What does the Morphic Resonance theory of Rupert Sheldrake
have to say about why people are taking longer to heal from psychotropic drug
damage, and what can be done to accelerate healing?
I tapered off of SSRI antidepressants from the end of 2003
to the middle of 2005. I couldn’t go
any faster that that because I had severe muscle contractions every time I went
down in dose. I thought that, after my
last dose, I could look forward to slowly recovering from the grueling taper,
and, indeed, I felt better for about a month.
Then, I started to have physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms I
had *never* had before. It seemed like
it must have to do with the medications, but how was that possible?
I Googled and discovered that there were people who had a
post-taper syndrome after discontinuing antidepressants. I had all the symptoms. In 2005, the post-taper syndrome was lasting
people somewhere from a few months to two years, with 1.5 years being the
median. I joined an excellent support
forum http://www.paxilprogress.org/forums/
and decided I would steadily heal and be completely back to normal in 1.5
years.
It is now over seven years since my last dose, and I am
still very ill. I became progressively
worse for the first 1.5 years, then got better, then got worse again, then have
slowly – excruciatingly slowly, and still with setbacks – improved since the
beginning of 2009.
In the meantime, I have watched as more and more people on
the various online support forums take longer and longer to recover. Why is this? We don’t know, because no research is being done on this
question, even though the number of people taking this class of medication is
skyrocketing all over the world.
There are many possible reasons for the lengthening duration
of the recovery process. For example,
people have now been on meds in this class for longer (Prozac was introduced in
1987, Paxil in 1992); people are now more likely to have taken more than one
psychotropic drug; the overall environmental toxic load has increased; the
specific toxic load of these drugs and their breakdown products in the
environment has increased.
Is it possible that Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic
resonance might shed some light on why people are taking longer to recover from
the same toxic exposure? And, if so,
can the theory also give us some ideas about how to aid recovery?
The theory of morphic
resonance
Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of many
books, including the most recent “The
Science delusion: Freeing the spirit of
enquiry” and the 1988 classic “Presence of the past: Morphic resonance and the habits of nature.” His theory of morphic resonance proposes
that everything in the world comes into its form due to the influence of a
field that has been created by its predecessors. This applies to atoms, cells, organs, plants, animals, human
cultures, crystals – anything formed in the world.
“Morphic fields are shaped by morphic resonance from all
similar past systems, and thus contain a cumulative collective memory. Morphic resonance depends on similarity and
is not attenuated by distance in space and time. Morphic fields are local,
within and around the systems they organise, but morphic resonance is
non-local” (Sheldrake, 2012, p. 100).
This theory is rooted in the work of early 20th
century biologists who came before Sheldrake, but he added the idea that “the
structure of these fields is not determined by either transcendent Ideas or
timeless mathematical formulae, but rather results from the actual forms of
previous similar organisms” (Sheldrake, 1988, p. 108). For example, every growing crystal of
copper sulfate resonates with previous crystals of copper sulfate. Every oak sapling is shaped by the
collective field created by previous oaks (Sheldrake, 2012, p. 99).
The morphic resonance theory also supplements the gene
theory in crucial ways. Genes, alone,
cannot predict how an embryo will develop, nor can they predict what form a
protein will take (Sheldrake, 2012, pp. 142-5).
One of the fascinating aspects of this theory is that it may
explain some mysteries such as why human IQ scores are going up over time, and
why, when rats learn a new trick in one lab, rats become able to learn that
same trick faster at a lab in another country, even if there has been no
contact nor genetic inheritance between the two groups. There is some research evidence to suggest
that when one member of a species learns something s/he contributes that
learning to the collective memory or morphic field of the species, making it
easier for future members of that species to learn the same thing, or even for
some members to just know the new information without having to learn it
(Sheldrake, 2012, pp. 207-9).
If we look only at this aspect of the theory, it would seem
that people should be recovering from SSRIs faster. There may be a subset of the population for whom this is true,
but in the three online support forum communities I’m familiar with, this does
not seem to be the trend. What else can
we borrow from the morphic resonance theory to account for this?
