals, resulting in depression and anxiety that cannot be addressed by drugs. When the diagnosis is wrong, the treatment will be problematic at best. In the second half of the book, Hari points to another group of experts and numerous studies and techniques illustrating how efforts to re-establish connectedness has yielded enormous benefits in reducing the suffering by directly addressing the social sources of depression. Hari's argument is challenging, but the evidence he presents should be taken very seriously by anyone who honestly cares about the problem of depression. Social problems don't have individual (or pharmaceutical) solutions, and to address the problems generated by the social order of late capitalism we need to work together to effect major social changes. Doing so will benefit us all.

View all my reviews

Keepin' On

Haven't posted in a while, but progress continues, even though it goes in fits and starts. I've made some headway on all but one of my goals (the Python training), but even that one can be initiated shortly. If anything, I need the discipline of an ordered and self-directed routine more than ever because of what it promises in terms of mental and spiritual peace. I'm struggling to emerge from a five-month period of almost relentless inner turmoil for which there is no easy solution. But staying on track has been helpful and to the extent I can mark daily progress there is a gradual restoration of calm.

Much to do this evening, so must sign off for now. 2,282 days remaining before the big change. Stay focused!