I bought a 2004 Toyota Prius this week.
I call it “future car” because it starts not by turning a key,
but pressing the “on” button. Despite being nearly 10 years old,
this impressively engineered vehicle doubles the gas mileage of most
other new cars. Looking at how it's designed, it's almost
impossible not to be impressed at the sophistication – a testament
to the complexity of the human brain.
But what does it say about us that the
very same brain that we all admire for creating a car like the Prius is
also responsible for the catastrophic problem of
global warming to begin with? And why is it harder for us to praise
the simplicity of an act like walking to work than it is to marvel at the invention of
something that, despite improvements, still spits out greenhouse
gases?
Because, look, if some mysterious higher power were to evaluate the status of our planet and find the element most likely to cause its demise, the human brain would be at the very top of the list. In fact, it would probably be the only thing on the list. And after everything that I have gone through over the past two years and counting, I feel pretty secure in saying that our brains are both fantastically sophisticated and horribly designed to live the way we do.
Consider that for hundreds of thousands
of years, humans lived and evolved in small social groups of hunter
gatherers. Over this time, our brain's ability to recognize and
respond emotionally to familiar faces became increasingly
sophisticated and helped us forge the necessary bonds for survival.
To protect us from outside threats, that same sophistication led to equally strong reactions to
unfamiliar faces.
And while that was great for us in small tribal groups, it had some horrible consequences in the last few hundred years when our population and range expanded - slavery, war, genocide...sports. In
fact, I would argue the amygdala and its primal power within
our reactive minds is now far more destructive than helpful.
That's not nearly the only flaw in the
human brain either. A friend of mine on Facebook posted the youtube clip below
that provides a biological explanation for the universal human trait
of marriage.
So that's how we safeguard the brain while it matures - marriage? Not
exactly a fool-proof device. Throw in an alcoholic parent, an
impoverished couple, or a sexually abusive relationship and the same
system required for healthy brain development turns the mind to a
dangerous weapon of self-destruction and/or a threat to others. It
can also lead to an unacceptable amount of suffering.
All of this and my current experience
suffering from benzodiazepine withdrawal shapes one of my primary
views of mental health – that our brains aren't as elegant as we think they are. It also
makes me more convinced in the biological underpinnings of mental
health problems and leads me to the opinion that our current mainstream approach to treating
them is, so far, wholly inadequate and primitive.
It also puts me in a strange place in
the current debate over psychiatric medication. My sympathies now strongly lean toward the anti-psych medication arm of the
discussion but I'm perversely put off by that same crowd's insistence
that mental health disorders are not problems of biology. I
understand what drives their passion – mental health experts and
pharmaceutical companies performed a heinous human crime insisting
on a simplistic theory of chemical imbalance to justify the need for
medications like SSRIs and benzodiazepines.
But as many researchers have pointed
out, that shouldn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
All human behavior is biology and all human behavioral problems are
also biological. When I say “biological” I don't mean just our
genetic makeup or anything that is a set-in-stone trait. Any true
definition of the word encompasses the fact that genes can't be separated from
their environment. Much of our DNA are just complicated instructions
our body has for how to react to life's events. And how we react to
life's events, as much as we insist differently, is not ever entirely
within our control.
This belief comes from my own direct
experience. The way I have felt and reacted to events put in front of
me over the past 19 months is so far afield from how I wanted to
react and how I knew I should feel that I either conclude that I'm
suddenly astonishingly inept at basic human functioning or that changes in the biology of my brain was so much more
profound than the 42 years of life coping skills I developed prior to getting off xanax. I'm
just going to go with the latter on that.
We have simultaneously overrated and understudied this bloated pink contraption running the show.
So what I need from readers of this
blog as I start writing about my thoughts on benzodiazepine
withdrawal, the brain, and the horrific gap between knowledge of
withdrawal and the depth of suffering it creates is to accept the
view of the brain as a potential loaded weapon. The disruption that
causes the weapon to do harm can just as easily be a traumatic life
event as a pharmaceutical drug because both effect brain chemistry.
Accepting this premise shouldn't make
us de-facto proponents or opponents of medication. Rather, it should
light a fire under our respective asses to put far more resources
into understanding brain function and environmental influences than
in creating drugs to treat the maladies we so poorly
understand.
Because I'm pretty sure that knowledge
is going to result in a collective gasp of horror at how crude our
current pharmacological approach has been.