What Sheldrake has said about
repairing physical damage, particularly neurological damage
We know that the human body in general and the nervous
system in particular have a substantial ability to heal and regenerate
themselves. SSRI antidepressants cause
pervasive, subtle, neuro-endocrinological damage, but, due to neuroplasticity,
people do heal once the offending toxin is removed. New neurons, receptors, and synapses are made, and neurochemical
levels are adjusted. People who go
through SSRI exposure and recovery find they first lose and then regain
physical, cognitive, and emotional functioning. Some of this return to original condition might be accounted for
by morphic resonance.
According to Sheldrake, individuals self-resonate to their
own past patterns of form and function.
“All organisms are dynamic structures that are continuously recreating
themselves under the influence of their own past states” (Sheldrake,1988, pp.
132-3). This is essential to an
individual’s continuity and memory, and goes some way toward explaining how we
perpetuate both illness and identity, despite the fact that almost every cell
in our body is continuously replaced.
Living beings at all stages of development, from embryonic
to adult, have a great capacity to re-direct their development toward the
original target, despite environmental interference. “The main reason that developmental biologists proposed the idea
of morphogenetic fields in the first place was because organisms can retain
their wholeness and recover their form even if parts of them are damaged or
removed. The field in some sense
contains the form or pattern of the entire morphic unit, and it attracts the
developing or regenerating system towards it” (Sheldrake, 1988, p. 317).
This capacity to regain one’s sense of self and many
functions can be seen in many cases of neurological damage. “After damage to parts of the brain, these
[morphic] fields may be capable of organizing the nerve cells in other regions
to carry out the same functions as before.
The ability of learned habits to survive substantial brain damage may be
due to the self-organizing properties of the fields – properties which are
expressed in the realm of morphogenesis in regeneration and embryonic
regulation” (Sheldrake, 1988, p.168).
These aspects of the morphic resonance theory account for
the fact that people do heal from SSRI-induced neuro-endocrinological damage,
but do not, at first blush, seem to account for why recovery from the same
toxin might be taking people longer.
Let us now bring to bear other aspects of the morphic resonance theory
to generate several hypotheses for this puzzling phenomenon.
Hypotheses
I. The need to wait a generation or more
Perhaps the simplest hypothesis is that we have to wait for
a generation or two to pass before we see the benefits of inherited
learning. Prozac was introduced in
1987, and the other drugs in this class came after that, and the really large
numbers of people taking the drugs didn’t start until the mid-90’s, so we are
still only in the first generation.
II. There’s something different about neurological damage
The second set of hypotheses is grouped around the main idea
that there is something different about neurological damage / recovery, or
something different about this particular form of neuro damage / recovery.
The nervous system is far more complex in design than any
other part of the body. And it can
learn and change far more than any other part of the body. Neurological healing is still the least
understood healing process.
The brain is very dynamic, responsive,and changeable
(Sheldrake, 1988, pp.166-7). It may be
that this responsiveness to changing conditions depends on what appears to be an
element of randomness, with ongoing fluctuations in electrical potential across
the cortex (Sheldrake, 1988, p. 120,
wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation).
Is the nervous system more stochastic than other biological systems?
Interestingly, Sheldrake proposes that morphic fields are
similarly probabilistic and not deterministic.
They do not absolutely control the development of forms. They are a composite of previous similar
forms, and they provide a guiding template for new forms, but there is still
individual variation (Sheldrake, 1988, pp. 119-20).
Furthermore, the particular form of neurological injury we
are looking at, caused by SSRIs, seems to entail dysautonomia or dysregulation
of the autonomic nervous system. (I
wonder if most neurological injury and many chronic illnesses have an element
of dysautonomia.) Dysautonomia makes
the nervous system even more sensitive, reactive, and possible stochastic.
Therefore, the nature of the nervous system, morphic fields,
and dysautonomia may conspire to make it harder for recovering individuals to
self-resonate to the morphic field of their nervous system as it was before
they were exposed to the medications.
Sheldrake notes the intriguing relationship between brain
damage and morphic fields when he points to the mysterious way that injured
people can often regain lost abilities despite permanent damage to certain
parts of the brain. Essentially, a new part of the brain becomes able to tune
into the old morphic field. This would
be an example of self-resonance via regeneration (Sheldrake, 1988, p.
218). Of course, this re-acquisition of
lost abilities does not always happen, and we don’t yet know why it sometimes
does and sometimes doesn’t. In the case
of SSRI-induced neurological damage, full recovery is very likely, although dysautonomia
may make it take a long time. The
question is why self-resonance seems to be taking even longer to achieve than
before.
