In my quest for better mental health over the past 57 years I have tried talk therapy, Reichian Therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, group therapy, deep dives into Alcoholics Anonymous, and at least a dozen psychotropic medications. This is not to mention almost every street drug and scotch whiskey I could get my hands on. I have tried dealing with mental illness through marriage, divorce, celibacy, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, and workaholism.
I am now down to the last drug (vilazodone) since I was prescribed Prozac after having a terrible panic attack in 2000. And you know what? I feel better than I have felt in forty years, or longer. I feel clear headed and calm. I feel peace, balance, and harmony. I don’t feel the need to do more than is necessary, nor less than necessary. I feel at peace. I guess I could say I am experiencing a degree of serenity greater than an any point past my first year of sobriety, 37 years ago. I guess I could say that the 12 promises of AA are finally presenting themselves in my life.
Occam’s Razor is a philosophical tool that urges the fewest explanations as possible to a problem – the razor is used to pare away extraneous proposed causes and solutions. The way I understand it: in the scientific method it is better to test a hypothesis and replicate a finding with the fewest variables. Thus, my quest to find the perfect mix of chemistry and therapies to alleviate my mental illness was doomed to failure from unavoidable complexity.
I can’t seem to find a simpler explanation of my current healthy state of mind that goes beyond LIVE IN THE NOW AND LEAVE IT IN THE NOW. This is harder than it sounds. It is difficult to live without fear, regret, remorse, all of which reside in the future or the past in our minds. Physicists still cannot explain what the “now” is, nor can they say why everything doesn’t just happen at once (although I think dark energy and dark matter have something to do with it.)
At my stage in development, life, honesty, and living in the now seem to be the only things that are required to be a happy cosmic citizen: Live in the now, enjoy what is happening now, don’t struggle with what is happening, don’t drag my illusions of the past or future into the now, and bring as much help and joy to those I come across in the now. It truly is more blessed to give than to receive, meaning that it feels better (happier) to give than to take. In fact, I think the best way to live in the now is to give as much and as often as possible, to be generous and not stingy. Even if it is just giving a smile to a stranger, it brightens the entire local universe when I do. And this is especially true in giving to myself. I have the power to bring darkness or light into my life, and that is a hell of a lot of power to have over someone I am supposed to love and take care of, namely myself. Medications and therapy won’t do it by themselves. Only I can do that in the sacred now. I say “sacred” because I am convinced that the higher power of the universe manifests itself in living things in the now.
An even simpler explanation for my improved mental health involves another physics metaphor: the gyroscope. I’m not certain that I want to talk about my childhood and how traumatic parts of it were, so I will just say that I went 55 years with undiagnosed PTSD even though I had all the classic symptoms, including violent dreams, flashbacks, and hyper vigilance, and uncontrollable mood swings. We are, I believe, born perfect with a perfectly balanced psychic gyroscope. And when the gyroscope is knocked off its balance it takes a long time to recover. It takes time for the universe to absorb the force of the trauma, but it does eventually.
My sudden mental health might be simply the experience of a better balanced gyroscope as experienced by my relatively sudden cessation of psychotropic drugs. I could have been getting better all along simply by continuing to survive as well as dealing more maturely with life’s unavoidable slings and arrows. But the medications may have masked my improvement. That is a hard thing to admit for someone who had near total faith in psychology, psychiatry, and psychotropic medication.
I think that the oldest and simplest solutions are the best for finding and maintaining good mental health: live in peace with the universe as it is now, utilizing all the best solutions passed down from wise and good people from all races, cultures, scientific disciplines, and religions. As an old friend (whom I met only once) told me, there are many roads home.
As to how this involves photography. I will continue to use it to anchor myself in the present, to study and appreciate all the beauty that happens no when else and everywhere else. I want to take photos that take my breath away at how magnificent that moment and place was and grow dizzy with wonder at the infinity of beautiful points in time-space that are happening right now.