Dysautonomia existed long before SSRIs. Is there something about SSRI-induced
dysautonomia that’s different? Is there
something about SSRI-induced dysautonomia that is changing over time? For one thing, contrary to the old
generalizations about brain damage recovery, with this syndrome, functioning
does not come back rapidly in the first six months and then cease improving after
a couple of years. On the contrary, the
regaining of functioning may not even start for a couple of years, and then
appears to go on indefinitely after that.
Other questions in this group would be: Are people healing from non-neurological
diseases faster over time? Are people
healing from other forms of neurological disorder faster over time?
III. There’s something different about these
toxins
The third set of hypotheses groups around the main idea that
there is something different about this particular class of toxin.
The SSRIs – Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc. – and the SNRIs –
Effexor, Cymbalta, etc. – are new human-made molecules. Now that they exist, there is a morphic
field for each of them, and perhaps an over-arching morphic field for these
closely-related, similarly-acting molecules.
According to Sheldrake:
“The appearance of a new kind of field involves a creative jump or
synthesis. A new morphic attractor [the
form that is the goal of that field] comes into being, and with it a new
pattern of relationships and connections.
Consider a new molecule, for example, or a new kind of instinct or a new
theory” (Sheldrake, 1988, p. 321).
Is there something about the morphic fields of these new
molecules – perhaps especially those of Effexor and Paxil which are notoriously
hard to withdraw from – that is more indomitable? Does such putative dominance have to do with them being
artificial forms that did not arise slowly on this planet? Is it something about their chemical
structure?
Anecdotally, many people in recovery from SSRIs seem to have
the experience of trying some kind of therapy to help with the
neuro-endocrinological symptoms, and often it will work well initially, but
only briefly, and then it stops having any impact. It *feels* as though the field of the medications overwhelms any
other therapy’s field.
Are some morphic fields more compelling than others? Something Sheldrake wrote about top down v.
bottom up creation of new fields may pertain here. I’m not sure if I’m understanding correctly, but I think he is
saying that some new fields emerge in the more Darwinian evolutionary way
of “ever more complex forms at higher
levels of organization” (bottom up), while others emerge more rapidly, often in
response to human activity, when a higher-order morphic field produces “within
itself a new lower-level field” (top down).
Sheldrake believes that these two processes are interactive (Sheldrake,
1988, pp. 180, 321-2).
There may be something more compelling about a human-created
substance and morphic field, or about these potent chemical compounds / morphic
fields in particular, but, again, these theories don’t account for why recovery
from these agents appears to be taking more time than it did when the
medications and their morphic fields were first created a few years ago.
IV. There’s something about the size of the morphic field of people
on SSRIs
The fourth set of hypotheses is grouped around the main idea
that the vast size of the population currently taking this class of medication
is causing an effect on ex-users.
a. The morphic field of people on the drugs has more and more
members.
The number of people taking these medications is
increasing. This is one thing that has
definitely changed since the medications were introduced. There is a morphic field being created by
people who are *on* these drugs. This
morphic field may be getting stronger.
It may be influencing the people who have been on the medications, are
now off them, but still might self-resonate to their own past state of being on
the meds.
Are people in recovery resonating too much to their recent
past state under the influence of the drug, and not enough to their more
distant past state-of-being prior to exposure to the drug? Interestingly, many people in recovery
report the experience of two selves fighting for supremacy within them. I, myself, had never felt this before in 40
years of life, but have felt is many times during recovery from the
antidepressants. It feels like there is
a self that is normal and familiar struggling with a self that is riddled with
alien withdrawal symptoms.
The colossal number of humans taking these drugs could be
generating a morphic field of the human-brain-while-on-these-drugs. Or, you could say that the morphic field of
the human species has been altered because so many members are taking these
drugs.
Sheldrake has written that abnormality can begin to dominate
a morphic field. “If fruit flies
develop abnormally under abnormal conditions, then the more the abnormality
occurs, the more likely it will be to happen again under the same conditions,
through cumulative morphic resonance” (Sheldrake, 2012, p. 180). Now, he is talking here about
intergenerational morphogenetic fields, but it raises the possibility of something
similar happening over time within a generation.
Could the morphic field of people on the drugs be entraining
ex-users to itself?
b. The Maharishi Effect
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a spiritual leader who developed
and popularized a mantra-based form of meditation called Transcendental
Meditation. He originally predicted
that if 1% of a population practiced this meditation method, it would have a
measurable, positive impact on the whole population. Later, he developed an augmented training program, and it was
predicted that only the square root of 1 % of a population would need to
practice this method in order to show a benefit to the whole population. There have been numerous studies around the
world that suggest that even such a small percentage of a local population,
practicing the meditation method, has had a statistically significant effect on
quality-of-life measures such as crime rate and car accidents (Wiki).
What percentage of the population is now taking
antidepressants?
In Oct 2011, the C.D.C. reported that from 1998 to 2008,
U.S. antidepressant prescriptions rose 400 %, and more than 1 in 10 Americans
over age 12 were taking an antidepressant (healthland.time.com). That is not a typo – yes, 400 %.
In 2010, there were 3.5 million antidepressant prescriptions
written in Wales, where antidepressant use had risen 71 % over the previous
eight years. In 2010, there were 4.3
million prescriptions in Scotland, an increase of 43 % over the previous eight
years. And, in 2009, there were 39.1
million prescriptions in England, an increase of 61% over the previous eight
years (the population of England was 52.5 million then)
(mentalhealthy.co.uk). In 2011, 46.7
million antidepressant prescriptions were written in England, a 9.1 % increase
over 2010 (ic.nhs.uk).
Worldwide sales of antidepressants reached $20.3 billion in
2008 (bloomberg.com). In 2007, the Eli
Lilly website stated that Prozac had been prescribed for more than 54 million
people in 90 countries" (thedailybeast.com, fasebj.org). The world population in 2007 was about 6,625,000
(prb.org).
You can see that the numbers are big and increasing
rapidly. It’s easier to get numbers of
prescriptions than numbers of actual people taking the drugs, but in 2008, the
U.S. government found that roughly 10% of Americans over age 12 were taking an
antidepressant (healthland.time.com), and in September 2011, the government of
Scotland estimated that 11.3% of Scots over age 15 were taking an
antidepressant (bbc.co.uk).
According to the Maharishi Effect theory, you only need the
square root of 1% of a population to be meditating in a certain way to have an
influence on the whole population. What
happens to the whole population when 10% are taking the same type of powerful
medication? Does that 10% have an even
stronger influence on people who have previously ingested the same medication,
even though they are now off it?
c. The Rensselaer study
A 2011 study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute used
computational models to discover the tipping point at which a minority belief
is adopted by the majority of a population.
Despite experimenting with several different social network models, they
repeatedly found that the magic number was approximately 10%. Once 10% of a population holds an unshakable
belief, that belief will spread rapidly through the rest of the population
(phys.org, thanks to nhne-pulse.org for the find).
While the Maharishi Effect suggests that the square root of
1% can have some sort of influence on a population, the Rensselaer study
suggests that 10% can have a very direct, almost imprinting effect on a
population (personal communication, Chris Bache, 12 Aug 11).
It’s also worth noting that, not only are 10 % of Americans
consuming antidepressants, but more than 10 % of Americans are convinced of the
safety and efficacy of antidepressants, and of the validity of the serotonin
model of depression despite compelling evidence to the contrary. (Sheldrake,
2012, pp. 271-2; wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_an_Epidemic). So, there may be morphic resonance not only
from the direct biochemical and epigenetic effects of the drugs, but from the
beliefs about them.
People in recovery from this class of drugs are often
hypersensitive to reinstatement of any of these meds, even at extremely low
doses. Re-exposure to the drugs causes
an exacerbation of the neuro-endocrinological damage symptoms, including
dyautonomic chaos. Might these people
be similarly hypersensitive to the morphic field of an enormous number of
people on this class of drugs? For some
reason, it is phenomenally hard for us to restabilize and become as robust and
resilient as many of us were before we took the meds. And, for some reason, it is getting harder, not easier.
d. The placebo effect is increasing
Before we sink too far into the slough of despond over this
situation, let us look at another trend which might counterbalance the
above-mentioned pathogenic morphic fields.
The placebo effect appears to be getting stronger over time.
In an excellent 2009 article for wired.com, journalist Steve
Silberman reported on Big Pharma’s scramble to cope with the recent, mystifying
increase in placebo effect, particularly in relation to psychotropic
medication, and how this is undermining their ability to turn a profit. Wrote Silberman, “Two comprehensive analyses
of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response
since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of
statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time”
(Silberman, wired.com, 2009).
Silberman reviewed a couple of factors that may be
contributing to the global rise of the placebo effect: 1)
since 1997, Americans have been bombarded by direct-to-consumer medication
advertising, which has practically brainwashed us to believe in meds; and 2) in
new drug trials conducted in developing or low infrastructure countries,
participants are responding as much to the lavish care they get in the drug
trial as they are to the med itself (Silberman, wired.com, 2009).
However, no one thinks we fully understand this new
phenomenon yet. In fact, as of Spring
2009, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. has
begun a massive data-gathering effort called the Placebo Response Drug Trials
Survey, reviewing decades of trial studies. It is funded by "Merck, Lilly,
Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson,
and other major firms....In typically secretive industry fashion, the existence
of the project itself is being kept under wraps. FNIH staffers are willing to
talk about it only anonymously, concerned about offending the companies paying
for it" (Silberman, wired.com, 2009).
What if the worldwide, but especially American, increase in
placebo response is due to a change in a morphic field? We know the placebo response is due, at
least some of the time, to expectations.
If you expect a treatment to work -- and the expectation might be
conscious or unconscious -- it is more likely to work. Having said that, we don’t actually know how
the mechanism of expectation works. For
all we know, the expectation of healing may be what links you to the correct
morphic field for your healing.
And, it’s not at all clear that expectation is the only
mechanism driving the placebo response, nor accounting for the recent rise in
the placebo response. What if the
placebo response is increasing because the placebo morphic field is increasing
in potency? And might the increasing
potency of an hypothesized placebo morphic field be partly a response to the
threat posed by the increasingly potent new pathogenic fields such as the
human-body-on-antidepressants?
According to Sheldrake, morphic fields are always changing,
they are inherently creative, and, as with evolution in general, they are
adaptive and purposeful. As such, they
could be said to be ultimately biased toward viability, vigor, and élan
vital! Earlier, we touched on the
possible role of morphic fields in repairing physical damage in general and
neurological damage in particular. What
we’re emphasizing now is how creative and innovative morphic fields may be.
There are many examples of this, in both biological and
non-biological systems. Sheldrake gives
the example of how a newt embryo that has been damaged can still create the
needed organs from alternative cells (Sheldrake, 1988, pp. 317-8). And he gives a couple of astonishing
examples of how new human-made chemical compounds have spontaneously changed
over the decades. They may change the
point at which they liquify, or they may start crystalizing in a new form that
has very different properties. And this
happens in a way that humans can’t predict or control (Sheldrake, 2012,
pp.101-3). (Could such a spontaneous
change have occurred to any of the antidepressant molecules?)
Sheldrake proposes that these examples demonstrate that
fields are historical and evolutionary – always changing. And the way they’re changing is creative and
adaptive: “Morphic fields appear to
have an inherent creativity, which is recognizable precisely because the new pathways
of development or behaviour often seem so adaptive and purposeful” (Sheldrake,
1988, p. 319). Often, as in the case of
the newt embryo, it’s clear that the creativity is directed at repair: “In all processes of regulation and
regeneration, the developmental process adjusts in such a way that a more or
less normal structure of activity is regained by a more or less new route. In other words, there is an element of
novelty or creativity in the developmental process” (Sheldrake, 1988, p. 317).
So, maybe the placebo field is increasing in strength as a
creative route to regenerating human health, in response to the many new
threats to our health. Remember that
“....habits acquired by some animals can facilitate the acquisition of the same
habits by other, similar animals, even in the absence of any known means of
connection or communication” (Sheldrake, 1988, p. 181). The placebo effect may have been around
forever, but humans may be learning to use it even more to their
advantage.
Harnessing and enhancing the
morphic field of the placebo effect
Just as mass marketing probably has contributed to the
placebo response in the US, so might other mass movements contribute
further. There is mounting evidence
that groups of humans can combine their consciousness to create a field
effect. The Maharishi Effect and the
Rensselaer study were mentioned earlier.
In “The intention experiment:
using your thoughts to change your life and the world,” researcher and
science writer Lynne McTaggart has collated fascinating information about many
different existing projects that suggest the power of group intention
(McTaggart, 2007). She has also
conducted several international group intention experiments on her own website
with very promising results (theintentionexperiment.com).
Can a field effect created by human consciousness affect a
morphic field? And how does the placebo
response create a morphic field anyway?
The hypothesized morphic field of the placebo response is, itself, a
field that is intimately related to human consciousness. More precisely, it could be called
the-morphic-field-of-the human-brain-while-on-placebo. So, as long as we’re being highly
speculative anyway, there is no obstacle in our theory to humans modifying this
field, especially by intentional effort, especially in groups.
In 1962, the FDA began requiring that new drugs be compared
to placebo. This helped determine drug
safety and efficacy, but had the side effect of casting placebo as the
enemy. “The fact that even dummy
capsules can kick-start the body's recovery engine became a problem for drug
developers to overcome, rather than a phenomenon that could guide doctors
toward a better understanding of the healing process and how to drive it most
effectively" Silberman, wired.com, 2009).
What a missed opportunity!
How can we make the placebo response *more* robust and reliable? The obvious course of action is to study
more how placebo works, what enhances it, what interferes with it, and more
about the history of it. We will hope
to get some publicly available information from the Foundation for the National
Institutes of Health’s Placebo Response Drug Trials Survey.
Another intriguing avenue would be a McTaggart- /
Maharishi-style group intention experiment focused directly on increasing the
efficacy of all placebo phenomena and/or expectations of healing. To some extent, this process is probably in
effect already – there are many different groups of people who pray ongoingly
for the safety, health, and happiness of all beings. And their efforts may be why we humans haven’t, for instance,
blown ourselves up completely yet. But,
it would be fun to focus specifically on boosting placebo phenomena, and then
watch drug trials go even further awry.
Instead of a headline about a 400 % increase in antidepressant
prescriptions, let us envision a headline about a 400 % increase in placebo
response!
Harnessing group intention in
other ways
As long as we’re daydreaming about group intention
experiments, there are a few other trials it would be great to see:
1)
an experiment focusing group intention on healing all humans in recovery
from antidepressants;
2)
an experiment focusing group intention on healing all members of the
three major English-language online antidepressant withdrawal support groups –
paxilprogress.org, survivingantidepressants.org, and
antidepressantwithdrawal.info. This
would make it easier to measure outcome.
3)
an experiment focusing group intention on the highest good for all
humans currently taking antidepressants.
After a suitable waiting period, we could see what happens to the
statistics for prescriptions, adverse incident reports, suicides, etc. The nice thing about this experimental focus
is that, according to some of our speculations above, benefiting the user group might benefit the ex-user group as
well.
It is thought-provoking to consider what the Maharishi
Effect and Renssalaer research has to say about how many people might be needed
to have a measurable impact on any of these groups. The current population of the U.S. is about 312,000,000. One percent of that is 3,120,000
people. The square root of 1 % is 1766
people. The current population of the
world is about 7 billion. One percent
of that is 70,000,000. The square root
of 1 % is 8,367 people. This would be
hard to organize, but conceivable with the new Internet-driven research methods
being used by people like McTaggart and Sheldrake.
Anecdotally, I have read umpteen stories of people in dire
health straits whose families organize huge prayer chains with amazing
results. For a long time, I have wished
we could get large groups of people to pray for people suffering terribly in
recovery from antidepressants. Over the
years, I have seen a few people make a stab at this, but barely. This course of action has great potential.
Toward the tipping point on
the battlefield of fields
Human biology and consciousness in relation to SSRI
antidepressants are evolving. There are
several trends. One trend is the
skyrocketing increase of people taking antidepressants and / or “spellbound” by
the belief in their safety and efficacy.
This includes true believers who aren’t even taking a medication. (The term “spellbound” was coined by the
whistleblowing psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D. to describe the obliviousness
of people on psychotropic medications to how impaired the drugs are making them
(Breggin, 2008; breggin.com.).)
Another trend is the more slowly growing awareness of the
harmfulness of the antidepressants.
This includes people who are on the meds or trying to get off them, who
have become aware that there is a serious downside to the meds. It also includes people who are paying
attention to the how drugs affect people they know, or paying attention to the
news reports of things like medication-propelled violence and pharmaceuticals
in the water supply.
The Internet is an historically unprecedented aid to raising
consciousness, to collaboration among people, and to the creation and
modification of fields. This can cut
both ways, and there are, unfortunately, ways that the Internet serves to
reinforce people being enamoured of their medications. It can also promote a nocebo effect when
people who have been made sick by their antidepressant come together and
unintentionally create an expectation of continuing to be sick. However, mostly, on the Internet, I have
observed the breathtaking human resolve to heal and to help others heal.
We might say that there is a struggle going on right now
between opposing fields. It’s a
struggle in the classic mold – a clash of the Titans; a Zoroastrian battle
between good and evil; a Darwinian competition for survival of the
fittest. People may be taking longer to
recover from the neuro-endocrinological damage of SSRIs because, right now, the
morphic field of the human-brain-while-on-these-meds is growing stronger. But, the countervailing forces are gathering
strength. We must continue until we get
to the tipping point where what is currently esoteric knowledge about the
dangers of antidepressants becomes “rapidly and dramatically more common”
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(sociology)).
Religion professor Chris Bache, Ph.D. has studied human
group fields. He is the author of
several books including “The living classroom:
Teaching and collective consciousness,” and has been influenced by
Sheldrake and Alfred North Whitehead, among others. He believes there can be a battlefield of fields, and has
suggestions about how to win fields and influence them.
According to Bache, group fields accumulate power over
time. You can treat the field like a
being -- relate to it, analyze it, nourish it.
The individual helps the group develop -- any work you do on your own consciousness
spreads through the field automatically.
His advice about how to dilute or weaken undesirable fields is: Don't feed them by resisting them. Instead, create something that makes it
impossible for the undesirable thing to exist (IONS workshop, San Francisco,
July 2011).
It might be important to acknowledge the battlefield of
fields between antidepressant harm v. healing, but to also look beyond it to
the bigger picture of what is being created by the tension between the
two. We now know that evolution is as
much about cooperation as it is about competition, and both contribute to
creativity. It may turn out that this
era of pandemic neuropathology becomes the springboard to an evolutionary
leap. Previously, this blog has looked
at the tantalizing links between neurological damage and psi openings.
Whether we look at neuro-endocrine harm from antidepressants
as an ill or as a descent experience with a silver lining, healing and the
relief of suffering must still be our goals.
Among our strategies, we could be learning how to maximize the placebo
effect and use group intention to strengthen the preferred fields.
Coda (To help kickstart your
own placebo effect)
I think most of us can never get too much reassurance, so I
just wanted to remind anyone going through recovery from psychotropic
medication or other brain injury that, in the last decade, the positive news
about the brain just keeps on coming. We used to think you formed no new
neurons after young adulthood. Wrong. We used to think no new healing occurred
1-2 years post brain injury. Wrong. We used to think if you had two short
alleles of a certain gene for depression, you were doomed to depression. Wrong.
On the contrary, it turns out that the brain is amazingly
flexible and responsive to doing anything good for it. And all the things that
we already knew were good for us turn out to be even MORE good for us than we
realized – for example, there is an spate of new research showing how exercise
rewires the brain. We are continually presented with the opportunity to rewire
ourselves to be who we really want to be. And, ironically, it can be the
unwanted experience of neurological injury that makes you really grasp how much
power you have, even now, to influence your own neurological system.
===========
Thanks to Barbara Croner, MFT, for her conceptual contributions
to this essay. And thanks to Luc for
the antidepressant usage statistics.
And thanks to Stan for always promoting this blog!
Sources:
Bache, C.M.
(2008). The living
classroom: Teaching and collective
consciousness. Albany: SUNY.
Breggin, P. (2008). Medication
madness: The role of psychiatric drugs
in cases of violence, suicide, and murder.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
McTaggart, L.
(2007). The intention
experiment: using your thoughts to
change your life and the world. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Sheldrake, R. (1988
/ 1995). The presence of the past: morphic resonance and the habits of
nature. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.
Sheldrake, R.
(2012). The science
delusion: Freeing the spirit of
enquiry. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.
Antidepressant statistics:
